First Strike (3 page)

They changed planes in Hong Kong, where they also picked up tourist visas that Ardman had arranged for China. Given his worry about cost, Jade suspected they might not have been issued through the ‘usual channels'. From Hong Kong they got a direct flight to Weijiang, the main city of Wiengwei province.

Immigration seemed to take an age, but otherwise there were no problems. They only had hand luggage as Ardman had sent their cases direct to Washington on an RAF flight. Jade wondered if that meant there was actually more or less chance of their luggage arriving when and where it was supposed to.

Chance, Rich and Jade eventually emerged into a large open area where there were a few small shops selling food
and newspapers. Through the main doors they could see several cars parked at the kerb.

An old woman carrying a basket pushed past Jade. She was surprised and saddened to see that there was a live chicken cramped inside the basket, grey feathers poking out through the weave.

“Lots of signs,” said Rich. “But they're not much help. They're all in Chinese.”

“Maybe Dad can read them?” said Jade.

“This way,” Chance decided, and set off across the airport.

“You
can
read Chinese!” said Jade, impressed.

“No. But I can read English.”

The sign actually said ‘ENGLISH'. It was written in block capitals on a sheet of grey cardboard using a chunky marker pen. It was being held by a small boy of about twelve years old. He had short, dark hair, and enormous front teeth that he was showing off in a broad smile.

As Chance, Jade and Rich approached, the smile got even broader and the boy bobbed up and down with excitement.

“Yoshi!” he exclaimed as they reached him. “Yoshi!” He bowed abruptly and quickly.

Jade bowed back. “Yoshi!” she replied, echoing his greeting.

Rich copied her. “Yoshi!”

The boy's smile faded. Then it reappeared and he bowed again. “Yoshi!” He straightened up and tapped his chest with his finger. “Yoshi!”

“Your turn, Dad,” said Rich.

“Yeah, don't be rude,” Jade told him.

Dad dutifully bowed his head. “John Chance,” he said. Then he smiled at Rich and Jade. “Yoshi is his
name
.”

The boy grabbed Jade's holdall from her before she could object. In exchange he gave her the cardboard sign. Then he hurried off across the airport.

“Are we being mugged?” Rich wondered, grinning.

“He wants us to follow him,” said Jade.

“Really? You think?”

“Children!” said Chance, sternly. But he was smiling too as they all followed Yoshi to the main exit.

Outside, the temperature was about the same as it had been in London when they left—mild, but not warm. There was a light drizzle that hung like mist in the air. Yoshi was opening the boot of a battered car waiting at the kerb, its engine humming. He dumped Jade's bag inside and gestured for Rich and Chance to put their bags in the boot too. Then he slammed the
boot closed and hurried round to the front of the car.

“He's never driving,” said Jade as Yoshi opened the right-hand front door of the car and got in.

As she spoke, a man in the other front seat turned to look at them. He was laughing.

“Left-hand drive in Wiengwei,” he said.

Mr Chang was like a larger version of his son Yoshi. His smile was semi-permanent, and his hair was thinning and edged with white. He explained he had not come into the airport to meet them himself because if he stopped the car it took for ever to get it started again. As he drove, threading his way between a mass of bicycles, he spoke over his shoulder to Chance, Jade and Rich who were jammed in the back.

“I have been making inquiries. Discreet inquiries of course. The man who will know the answers to your questions runs a factory in the city. We go there now, and he is expecting us. OK?”

“OK,” Chance agreed. “What have you told him?”

“About you? Nothing. I have allowed him to assume you are French. I will translate, and he won't know English from French from Greek.”

“How does he get his information?” Jade asked.

“He has contacts in the Chinese military. He gets things for the soldiers. Cigarettes, drink, magazines.”

“Smut,” Jade muttered.

“
Newsweek
, Hong Kong edition,” Mr Chang corrected her. “Books too. My friend will know whether nuclear missiles were really ever stationed in Wiengwei, and if so where. The declaration the Chinese government made at the disarmament talks was rather vague and may have been a bluff anyway. But there are certainly many military bases in the province.”

“Despite the rebels?” Rich asked.

“Because of the rebels. Some of the bases have been taken over by the rebels.”

In the front passenger seat, Yoshi suddenly spoke up excitedly.

“What did he say?” Jade asked when the boy had finished.

Mr Chang laughed. “He says he has never met westerners before. He says he thinks you are very nice. And he is fascinated by the yellow colour of your hair. He asks if it is dyed.”

“Tell him no,” said Jade.

“And tell him we think he's very nice too,” Rich added. “Especially my sister.”

Mr Chang didn't really park the car. He just stopped it in the road and got out.

“We try not to attract too much attention,” he said. “Yoshi has baseball caps for you. Wear them low, so people cannot easily see your hair and eyes. Your height might be more difficult to disguise.”

“Expecting trouble?” Chance asked.

“Only getting my car to start again. But you are distinctive. The less attention you attract, the better. We don't get westerners here as a rule.”

“Except US airmen falling from the sky,” said Rich. No one knew what had happened to the crew of the crashed plane, but he didn't fancy ending up in the next cell.

Mr Chang nodded. “Rumour has it, the plane was shot down.”

“It was over Chinese airspace,” Chance admitted.

“With permission, the Americans say,” Jade pointed out.

“Parts of this province are a war zone,” said Mr Chang. “Who knows what really happened, or where the airmen are now?”

Even with the baseball caps, it seemed as though everyone was looking at them as they followed Mr Chang
and Yoshi. Rich was aware of people turning, staring and talking to each other as he passed. Bicycles wobbled as they went by. People called out, but Mr Chang ignored them.

Further up the road, Mr Chang led them down a side street, which seemed to have been turned into an impromptu market. There was hardly room to get through between the stalls. People were selling hot food from the back of carts, cotton and other fabrics from trestle tables, watches and pens, even a few iPods.

The smell was awful. Rich could only guess what Jade was thinking as they passed cages of chickens and song birds, a pen with piglets grunting round inside, and several mangy-looking goats.

Mr Chang and Yoshi waved away all offers of goods and bargains and forged a path through the market. Finally they emerged at the other end of the narrow street. Mr Chang pushed open a plain, metal door set into the brick wall of a nondescript building and they went inside.

The noise was incredible. For as far as Rich could see, the building was one enormous room, filled with people working on sewing machines. There were a few men, but mainly women and children. Mr Chang led the way along the side of the room.

“What are they all doing?” Rich asked.

“They make clothes for export to the West,” Mr Chang explained.

“A sweatshop,” said Jade angrily.

“Careful, Jade,” her father warned.

“Well it is,” she retorted. “I bet they get paid almost nothing.”

“Not much,” Mr Chang agreed. “But at least they have work.”

“Hey,” said Rich, as they passed a woman sewing a collar on to a brightly coloured blouse. “You've got one like that, Jade.”

“It's going to a charity shop as soon as I get back,” she told him.

There was a door at the end of the factory floor that led into an office area. Mr Chang and Chance went through to another office, leaving Yoshi with Rich and Jade.

“I hope Dad's going to tell the boss just what he thinks of this place,” said Jade.

“I hope he's not,” Rich told her. “At least, not until he's found out about the nukes.”

Yoshi grinned at them and said something they didn't understand. But Jade smiled back at him encouragingly.

“At least you don't have to work in a place like this,” she said.

“Yeah,” Rich agreed, “at least your dad's a decadent western spy whose mates sell booze and ciggies to the troops. You stick with it, kid.” He winked at Jade. “In a place like this,” he said, more serious now, “I think they just have to survive however they can. Especially with a rebellion going on.”

“I guess so. Doesn't mean it's a good thing though.”

“No, it doesn't,” said Rich.

Chance waited until they were back in the car before he told them how the meeting with Mr Chang's contact had gone.

“There was a Chinese People's Liberation Army nuclear base about 150 kilometres outside the city. The nukes were all decommissioned and there's just a small force left to guard the place.”

“So we can get going, then,” said Rich. “Washington, here we come!”

“If we're going anywhere,” said Jade, as Mr Chang kept trying to start the car. The engine coughed and spluttered, then died.

“Soon. Mr Chang's contact says there's been unusual
activity at the base recently. Convoys of lorries and increased security. It is also in the area where Mr Chang says Ralph had some business contacts.”

“So you want to go and take a look?” Jade guessed.

“Seems sensible.”

“Seems suicidal,” she said. “You can't just wander in and ask if they've got any old nukes left or whether the rebels have taken them all.”

Chance held up two small plastic cards. “Actually, I can. These are high-level security passes for a military inspection team. Mr Chang and I are going in to take a look round. If we ever get going.”

The engine finally caught and Mr Chang smiled and gave them a thumbs up.

“Just the two passes?” Rich asked as they pulled away.

“That was all he could get,” said Chance, rather too quickly.

“You mean it's all you asked for,” said Jade.

Mr Chang cleared his throat. “Paid for, actually. They were not cheap.”

“Nothing is,” said Jade. “Except slave labour.”

“And what do we do while you're gate-crashing the Chinese People's Liberation Army Former Nuclear Base Party?” Rich wanted to know.

“I have a sister who lives not far from the base,” said Mr Chang. “She will look after you. She is a good cook. And Yoshi is good at eating.” He said something to Yoshi, who grinned, and mimed shovelling food into his mouth.

They left the car at Mr Chang's sister's house. It was little more than a wooden hut, with a living space that obviously doubled as a bedroom, and a little kitchen off that. There was a toilet and washroom, which were surprisingly sophisticated compared with the antiquated kitchen. Chang's sister bowed in welcome and loosed off a barrage of fast, unintelligible conversation.

Chance and Mr Chang changed into Chinese military uniforms that Mr Chang's contact at the clothes factory had also provided. Chance had to struggle into his uniform, and the jacket wouldn't do up. But he made a passable Chinese soldier. They set off on foot as the evening was drawing in, and were soon lost to sight.

“Right,” said Jade as soon as they were gone, “the big question is, can we persuade Yoshi to show us the way to this base?”

Rich shook his head. “No way. The big question is, how quickly can Yoshi's aunt cook us some food before he shows us the way to this base?”

“Actually, the big question is whether we can make Yoshi understand what we're asking,” Jade decided.

The boy was standing beside them outside the little house. For once, he wasn't smiling. He pointed at Jade, then he pointed at Rich, and then he pointed at himself.

“Us, all of us, yes?” said Jade.

Yoshi pointed to them all again, then he pointed down the road in the direction his father and Chance had gone. He mimed walking on the spot.

“All of us, follow them,” Rich interpreted. “Looks like language isn't a barrier after all.” He bent down to talk to the boy. “We need to tell your aunt that we're going out. And any chance of something to eat first? I'm starving.”

Yoshi shrugged and shook his head. He obviously had no idea what Rich was asking.

They got through the main gates with no problem. If the guard wondered how the two official inspectors from Army HQ had got to the base on foot, he knew better than to ask.

Mr Chang did the talking, while Chance kept his head down—literally, so his face could not be seen under his uniform cap. He also tried to hunch up and appear
shorter than he really was. The guard opened the barrier and let them walk into the base.

As well as several outbuildings and workshops, there was an administration block and a large hangar. Chance set off for the hangar. In the dying light of the evening he could see grass growing through the concrete slabs that made up the roadway. The whole place looked run down and dilapidated. Some of the admin block windows were boarded up, and the doors to the hangar looked like they were rusted open.

“I don't think our passes will allow us into the main silos and more secure areas,” said Mr Chang.

“There's hardly anyone here,” Chance pointed out. “The place has been all but abandoned. With luck we can be in and out again before anyone even notices. Or if they do, no one will miss them for a few hours.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Mr Chang agreed. “And the guard at the gate is obviously not expecting any trouble. He says most of the troops were moved out a few weeks ago, and he thinks the rest of them have been forgotten and left to rot.”