Moscow Machination

“I apologize… Sergey Luzkhov our Foreign Minister had to go from Riga to Vilnius. Suddenly the Lithuanians want assurances and guarantees. Ah… what can I say? So I thought I might step in and surprise you all… hope you all aren’t disappointed …”

Of course not. Fuck that conniving Luzkhov. This was an honor. Award from the President… ooh.

“… as you all know, we are in unchartered territory. And we are going to have to use every unorthodox tool… to preserve what’s rightfully ours. So I would like to congratulate you all… for the service you do for the Motherland.”

As the group applauded, an assistant began calling out the awardees. When Primakov was called up, he walked up to the President. The President shook his hand and pinned the ‘Defender-General Badass’ medal to his shirt. She then proceeded to shake his hand.

“Pyotr Primakov, the Japanese are extremely happy with what you did. Thank you.”

By the time he had uttered his own “Thank you madam…” he found himself at his seat. Some anal security guy had whisked him away. Whatever.

Back in his seat, he looked around and noticed the Japanese Minister Yamazaki and his interpreter Yuki were seated in a plush corner. As the Minister raised his drink at him, Yuki smiled emoji style…

Chapter 5

Ministry of State Security, Beijing, China

“Waterboarding?… hmmm… lie detectors?… Ok, what about labor camps for their cousins? Even distant cousins?… hmmm… interesting… deputation to the Congo?… did you try Pyongyang?… still nothing? Hmmm… tough cookies.”

Head of State Security Hu Gong, was running out of options. In his forty years of service to the party, he had come up against some freaky shit. But the incident on the Shenzhen — Guangzhou high speed line had been something else. It was brash, idiotic and pointless. Only a dimwit-poindexter/wannabe-Joker could have come up with that. Tripping up two trains with a steel cord to unleash havoc… Hu Gong shook his head.

Hu Gong was the head of the all-encompassing Ministry of State Security (MSS), Beijing’s counter intelligence arm. It had been three weeks since the incident in Guangdong. Despite initial fears, the world’s confidence in China’s stability as a business partner hadn’t changed. Everyone knew Beijing was ruthless towards internal bs. Yet for some reason, the Tokyo Tentacler and the Berlin based, Marx Monthly, had run identical hit pieces dissing ‘Made in China’.

Initially, railway security had discovered a scapegoat, a maintenance engineer who had turned up fifteen minutes late for work on that day. Despite the railway authority’s insistence, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), China’s internal security arm had come away unconvinced. There were no traitors in China, unless of course they were Tibetans or Uighurs.

Even after ‘thoroughly’ interviewing the CRH400A’s pilots, Ms. Zhen Zhao and Chang, they hadn’t find anything amiss. Chou Chang though was fined 1000 yuan for playing games on her unregistered cell phone. After this lack of progress and pressure from the Politburo, the Ministry of Public Security had turned over the investigations to the MSS.

MSS chief Hu Gong knew that he was the last stop on this deadly game of passing the parcel. There was no one after him and his MSS. He had to do something. So he had gotten hold of the suspected maintenance engineer, the pilots Zhen Zhao and Chang, and put them through his own version of Chinese Horror Story.

Everyone including himself knew that it was just a just sham… a charade to show, that the MSS was doing something. Deep down, Hu Gong knew that there were no bad people in China, unless of course they were from Hong Kong. He preferred Uighurs over Hong Kongers… even on the day of his daughter’s wedding.

“… so in your opinion?… mostly harmless?… hmm… have any of them travelled to Hong Kong in the past year?… no?… ok… well, let them go… release them all… wait… that pilot… give her some medal, she did figure out the escape hatch… I guess… ok.”

Hu Gong, returned the pink phone to its cradle and returned his gaze to the two squirming men. They were from the State SIGINT satellite division.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Gong goaded.

“Yes sir. There were three satellites over the area of disaster. Ours, an American and a Russian. The American satellite has been doing its rounds for over forty years now, we don’t think it caused anything. It’s most likely the Russian Koba…”

“Koba huh, weird name for a satellite. What do we know about this Koba?”

“Not much. It was launched two months ago from their old Soviet era Cosmodrome — Plesetsk up in Arkhangelsk.”

“Not Baikonur?”

“No Sir. Baikonur has been relegated to feces transports from the International Space Station.”

“Because it’s in Kazakhstan?”

“No Sir. The Russians are pissed at the Kazakhs for renting it out for a Hollywood movie.”

“Ah, which one?”

“The one with the Bullock and George Clooney. Clooney…”