The Bear and the Dragon jrao-11 Read online

“Minister, you call us uncivilized,” Rutledge replied. “But there is no blood on our hands. Now, we are here, as I recall, to discuss trade issues. Can we return to that agenda?”

  “Mr. Rutledge, America does not have the right to dictate to the People’s Republic on one hand and to deny us our rights on the other,” Shen retorted.

  “Minister, America has made no such intrusion on China’s internal affairs. If you kill a diplomat, you must expect a reaction. On the question of the Republic of China-”

  “There is no Republic of China!” the PRC’s Foreign Minister nearly screamed. “They are a renegade province, and you have violated our sovereignty by recognizing them!”

  “Minister, the Republic of China is an independent nation with a freely elected government, and we are not the only country to recognize this fact. It is the policy of the United States of America to encourage the self-determination of peoples. At such time as the people in the ROC elect to become part of the mainland, that is their choice. But since they have freely chosen to be what they are, America chooses to recognize them. As we expect others to recognize America as a legitimate government because it represents the will of her people, so it is incumbent upon America to recognize the will of other peoples.” Rutledge sat back in his chair, evidently bored with the course the afternoon had taken. The morning he’d expected. The PRC had to blow off some steam, but one morning was enough for that. This was getting tiresome.

  “And if another of our provinces rebels, will you recognize that?”

  “Is the Minister telling me of further political unrest in the People’s Republic?” Rutledge inquired at once, a little too fast and too glibly, he told himself a moment later. “In any case, I have no instructions for that eventuality.” It was supposed to have been a (semi) humorous response to rather a dumb question, but Minister Shen evidently didn’t have his sense of humor turned on today. His hand came up, finger extended, and now he shook it at Cliff Rutledge and the United States.

  “You cheat us. You interfere with us. You insult us. You blame us for the inefficiency of your economy. You deny us fair access to your markets. And you sit there as though you are the seat of the world’s virtue. We will have none of this!”

  “Minister, we have opened our doors to trade with your country, and you have closed your door in our face. It is your door to open or close,” he conceded, “but we have our doors to close as well if you so force us. We have no wish to do this. We wish for fair and free trade between the great Chinese people and the American people, but the impediments to that trade are not to be found in America.”

  “You insult us, and then you expect us to invite you into our home?”

  “Minister, America insults no one. A tragedy happened in the People’s Republic yesterday. It was probably something you would have preferred to avoid, but even so, it happened. The President of the United States has asked for you to investigate the incident. That is not an unreasonable request. What do you condemn us for? A journalist reported the facts. Does China deny the facts we saw on television? Do you claim that a private American company fabricated this event? I think not. Do you say that those two men are not dead? Regrettably, this is not the case. Do you say that your policeman was justified in killing an accredited diplomat and a clergyman holding a newborn child?” Rutledge asked in his most reasonable voice. “Minister, all you have said for the past three and a half hours is that America is wrong for objecting to what appears to be cold-blooded murder. And our objection was merely a request for your government to investigate the incident. Minister, America has neither done nor said anything unreasonable, and we grow weary of the accusation. My delegation and I came here to discuss trade. We would like the People’s Republic to open up its markets more so that trade can become trade, the free exchange of goods across international borders. You request a most-favored-nation trading relationship with the United States. That will not happen until such time as your markets are as open to America as America’s are open to China, but it can happen at such time as you make the changes we require.”

  “The People’s Republic is finished with acceding to America’s insulting demands. We are finished with tolerating your insults to our sovereignty. We are finished with your interference in our internal affairs. It is time for America to consider our reasonable requests. China desires to have a fair trading relationship with the United States. We ask no more than what you give other nations: most favored nation.”

  “Minister, that will not happen until such time as you open your markets to our goods. Trade is not free if it is not fair. We object also to the PRC’s violation of copyright and trademark treaties and agreements. We object to having industries fully owned by agencies of the government of the People’s Republic to violate patent treaties, even to the point of manufacturing proprietary American products without permission or compensation and-”

  “So now you call us thieves?” Shen demanded.

  “Minister, I point out that such words have not escaped my lips. It is a fact, however, that we have examples of products made in China by factories owned by agencies of your government, which products appear to contain American inventions for which the inventors have not been compensated, and from whom permission to manufacture the copies has not been obtained. I can show you examples of those products if you wish.” Shen’s reaction was an angry wave of the hand, which Rutledge took to mean No, thank you. Or something like that.

  “I have no interest in seeing physical evidence of American lies and distortions.”

  Gant just sat back in his chair while Rutledge made his injured reply, like a spectator at a prizefight, wondering if anyone would land the knockdown punch. Probably not, he thought. Neither had a glass chin, and both were too light on their feet. What resulted was a lot of flailing about, but no serious result. It was just a new kind of boring for him, exciting in its form, but dull in its result. He made some notes, but those were merely memory aids to help him remember how this had gone. It might make a fun chapter in his autobiography. What title, he wondered. Trader and Diplomat, maybe?

  Forty-five minutes later, it broke up, with the usual handshakes, as cordial as the meeting had been contentious, which rather amazed Mark Gant.

  “It’s all business, not personal,” Rutledge explained. “I’m surprised they’re dwelling on this so much. It’s not as though we’ve actually accused them of anything. Hell, even the President just asked for an investigation. Why are they so touchy?” he wondered aloud.

  “Maybe they’re worried they won’t get what they want out of the talks,” Gant speculated.

  “But why are they that worried?” Rutledge asked.

  “Maybe their foreign-exchange reserves are even lower than my computer model suggests.” Gant shrugged.

  “But even if they are, they’re not exactly following a course that would ameliorate it.” Rutledge slammed his hands together in frustration. “They’re not behaving logically. Okay, sure, they’re allowed to have a conniption fit over this shooting thing, and, yeah, maybe President Ryan pushed it a little too far saying some of the things he said-and Christ knows he’s a real Neanderthal on the abortion issue. But all of that does not justify the time and the passion in their position.”

  “Fear?” Gant wondered.

  “Fear of what?”

  “If their cash reserves are that low, or maybe even lower, then they could be in a tight crack, Cliff. Tighter than we appreciate.”

  “Assume that they are, Mark. What makes it something to be fearful about?”

  “A couple of things,” Gant said, leaning forward in his limo seat. “It means they don’t have the cash to buy things, or to meet the payments on the things they’ve already bought. It’s an embarrassment, and like you said, these are proud people. I don’t see them admitting they’re wrong, or wanting to show weakness.”

  “That’s a fact,” Rutledge agreed.

  “Pride can get people into a lot of trouble, Cliff,” Gant thought aloud. He remembe
red a fund on Wall Street that had taken a hundred-million-dollar hit because its managing director wouldn’t back off a position that he’d thought was correct a few days earlier, but then stayed with after it was manifestly clear that he was wrong. Why? Because he hadn’t wanted to look like a pussy on The Street. And so instead of appearing to be a pussy, he’d proclaimed to the whole world that he was an ass. But how did one translate that into foreign affairs? A chief of state was smarter than that, wasn’t he?

  It’s not going well, my friend,” Zhang told Fang.

  “That foolish policeman is to blame. Yes, the Americans were wrong to react so strongly, but that would not have taken place at all if not for the overzealous police officer.”

  “President Ryan-why does he hate us so?”

  “Zhang, twice you have plotted against the Russians, and twice you’ve played your intrigue against America. Is it not possible that the Americans know of this? Is it not possible that they guessed it was the case? Has it not occurred to you that this is why they recognized the Taiwan regime?”

  Zhang Han San shook his head. “This is not possible. Nothing was ever written down.” And our security was perfect in both cases, he didn’t trouble himself to add.

  “When things are said around people with ears, Zhang, they remember them. There are few secrets in the world. You can no more keep the affairs of state secret than you can conceal the sunrise,” Fang went on, thinking that he’d make sure that this phrase went into the record of the talk that Ming would write up for him. “They spread too far. They reach too many people, and each of them has a mouth.”

  “Then what would you have us do?”

  “The American has requested an investigation, so, we give him one. The facts we discover will be whatever facts we wish them to be. If a policeman must die, there are many others to take his place. Our trading relationship with America is more important than this trivial matter, Zhang.”

  “We cannot afford to abase ourselves before the barbarian.”

  “We cannot not afford not to in this case. We cannot allow false pride to put the country at risk.” Fang sighed. His friend Zhang had always been a proud one. A man able to see far, certainly, but too aware of himself and the place he wanted. Yet the one he’d chosen was difficult. He’d never wanted the first place for himself, but instead to be the man who influenced the man at the top, to be like the court eunuchs who had directed the various emperors for over a thousand years. Fang almost smiled, thinking that no amount of power was worth becoming a eunuch, at the royal court or not, and that Zhang probably didn’t wish to go that far, either. But to be the man of power behind the curtain was probably more difficult than to be the man in the first chair … and yet, Fang remembered, Zhang had been the prime mover behind Xu’s selection to general secretary. Xu was an intellectual nonentity, a pleasant enough man with regal looks, able to speak in public well, but not himself a man of great ideas …

  … and that explained things, didn’t it? Zhang had helped make Xu the chief of the Politburo precisely because he was an empty vessel, and Zhang was the one to fill the void of ideas with his own thoughts. Of course. He ought to have seen it sooner. Elsewhere, it was believed that Xu had been chosen for his middle-of-the-road stance on everything-a conciliator, a consensus-maker, they called him outside the PRC. In fact, he was a man of few convictions, able to adopt those of anyone else, if that someone-Zhang-looked about first and decided where the Politburo should go.

  Xu was not a complete puppet, of course. That was the problem with people. However useful they might be on some issues, on others they held to the illusion that they thought for themselves, and the most foolish of them did have ideas, and those ideas were rarely logical and almost never helpful. Xu had embarrassed Zhang on more than one occasion, and since he was chairman of the Politburo, Xu did have real personal power, just not the wit to make proper use of it. But-what? Sixty percent of the time, maybe a little more? — he was merely Zhang’s mouthpiece. And Zhang, for his part, was largely free to exert his own influence, and to make his own national policy. He did so mostly unseen and unknown outside the Politburo itself, and not entirely known inside, either, since so many of his meetings with Xu were private, and most of the time Zhang never spoke of them, even to Fang.

  His old friend was a chameleon, Fang thought, hardly for the first time. But if he showed humility in not seeking prominence to match his influence, then he balanced that with the fault of pride, and, worse, he didn’t seem to know what weakness he displayed. He thought either that it wasn’t a fault at all, or that only he knew of it. All men had their weaknesses, and the greatest of these were invariably those unknown to their practitioners. Fang checked his watch and took his leave. With luck, he’d be home at a decent hour, after he transcribed his notes through Ming. What a novelty, getting home on time.

  CHAPTER 28 Collision Courses

  Those sonsabitches,” Vice President Jackson observed with his coffee.

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of statecraft, Robby,” Ryan told his friend. It was 7:45 A.M. in the Oval Office. Cathy and the kids had gotten off early, and the day was starting fast. “We’ve had our suspicions, but here’s the proof, if you want to call it that. The war with Japan and that little problem we had with Iran started in Beijing-well, not exactly, but this Zhang guy, acting for Xu, it would seem, aided and abetted both.”

  “Well, he may be a nasty son of a bitch, but I wouldn’t give him points for brains,” Robby said, after a moment’s reflection. Then he thought some more. “But maybe that’s not fair. From his point of view, the plans were pretty clever, using others to be his stalking horse. He risked nothing himself, then he figured to move in and profit on the risks of others. It certainly looked efficient, I suppose.”

  “Question is, what’s his next move?”

  “Between this and what Rutledge reports from Beijing, I’d say we have to take these people a little seriously,” Robby reflected. Then his head perked up some more. “Jack, we have to get more people in on this.”

  “Mary Pat will flip out if we even suggest it,” Ryan told him.

  “Too damned bad. Jack, it’s the old problem with intelligence information. If you spread it out too much, you risk compromising it, and then you lose it-but if you don’t use it at all, you might as well not even have it. Where do you draw the line?” It was a rhetorical question. “If you err, you err on the side of safety-but the safety of the country, not the source.”

  “There’s a real, live person on the other end of this sheet of paper, Rob,” Jack pointed out.

  “I’m sure there is. But there are two hundred fifty million people outside this room, Jack, and the oath we both swore was to them, not some Chinese puke in Beijing. What this tells us is that the guy making policy in China is willing to start wars, and twice now we’ve sent our people to fight wars he’s had a part in starting. Jesus, man, war is supposed to be a thing of the past, but this Zhang guy hasn’t figured that one out yet. What’s he doing that we don’t know about?”

  “That’s what SORGE’s all about, Rob. The idea is that we find out beforehand and have a chance to forestall it.”

  Jackson nodded. “Maybe so, but once upon a time, there was a source called MAGIC that told us a lot about an enemy’s intentions, but when that enemy launched the first attack, we were asleep-because MAGIC was so important we never told CINCPAC about it, and he ended up not preparing for Pearl Harbor. I know intel’s important, but it has its operational limitations. All this really tells us is that we have a potential adversary with little in the way of inhibitions. We know his mind-set, but not his intentions or current operations. Moreover, SORGE’S giving us recollections of private conversations between one guy who makes policy and another guy who tries to influence policy. A lot of stuff is being left out. This looks like a cover-your-ass diary, doesn’t it?”

  Ryan told himself that this was a particularly smart critique. Like the people at Langley, he’d allowed himself to wax
a little too euphoric about a source they’d never even approached before. SONGBIRD was good, but not without limitations. Big ones.

  “Yeah, Rob, that’s probably just what it is. This Fang guy probably keeps the diary just to have something to pull out of the drawer if one of his colleagues on the Chinese Politburo tries to butt-fuck him.”

  “So, it isn’t Sir Thomas More whose words we’re reading,” TOMCAT observed.

  “Not hardly,” Ryan conceded. “But it’s a good source. All the people who’ve looked at this for us say it feels very real.”

  “I’m not saying it isn’t true, Jack, I’m saying it isn’t all,” the Vice President persisted.

  “Message received, Admiral.” Ryan held up his hands in surrender. “What do you recommend?”

  “SecDef for starters, and the Chiefs, and J-3 and J-5, and probably CINCPAC, your boy Bart Mancuso,” Jackson added, with a hint of distaste.

  “Why don’t you like the guy?” SWORDSMAN asked.

  “He’s a bubblehead,” the career fighter pilot answered. “Submariners don’t get around all that much. . but I grant you he’s a pretty good operator.” The submarine operation he’d run on the Japs using old boomers had been pretty swift, Jackson admitted to himself.

  “Specific recommendations?”

  “Rutledge tells us that the ChiComms are talking like they’re real torqued over the Taiwan thing. What if they act on that? Like a missile strike into the island. Christ knows they have enough missiles to toss, and we have ships in harbor there all the time.”

  “You really think they’d be dumb enough to launch an attack on a city with one of our ships tied alongside?” Ryan asked. Nasty or not, this Zhang guy wasn’t going to risk war with America quite that foolishly, was he?

  “What if they don’t know the ship’s there? What if they get bad intel? Jack, the shooters don’t always get good data from the guys in the back room. Trust me. Been there, done that, got the fucking scars, y’know?”