The Outer Circle (The Counterpoint Trilogy Book 3) (15 page)

Beijing, China

“Walk with me, Comrade Yang,” offered Kai Liu.

“Of course, Comrade General Secretary,” accepted Sun Yang.

They were in a park near a Buddhist temple, the security agents nearby but keeping a respectful distance.

“Comrade Yang, you expressed some reservations about General’s Cao’s proposal to annex Taiwan. Do you think we should not be attempting reunification of the island?”

“Comrade General Secretary, I believe the island must be re-united with the mainland. But I think we have to be careful and consider the bigger picture. The generals only too often focus on the immediate battle. General Cao is a hammer looking for a nail. I wanted to challenge him to be deliberate and consider all possible scenarios. I was playing the devil’s advocate, so to speak.”

Kai Liu took a few steps, stopped to look at the other man:

“So you are in favor of the Taiwan takeover, even though it means war with the U.S.?”

“I am. But I want to make sure we win the war. We must only attempt the reunification when we are sure of the positive outcome.”

“How much longer do you think we should wait? We’ve been preparing for many years.”

“Ideally, I would have preferred to attack when we, on our own, are military superior the Americans. But I want to hear General Cao’s proposal. Our internal situation favors initiating our expansion soon.”

Kai Liu resumed his deliberate walking.

“And you think we can overcome our military deficiencies?”

“Comrade Secretary, I consider the geopolitical situation to be in our favor now. We always knew that the American strategist Brzezinski was right: the key to the world supremacy lies in ruling the Eurasian continent. Since the 1990s, we fought the “cold war” against the Americans for control of Eurasia. We won. We secured our continental borders. We welcomed the Russians when the Americans ignored them. We then saved the Russians when the Americans tried to choke them with economic warfare ten years ago.”

“Are you counting on their gratitude? We did this for our own benefit.”

“Of course! We needed them to control Eurasia. Had we let the Russians fall, we would have lost our most important energy supplier and military ally. As it is, the U.S. and Russia are now enemies and the Russians are aligned with us both by choice and by necessity. We have also normalized our relations with India. We don’t have to worry about our inland borders.”

“Should we perhaps wait until there is a new administration in Washington? Is there a way to avoid a military confrontation by reaching some kind of agreement with the Americans?”

Sun Yang shook his head:

“No matter who is in power in Washington, they will come to Taiwan’s aid, this can’t be avoided. They can’t afford to be seen as unable to protect their allies. Their power is on the decline but we have to take it from them; they won’t relinquish it without a fight. We, together with the Russians, are the largest continental power. The Americans are the largest naval power. We and the Americans are in a similar situation: expand or die.”

Kai Liu turned around and started slowly walking back. The security agents quickly re-arranged their order and enclosed a protective bubble around the two men.

“How do you think other countries will react?”

Sun Yang nodded, “Very important question, and one that the generals often don’t sufficiently explore. We’ll have to offer something to India for their neutrality. Japan is spent and bankrupt, they won’t do anything. The Europeans are too far away.”

“What about Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia?”

“I think they’ll stay neutral, not wanting to bet on the wrong horse. They, by now, have closer economic relationship with us than with the Americans. But we should be proactive, let them know that we have no territorial ambitions beyond Taiwan.”

Kai Liu stopped again, looked at Sun Yang.

“The Americans believe that they are better able to win a protracted war because of their superior navy. Do you think that’s the case?”

“Not necessarily. Because of our alliance with Russia, we are no longer so dependent on maritime trade. When combined, China and Russia are independent in energy and most other resources. It will be difficult for the Americans to blockade us.”

“The Americans can attack the pipelines between our countries.”

“They know that if they take the war to our mainland, we’ll take it to theirs. Their people have not had a war on the American soil in many years. They won’t risk it.”

Secretary Liu resumed walking, chewed on his lip.

“Comrade Yang, I want you to be a part of the small group that will evaluate General Cao’s proposal. I am concerned that the military tends to engage in a groupthink, that they don’t want to show disagreement in front of the civilian government. Against their powerful network we often only think that we are in control. Please continue challenging General Cao’s assumptions. We need someone to be the devil’s advocate. And we have to be careful in our ambitions, without falling into imperial thinking. That’s what generals usually do. They set up a forward position to protect their current line. Then the new line comes under attack and they ask to establish another, further forward position. And so on, until the country goes broke.”

Farmington, USA

It was a slow day in the small office. July 4
th
was the previous week and some people took the advantage of making this a long vacation. By the evening, Jim Brobak was the only one left. Not that it mattered greatly, but it made him feel better. He wouldn’t have to explain why he was using an old touch-screen 3-D display instead of the modern projection one manipulated by hand and eye signals. 3-D displays were supposed to be used for highly classified work, but hardly anyone bothered these days.

Jim pulled out a sheet of paper with the accounts numbers and the search parameters that David Ferguson asked him to run. Jim didn’t want to carry the secure phone with him, it was safer to keep the phone hidden in the backyard. The FBI computer system had access to all the financial transactions systems operating within the U.S. and to select international systems and networks.

Executing the queries that David requested from 2020 to the current day took less than ten minutes. Jim saved the gigabytes of results data and was about to log out, when he had an idea. The FBI had access to databases of relationships between entities. Be it people, known relations and friendships, business connections, pets, cars, properties, corporations, charities, churches, other organizations – every known connection was in one of the searchable databases. Volumes and volumes of data were sitting there, available to be searched by anyone with proper access.

Jim had no love lost for statistics, but some knowledge was mandatory for FBI agents. Actually, in the past few years knowledge of statistics became number one priority for all white-collar workers. The more data was out there, the higher was the premium on trying to make any sense out of it. Jim added more entity relationships databases to Ferguson’s queries by specifying ‘degrees of separation’ N = 2 and asking for the
p-value
of less than 0.005, indicating that there is at least a 50% correlation between a data set and a particular entity. The query took longer and came up with zero results.

Jim looked at his watch; it was 7 p.m. He was hungry, he did what Ferguson asked him, his conscience was clear. Still, he did not feel satisfied. Two degrees of separation typically captured extended family, co-workers and known friends. To dig deeper, you have to go to “the third degree” as some called it. Of course, that would mean throwing a much larger net of possibly billions of entities. That would take many hours and burn through a big chunk of of the FBI’s computer utility, presenting the Farmington office with a highly noticeable and difficult to explain bill. If he wanted to raise the degrees of separation, he'd have to narrow somewhere else.

Interfaces to the SOFI, the Russian-Chinese financial system. The system was opaque, but from the prior experience he knew that the SWIFT – SOFI interface was processed in batches and there was some degree of correlation between transactions in each batch. While transactions were not necessarily correlated, they had a higher chance of being a part of a related order execution than transactions in different batches.

Brobak added a variable of using only the data from transactions that terminated at one of the SOFI’s gateways and were in the same batch. He took a deep breath, set N = 3 and ran the query. Twenty minutes later, the search ran its course. There were two results that met the statistical significance criteria. One person, John Dimon. One corporation, FreedomShield.

Jim rubbed his face, thinking. John Dimon and FreedomShield had a statistically meaningful probability to be correlated – at a distance of three degrees of separation – to each other and to transactions going into the SOFI’s “black hole.” It could have been something, it could have been nothing. Jim was not a big believer in coincidences. He expanded the details – over 99% of the executions were deposits, coming from SOFI and going into accounts here.

Brobak saved the results. After getting home, he retrieved the secure phone from its hiding place and sent the data to the Newfoundland phone number, together with a brief explanation. It was almost 10 p.m. when he finally sat down to eat his dinner.

About two thousand miles away, in Virginia, a silent alarm went off. It was programmed to be triggered when a statistically significant search of designated entities and variables was detected. The difficulty with setting alarm triggers is that there are so many possible parameters to watch for. The people that programmed the alarm system were cautious, worried about their jobs. After all, people got fired for missing something important, not for triggering a false alarm. As the result, hundreds of alarms were being triggered daily, leading to a certain “alarm fatigue” amongst the computer security staff. The person that saw the alarm had been just recently been laughed at for giving “Priority 1” to a couple of silly IRS searches. He checked that the searches originated at the FBI, a friendly organization, and assigned the alarm “Priority 3,” to be reviewed when the time allows.

Peredelkino, 13 miles southwest of Moscow, Russia

“It’s a nice little
dacha
you got yourself, General,” the man that called himself simply “Arkady” unceremoniously poured a nice-sized glass of brandy and stretched in a leather chair. “It doesn’t even feel right to refer to it as a
dacha
. It’s more like a little summer palace. Something that a smaller tzar would build.”

It was the fourth time that General Yuriy Shelkov had to see Arkady and he absolutely hated the man. Hated this tallness, his mocking, nasal voice, his hairy hands. But Shelkov knew who was behind Arkady and did not dare to antagonize the man. Perhaps one day, when the time is right, he’d get his payback.

“What do you want?” asked Shelkov, not friendly but not particularly hostile.

“You sound a touch resentful. But why, Yuriy Denisovich?” feigned Arkady. “After all, you are now the Minister of Defense just as I promised the first time we saw each other. And your future looks quite bright.”

“Let’s just get down to business,” sighed Shelkov.

“Yes, of course, you are a busy man with many responsibilities,” agreed Arkady with a smirk. “How are the joint exercises with the Chinese going?”

“They are going fine,” Shelkov was not going to volunteer anything.

“I trust our Pacific Fleet carriers successfully rendezvoused with the Chinese fleet in the South China Sea?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, Yuriy Denisovich, play hard to get.”

Shelkov felt a strong desire to throw his own glass at the man’s head.

Arkady grew serious, “Well, enough pleasantries. Things are moving. I will be back here in a few days. You will host an important planning meeting. Call some of the Western Military District commanders here to discuss upcoming inspections.”

“What inspections?”

“Who cares; the ones you are supposedly going to conduct,” waved Arkady irritably.

“Who am I supposed to call?”

“You will call Colonel General Valery Pashin of the Western Military District, General Maxim Popovich of the 77
th
Air Assault Division, and Colonel Aleksander Mironov of the 43
rd
Spetsnaz Regiment.”

Shelkov’s mouth went dry.

“These are the units concentrated around Moscow,” Shelkov’s words came out ragged.

“Yes, my dear Yuriy Denisovich. The time for games is coming to an end. Also, Pavel Zaporozets from the GRU and Dmitry Kolotov from the Internal Affairs.”

Shelkov swallowed, “When am I calling them here and why?”

“When – I’ll let you know in few days. Why – you’ll find out at the meeting.”

Arkady finished the brandy and got up to leave. At the door, he turned around:

“One more thing. How recent are the Ministry’s plans for attacking to the west? You should know, you were the Chief of the General Staff until a few months ago.”

“Well, we review them periodically,” stumbled a surprised Shelkov.

“Oh come on, Yuriy Denisovich! We all know what these reviews are. No, I am talking about serious, detailed, nuts to bolts planning. How long ago?”

“A few years,” shrugged Shelkov. “Who cares, we aren’t anticipating an attack from the west and we have not seriously looked in that direction in quite some time.”

“Well, the times are changing. And given how long these things take, might as well start now. Look at the plans to occupy the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.”

“But... but we are looking at moving some of the forces from the Western and the Southern Military Districts to the east, towards China. That won’t leave us with enough to attack to the west!”

“General, plans are just plans. For the western attack, assume that no forces will be moved to the east. Keep it quiet.”

Arkady went, leaving Shelkov with his thoughts.
How did he end up in this predicament?
His great-grandfather became an officer in the Red Army during the Civil War. His grandfather commanded a tank division and ended the Great Patriotic War in Berlin in 1945. His father also commanded a division and fought the Chinese in 1969. All faithfully served the Motherland, the
Rodina
. And now he was supporting what looks like a possible military coup. Perhaps he should go to Kremlin and confess everything. Except that he may have already gone too far to be forgiven. Except that his grandson Valeriy, whom he shipped off to a minor diplomatic post abroad, will meet with a violent end. Arkady made a point of emphasizing this.