The Bear and the Dragon

them.

“Cocksuckers,” Robby said, first of all. “If they really think this way, we shouldn’t sell them shit in a paper bag. Even at Top Gun after a long night of boilermakers, even Navy fighter pilots don’t talk like this.”

“It is callous,” Ben Goodley agreed.

“They don’t issue consciences to the political leaders, I guess,” van Damm said, making it unanimous.

“How would your father react to information like this, Robby?” Ryan asked.

“His immediate response will be the same as mine: Nuke the bastards. Then he’ll remember what happens in a real war and settle down some. Jack, we have to punish them.”

Ryan nodded. “Okay, but if we shut down trade to the PRC, the first people hurt are the poor schlubs in the factories, aren’t they?”

“Sure, Jack, but who’s holding them hostage, the good guys or the bad guys? Somebody can always say that, and if fear of hurting them prevents you from taking any action, then you’re only making sure that things never get better for them. So, you can’t allow yourself to be limited that way,” TOMCAT concluded, “or you become the hostage.”

Then the phone rang. Ryan got it, grumbling at the interruption.

“Secretary Adler for you, Mr. President. He says it’s important.”

Jack leaned across his desk and punched the blinking button. “Yeah, Scott.”

“I got the download. It’s not unexpected, and people talk differently inside the office than outside, remember.”

“That’s great to hear, Scott, and if they talk about taking a few thousand Jews on a train excursion to Auschwitz, is that supposed to be funny, too?”

“Jack, I’m the Jew here, remember?”

Ryan let out a long breath and pushed another button. “Okay, Scott, you’re on speaker now. Talk,” POTUS ordered.

“This is just the way the bastards talk. Yes, they’re arrogant, but we already knew that. Jack, if other countries knew how we talk inside the White House, we’d have a lot fewer allies and a lot more wars. Sometimes intelligence can be too good.”

Adler really was a good SecState, Ryan thought. His job was to look for simple and safe ways out of problems, and he worked damned hard at it.

“Okay, suggestions?”

“I have Carl Hitch lay a note on them. We demand a statement of apology for this fuckup.”

“And if they tell us to shove it?”

“Then we pull Rutledge and Hitch back for ‘consultations,’ and let them simmer for a while.”

“The note, Scott?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Write it on asbestos paper and sign it in blood,” Jack told him coldly.

“Yes, sir,” SecState acknowledged, and the line went dead.

It was a lot later in the day in Moscow when Pavel Yefremov and Oleg Provalov came into Sergey Golovko’s office.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have you in sooner,” the SVR chairman told his guests. “We’ve been busy with problems-the Chinese and that shooting in Beijing.” He’d been looking into it just like every other person in the world.

“Then you have another problem with them, Comrade Chairman.”

“Oh?”

Yefremov handed over the decrypt. Golovko took it, thanking the man with his accustomed good manners, then settled back in his chair and started reading. In less than five seconds, his eyes widened.

“This is not possible,” his voice whispered.

“Perhaps so, but it is difficult to explain otherwise.”

“I was the target?”

“So it would appear,” Provalov answered.

“But why?”

“That we do not know,” Yefremov said, “and probably nobody in the city of Moscow knows. If the order was given through a Chinese intelligence officer, the order originated in Beijing, and the man who forwarded it probably doesn’t know the reasoning behind it. Moreover, the operation is set up to be somewhat deniable, since we cannot even prove that this man is an intelligence officer, and not an assistant or what the Americans call a ‘stringer.’ In fact, their man was identified for us by an American,” the FSS officer concluded.

Golovko’s eyes came up. “How the hell did that happen?”

Provalov explained. “A Chinese intelligence officer in Moscow is unlikely to be concerned by the presence of an American national, whereas any Russian citizen is a potential counterintelligence officer. Mishka was there and offered to help, and I permitted it. Which leads me to a question.”

“What do you tell this American?” Golovko asked for him.

The lieutenant nodded. “Yes, Comrade Chairman. He knows a good deal about the murder investigation because I confided in him and he offered some helpful suggestions. He is a gifted police investigator. And he is no fool. When he asks how this case is going, what can I say?”

Golovko’s initial response was as predictable as it was automatic: Say nothing. But he restrained himself. If Provalov said nothing, then the American would have to be a fool not to see the lie, and, as he said, the American was no fool. On the other hand, did it serve Golovko‘s-or Russia’s-purposes for America to know that his life was in danger? That question was deep and confusing. While he pondered it, he’d have his bodyguard come in. He beeped his secretary.

“Yes, Comrade Chairman,” Major Shelepin said, coming in the door.

“Something new for you to worry about, Anatoliy Ivan’ch,” Golovko told him. It was more than that. The first sentence turned Shelepin pale.

It started in America with the unions. These affiliations of working people, which had lost power in the preceding decades, were in their way the most conservative organizations in America, for the simple reason that their loss of power had made them mindful of the importance of what power they retained. To hold on to that, they resisted any change that threatened the smallest entitlement of their humblest member.

China had long been a bete noir for the labor movement, for the simple reason that Chinese workers made less in a day than American union automobile workers made during their morning coffee break. That tilted the playing field in favor of the Asians, and that was something the AFL/CIO was not prepared to approve.

So much the better that the government that ruled those underpaid workers disregarded human rights. That just made them easier to oppose.

American labor unions are nothing if not organized, and so every single member of Congress started getting telephone calls. Most of them were taken by staffers, but those from senior union officials in a member’s state or district usually made it all the way through, regardless of which side the individual member stood on. Attention was called to the barbaric action of that godless state which also, by the way, shit on its workers and took American jobs through its unfair labor practices. The size of the trade surplus came up in every single telephone call, which would have made the members of Congress think that it was a carefully orchestrated phone campaign (which it was) had they compared notes on the telephone calls with one another (which they didn’t).

Later in the day, demonstrations were held, and though they were about as spontaneous as those held in the People’s Republic of China, they were covered by the local and/or national media, because it was a place to send cameras, and the newsies belonged to a union, too.

Behind the telephone calls and in front of the TV coverage of the demonstrations came the letters and e- mails, all of which were counted and cataloged by the members’ staffers.

Some of them called the White House to let the President know what was happening on the Hill. Those calls all went to the office of Arnold van Damm, whose own staff kept a careful count of the