Dragon Fire

Prime Minister’s Residence, Tokyo, Japan

General Shigehiko Ogawa had been in the waiting room of the spartan official residence for more than half an hour, while the Prime Minister’s nightcap with a visiting American trade delegation wound up. Ogawa was Japan’s long-serving Director, Defence Intelligence Headquarters and since the Dragon Strike war he had been charged with substantively increasing the human intelligence network inside the centre of power in China.

More than any other power in the region, including the United States, Japan had the ability to feed agents into China’s institutions. But it had been painstaking work and there was still a long way to go. While Ogawa knew just about every negotiating tactic in advance from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (MOFTEC), he had failed to make any headway in the Second Artillery Regiment, which controlled China’s nuclear weapons programme.

He had, however, thanks to a sickness, had some success within Zhongnanhai. While he was unsure of the value of his intelligence, Ogawa, who was just two years from retirement, felt he should let the Prime Minister know what he had found out, even if it meant wasting his evening waiting for an audience. The intelligence had come by way of the interpreter of Tang Siju, the Chinese security chief. Tang’s usual interpreter was off with the flu. The replacement was a spy for the Japanese.

The Americans left noisily, passing through the anteroom, eyeing Ogawa as if he was a janitor waiting to clear up. Then Prime Minister Shigeto Wada greeted him formally and offered him tea.

‘I have information that China authorized the coup in Pakistan and has formed a new military alliance with the new government there,’ began Ogawa.

‘But the two governments have always been strategically close,’ said Wada.

‘The Foreign Minister, Jamie Song, and Tang Siju, of the General Staff Department, have both given their personal backing to General Hamid Khan for specific support during this crisis.’

He handed Wada a transcript of two separate meetings at which Tang had used Ogawa’s agent as interpreter. One was of the conversation within Zhongnanhai with the Pakistani Ambassador, Jabbar, and the Defence Attaché, Hussein. The second was in the military General Command Centre in the Western Hills just outside Beijing. Hussein and Jabbar were with Tang, being consulted on moving extra troops towards the Indian border.

‘In order to both threaten and humiliate,’ said Jabbar, ‘I suggest you concentrate your area of attack on the Thag La Ridge, as you did for the 1962 war.’