The Mandarin Code (25 page)

Sydney

It was like stepping into a sauna fully clothed. Sydney's steamy heat engulfed Paul Mahoney as he emerged from the air-conditioned cool of the Great Southern on Thomas Street.

His mood was as dark as the schooner of stout he'd left, half drunk, on the bar.

A screech of tyres snapped his introspection.

‘Look out fuckwit!' Mahoney slammed his hand down on the bonnet of a petrol-blue Subaru WRX as it swerved, dangerously close, running a red light and playing chicken with a crowd of pedestrians on the busy Chinatown street. The driver proffered a one-finger salute as he sped off.

Mahoney shook his head and continued his trudge back to the ABC's head office at Ultimo. Typically he was angry. Angry at the inner-city obsessions of his employer and its employees. Angry that he had moved from Canberra on the promise of a bright future in TV only to find himself back on the treadmill of radio current affairs.

And he was pissed off with himself for being angry, knowing that others would kill to have his secure job in one of the last bastions of serious journalism.

It was Friday afternoon and he'd hoped to slope off for a long lunch only to be dragged back by a radio producer demanding that he file for the ABC's flagship drive-time current affairs show,
PM
.

‘But I told you, Sasha, I don't have a story,' he complained.

‘And I told you, Paul, right now I don't have a show. So get your arse back here and find one.'

‘Bastard,' he'd said, after he was sure she had hung up. He'd left two of his colleagues propping up the bar. They worked for
Four Corners
and their story had gone to air on Monday, so they were in a week-long wind-down before the hunt for another yarn began.

Both had been full of what they saw as the most recent management travesty.

The broadcaster had been given millions to set up a fact-checking unit, and with space at a premium it had usurped rooms from the children's show
Giggle and Hoot
. The outraged kiddie producers weren't good at sharing and demanded new digs. Management had rolled over and decided to punt them up to the third floor, taking valuable space from
Four Corners
.

The multi-award-winning journalists were incensed at being ordered to hand over precious real estate to a blue owl and a clown, so the ABC's HR unit, People and Learning, had been hauled in to mediate.

That was bad enough, but all hell broke loose when the
Giggle and Hoot
team discovered they would now have to share facilities with their hated
Play School
rivals. Soon, several nasty incidents had been logged with mediators and open warfare broke out after a damaging leak that was being sheeted home to Rhys from
Play School
.

James Jeffrey, the acerbic wordsmith behind
The Australian'
s ‘Strewth' column, was on the receiving end of a corker of a yarn. The puppeteer behind the blue owl, ‘Hoot', had suffered a recurrence of a nasty case of RSI. It had flared during a wrestling match with a
Play School
producer over the ownership of half a packet of Scotch Finger biscuits.

As a result the puppeteer could no longer move his arm to the right. Which, effectively, meant that Hoot's neck was partially paralysed. The puppeteer blamed his injury on ABC mismanagement, demanded compensation and refused to stand down. He called in the union to ensure the show's script was modified around his disability.

Human resource bureaucrats now vetted every
Giggle and Hoot
script, enforcing an order that Hoot never look to the right.

The conservative commentariat lapped it up. A missive from management warning of serious consequences for leaking lobbed in Jeffrey's inbox thirty seconds after it had been sent, marked ‘Strictly Confidential'.

The unsavoury dispute escalated with the kidnap of Big Ted. He was discovered ritually hanged in the boy's loos with the menacing note ‘You're next, Jemima' pinned to his yellow fur.

That image brought a smile to the face of Mahoney as the ABC building hove into view. ‘It could only happen here,' he thought.

As he entered the
PM
workspace in the first-floor newsroom, his phone rang. It was a number he hadn't seen in the months since he'd left Canberra.

‘Elizabeth Scott, what use do you have for a retired gallery hack?'

‘Now Paul, you know you were always one of my favourites and I know you can be discreet,' she purred.

Mahoney knew the tone. He was being courted for a favour.

‘Well, I hope you've got a story because I have a deadline that's just an hour away.'

‘Oh, I do. But you didn't hear this from me.'

‘Sure, what is it?'

‘In twenty minutes a video will be posted on YouTube. I'm going to give you a headstart simply by telling you where to look. The Radio National version of
PM
will have an exclusive.'

‘I'm intrigued.'

‘You will be more than intrigued. And, my dear, you'll owe me.' Mahoney's mood improved immeasurably. And it soared when he saw the surprisingly graphic images of Emily Brooks and that Channel Nine grub Jonathan Robbie.

Oh, to be able to use the pictures . . .

Once again, he longed to work in the bright lights of television.

Washington

Big Mac wiped the crumbs from his lips and lifted a sheaf of papers. ‘Nancy, how do I look?'

‘Like a leader going into war, sir.'

Morgan McDonald was preparing for a press conference in the Capitol building and had been rehearsing the script with his press secretary. The Republican House leader was fired up, ready to rumble.

He clapped his hands loudly, a habit that came to the fore when the adrenalin was flowing. Like now.

The Tea Party – the group of dissident, far-Right-wing republicans that McDonald controlled – was in revolt and he wasn't about to make life any easier for President Earle Jackson.

He would teach that son of a bitch what it meant to go limpwristed.

‘Right, team. Let's roll.'

Big Mac led his entourage to the media conference room, a hundred metres from his office.

It was nearing 4pm, and the press corps was getting restless, needing to prepare evening bulletins and newspaper articles.

Oh my, I am popular today.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming.'

McDonald used to hate the press, particularly the liberal media who'd given Nixon, Reagan and Bush Mk 1 and 2 such a hard time. Obama, by comparison, had been shown easy street even though his damned healthcare package threatened to bankrupt the Stars and Stripes.

In Big Mac's eyes, the
New York Times
was America's
Pravda
.

But he'd learned the importance of forging a good working relationship with the media to ensure his political message was spread as widely as possible.

‘Okay . . . ready, fellas? Today I am here to announce that I am calling on President Jackson to take decisive action to ensure the United States can live within its financial means.

‘America is a great world power. Our friends overseas need us now more than ever. But a weakened United States, beholden to the foreign dictates of countries that don't share our values and beliefs, cannot be allowed. That's what being in debt to the world means. As leader of the House Republicans, I will do everything within my power to ensure the US remains a force for good.

‘When the President calls for the debt ceiling to be lifted, I appreciate that he believes he is acting to repair the damage inflicted on this country by the Democrats. But we can't do that without getting an assurance that big cuts to government spending are planned.

‘Yes, I know the deadline to resolve this, in order to prevent a government shutdown, is drawing close.

‘So tonight I will call the President and offer him a ten-point plan. This has been thrashed out with other right-thinking Republicans. It is a sign of goodwill, that we are willing to compromise.

‘But we will not compromise the supremacy of the United States in world affairs. I urge my friend Earle Jackson to reconsider his weak stand on Chinese currency manipulation. If he doesn't, then, ladies and gentlemen, all bets are off.'

Several hours later President Jackson delivered a foreign policy speech to the Right-wing hawks of the American Enterprise Institute. He began with some domestic house-cleaning.

‘My friends in Congress are right when they say that we should not live beyond our means. But they are wrong to try and starve this government of funds. I will bring down the deficit but that can't be done overnight.

‘I have taken a call this evening from my ol' friend Big Mac . . . sorry, the House Majority leader, and I have agreed to sit down and discuss his ten-point plan to try and find a way to bring Washington to heel. I pledge myself to this: government will be smaller. I am happy to report that the House Leader will be coming to the White House in the morning for talks on how we can bring about this historic change. As a sign of goodwill, he has offered to pass the debt-ceiling legislation through Congress tonight.

‘So, as friends do, Big Mac and I have had our disagreements. But there is one thing where we see eye to eye: the United States of America should bow to no one.

‘I will be honest and say that there are many voices in my government who are urging me to back off on my demand that China play by the international road rules. They say that we should accommodate the rising power in the East. But if we let China push us around now, what will the future hold? If I step back, China will step forward and, in the end, we will retreat right across the Pacific.

‘So I make another pledge tonight. I will do everything in my power to ensure the best possible relationship with the Chinese leadership. I do believe that we can live together.

‘But I will not kowtow to Beijing. Given China has done nothing to increase the value of its currency, I will be putting a plan to Congress to impose tariffs on a range of Chinese goods. It will begin with motor vehicles and television sets, but the longer China refuses to act the more I will increase the scope of the tariffs.

‘And tonight, in a sign of solidarity with our good friends in Japan, I have ordered two unarmed B-52s to fly over the Senkaku Islands. I also reaffirm that Japan is the rightful owner of these islands, now and forever.

‘God bless our ally Japan. And God bless America.'

Beijing

Jiang Xiu pulled back from the TV screen and smiled. The Americans were practically doing his job for him.

What does Jackson think he's doing? Is he that big a fool?

The Minister for Propaganda had been urging his comrades to take an even more assertive stance. Some on the Standing Committee were still sceptical and were counselling restraint. But Jiang had been deploying all official channels to ensure his aggressive message was disseminated as widely as possible.

It was working. The
People's Daily
had become almost as strident as the
Global Times
, renowned for its anti-Western tirades. Chinese nationalist spirit was stirring. Anti-US and Japan sentiment was bubbling nicely.

Online attacks against the US President had already been trending on China's own version of Twitter, Weibo. And now Earle Jackson had made a fatal error.

Jiang could not believe that Jackson had declared Japan the ‘rightful owner' of the disputed islands. It was likely that this was a slip of the tongue because it was not the official position of the United States. But words were missiles in diplomacy and Jiang had already ordered CCTV's general channel to run that grab on a continuous loop. It would be used to whip up public outrage.

Just as astoundingly, Jackson had telegraphed his next move. A worthy general did not do that. Jiang assumed the B-52s would make their pass over the islands at night. That gave him all day to urge his comrades into action.