Dragon Fire

EPILOGUE

With medical and public services collapsed, the twenty million people affected by the nuclear attack in India were mostly left to fend for themselves. International agencies came in where they could, but the task was simply too enormous. The few not killed in the immediate explosion died of burns and infection over the following few days. Those who survived longer began to break out with illnesses. The symptoms were nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite; diarrhoea with blood; high fever; bleeding into the skin resulting in welts; ulceration of the mouth; bleeding from the gums, the rectum and the urinary tract; loss of hair and general weakness until death. The statistics were still being compiled when this report was written, but it was estimated that 60 per cent of the deaths were from burns and the blast itself, 20 per cent from radiation sickness and another 20 per cent from related injuries and illnesses. Many in this last category were the very young or very old. Scientists estimated that the radiation in the worst areas measured almost 500 rads an hour and that anything above 400 rads an hour (over a three-hour period) would kill at least half the people exposed to it. Given that most had no means of escape, many more than the specified 50 per cent would have died from it. A year later eight hundred thousand people were estimated to have died because of the attack.

Chengdu and the Western Hills outside Beijing were closed off completely. It is still not clear the extent of the casualties there, or how the Chinese emergency services handled the crisis. Experts assumed that because of its more disciplined society, the victims fared better than in India.

The United States led a global condemnation of China and introduced a package of potentially crippling sanctions. But these were ignored by Russia and most of the governments in South-East Asia. The Thai Prime Minister was the first high-level foreign leader to visit Beijing, followed by most of the South-East Asian heads of government, who publicly acknowledged China’s new position as a world superpower. Dignitaries from the Middle East visited. The first Western leader was the German Chancellor, followed shortly by the French President. Britain maintained that a high-level visit was out of the question. It never confirmed that it had led the Special Forces raid on the Cocos Islands and it was never leaked out that for a few hours the BBC was broadcasting from the Wood Norton nuclear bunker.

The new Indian Prime Minister signed a substantive defence alliance with Japan allowing for joint exercises in the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal, breaking Japan’s commitment to confine its military activities to within 2,400 kilometres of its coastline. Russia attempted to initiate a three-power summit in Moscow with China and India, where it was announced that India would open border negotiations with China. At the eleventh hour India pulled out, refusing to send even a junior official. Chinese troops withdrew into Burma from Arunachal Pradesh. General Hamid Khan and his staff, including Captain Masood, were dug out of the General Headquarters bunker by the first wave of UN troops to arrive in Pakistan. Khan was a broken man, conceding that his high-stakes plan to modernize Pakistan had failed. The country was run by an interim UN protectorate, but supported by the army. One of the options was to incorporate Pakistan back into the Indian federation, with a widespread international view that the partition had failed, but there was strong opposition to this from within Pakistan and the Islamic world. Chinese troops continued to occupy the outlying islands of Taiwan with no resistance from the local people. President Lin resigned and was replaced by a more moderate politician. Trade between the mainland and Taiwan boomed to such an extent that direct shipping and flights were allowed.

India held fresh elections and reconstruction work began in both Delhi and Bombay. The Bombay stock market was moved to Madras, but with the stated aim of rebuilding it on its original site once decontamination had been completed. The seat of government was temporarily set up in Calcutta.

Both John Hastings and the more hawkish Anthony Pincher were re-elected, with increased majorities, as were the leaders of New Zealand and Australia. Prime Minister Wada lost his election to more nationalistic forces in Japan. President Tao held a missile parade in Tiananmen Square with Jamie Song, Tang Siju and General Leung by his side on the balcony on the gate of the Forbidden City. Reece Overhalt, as doyen of the diplomatic corps, boycotted the ceremony. Shortly after that, both he and Jamie Song retired, with Song spending most of his time with his software companies in California.

The status of China in the twenty-first century was hotly debated in diplomatic and academic circles. But in reality, it had obtained power by force which would have taken it generations to obtain through peace.