Vulcan's Forge (11 page)

“Why’s that?”

“I may be sixty-six years old, Mr. Mercer, and have four delightful grandchildren, but these old eyes can still appreciate a handsome man. And Valery Borodin was a very handsome man.”

“So you say he knew more about geology than anything else, huh?”

“That’s right. If you want to know more about him, I suggest you contact the woman from NOAA. I can’t think of her name right off the top of my head, but if you give me a second I can get it.”

“That’s okay, Dr. Baker, you’ve been more than kind. Thank you, and please thank Dr. Washington.” Mercer hung up and leaned far back into his seat.

He reviewed the information he’d gathered. A bunch of dead whales. An explosion on a research vessel. An assassination attempt on the only survivor. A telegram from a dead friend. One freighter with two different designs on its stack. An Italian crew that speaks Russian. A Russian biologist that doesn’t know biology and probably has nothing to do with what’s going on, and, Mercer looked ruefully at the empty beer bottles on his desk, the beginning of a good buzz.

“In other words, I’ve got nothing,” he said aloud, and switched off the desk lamp.

W
hile many of the Pacific islands are described as sparkling jewels by those who visit them, anyone seeing the Spratly Islands would agree that they are nothing more than a handful of gravel tossed haphazardly into the center of the South China Sea. The Spratlys are spread across an area the size of New England, yet comprise a total land area of less than two square miles. The more than one hundred islets, coral outcroppings, and atolls are completely unremarkable—except that they are claimed as sovereign territory by no less than six nations.

These countries, in a bid to legitimize their claims, have gone so far as to set up gun emplacements on some of the larger islands and garrisons on the smaller ones, islands so small that high tide obliterates them and leaves the troops standing thigh high in the sea. Vietnam has occupied twenty-five of the islands while China claims seven, the Philippines eight, Malaysia three, and Taiwan one. The sultan of Brunei wants to claim one island in particular, but that tiny speck is underwater for more than six months of the year.

At first, many Western observers scoffed at the conflicting claims, calling them a poor man’s imperialism. A naval engagement between China and Vietnam in March 1988, which claimed the lives of seventy-seven Vietnamese and an undisclosed number of Chinese, changed their attitudes.

These two vehemently Communist countries did not come to blows for merely territorial reasons nor national pride. The motivation for the battle was the basest of interests: greed. Since oil was discovered off the coast of southern Vietnam in the mid-1980s, the nations ringing the South China Sea have shown a keen interest in what other natural resources might lie beneath the warm waters. Hydrocarbons, huge fishing banks, and the Spratlys’ location, in the middle of the shipping lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, have made them one of the most contested spots on the globe.

To open a dialogue between the disputing parties, the government of Indonesia invited them all to Bandung, about sixty miles east of Jakarta, in 1992. For several weeks, ministers met to discuss their aims. China promised to consider joint economic development of the Spratlys, provided that all other claimants relinquished their territorial interests. In response, Malaysia purchased two guided missile corvettes from Great Britain.

The meeting broke up with nothing resolved.

Since then, the situation had continued to deteriorate. Vietnam began shelling vessels that strayed too close to the island of Amboyna Cay and Malaysia further solidified her position by building an airfield on Terumba Layang-Layang. Taiwan grabbed two more islands, setting up manned outposts. The Taiwanese also faced down a threat from a Chinese gunboat, an act that almost brought the two nations to war.

Taiwan’s new aggressiveness, coupled with a massive infusion of money from American and European oil companies, prompted the government of Thailand to make a new attempt to bring about a peaceful settlement. Thus, ministers from the six rival nations, plus binding representatives from the United States and Russia, were meeting in Bangkok at the invitation of the Thai foreign minister.

The meetings were held at the Shangri-la Hotel just off Sathon Road along the banks of the Chao Phraya River, the river which runs through the sprawling city of Bangkok the way the aorta runs through the human body. Behind closed teak doors in the hotel’s new convention center, the eight representatives, plus their coterie of aides and translators, had been hard at work for six straight weeks, meeting ten hours a day, and it was beginning to look like the conference would be a success.

The Chinese representative, Minister Lujian, was willing to forgo total sovereignty of the islands if his nation was granted a continuation of Most Favored Nation status from the United States. In return, the United States representative, Undersecretary of Commerce Kenneth Donnelly, received guarantees that several American oil companies would be allowed exploratory rights to a couple of areas in the Spratlys.

All of the assembled delegates agreed to this, yet the Taiwanese and Russian representatives continued to bring up fine points of law that served only as delaying tactics. The Bangkok Accords, as they were to be known, were ready, yet Minister Tren and Ambassador Gennady Perchenko continued to delay the final signing.

Ambassador Perchenko had been mostly silent during the preceding weeks of negotiations, yet a week earlier he had taken his customary place at the round table in the richly tapestried room with a new set to his shoulders. He had begun to speak, and had rarely stopped since. At first, Minister Lujian thought Perchenko and Tren were buying time for a Taiwanese military buildup, but satellite images and hard data from spies around the naval bases at Kao-hsiung and Chi-lung showed no increase in activity. Kenneth Donnelly finally assumed that these tactics were a way for the Russians to gain some sort of economic interest in the Spratlys in exchange for a timely settlement.

Drawing on his twenty-five years of adroit statecraft experience, Perchenko had changed his role from observer to dominator, ready to dictate terms.

With a discreet click, a member of the king’s personal bodyguard closed the heavy doors to the conference room and took up station just to their left, a gleaming M-16 hanging from his thin shoulder. The Thai foreign minister, Prem Vivarya, paused for a few moments to let the men in the room settle down before opening the morning session. Set before the Asian delegates were cups of delicate porcelain decorated with ermine lotus blossoms, filled with steaming tea. The Americans and the Russians drank thick coffee from institutional white cups, the type found in hotels all over the world.

Through the partially shaded plate-glass window, Minister Prem could see the gleaming concrete tower of the hotel. Beyond it, the green torpid river was choked with powerboats, barges, water taxis, and long-tailed skiffs caught in the midst of the city’s rush hour. He hoped that this day would not become as deadlocked as the river traffic.

“Gentlemen, at yesterday’s meeting,” Prem intoned, and the assembled translators began whispering to their charges, “the representative from the Russian Federation, Ambassador Perchenko, was beginning to outline several concerns that his government had for the treaty that we are all considering.”

Even through the cumbersome translations, Prem’s annoyance at the Russian was plain. Perchenko, a heavy rumpled man in his late fifties, smiled tightly.

As an aide, Perchenko had attended the landmark 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in Caracas. With more than 150 nations represented it was the largest gathering of its type in history, a truly global event. It took nine grueling months to write the final document. It pertained to every aspect of the oceans, from environmental protection to the harvesting of their bounty, from the free passage of vessels to undersea mining. In the end, every representative signed it, yet the convention was killed soon after its birth because the United States Congress refused to enact it into law.

Though UNCLOS had miscarried, it had given Gennady Perchenko one of the finest educations possible on maritime law. Now he was using that knowledge for the Bangkok Accords. Or, more precisely, to stall the Bangkok Accords.

After Minister Prem’s opening remarks, Perchenko launched into a ten-hour-long monologue, interrupted only by a one-hour pause for lunch. This speech, though informed, was entirely irrelevant. Perchenko chronicled sovereignty issues dating back more than a century and, although the conflict over the Spratlys was based on such historical clashes, they had been reviewed ad nauseam during earlier meetings. There was no logical reason for the wily Russian to bring them up again. As soon as the other delegates realized that Perchenko was stalling once again, they quickly tuned out the voices of their translators and blankly watched the shadows progress around the room as the hours passed.

This was the third straight day of Perchenko’s monologues, and this one was as pointless as the preceding two.

At six in the evening, Minister Prem politely interrupted Perchenko. “Ambassador Perchenko, the hour once again grows late. The hotel’s chef informed me earlier that his dishes cannot be held long, so it is in our best interest if we pause here and resume again in the morning.”

“Of course, Minister.” Perchenko smiled mirthlessly. His voice was still controlled and level after hours of speaking, and unlike the other men in the room he showed not the slightest trace of discomfort or boredom.

The delegates stood quickly and shuffled from the room. Perchenko remained seated and made a show of lighting a thin Dutch cigar. Undersecretary of Commerce Donnelly clapped Perchenko on the shoulder in a friendly gesture, but the big Texan’s hand dug deeply into the Russian’s soft muscles. “See ya’ at dinner, pardner.”

Perchenko waited until the room was empty before wincing at the pain in his shoulder and attempting to massage it away.

“Fucking cowboy,” he muttered.

Perchenko left the hotel quickly, forgoing the dinner, as he had most evenings. Exiting the gleaming concrete tower on the river side, he called over one of the hotel’s river taxis. Perchenko told the bellman his destination and he, in turn, informed the liveried boat driver. The Russian stepped lightly onto the taxi, a Riva twenty-four footer, and settled himself into the wide backseat just forward of the craft’s idling engine.

The driver eased the boat into the teeming river traffic, heading north and passing the classic Victorian elegance that was the Oriental Hotel. Like its brethren, Shepherds in Cairo, or the Mount Nelson in Cape Town, the Oriental stood as a reminder of the once mighty and far-flung British Empire.

The Riva drove north, cutting a quick stroke through the river, dodging other boats with the agility of a thoroughbred. Bangkok tumbled down to the edge of the river in urban sprawl. Barges sat tied to the banks four and five deep, forming cluttered neighborhoods of their own. The numerous canals that once sliced off into the city and earned Bangkok the title “Venice of the East” were all but gone, turned into automobile-choked streets, but all of Bangkok’s diversity could still be seen from the river; the wealth stacked up in glittering high-rises and the abject poverty living in stick and sheet metal shacks crammed between warehouses.

On the river, the sharp water smell almost masked the reeking cloud of pollution which shrouds the city, ejected from sweatshops and cars in a pall that rivals Los Angeles or Mexico City.

The boat sped along, under the Memorial Bridge, where cars and the three-wheeled jitneys called tuk-tuks were strung like beads. They shot past the Arun Wat, the Temple of Dawn, a squashed cone that typified Thai religious architecture. The dying rays of the sun shone hard against its gilded facade.

The taxi passed the royal palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and Wat Po. As they pounded northward, the city became older, the buildings more tumbled, the Western influence not nearly as strong. The houses and tenements were so jammed together that they leaned against one another. It seemed as though if one were torn down, whole neighborhoods would tumble like dominos.

Finally they came to the Royal River Hotel, the only major hotel on the western bank of the river. A new hotel, it was immensely popular with European and Australian tour groups. Tourists clustered around white tables on the hotel’s landing, their shorts and open-necked shirts garish splashes of color that clashed sharply with their sunburnt skin.

Gennady Perchenko stood and shuffled to the Riva’s gunwale. Ignoring the proffered hand of a bellman, he stumbled to the dock and told the driver to wait, in both English and mangled Thai. He approached the waterside bar’s host, a tuxedoed man with a deeply pocked face and slicked back hair. As the maître d’ led Perchenko to the only unoccupied table, he spoke quietly from the side of his mouth, his thin lips barely moving.

“There is no word yet, you should wait.”

Perchenko bristled at the order from this man who was no more than a cutout in the spy trade, a disposable piece of garbage whose worth was so small it was un-countable, yet he knew the man was right. He must wait.

As a slim waitress set a Rum Collins on his table, Perchenko thought, as he had every night since coming to Bangkok, about how he had gotten into his current situation.

He had been a successful diplomat under the old Soviet regime, a functionary of some standing who might have one day reached a cabinet position. The coup, the collapse of the Soviet government, and the subsequent formation of the Russian Federation had all but crushed his career. In the sweeping changes that washed across his homeland like a tsunami wave, Perchenko had found himself tumbling in the swirling black eddies. Former allies in the Politburo vanished, others switched loyalties so fast that even they had no idea in what they believed. Gennady watched assignment after assignment pass him by. The old cronyism had been replaced by a tougher but more subtle system of political patronage that left him idle while other men flourished.