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.’