Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

“Jesus.”

“Back in the early 1980s, Calderon was the wunderkind of the CIA, the boy genius. In 1983, at the age of 27, he conceived and coordinated the little-known Able Archer 83 exercise—a simulation of a NATO nuclear attack on the USSR that involved the participation of real heads of state. The Soviets, as Calderon had predicted they would, thought it was real and readied their nuclear arsenal . . . while every American military and intelligence agency observed them closely. For the rest of the 1980s, we knew all the Soviets’ moves before they did. Reagan loved it. He gave Calderon the Intelligence Medal for it.

“Impressed by his work on Able Archer 83, the CIA used Calderon for all sorts of geopolitical analyses—Russia, China, Central and South America. But most of all, they used him as a predictor , an analyst of enemy intent, a forecaster of how America’s enemies would react in certain scenarios, just like in Able Archer.

“Calderon was such a good reader of people and their motivations, their emotions and their intentions, that he was often able to predict what they would do. For instance, Calderon predicted every one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s internal strategems, from his rise to General Secretary of the Politburo in 1985 to glasnost and perestroika. Any time Reagan met Gorbachev, the President was briefed personally by Calderon beforehand. Reagan would say it was like seeing all of Gorbachev’s cards before playing poker with him.

“I actually found one old report that Calderon wrote about China back in 1982, with some predictions he made back then.”

Retter still had her briefcase with her, filled with the files and notes she’d been taking to the White House. She opened it, pulled out a printed document and handed it to Dave.

It was titled:

THE COMING RISE OF CHINA

AND THE ENSUING FALL OF AMERICA

ANALYSIS BY

MARIUS CALDERON

JULY 2, 1982

“Nice title,” Dave said. “Very alarmist.”

Retter said, “The Communist Party called China’s economic reforms ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ but we would just call it free-market capitalism with a brutal government. The reforms began in 1978 and were slow to take hold. It wasn’t until the late 1990s and 2000s that China’s economy became the powerhouse we know it to be today. But in 1982, it was still a dump, an agrarian economy with collective farms and useless state-owned industries. Nobody took China seriously back then . . . except Marius Calderon. Read some of the highlighted paragraphs and remember that Calderon wrote them back in 1982 .”

Dave scanned the document, glancing at the paragraphs Retter had marked with highlighter. They included:

THE 21ST–CENTURY SUPERPOWER: CHINA

Make no mistake, the Communist Party’s sweeping economic reforms will create a new China, a China that by the year 2010 will challenge America as the dominant player in the world’s economy.

As China’s economy opens and expands, its industry will devour the globe’s supplies of iron ore and aluminum, and its middle class will grow wealthier. A billion Chinese consumers will demand TVs, cars, refrigerators, plus all the other consumer goods that Americans have taken for granted since the 1950s, our golden age.

America is in decline. We don’t manufacture anything anymore. The dream years from 1945 to 1970 (when we had no industrial competition from the countries we defeated in the Second World War, Germany and Japan) are over. Now in the 1980s, both Germany and Japan build better cars, white goods and consumer electronics than we do. American blue-collar workers can’t compete with cheap labor from countries like Japan and Taiwan.

But all this is nothing compared to the industrial behemoth that China will become.

It was industrial might that allowed the North to win the Civil War; it was industrial might that allowed America to prevail on two fronts in the Second World War. China’s industrial might is of a scale not seen before on this planet. And its recent economic reforms are designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to rouse the sleeping dragon and awaken that industrial might.

If implemented correctly, I foresee China’s economy growing at double-digit annual rates every year for much of the 1990s and 2000s—

“Jesus,” Dave said. “This guy foresaw China’s double-digit growth back in 1982.”

“Read on,” Retter said.

Dave found the next highlighted passage:

FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE RISE OF CHINA

The first casualty of the rise of China will be the average American’s standard of living. Our dollar will become worthless alongside the Chinese yuan (which the Chinese will be reluctant to float). Americans will not be able to travel, while the Chinese will grow ever richer. Large deficits will follow and our government will start borrowing money from the Chinese.

American unemployment will reach unsustainable levels as low-skilled work (especially factory and manufacturing labor) will be done by cheaper workers in China. And with economic strength goes political strength. As China grows wealthier, it will give aid to poorer countries and ultimately develop greater global influence than the United States—

Dave looked up from the document. “This guy was good.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Retter said. “He goes on to predict that China will bid for and win the Olympic Games in the first decade of the 21st century and use the Games to showcase China to the world.”

“Okay. So where is he now?” Dave asked.

Retter raised her palms. “I asked around at both DIA and CIA, but either no one knows or they aren’t telling. He’s still with the Agency. He did some deep black stuff in its special forces paramilitary unit in 2002—did you know that the Agency owns and operates three Sturgeon -class submarines for clandestine insertions? Then he did some time at U.S. ‘rendition stations’ in Egypt and Turkey from 2003 to 2004. As for where he’s been stationed for the last year or so, and what he’s been doing, no one’s saying.”

“You think Calderon is connected with the Army of Thieves?” Dave asked.

“He personally trained the twelve Chileans who were sprung from Valparaiso prison. They know him and they know his methods; they’d be a perfect officer corps for a renegade army. And there’s something else: I mentioned that Calderon worked at the CIA’s rendition stations in Egypt and Turkey—nasty remote compounds where we tortured prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq. But at the rendition center in Egypt, the CIA helped certain African governments extract information from their captured enemies, and one of our customers was the rather unpleasant government of Sudan that was later brought down.”

Dave said, “The second breakout was of a hundred Sudanese soldiers from a U.N. prison in the Sudan. Wait. Are you saying that this Calderon guy, a CIA agent, put together the Army of Thieves? Got the officers from Chile and the infantry from the Sudan?”

“Yes. I have another theory, too, but you’ll think it’s nuts.”

“Try me.”

Retter hesitated. “I can’t prove it but . . . well . . .” She took a quick breath. “The leader of the Army of Thieves is smart, bold and totally brazen, yet he always covers his face. Why would you do that if you were an anarchist? I think he does it because he doesn’t want anyone to recognize him . He needs to keep his identity a secret. I think it’s entirely possible that Marius Calderon, a top CIA agent, is the leader of the Army of Thieves.”