Sea of Shadows

the moment, I’ll settle for a hunch.”

“I have no idea, sir,” Brenthoven said. “But it’s liable to be something we’re really not going to like.”

Veronica Doyle looked around at the members of the team. “Anybody got any idea how far the Chinese might go?”

“They just launched a ballistic missile over Taiwan,” said Secretary Whelkin. “I’d say they’re feeling pretty bold.”

“And in this case,” the president said, “bold might equate to stupid.”

He nodded slowly and then turned to his national security advisor. “Greg, round up the Joint Chiefs; I want an aircraft carrier off the coast of Taiwan by the time the sun comes up tomorrow, and a second carrier on scene as soon as we can manage it.”

The national security advisor frowned. “Two carriers, Mr. President? We’ve only got four deployed. That’s going to spread us pretty thin. If we’re trying to show the Chinese that we’re not happy with them, I should think one carrier would more than do the job.”

The president shook his head. “I don’t want China to think we’re unhappy. I want them to know that we’re mad as hell and not interested in playing games where Taiwan is concerned. Besides, the people of Taiwan have an election coming up in a few days. If we let the Politburo have their way, that election will take place in the shadow of a Chinese sword. Let’s show the Taiwanese people a little of the American shield instead.”

He looked up. “Okay guys, all we’ve got are guesses. If the Chinese are planning some kind of move, we’re going to need a lot more than that.

Get out there and beat the bushes. We need numbers on the Chinese economy, readiness assessments on their military, and trend analyses on their logistics. If they’re stockpiling anything — I don’t care if it’s rice, bullets, or canned peaches — I want to know about it.” He stood up.

“That’s all.”

The members of the team began filing out the door. In a few seconds, only the president, his chief of staff, and the national security advisor remained.

“Something I can do for you, Greg?”

“Yes, sir. I do have one more item I’d like to run by you, if you have a couple of minutes.”

The president nodded.

Brenthoven reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and retrieved a small leather-bound notebook. He opened it and read for a couple of seconds before looking up at his boss. “February of last year, Niedersachsen Six, the nuclear reactor outside Hanover, Germany, had to be shut down because of a primary coolant leak. There wasn’t a great deal of contamination, but the European media had a field day with it anyway.”

“I remember,” the president said. “They trotted out every China Syndrome reference they could lay their hands on, from Three Mile Island to Chernobyl.”

“Taken by itself, I wouldn’t assign it much importance,” Brenthoven said. “But Niedersachsen Six was the third significant incident in the German nuclear power program in less than two years.”

“I read a white paper on Niedersachsen,” Doyle said. “They shut down the reactor for inspection and repair. They’re going to restart it at the end of this month.”

Brenthoven shook his head. “No, they’re not. The Green Party has cobbled together a sort of ecologist’s coalition to block the restarting of the reactor. In fact, they managed to whip up enough public backlash to force their case all the way up to the Bundestag for a formal vote. It’s official: they’re shutting them all down. Every reactor on German soil.”

Doyle pursed her lips for a half-second. “Germany was moving in that direction anyway. Now they’ll have to do it a little faster.”

“Not a little faster,” Brenthoven said. “A lot faster. In less than a year, the Germans are going to have one hell of an energy crunch. Nearly thirty-five percent of their electricity comes from nuclear power, and their per capita usage is through the roof. Over six thousand kilowatt- hours per person, per year.”

“How bad is it going to get, Greg?” the president asked.

Brenthoven checked his notebook again. “Bad, sir. Catastrophic. We could conceivably be looking at the collapse of the entire German economy.”

Doyle curled a finger under her chin. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would the German people vote for a plan that could bankrupt their economy?”

“It’s a classic argument,” the president said. “The pro-Earth lobbies push for environmental safety at any and all cost; they try to frighten people with dire predictions of impending ecological disasters. The pro-industrial lobbies counter with their own brand of scare tactics. Factory shutdowns, loss of jobs, and the crippling economic impact of tighter environmental restrictions. Both sides run around screaming that the sky is falling, and the only way to stop it is to vote the way they tell you to.”

He smiled. “And the irony of it is, both sides are probably right. We are poisoning our planet at an alarming rate. And the cost of stopping this catastrophe-in-progress may well be higher than we can afford to pay.”

He sighed. “It comes down to a tug-of-war between the tree huggers and the polluters. Most of the time, industry wins out. People have a hard time picturing ecological catastrophe; but they can picture themselves unemployed. It’s hard to get the man on the street to see past his job. Usually, the only way to do it at all is to scare the hell out of him. I would guess that the Green Party has been capitalizing on the recent spate of accidents in the German nuclear power industry.”

“I would call that an understatement, Mr. President,” Brenthoven said.

“A group called Leben Zuerst, Life First, has blitzed the German media with grisly commercials. One of them, the so-called Dance of the Condemned, uses movie-quality special effects to morph a playground full of laughing children into a pile of smoldering corpses, with a voice-over of German children reading the names of people killed in and around Chernobyl.” He shuddered. “Nasty stuff, sir. The more so because there’s a grain of truth in it.”

“I get the picture,” the president said. “But I have to admit that I’m a little puzzled by your sudden interest in German politics.” He stared at his national security advisor. “There’s more to this, isn’t there?”

Brenthoven nodded. “Yesterday morning, British military intelligence intercepted what they believe to be an internal memorandum from German Chancellor Shoernberg to his chief attache officer. The memo alludes to a letter-of-intent from the German government to Abdul al-Rahiim, the president of Siraj. The CIA and British MI-5 are trying to get their hands on a copy of the letter itself. If the Brits are right, the letter formalizes a secret deal between Germany and Siraj.”

The president leaned forward slowly. “What kind of deal?”

“British intelligence thinks it’s an exchange: military hardware for oil. The boys at Langley think the Brits could be right.”

“Shoernberg will never be able to get the UN Security Council to lift the standing embargo against Siraj,” Doyle said. “Abdul al-Rahiim may call himself president of Siraj, but everyone knows he’s a dictator and a thug. His regime can be linked to half the terrorist organizations in the Middle East. The last thing anybody wants to do is arm the bastard. If Germany brings this up before the UN, there’s going to be a very loud splat when it hits the floor.”

“I agree,” Brenthoven said. “The Office of Naval Intelligence thinks the Germans might just sidestep the embargo.”

“You mean ignore it?” the president asked.

Brenthoven nodded. “Yes, sir. They may just try to deliver the goods in broad daylight and dare anyone to do anything about it.”

“I don’t see that happening,” the president said. “But we’ll worry about that part later. Do you have any details on this supposed deal?”

The national security advisor shook his head. “Not anything concrete, Mr. President. But ONI has thrown together a rough projection, mostly based on production figures from the German military-industrial complex.

Recently, quite a bit of hardware has been earmarked for sale to the German military. I asked State to have a look at the German federal budget and any recent appropriations bills. They couldn’t find any sign at all that the German government has plans to allocate money for upcoming major military purchases.”