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leaders before him, Teng decided it was prudent to acknowledge the wishes of the Chinese people and not just the Chinese elite. The deputy premier quietly but quickly reinstated personnel and organizations he had removed. Most immediately, the one that was responsible for his personal protection.
Today, the 8341 Unit was responsible for uncovering plots against the regime. Their sphere of activity centered upon China and the breakaway republic. Since the Tian’ anmen Square uprising in 1989, few dissidents had undertaken public displays against the government. Private activity was still relatively abundant but unthreatening, limited to pockets of philosophers, failed entrepreneurs, foreign-born firebrands, and disenfranchised youths who wanted fashionable Western clothes. At present, none of them represented a serious threat against the government. The only potential source of danger was the PLA, where one reckless, ambitious man might control the loyalty of tens of thousands of troops.
A man like General Tam.
Unlike the prime minister with whom he had just been meeting, Chou had no patience or sympathy for those who would betray the nation or the philosophies set out by Chairman Mao. Le Kwan Po was a mediator. He was a man committed to equilibrium, to compromise. Chou liked the prime minister and believed he was a patriot. But Le wanted to rule a China that was unified at any cost, even if it was a heterogeneous one and not a Communist one. Chou did not agree with him on this very significant point. The director still seethed when he thought of the beloved chairman’s late wife, who was one of the treasonous Gang of Four. She and her three fellows had coerced members of the military to help cleanse the nation of ideologues. The Communist Revolution had been an uprising of ideas. They were good and necessary ideas. In the 1930s and 1940s, the military was called upon by Mao to defend the right of the people to hold those ideas. Jiang Qing corrupted that. She used the vicious Red Guard to enforce her ideas. Iron boot education never produces long-lasting results. It produces slaves, and eventually slaves turn on their masters.
That was something the Gang of Four learned during their long, televised trial in Beijing.
It was something General Tam Li would also learn.
The computer beeped. The short, bespectacled intelligence director closed the white folder and put it in a drawer. He looked at the monitor. The cursor prompted him to enter a password. He typed in the Chinese characters for eagle and talon and waited for the file to download. Chou had a collection of ivory dragons on a shelf in his office. He enjoyed them and had collected them since he was a boy. But they were also there to mislead his adversaries. Anyone who came into his office and tried to access his computer files would naturally search for dragon-related passwords. No one would ever think to look for another powerful predator.
It was a report from one of Chou’s field agents in Taiwan. The CSR director had been expecting the information.
General Tam Li had gone into this day with a plan he had hoped would undermine the resolve of the man who was watching him closely. The general seemed to have thought that violence and the threat of personal exposure would turn the eyes of Chou Shin elsewhere.
Tam was not just wrong, he was decisively wrong.
As he would discover in less than an hour.
ELEVEN
Taipei, Taiwan Monday, 11:49 P.M.
Lo Tek had a wonderful life. Part of that was due to the freedom he enjoyed, and part of it was the respect he had. Part of it was also due to the quaint simplicity of his world.
Born Hui-ling Wong, Lo Tek was a name given to him by his associates because he refused to use any sophisticated electronic communications devices. He believed in being surreptitious, and one could not work in the darkness with all the electronic lights of the modern age. Most days and nights the thirty-two-year-old spent on his ninety-fourfoot
Today, the 8341 Unit was responsible for uncovering plots against the regime. Their sphere of activity centered upon China and the breakaway republic. Since the Tian’ anmen Square uprising in 1989, few dissidents had undertaken public displays against the government. Private activity was still relatively abundant but unthreatening, limited to pockets of philosophers, failed entrepreneurs, foreign-born firebrands, and disenfranchised youths who wanted fashionable Western clothes. At present, none of them represented a serious threat against the government. The only potential source of danger was the PLA, where one reckless, ambitious man might control the loyalty of tens of thousands of troops.
A man like General Tam.
Unlike the prime minister with whom he had just been meeting, Chou had no patience or sympathy for those who would betray the nation or the philosophies set out by Chairman Mao. Le Kwan Po was a mediator. He was a man committed to equilibrium, to compromise. Chou liked the prime minister and believed he was a patriot. But Le wanted to rule a China that was unified at any cost, even if it was a heterogeneous one and not a Communist one. Chou did not agree with him on this very significant point. The director still seethed when he thought of the beloved chairman’s late wife, who was one of the treasonous Gang of Four. She and her three fellows had coerced members of the military to help cleanse the nation of ideologues. The Communist Revolution had been an uprising of ideas. They were good and necessary ideas. In the 1930s and 1940s, the military was called upon by Mao to defend the right of the people to hold those ideas. Jiang Qing corrupted that. She used the vicious Red Guard to enforce her ideas. Iron boot education never produces long-lasting results. It produces slaves, and eventually slaves turn on their masters.
That was something the Gang of Four learned during their long, televised trial in Beijing.
It was something General Tam Li would also learn.
The computer beeped. The short, bespectacled intelligence director closed the white folder and put it in a drawer. He looked at the monitor. The cursor prompted him to enter a password. He typed in the Chinese characters for eagle and talon and waited for the file to download. Chou had a collection of ivory dragons on a shelf in his office. He enjoyed them and had collected them since he was a boy. But they were also there to mislead his adversaries. Anyone who came into his office and tried to access his computer files would naturally search for dragon-related passwords. No one would ever think to look for another powerful predator.
It was a report from one of Chou’s field agents in Taiwan. The CSR director had been expecting the information.
General Tam Li had gone into this day with a plan he had hoped would undermine the resolve of the man who was watching him closely. The general seemed to have thought that violence and the threat of personal exposure would turn the eyes of Chou Shin elsewhere.
Tam was not just wrong, he was decisively wrong.
As he would discover in less than an hour.
ELEVEN
Taipei, Taiwan Monday, 11:49 P.M.
Lo Tek had a wonderful life. Part of that was due to the freedom he enjoyed, and part of it was the respect he had. Part of it was also due to the quaint simplicity of his world.
Born Hui-ling Wong, Lo Tek was a name given to him by his associates because he refused to use any sophisticated electronic communications devices. He believed in being surreptitious, and one could not work in the darkness with all the electronic lights of the modern age. Most days and nights the thirty-two-year-old spent on his ninety-fourfoot
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