Dragon Fire

Oval Office, White House, Washington, DC

‘I know it runs against every grain of your new foreign policy, Mr President, but if you do not react to this massacre, we should hand back the campaign money for the next election and retire.’ Ennio Barber, aged thirty-five, was one of John Hastings’s closest personal advisers.

What Tom Bloodworth gave him in diplomatic and military pragmatism, Barber gave him in domestic and electoral advice.

Within hours of the Tibetan massacre being shown worldwide, political opponents had already been on television calling for sanctions against China. Each had a different comparison, yet each amounted to the same.

It was compared to the Tiananmen Square killings on 4 June 1989, to the slaughter on 20 March 1959 outside the Chinese Transport Centre in Lhasa, and to the 1956 tragedy in Magyarovar, Hungary when eighty-four unarmed demonstrators were shot down by Communist machine guns. There was an emphasis on the word Communist, to show that while the United States had defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War, it had yet to contend with China.

‘The relationship with China will sort itself out, Mr President,’ said Ennio Barber. ‘The question facing us now is what message should you, the President, send to the American people about the atrocities in Tibet.’

With John Hastings and Barber were the National Security Advisor, Tom Bloodworth, and the Secretary of State, Joan Holden.

‘I think we have to be careful not to get ourselves into a media-driven policy,’ said Hastings. ‘I don’t care if we keep our mouths shut for another twenty-four or forty-eight hours on this. Tom, could you give us a run-down of what we know happened and what is happening now.’

‘The demonstrators were on the corners of Lingyu Shar and Chingdrol Shar Lam,’ said Bloodworth. ‘It’s an area in the south-east corner of Lhasa. Most of them had walked about three hundred yards from Jokhang where more disturbances were taking place. They were unarmed and, it appears, none of the Tibetan Special Frontier Force, which has so effectively infiltrated Lhasa, was with them.’

Bloodworth turned on a television set, ran the video disc for a few seconds and paused on the picture of the machine-gun post on the roof. ‘This is a PLA post, put up after the Drapchi raid, to protect the government offices.’ He paused on the armoured car coming out of the compound to the north. ‘This is the headquarters of the Public Security Bureau, who are a permanent street security presence in Tibet. In other words the PSB regard the streets of Lhasa as their patch, while the more disciplined PLA are under stricter orders of engagement. The massacre, Mr President, was carried out by the PSB, against the specific instructions of the PLA.’

‘Which has overall command?’

‘In a situation where the PLA is deployed, it should technically be the army,’ said Bloodworth.

‘So the Chinese might admit to a renegade unit being responsible and we would all be off the hook.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Joan Holden. ‘The Chinese security chief, General Tang Siju, came from the Public Security Bureau. He is one of President Tao’s closest confidants and he is very unlikely to let his old friends be criticized for killing rebellious Tibetans. China will speak with one voice on this one.’

‘We have satellite surveillance to back up our HUMINT reports stumbling out of Lhasa,’ said Bloodworth. ‘Protests have been going on just about every day since the Drapchi break-out. Some only a few hundred. The biggest are between three and five thousand people. Many of them are spontaneous, usually sparked off by the police arresting someone. Although supported by normal Tibetans, most of the demonstrators are monks and nuns. Sera, Drepung, Ganden and Nechung monasteries have been closed. We have unconfirmed reports that twenty monks were gunned down in a courtyard at Sera while praying. The Shungseb nunnery has been shut down and the military presence in the Jokhang is so intense that it is as good as closed. We believe the protesters who were shot by the PSB had gone to the government offices after failing to get into the Jokhang.

‘The Chinese have put police or army units in all the major Tibetan parts of the city. The ones we know about are in the Barkor area just south of the Jokhang. There’s a 7.25mm sand-bagged machine-gun position on the side-street off the south-west corner of the Barkor Square. Two armoured personnel carriers are permanently parked outside the Snowlands Hotel just north-west of the Jokhang, to ensure that no tourists get out, or see out. The same is at the Holiday Inn, the best hotel in Lhasa, although that is not in such a sensitive area. All communications are down. There is no television and the Chinese are jamming the BBC and Voice of America as best they can.

‘There’s another machine-gun post along Beijing Lu. The restaurants and cafés along there like Tahi One, the Kirey and Banak Shol hotels are crawling with police. Basically the whole Tibetan area which runs around the Lingkor circumambulatory path, around Chakpori Hill and the Potala, is affected by riots and repression.’

‘What about tourists?’ asked Hastings.

‘The Chinese were going to fly them out at night. But things never got quiet enough for them to do it, without them becoming witnesses to the crack-down. They’ve been confined to their hotels and the windows have been shuttered up.’

‘Are there American citizens?’ asked Barber

‘Almost certainly,’ said Bloodworth, glancing over to Holden. ‘Joan, do you want to take this?’

‘Jamie Song personally assured Reece Overhalt in Beijing that no American had been harmed. Song’s view was that it was far better to have a dozen Americans cooped up in a hotel room for a week than have one arrested on spying charges because he’s been caught with a video camera. As even the PLA found out, the PSB are a law unto themselves, so Overhalt gave Song the benefit of the doubt and recommended to us that we go along with it.’

‘OK, Tom, go on,’ said Hastings.

‘We estimate that more than ten thousand people have been arrested. Our satellites have picked up the sudden overcrowding of prisons. We’ve photographed Gutsa in the east of the city, which is a PSB detention centre; Sangyip in the north-east; Utritru — the Chinese call it Wuzhidui — which is usually for common criminals, but is used as an overspill in times of riots; Sitru, Sizhidui in Chinese, which is for prisoners considered to be a threat to state security; and there’s a new prison less than a mile south of Sitru. This is where the ringleaders would be taken and where the serious people would be executed and tortured. No one seems to have been taken to Drapchi, not surprisingly — yet this is where 45 per cent of political prisoners are usually kept.

‘The number of dead is more difficult to ascertain. But given the killing we know about on video, and given that there might have been others, such as the shooting at Sera Monastery, our analysts put the number of dead so far at around three thousand.’

‘Tell it like that,’ whispered Barber enthusiastically after a few seconds’ silence, and turning to Hastings. ‘Just stroll into the White House press room and blind them with detail. Not scheduled. Do it as a “drop-by”, when the question is asked.’

‘But we’re getting asked it all the time,’ said Holden.

‘Then I’ll do it as a drop-by at State,’ Hastings suggested. ‘Joan can walk in with me.’

‘But what’s the policy?’ pressed Barber. ‘We can’t tell them what’s happening, without telling them what we’re going to do about it.’

‘Why not?’ said Hastings. ‘There is no American national interest in Tibet. We have no factories there. We do not sell American products there. It does not border any area which is of vital strategic interest to us. If we don’t intervene in Africa any more, why should we in Tibet?’

‘Because Tibet’s special,’ insisted Barber. ‘Tibet and the Dalai Lama have a special place in the hearts of the American people. If we abandon Tibet after scenes like this, America will abandon us.’

The red bulb on top of a direct-line telephone on the President’s desk flashed, indicating that a call was coming in to his private office from the National Security Agency. Hastings took it, but within seconds put the call on hold. ‘Pakistan has launched a major attack on Indian Kashmir,’ he said.