up.
He had been playing most of the round in a bad mood. In the trunk of his armour-plated Mercedes, secured under lock and key and watched over by a 250-pound former Navy SEAL chauffeur, was a leaked, top-secret copy of the Report of the Select Committee on US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns With the People’s Republic of China—now commonly referred to as the Cox Report. Cox was a classified document until a few years ago and, strictly speaking, Marston shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. However, a disgruntled staffer in the House of Representatives had suggested to one of Marston’s senior employees that he might be able to obtain a draft copy in return for a position as a Macklinson executive in Berlin earning low six-figures after tax. Marston had agreed to the deal and had spent most of the previous evening reading the report at his home in Georgetown. The process had left him incensed to the point of insomnia.
These were the edited highlights, digested over a bowl of his wife’s notoriously insipid clam chowder:
The People’s Republic of China (hereafter the PRC) has stolen classified design information on the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear weapons. These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories have enabled the PRC to design, develop, and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible.
“Fuckers,” Marston muttered.
The stolen information includes classified information on seven US thermonuclear warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the US ballistic missile arsenal. The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced radiation weapon (commonly known as the “neutron bomb”) which neither the United States, nor any other nation, has yet deployed.
“Jesus.”
The Select Committee judges that the PRC will exploit elements of the stolen design information on the PRC’s next generation of thermonuclear weapons. The PRC has three mobile ICBM programs currently underway, all of which will be able to strike the United States.
Since the joyful, Cold War-ending events of 1991, Bill Marston had been looking around for a new global enemy. Finally he had found one.
Jenson won the seventeenth hole with a nerveless putt from eight feet, but Marston produced a second shot onto the eighteenth green which effectively won the match when his opponent failed to escape a fairway bunker at the third attempt. Afterwards, while Josh explained to Sally-Ann that he worked in an office “about forty feet” from CIA director John Deutch and wondered if she was by any chance free for dinner, the two old friends showered and met at the bar for a pre-prandial Scotch and soda. After polite exchanges with several fellow club members they got down to business.
“What are you guys working on with China?” Marston enquired.
“You mean Cox?” The Deputy Director was initially reluctant to play Marston’s game. “You know I can’t talk about that, Bill.”
As far as Marston was concerned, this was just standard-issue bluff. One more glass of Highland Park, a decent bottle of Californian Merlot over lunch and Jenson would be more inclined to talk.
“What if I told you I’d heard some things on the grapevine?”
“What kind of things?”
“That one of our most prestigious satellite communications companies provided some much-needed technical assistance on rocket propulsion to the Chinese without obtaining the correct licences from the federal government. That this prestigious satellite communications company is now facing a multi-million dollar fine for consorting with the enemy.”
It was the one part of the Cox Report that Marston had enjoyed. While thousands of Chinese spies had been busy ripping off American nuclear secrets for the best part of two decades, Canyon Enterprises, one of Macklinson’s fiercest rivals in the field of satellite
He had been playing most of the round in a bad mood. In the trunk of his armour-plated Mercedes, secured under lock and key and watched over by a 250-pound former Navy SEAL chauffeur, was a leaked, top-secret copy of the Report of the Select Committee on US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns With the People’s Republic of China—now commonly referred to as the Cox Report. Cox was a classified document until a few years ago and, strictly speaking, Marston shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. However, a disgruntled staffer in the House of Representatives had suggested to one of Marston’s senior employees that he might be able to obtain a draft copy in return for a position as a Macklinson executive in Berlin earning low six-figures after tax. Marston had agreed to the deal and had spent most of the previous evening reading the report at his home in Georgetown. The process had left him incensed to the point of insomnia.
These were the edited highlights, digested over a bowl of his wife’s notoriously insipid clam chowder:
The People’s Republic of China (hereafter the PRC) has stolen classified design information on the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear weapons. These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories have enabled the PRC to design, develop, and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible.
“Fuckers,” Marston muttered.
The stolen information includes classified information on seven US thermonuclear warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the US ballistic missile arsenal. The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced radiation weapon (commonly known as the “neutron bomb”) which neither the United States, nor any other nation, has yet deployed.
“Jesus.”
The Select Committee judges that the PRC will exploit elements of the stolen design information on the PRC’s next generation of thermonuclear weapons. The PRC has three mobile ICBM programs currently underway, all of which will be able to strike the United States.
Since the joyful, Cold War-ending events of 1991, Bill Marston had been looking around for a new global enemy. Finally he had found one.
Jenson won the seventeenth hole with a nerveless putt from eight feet, but Marston produced a second shot onto the eighteenth green which effectively won the match when his opponent failed to escape a fairway bunker at the third attempt. Afterwards, while Josh explained to Sally-Ann that he worked in an office “about forty feet” from CIA director John Deutch and wondered if she was by any chance free for dinner, the two old friends showered and met at the bar for a pre-prandial Scotch and soda. After polite exchanges with several fellow club members they got down to business.
“What are you guys working on with China?” Marston enquired.
“You mean Cox?” The Deputy Director was initially reluctant to play Marston’s game. “You know I can’t talk about that, Bill.”
As far as Marston was concerned, this was just standard-issue bluff. One more glass of Highland Park, a decent bottle of Californian Merlot over lunch and Jenson would be more inclined to talk.
“What if I told you I’d heard some things on the grapevine?”
“What kind of things?”
“That one of our most prestigious satellite communications companies provided some much-needed technical assistance on rocket propulsion to the Chinese without obtaining the correct licences from the federal government. That this prestigious satellite communications company is now facing a multi-million dollar fine for consorting with the enemy.”
It was the one part of the Cox Report that Marston had enjoyed. While thousands of Chinese spies had been busy ripping off American nuclear secrets for the best part of two decades, Canyon Enterprises, one of Macklinson’s fiercest rivals in the field of satellite
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