Satellite photos on Kai’s desk showed an unknown vessel near the Xisha Islands, which Westerners called the Paracel Islands. Aircraft surveillance revealed it to be a Vietnamese oil exploration ship called the Vu Trong Phung. This was dynamite, but the fuse did not have to be lit.
Kai was familiar with the background, as was just about everybody in the Chinese government. Chinese boats had fished these waters for centuries. Now China had dumped millions of tons of earth and sand onto a group of uninhabitable rocks and reefs and then built military bases. Kai thought any fair-minded person would concede that this made the islands part of China.
No one would care much about it except that oil had been discovered beneath the sea bed near the islands, and everybody wanted some. The Chinese considered the oil to be theirs and were not planning to share. That was why the voyage of the Vu Trong Phung was a problem.
Kai decided to brief the foreign minister himself. His boss, Security Minister Fu Chuyu, had gone out of town, to Urumqi, capital of the Xinjian region, where millions of Muslims stubbornly adhered to their religion despite the Communist government’s energetic efforts to repress it. Fu’s absence gave Kai the opportunity to discuss the Vu Trong Phung quietly with Foreign Minister Wu Bai and agree a diplomatic course of action to be suggested to President Chen. But when he arrived at the Foreign Ministry in Chaoyangmen Nandajie he was dismayed to find General Huang there.
Huang Ling was short and wide, and looked like a box in his square-shouldered uniform. He was a proud member of the Communist old guard, like his friend Fu Chuyu. Also like Fu, he smoked all the time.
Huang’s membership of the National Security Commission made him very powerful. Like the gorilla at the dinner party, he sat where he liked, and he had the right to muscle in anywhere in the Foreign Office. But who had told him about this meeting? Perhaps Huang had a spy in the Foreign Office – someone close to Wu. I must remember that, Kai thought.
Despite his irritation, Kai greeted Huang with the respect due to an older man. ‘We’re privileged to have the benefit of your knowledge and expertise,’ he said insincerely. The truth was that he and Huang were on opposite sides in the rancorous ongoing struggle between the old school and the young reformers.
As they sat down, Huang immediately went on the attack. ‘The Vietnamese keep provoking us!’ he exclaimed. ‘They know they have no right to our oil.’
Huang had an assistant with him, and an aide sat close to Wu. There was no real need for assistants at this meeting, but Huang was too important to travel without an entourage, and Wu probably felt the need for defensive reinforcement. Kai had slightly lost face by showing up alone. Such bullshit, he thought.
However, it was true that the Vietnamese had twice already attempted to explore the sea bed for oil. ‘I agree with General Huang,’ Kai said. ‘We must protest to the government in Hanoi.’
‘Protest?’ Huang was scornful. ‘We have protested before!’
Kai said patiently: ‘And, in the end, they have always backed down and withdrawn their ship.’
‘So why do they do it again?’
Kai suppressed a sigh. Everyone knew why the Vietnamese kept repeating their incursions. It was all right for them to withdraw when threatened, for that meant only that they had been bullied; but to stop trying would be like accepting that they had no right to the oil, and they were not willing to do that. ‘They’re making a point,’ he said, simplifying.
‘Then we must make a stronger point!’ Huang leaned forward and tapped cigarette ash into a porcelain bowl on Wu’s desk. The bowl was ruby-red with a double-lotus pattern and probably worth ten million dollars.
Wu carefully picked up the delicate antique bowl, threw the tobacco ashes on the floor, and silently put the bowl at the other end of the desk, out of Huang’s reach. Then he said: ‘What did you have in mind, general?’
Huang answered without hesitation. ‘We should sink the Vu Trong Phung. That will teach the Vietnamese a lesson.’
Huang wanted to turn the heat up – as usual.
Wu said: ‘It’s a bit drastic. But it might put an end to these repeated offences.’
Kai said: ‘There’s a snag. My intelligence says that the Vietnamese oil industry is advised by American geologists. There may well be one or more Americans aboard the Vu Trong Phung.’
Huang said: ‘So?’
‘I merely ask whether we want to kill Americans.’
‘Undeniably,’ Wu said, ‘to sink a ship that has Americans aboard would escalate the incident.’
That infuriated Huang. ‘For how long must we allow the motherfucking Americans to dictate what will happen in our territory?’ he raged.
This was impolite. The strongest Chinese swear words all had to do with fucking someone’s mother. Such language was not normally used in foreign policy discussions.
‘On the other hand,’ Kai said mildly, ‘if we’re going to start killing Americans there is more to consider than merely oil under the sea. We would need to gauge their likely response to the murders and prepare for it.’
‘Murders?’ said Huang with rising indignation.
‘That is how President Green would see it.’ Kai judged it was time to make a concession, to calm Huang down. He went on quickly: ‘I don’t rule out the possibility of sinking the Vu Trong Phung. Let’s keep that option open. But we would need to say it was a last resort. We should first send Hanoi a protest –’
Huang gave a derogatory snort.
‘– then a warning, then a plain threat.’
‘Yes, that’s the way to do it,’ said Wu. ‘A ladder.’
‘Then, after all that, if we sink the ship, it will be clear that we did everything we could to seek a peaceful solution.’
Huang was not happy but he knew he was beaten. Making the best of it, he said: ‘Then let us at least station a destroyer in the vicinity ready to attack.’
‘Excellent proposal,’ said Wu, standing up to indicate that the meeting was over. ‘This is what I will suggest to President Chen.’
Kai went down in the elevator with Huang, who was silent as they descended seven floors. Outside, Huang and his assistant were met by a gleaming black Hongqi limousine, while Kai got into a silver-grey Geely family sedan with Monk at the wheel.
Kai wondered whether he should pay more attention to these status symbols. The marks of affluence and prestige were more important in Communist countries than in the decadent West, where a guy in a battered leather jacket might be a billionaire. But Kai, like the American students he had met at Princeton, felt status symbols were a waste of effort. And today he had proved that, for the foreign minister had followed his advice, not Huang’s. So maybe the assistant and the limousine did not count for much after all.
Monk pulled out into the traffic and headed for the Beautiful Films studio. This evening there was a party to celebrate the hundredth episode of Love in the Palace. The show was a hit. It attracted a huge audience and the two leads were celebrities. Ting was paid a lot more than Kai – which was fine with him.
Kai took off his tie to look less formal among the actors. When he arrived the party was just getting under way on the sound stage with the sets all around, great and small rooms furnished and decorated in the lavish style of the late Qing dynasty.
The actors had removed their heavy television make-up and changed out of their costumes, and now they flooded the room with a sea of colour. In Kai’s world the men wore suits to make themselves look serious, and the few women wore grey and dark blue to look like the men. Here it was different. The actors and actresses wore fashionable clothes in all colours.