O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [19]
Tobias had seen brilliant bronze castings in the city and about the palace, but they were Buddhas and bells and made of the wrong metal.
“Does the province have an operating iron mine?” the Marine asked.
“Yes, and of excellent grade.”
“And the Chinese certainly know what there is to know about gunpowder.”
The emperor nodded.
A day later a secret protocol was drawn up between the emperor and the State Department official with Lieutenant Storm and one palace minister witnessing.
America would provide blueprints and manufacturing methods of the most modern artillery, from 5 to 14 inches and from 75 to 105 millimeters.
America would likewise provide the know-how to make shells and auxiliary equipment.
America would provide a team of civilian experts, under contract to Wu Ling Chow, to set up and operate a clandestine factory.
America would assign Lieutenant Tobias Storm, legally, under international precedent, to train officers with a specialty in artillery.
Lieutenant Storm would retain his Marine Corps rank as well as legally hold the rank of colonel in the Nandong military.
America had no financial obligation except for Lieutenant Storm’s Marine Corps salary and allowances.
There would be no further American military presence. When guns were tested successfully, the American civilian team would turn over manufacturing matters to Nandong personnel.
In return:
Wu Ling Chow would grant exclusive trade concessions as listed on the attached pages.
It was a very quiet deal so as not to send off alarm bells all over China. Few would even know of its existence.
Beyond that, Captain Dinkel, commander of the Kansas, had a heart-to-heart with Tobias. The navy was extremely liberal about pets aboard: dogs, of course, cats, monkeys, an occasional goat, but Stars and Stripes were eating enough fish every day to feed half the crew. Emperor Wu sensed that the gift of the seals was not Lieutenant Storm’s idea, but he most gratefully accepted.
The endgame was that Tobias Storm was promoted to captain in the Marines and commissioned a colonel in the Nandong military as superintendent of the new academy.
After returning to the States to collect his family and receiving a heavy briefing by the State Department and military, Tobias returned to Nandong with his dear wife, Matilda, their sons Norman and Jason, and their youngest, a daughter, Brenda.
In 1879, Storm founded a small military school that, over time, rose to a very high level of respect in the region.
It seemed so celestial in the beginning. Surely heaven’s gates had swung open for the Storms. They were housed in one of the lesser royal compounds—an ebony- and redwood-carved, ivory- and jade-decorated domicile of Oriental splendor—wrapped in gold- and silver-threaded silk brocades, and served on Ming porcelain.
The first bucking of heads between Tobias and Wu came almost immediately. Tobias planned an initial class to consist of twenty-five cadets to go through a very hard two years’ training.
The normal way of doing things in Nandong would be to draw the candidates from the most important families and loyal relatives. Inner-circle patronage was the ancient system and was not to be toyed with.
Colonel Storm reckoned he could abide with, say, three or four such cadets but insisted on open recruiting from the general population and countryside.
Wu Ling Chow halted the argument quickly. The loyalty lineage could never be tampered with.
“Okay, Your Majesty, it’s your fucking army,” Storm said . . . way beneath his breath. Twenty-five cadets were selected and underwent the displeasures of a brutal training regimen.
Within a month, eighteen of the twenty-five candidates had limped off in horror.
The colonel got a royal summons and learned that court shenanigans were being played by men of devious character and cowardly bent.
“Your Majesty, I cannot do what you want me to do with candidates who have soft hands and softer backbones. I am not here to play toy soldiers with a bunch of spoiled rich kids. And, Your Majesty, if