The China Paradox

Gerard Shirar

Description

An Asian thriller with trubling implications for US democracy and the US’s place in the world. Appeals to people interested in world affairs and the Far East as well as China’s role in the world.
Walter J. Lummis is a freelance newsman, an American expatriate, who has spent his life covering the news in Asia. Now in his later years he has develop information about a plot involving China and North Korea, with Russia and Iran cooperating. A plot to destroy the US’s democracy from within, eliminate its’ influence in world affairs, and alter the world order by creating a single nation, comprised of all the nations of the world ruled by China. His’ journey takes him to a number of Far East countries as he seeks out sources with knowledge of the plot, all the while being pursued by agents of North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, MSS, who are out to kill him, before he can get the story on the front page of a leading US newspaper and earn a Pulitzer prize.
Will Lummis reach his objective of publishing the story or will the MSS kill him before he reaches his goal? The fate of Lummis, the United States, and the world order hang in the balance.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Suspense
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 06 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663241993
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

OTHER TITLES By Gerard Shirar
The Lottery Game
When the Rules Don’t Apply
The Girl Called Princess Charlotte
The Court-Marshall of Charlie Newell
The Many Indiscretions of Art Boyle
The Unknown Subject
Nantucket Summer
THE CHINA PARADOX
 
 
 
 
GERARD SHIRAR
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
THE CHINA PARADOX
 
 
Copyright © 2022 Gerard Shirar.
 
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.
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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www.iuniverse.com
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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.
 
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.
 
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: 978-1-6632-4197-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4198-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4199-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912320
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  07/05/2022
CONTENTS
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Part Two
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
 
Epilogue
 
Dedication : To my daughter Suzanne for her encouragement, and to those who seek the facts and uncover the truth.
 
“Remember… democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide .” -John Adams, the second president of the United States.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The sound of a metal door shutting, followed by a latch closing. Then heavy breathing and the sound of a toilet seat being lowered, followed by more heavy breathing.
A man has just entered a toilet stall and is muttering to himself, fear reflected on his face. “Christ! Can’t believe what just happened.” His voice is on the edge of panic. “Saw Koreans in the terminal earlier…could have been North Korean MSS…fit the description…late twenties… early thirties…athletic looking…arrogant acting. Shit! If MSS, they could be behind it… would have seen me greeting him.”
The man is thinking now. Calm down, God dammit… and stop talking to yourself; someone’ll hear you. Think, God dammit…think! If it was the MSS they’ll have their whole fucking organization looking for you and if they find you, they’ll kill you for sure, just like they did him. It must have been the North Koreans. Who else would want him dead? He’s been a thorn in the Supreme Leader’s side for years. Got to prepare for the worst, can’t just let them get away with it. Can’t let what I’ve learned die with me. Got to get the word out… tell someone. So think… God dammit, think…think... That’s it!... Your tape recorder. It’s in your pocket. Record what you know.
Beginning of recording.
“Testing...one, two, three.”
The voice recorder plays back, the sound just above a whisper, “Testing one, two, three...”
Hope you can hear this. Got to talk softly. I’m in a toilet stall in one of the men’s rooms in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. I just witnessed Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the ruler of North Korea, being murdered—I think by the North Korean MSS. The restroom stall’s not the safest place to hide, but it’s the first place I could think of. What I’ve just witnessed has put my life in danger. Legs are shaking; I’m sweating out of fear. To put it bluntly, I’m scared shitless. So bear with me.
It’s February 13, 2017. I was at the airport to meet Kim Jong-nam, the exiled half-brother of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s Supreme Leader. He had just arrived on a Japan Airlines flight from Macau to tell me what he learned about a plot North Korea is a party to, a plot masterminded by China to end the economic and political dominance of the US and form a one-nation world in China’s image.
Two young women approached Kim as he walked across the airport concourse toward me. They rubbed their hands on his face, giggling as they did it. It looked like a prank, something dreamed up for a TV program… a dare or something. You probably know the type of TV program I’m talking about. A second or two later, just as I had my hand out to greet him, he slumped to the concourse floor. The way his body convulsed and went limp, they must have smeared his face with something like Venomous X, VX. There’s an antidote, Atropine. If the women took Atropine, they would have been immune to VX’s lethal effects. If it were VX, he would have died almost instantly.
The women had hurried off by the time Kim’s body hit the concourse floor. They might have been dupes, picked at random, tricked into doing it, or they could have been MSS agents. The MSS are known to use women agents to do their dirty work...who knows? At this point I’m just guessing.
But I’m betting that somehow, they learned that Kim was asking his contacts in North Korea what they knew about China’s plot and the MSS killed him before he could pass on what he learned. If it was the MSS they now know that someone he was passing it on to was me. Kim was helping me with the story I’m writing about the plot, a story I began working on in 1995 when I first learned that Russia was providing North Korea with uranium isotopes, U235 and U238. Later I learned that China and North Korea were working together and that Russia and Iran were cooperating with them to end the US’s dominance in the world. As I continued working on the story I have since learned that China and North Korea are engaged in a plot whose ultimate objective is not only to end the US’s dominance in the world but to create a one-nation world with all the present countries merged into a single nation modeled after China’s form of governance and employing China’s Socialist market-oriented economy. I’m planning to sell the story to the New York Times or the Washington Post, maybe to 60 Minutes. That’s how I make my living—part of it anyway—uncovering newsworthy stories and selling them to newspapers. I’m a freelance reporter… been one all my adult life.
Met Kim Jong-nam in Macau. We’re both gamblers and frequented Macau’s casinos, mostly the blackjack and roulette tables. Since I speak Korean, we hit it off. As a reporter I’m always on the lookout for sources of information and while we were not bosom friends, you could say we were more than mere acquaintances. He agreed to find out what he could about the plot from the contacts he still maintained in North Korea, and we planned to meet in Kuala Lumpur if he learned anything. He telephoned me three days ago and told me to meet him at the airport.
Kim Jong-nam’s been a thorn in the side of his half-brother for a long time, so I’m sure his half-brother would have had no qualms about having him killed. A nerve agent is hard to detect. So if the MSS was behind it, and used VX, they’re probably counting on the Malaysian authorities treating Kim’s death as a heart attack. I had most of the story by the time I asked for Kim’s help, but since the source of most of what I’ve learned was someone I couldn’t identify, Kim Chong-nam would have served two purposes; possibly adding further information to what I already knew and allowing me to use him as the principle source for the story. The actual principle source, who I named Source X, was a general in the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, RGB, North Korea’s premier intelligence service. The North Koreans think he’s dead and I promised not to reveal his identity. I promise I’ll tell you the reason for that later.
If the two Koreans I saw on the concourse earlier were MSS they probably saw I had my hand out in the process of greeting Kim and are looking for me right now. If they killed him because of what he learned about the plot, they probably figure I was involved and it won’t be long before they’ll have my name, learn I live in Macau, and discover that I’m a journalist. I’m sure one of the first things they’ll do is search my apartment. They’re sure to find my computer and learn from it what I’ve learned so far about the plot. Then they’ll have their whole God damn organization after me. If they find me, they’ll kill me just like they did Kim. So I’ve got to plan for the worst.
As I said, I planned to sell the story to the New York Times , or The Washington Post . With one of those prestigious newspapers running the story, hopefully on