Kompromat

‘It could be an explanation,’ Shao Wei-Lu conceded, ‘but I doubt it. Generally the rangers know their animals. They know which ones are already in the system. If they don’t know they usually have time to check. They’ve all got hand-held computers, not much bigger than your mobile phone. As long as they have some kind of a visual reference, they can check the database. Anyway, if President Popov had darted the tiger, we’d have a double signal, as the second micro-transmitter begins to function, but there’s no such signal. Instead, we see our tiger bound away from the site of the kill, as though he has been startled or surprised. He makes a rapid loop or two.’ She tapped the screen to indicate the tiger’s movements. ‘Then he quietens down and heads for the border, and a couple of days ago he swims across the river.’

‘Oh, my lord!’ Jang suddenly realized the full implication of what Shao was suggesting. ‘You mean Popov never darted the tiger at all? Maybe they realized that tiger had already been collared, so they let it go. Then why all the pictures on TV of the president with his rifle?’

Shao Wei-Lu thought long and hard before replying. She knew she was getting into deep water. Way above her pay-grade.

But she, as a loyal cadre, felt she had a duty to speak.

‘I don’t think Popov fired the dart at the tiger,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s not what the record shows.’

CHAPTER NINE

Consisting of seven men, the Standing Committee of the Politburo of China’s Communist Party is effectively China’s ruling body. As usual, the committee met that May morning in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai district, the exclusive area next to the Imperial City, which houses not only the president’s office and other organs of state, but which also provides residential quarters for China’s most senior politicians and officials.

There was a time when Zhongnanhai had been open to the public, but since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 security had been greatly increased. Access had been closed to the general public, with numerous plain-clothes military personnel patrolling the area on foot.

If the Standing Committee of the Politburo was a closed grouping in the most literal sense, it was also closed metaphorically. For the most part its members had spent their lives in the service of the party, often in far-flung provinces. The grandest of all were those who had links by blood or by marriage with the Party’s now almost mythic heroes, men whose fathers or grandfathers had been on the Long March with Chairman Mao.

President Liu Wang-Ji called the meeting to order.

‘Comrades,’ he began, ‘I thought I would start today’s proceedings by reporting on my recent trip to St Petersburg.’

For the next twenty minutes he recounted some of the details of his encounter with other world leaders at the World Tiger Summit, organized and presided over by Russia’s president Igor Popov. His assessments were frank and pithy.

‘I was intrigued – and I must confess rather alarmed – by the German chancellor, Helga Brun, and her apparent closeness to President Popov. Of course, she speaks Russian fluently and he speaks German. That helps. I am told that our security services are in the process of making a full assessment of historic and other links between President Popov and Chancellor Brun.’

He nodded across the table in the direction of Zhang Fu-Sheng.

‘Is that not so, Comrade Zhang?’

‘Yes, that is so, Mr President,’ Zhang Fu-Sheng agreed.

In the official handout entitled ‘Composition of the Standing Committee’, Zhang’s functions were simply listed as Deputy Leader of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, but within the standing committee itself and the upper echelons of government it was well known that Zhang was responsible for Ministry of State Security. As one of the most powerful and most active Chinese intelligence agencies, the MSS’s main objective was to keep track and neutralize ‘enemies’ of the Communist Party of China.

‘Our sources in Berlin,’ Zhang continued, ‘indicate that Chancellor Brun appears to be distancing herself from some of the previous policies of the EU regarding Ukraine and NATO and so on. Apparently she may soon be pushing the EU and the US to drop the sanctions over Crimea.’

President Liu Wang-Ji took a sip of the sweet green tea served at all meetings of the Standing Committee. Gaily decorated thermoses were conveniently placed on the table for those who wanted a top-up.

‘Most interesting,’ he said. ‘Your mention of the United States, Comrade Zhang, reminds me to report also on Ronald Craig, presently one of the leading Republican candidates for the Presidency.’

In the old days, before the Chinese government banned spitting in public places, there would have been strategically placed spittoons in the Standing Committee’s meeting room. Veterans could launch a glob of spit with unerring accuracy over a distance of twenty paces. But spittoons had gone from modern China, much as the practice of binding women’s feet had gone.