The China Enigma

J. R. Kepler

Description

The Spence family juggernaut of wealth, privilege, and U.S., China, and British Intelligence agency involvement is drawn into a conundrum of cyber spy-craft and murder.
At the start of the 21st century the Spence family had successfully accumulated a multi-billion dollar business empire. The family had two sitting U.S. Senators, an ex-CIA Deputy Director now in charge of a highly secretive NSA project, and a 53 year old head of their business empire and family, Zachary Spence,who lived on a sprawling estate north of Liverpool, England. Zach was a top advisor to the British Prime Minister and to British Intelligence agencies, all due to his expertise in the affairs of Hong Kong, Macao, and mainland Communist China since his business entreaty to those locations starting back in the 1970's. A young savant, a brilliant Chinese woman, now a U.S. citizen, and in FBI custody, was about to initiate their family's greatest struggle and throw their family into a spiraling morass of cyber spy-craft, deceit, revenge, and tragedy.

Sujets

• International Crime
• Thrillers
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Suspenso
• Espionage
• Mystery
• Adventure
• Romance
• Suspense
• Thriller
• Fiction
• Action

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665744362
• Langue: English

Extrait

The China Enigma
 
THE SPENCE FAMILY CHRONICLES
 
 
 
 
J. R. KEPLER
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2023 J. R. Kepler.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4435-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4436-2 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023909372
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/11/2023
CONTENTS
The China Enigma
Prologue to “The China Enigma”
Chapter 1     January, February 2001
Chapter 2     March, April 2001
Chapter 3     May/June 2001
Chapter 4     September 2001
Chapter 5     November/December 2001
Chapter 6     February 2002
Chapter 7     March 2002
Chapter 8     June 2002
Chapter 9     June, 2010
Chapter 10   July, 2010
Chapter 11   January, 2021
Chapter 12   April 2022
About the Author
THE CHINA ENIGMA
At the start of the 21 st Century, in the year 2001, The Spence family had successfully accumulated a multi-billion-dollar business empire. The family also had two sitting U.S. Senators, an ex-Deputy Director of the CIA now in charge of a highly secretive NSA project, and a 53-year-old head of their family and business empire living on a large estate north of Liverpool, England, named Zachary Spence. Zach was also a top advisor and participant in The British Secretive Service, following in his deceased father’s footsteps. His expertise in the affairs of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao had been developed since his business entreaty to those locations starting in the 1970’s as a much younger man, and at the behest of his father. A single Chinese savant, a young Chinese woman, now a U.S. citizen, and in FBI custody, was about to initiate their family’s greatest struggle.
PROLOGUE TO “THE CHINA ENIGMA”
1946 to 1999
The history and backstory of some of the main characters in ‘The China Enigma’ are in the book, ‘The Spence Family Chronicles’ which covers the years 1946 to 1999 telling the generational story of Zachary Spence’s family starting with his father’s return home from the second World War. A recap of that story-line and its well-crafted characters can enlighten the reader of “The China Enigma” as the family heads into the new Millennium in January of 2001, where technology, globalization, and communication go into hyperdrive with unexpected consequences, and terrorism unleashes ‘Big Brother’ on our fundamental liberties and our democracy. As FDR asserted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Sam Spence, a young paratrooper returns from the war to Akron, Ohio. After an evening with his high school mentor and teacher, and after giving the man cash for a used car, this teacher/mentor mysteriously disappears. Finding out that gambling debts were owed to factions in Youngstown and Steubenville, Ohio by this man, he tracks down the two men who he assumed killed his mentor. Through a series of events he ends up being befriended by the Steubenville, Ohio mob boss. Sam is given the opportunity to own and run several bars/gambling establishments in the booming factory town of Barberton, Ohio. In time, and with the death of this mob patriarch in Steubenville, Sam inherits some cash and some advice to get out of the business and to pursue building a rubber business with his father-in-law who has developed several patents on rubber equipment. Sam sells the bars and he and his father-in-law pursue the building of a rubber business, with good success, in the Akron, Ohio area, the ‘Rubber Capital of the World’. All of the above taking place in 1946 and 1947.
In 1956 and 1957 Sam Spence and his wife have grown their family, and have moved into a larger unit of the brick and mortar ‘Norton Homes’ projects in Barberton that were built to help the housing shortage for returning veterans. The rubber business has grown and prospered, but with the opportunity to purchase Saul Goldstein’s rubber business with world- wide trading contacts, a merger takes place and Sam, his wife Adriana and Saul head to Liverpool, England for the first leg in a multi-country visit.
Through a series of events Sam is approached by British SIS, MI-6 agents to be an operative for intelligence gathering, particularly in the Soviet Union eastern block countries where Sam now has legitimate commercial interests and dealings. His active participation for MI-6, through some bizarre and opportunistic choices, escalates.
In 1968 and 1969 Sam’s family is flourishing, they have moved into a new home, and his son Zach is actively part of their business, which is still growing. Returning to London to attend the funeral of Angus Nesbitt, a key and high-ranking member of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Sam is asked to handle several operations that he struggles with from a moral standpoint, yet he succumbs to the end justifying the means.
The Patterchevsky business empire, headquartered in England was run by three brothers and Sam has been working, primarily with Boris Patterchevsky, on mutually beneficial business endeavors. With the death of the eldest brother, and with Sam’s MI-6 participation in the death of Felix Patterchevsky, he now, through another series of events, becomes involved in the British government’s wishes to usurp his ailing friend, Boris Patterchevsky, of his holdings. As events progress, it is apparent Sam is going to bring his son Zachary into the intelligence game with him, a request that MI-6 has been asking for, and Sam has been struggling with. The British intelligence community and the government want Sam to partner with them to take control of the Patterchevsky holdings as those companies and its global web are crucial to Britain’s economic interests and considered critical interests for national security reasons. The Patterchevsky companies, through Boris’ brother Felix, are all compromised with his addition of Soviet staffers at the highest levels. If Boris would die, or if the newly acquired information on a KGB assassination attempt on Boris’s life is successful, the companies would end up in the sphere of Soviet influence.
Sam and his family, with the proposed secret backing of the English government through their banks, would take an immense leap in net worth and control of a business empire that started in the 1700’s. The merger of the Patterchevsky holdings and Sam’s U.S. company vault the family into global business dealings, a task that they are somewhat ill prepared for. In 1970 Sam has to engage several embedded Soviet agents within the Patterchevsky holdings, prompted by an off the record quid pro quo arrangement he had agreed to. On a dangerous assignment in Budapest tracking down the controlling KGB agent within the Patterchevsky companies Sam ends up hospitalized, in a coma, in a London hospital. After coming out of it, he agrees to retire from his activities with MI-6, but his son, Zachary continues working for the British, primarily in Hong Kong, China and Macao.
In 1988 in a tragic boating accident, two of the family’s longtime pillars die, lost at sea. And then, Tyler Welch, who sits on the Board of Spence-Witter also dies, setting off a series of intriguing events that Zach deals with. Sam has reintroduced himself into running their worldwide holdings along with Zach, Jeremy Campbell, and his daughter Mary Elizabeth. Zach makes enormous inroads into mainland China affairs through his friend Zhou Yat Sen.
In 1999 Zach reflects on his father’s passing in 1997 at age 72, and his father’s knighthood back in 1989. Zach and his wife have four children, live on the former Patterchevsky estate overlooking the Irish Sea, and deal with two Wall Street Journal investigative reporters who intend to break a story on the massive holdings of their family and put them into the bright lights of the financial mainstream media. Zach’s intentions to allocate much of their wealth to philanthropic endeavors are initiated.
1
January, February 2001
R osalind Spence lazily rocked back in her chair with their newest family member, Samuel Jason Spence, who was bundled in a blanket and safely in her lap. The storm-fed winds off the Irish Sea were buffeting the west side of their mansion on this, the Spence estate, north of Liverpool. Her eldest son, Hans, named after her husband Zach’s grandfather was now nine. Angus, now eight, was named after Zach’s father’s deceased friend, whose estate, just outside of Liverpool proper, they also owned. And Lorena was now six, named after Zach’s grandmother. Roz finally, and forcefully, persuaded her husband to go with adding her father Jason’s name for the newest family member, and he obliged even though it ended up follow