Ian Slater: Asian Front

The president liked the idea and put it to the Japanese prime minister, who put it to the Diet, and after “lively” debate the motion was passed, a precedent having already been set by the Japanese Diet sending a peacekeeping contingent to Thailand in October 1992. And so — for only the second time since World War II — Japanese forces were deployed overseas.

It was a colossal blunder, and when Freeman heard the news flash from CBN he was shaving and almost cut himself. He still used a cutthroat razor, believing a man must have a weapon at hand even in his toilet kit. He walked to the bathroom door and stood glowering through the hallway at the CBN reporter. “Well — now it’s official,” Freeman rumbled. “Washington’s a lunatic asylum!”

“Asylum?” It was Marjorie.

“Good God!” Freeman proclaimed, standing in his khaki trousers, suspenders down at his sides, razor being used as a pointer. “Don’t they know — don’t they realize that the one thing the Chinese’ll never stand for is Japanese on Chinese soil? Chinese’ll buy Japanese Hondas, but this is a different ball game. By God, the Chinese hate the Japanese.”

“Isn’t it time for your morning run?”

“Japanese occupied Manchuria for thirteen years — even changed its name to Manchukuo. Then there was the Rape of Nanking — butchering people right, left, and center — and then—” The razor flew out at the screen to illustrate the point for Marjorie. “—Japanese had a biological and chemical warfare unit — used Chinese and some of our boys as guinea pigs. Injected them anthrax and all kinds of diseases as well as gassing them. Chinese have a long memory. By God—”

“I wish you wouldn’t use that language, Douglas,” came Marjorie’s unruffled tone from the kitchen. “Aren’t you going for your run soon?”

“Marjorie, Beijing’ll see this as a provocation.”

“What — you jogging? I shouldn’t think so, Douglas.”

But even Freeman had underestimated the ferocity of the Chinese reaction. To Beijing it was clearly a test by the West to see what China would do when faced with the fact that the Japanese had been invited by the Americans and had accepted. It was proof positive to General Cheng and other members of the Central Committee that Japan, with U.S. backing, was testing the waters, returning to its old obsession, Manchuria — to its old dream of possessing untold oil and mineral wealth that would make Japan independent of other countries for raw materials and make her an even greater industrial powerhouse than she was already.

In the golden light of the brothel, the air redolent with incense and the smell of rice cooking downstairs, Spring Blossom had prepared her surprise well. No sooner had she led him into the other room than Summer Flower, even more beautiful than Spring Blossom, dressed in nothing but a scarlet V-kini, took him by the hand. After they had undressed him and he lay naked except for his dog tags, Summer Flower knelt before him on the floor mattress, her legs straddling his chest, her hands behind his head, swaying gently back and forth over him one second, offering her pendulous breasts to suck, the next moment all but sitting on his face while Spring Blossom moistened her lips and went down on him. He was in such ecstasy he neither saw nor heard the Chinese youth who came in and took the .45’s holster and belt.

Arriving in his chauffeur-driven Red Flag at the Great Hall of the People, which bordered Tiananmen Square, for the meeting with the all-powerful Central Committee under Chairman Nie, Cheng received further news of the Japanese intervention and his second shock of the day. Chairman Nie, a painfully cautious man who knew how to play both sides against the middle and who normally questioned the other members until they were numb with fatigue, now quickly concurred with Cheng and the rest of the committee that the Japanese had obviously thrown in their hand in order to qualify for the lucrative kind of capitalist contract feeding frenzy that followed the Gulf War. Then Nie did something that for the premier was extremely difficult — he surprised General Cheng by demonstrating a cunning that even the strategist Cheng had to admire.

For Nie, a politician, the political reality always subsumed the narrower military perspective, yet he now clearly approved of unhesitating military action, explaining, with the smoothing, consensus-seeking gestures of his hands, that while of course it was regrettable that the People’s Liberation Army would find it necessary to fight, from an internal political perspective a xiao guz muo zan dou — a skirmish — or two on the northern borders of their grossly overpopulated country would have a salutary result. For quite apart from rebuffing the Japanese, it would have the time-proven effect of diverting domestic dissatisfaction away from Beijing’s widely unpopular anti-inflationary policies and its ruthless hunt for dissident elements.

Cheng agreed it was axiomatic that internal dissent would be far less tolerated by the masses whose attention would of necessity shift to that of concern for a foreign devil at China’s gates along the ancient northern wall of Genghis Khan. Besides, Cheng knew an external enemy in any country had the effect of burying, or at least subsuming, internal squabbles within the party as well as on the street. Such a move of course would also consolidate Nie’s power.

Cheng’s attack, with the Central Committee’s unanimous backing, was set for dawn, April 25.

Cheng said nothing about the plan he had set in motion against Freeman. For Nie and the others, Freeman, for the most part, was an open book — a career soldier of fifty-five who bore an uncanny resemblance to an American actor and whose strategies and tactical brilliance had earned him four stars and the grudging respect of even enemy commanders. His reputation had grown rapidly since his daring attack on Pyongyang earlier in the war and his brilliant defense against the Siberian Aist — giant hovercraft — offensive on Lake Baikal. On the lake he had what little artillery he had brought with him on the airdrop fired into the ice around his paratroopers’ positions at the lake’s end. This bombardment had created a jagged sea of auto-size bergs that the Aists could not negotiate. The result had been known as “Freeman’s Basra,” a telescoping pile of wreckage that looked like the destruction meted out to the retreating Iraqis along the highway from Kuwait.

If Freeman’s victories were an open book, he had a few secrets he shared with no one. One of them was that, fit as he was, he detested having to keep it up. Jogging and physical exercise made you too damn hot and sweaty— unless, of course, you were in combat. Then you were so busy, so fearful, at times — usually after — so exhilarated you didn’t notice. But he had to force himself to run at least four miles a day to stay in shape, and go easy on the buttered popcorn. Monterey’s beach was perfect, the sand making it more exhausting, making him feel doubly heroic, and at the end he could walk into the ocean. That, as Marjorie said every time, would “cool you off right enough.”

For the past three days, Freeman hadn’t seen the figure on the dunes, and this morning the general was particularly relaxed, going over the old battles in his mind as he jogged along the water-firmed beach.

He remembered the armored battle in the Yakutsk region of Siberia where it had plunged to minus sixty degrees, at which temperature metal became brittle and the waxes in the hydraulic lines of the Siberian tanks, but not the American Abrams M1A1, separated out, the oil’s constituent waxes then clogging the tanks’ arteries in the same way as lumps of cholesterol clog the bloodstream. The T-72s and some T-80s had suddenly become sitting ducks, whereas the American tanks burst through the snow berms at forty miles per hour like exploding icing sugar, picking the Siberians off. It was one of the most beautiful things Freeman had ever seen, and he was thinking of it now as suddenly he saw the lone figure on the dunes once again.