NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

The phone rang the next morning at 6 AM. “What the?” I mumbled as I went to get it from its charging stand.

It was The Lady. “Dana, they’ve got Mark,” she said simply.

“What?”

“Mark Cuban. Check your screen, get some coffee, then come over to the Centre by 8. We must have some response before the close of business.”

The signs in Jenni’s report were clear only to the paranoid, but sometimes they are out to get you. And that someone in this case was the U.S. government.

Over the last month a clear pattern emerged, different from anything DolEx had seen before. While the regular pattern was for Americans living in South Africa to send money home, Rand which the falling Dollar turned to gold, now the figures were almost equal. As many Dollars were coming in as going out.

There was no other answer. Tony Leon had to be getting his information from somewhere, and only the U.S. government had the financial and technical to get him that information. On top of them, they were paying him to speak, probably funneling the money through a host of CIA fronts or more legitimate firms – government contractors, the Carlyle Group. All so he would do what was in his best interest to do anyway, try and de-stabilize the Mbeki government by pointing out what it had given Virgin Maverick.

This, The Lady almost expected. They had stolen Florida from Al Gore, stolen Ohio from her second husband. It was business as usual.

But this. The reports on the Net didn’t do it justice. I flipped on CNN International, muting the sound, to get a better look.

All this had happened last night local time, as I enjoyed a quiet dinner with my beloved and my son John, the wave growing as I slept.

The American strike had been swift, and directed directly at us.

There, at 1 PM Dallas time, or 10 PM here in Joburg, Mark Cuban was at the hour of his greatest triumph. His beloved Dallas Mavericks had finally, finally gotten over the hump and won the NBA Championship, beating Shaquille O’Neal and the Miami Heat in the finals. Now, the noon victory parade had culminated in a rally outside his American Airlines Center, and David Stern had just handed him the stylized basket-and-ball symbolizing victory. He held it aloft, a huge smile of triumph on his face, prepared to jump up-and-down like the captain of the winning team in most sports, when suddenly his right hand was pulled behind him, the trophy tottered into the strong hands of MVP Dirk Nowitzki, and then the other hand was pulled away, the cuffs locked behind him.

You could see the whole thing in his face, a thousand emotions flashing across it in those two seconds, two seconds replayed over-and-over like the Zapruder film. “The Triumph and Fall of Mark Cuban,” as CNN anchor Miles O’Brien called it. “An American Tragedy,” echoed MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson. “Day of Infamy,” said Fox anchor Stephen Smith, giving the official line.

To gain complete control of what was left of America’s economy, George Bush was going to give Mark Cuban the Khorokovsky treatment. Just as the Yukos chairman had been sentenced to death on a series of trumped-up financial charges earlier in the year, having only dared to support candidates other than those of Putin’s choosing, so Cuban was to be railroaded for America’s fall, and the blame attached to us.

It was diabolical. It was brilliant. And as I walked the wakening streets of Johannesburg, I didn’t see a damned thing we could do about it.

Because Cuban was just a figurehead. He had invested in Virgin Maverick, invested heavily, and he had a handsome return, with nearly half of his total assets now in South African holdings. The dollar’s fall had clobbered every other American billionaire – from Gates to Buffett to Walton. Only Cuban had gained.

And now it was all being taken away from him. More important, to me anyway, was it was all going to be taken away from us. The American move had declared war on Virgin Maverick, and by implication declared economic war on South Africa.

I got to the top of the Centre early. The cement-and-steel skeleton for the first of our new Towers was already rising to the level of Branson’s office, and would rise to the same height again, if we could finish it. For now the morning sun still shone on the office of The Lady, appointed as it was in rich, light African woods, with tasteful pictures of her Pennsylvania family and two husbands set against precious native art and minerals.

Her desk, like those of others at the top of the Virgin Maverick hierarchy, was dominated by a large flat screen that could be turned in any direction. It was now set against an end of her desk, so it could be seen both by her and by me, her visitor. A cup of bush tea was before my chair, heated by a hot plate coaster plugged into the front of the desk.

The screen, like many I had passed on my way up here, showed the face of South African President Thabo Mbeki himself. But while those other screens all showed him in interviews with local anchors, or giving official statements from his Tshwane offices, this picture was live, a videoconference.

“Nice of you to join us,” he said as I sat down.

“An honor, sir, sorry I was late,” I said, although my watch proved I was a few minutes early.

“Markets are already reacting negatively, Dana,” said The Lady calmly. “The value of the Rand has plummeted in Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney and Singapore. It’s nearly mid-day there, and the pressure on the President is growing to make a statement, to calm matters before our own markets open later this morning…

“With a run that will make the Asian contagion look like an insect bite,” added President Mbeki.

“Need me to kiss it and make it all better?” I said ruefully. “I can’t. I don’t think PR matters here.”

Suddenly, what looked like a painting on the wall opposite Mbeki’s face became a screen, one that dwarfed in size the one holding the image of the President. And on that screen came the face, and the booming voice of Sir Richard Branson.

“Mr. Blankenhorn is right, as he so often is,” said Branson. “What matters here, Mr. President, is simple financial strength. Mr. Bush has pushed his chips onto the table, but it is we who have the stronger hand.”

“Stronger than the U.S. government?” asked The Lady, alarmed.

Branson nodded. “Much stronger. The Bank of China,” he said. “I have been in touch with my contacts at the Bank over the last few hours, and I have already alerted the members of our exchange to sell into this strength. Already the dollar’s move against the Rand is starting to slow, and as soon as trading begins here it will reverse completely. You should know, Mr. President, that the government funds under our management are being invested in the same direction, which would normally be the case anyway if you were merely trying to protect the currency.”

“How? asked Mbeki. “What do you know? Why are you smiling?”

“At approximately noon today Joburg time, after Europe has had a chance to brush its teeth, grab some coffee, and place its own bets, the Bank of China is going to start selling U.S. Dollar bonds it holds, first in a trickle, and then in a flood, until the American President understands that his currency can go, not to par, but beyond it against the Yuan. The inflationary pressures that so bedeviled the U.S. some months ago, that forced it into demanding tremendous sacrifices of its own people, are going to be doubled and redoubled, until the U.S. agrees to come to the table.”

“And if it doesn’t?” asked the Lady with alarm. “If the response is military? The United States still has the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world. Hundreds of millions of Chinese could lose their lives.”

“It won’t come to that,” said Branson with certainty.

“How do you know?” asked Mbeki.

“Because the Russian bank is going to join the selling. It will be check and mate in two.”