The Bear and the Dragon

“And you said the Russians are thin in their East?”

Lahr nodded. “Yep. Admiral, if I was that Bondarenko guy, I’d sweat it some. I mean, it’s all theoretical as a threat and all, but as theoretical threats go, that’s one that might keep me awake at night.”

“And what about reports of gold and oil in eastern Siberia?”

Lahr nodded. “Makes the threat less theoretical. China’s a net importer of oil, and they’re going to need a lot more to expand their economy the way they plan to-and on the gold side, hell, everybody’s wanted that for the last three thousand years. It’s negotiable and fungible.”

“Fungible?” That was a new word for Mancuso.

“Your wedding band might have been part of Pharaoh Ramses II’s double-crown once,” Lahr explained. “Or Caligula’s necklace, or Napoleon’s royal scepter. You take it, hammer it, and it’s just raw material again, and it’s valuable raw material. If the Russian strike’s as big as our intel says, it’ll be sold all over the world. Everybody’ll use it for all sorts of purposes, from jewelry to electronics.”

“How big’s the strike supposed to be?”

Lahr shrugged. “Enough to buy you a new Pacific Fleet, and then some.”

Mancuso whistled. That was real money.

It was late in Washington, and Adler was up late, again, working in his office. SecState was usually a busy post, and lately it had been busier than usual, and Scott Adler was getting accustomed to fourteen-hour days. He was reading over post reports at the moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop in Beijing. On his desk was a STU-6 secure telephone. The “secure telephone unit” was a sophisticated encryption device grafted onto an AT amp;T-made digital telephone. This one worked on a satellite-communications channel, and though its signal therefore sprinkled down all over the world from its Defense Department communications satellite, all the casual listener would get was raspy static, like the sound of water running out of a bathroom faucet. It had a randomized 512-bit scrambling system that the best computers at Fort Meade could break about a third of the time after several days of directed effort. And that was about as secure as things got. They were trying to make the TAPDANCE encryption system link into the STU units to generate a totally random and hence unbreakable signal, but that was proving difficult, for technical reasons that nobody had explained to the Secretary of State, and that was just as well. He was a diplomat, not a mathematician. Finally, the STU rang in its odd trilling warble. It took eleven seconds for the two STU units on opposite sides of the world to synchronize.

“Adler.”

“Rutledge here, Scott,” the voice said on the other side of the world. “It didn’t go well,” he informed SecState at once. “And they’re canceling the 777 order with Boeing, as we thought they would.”

Adler frowned powerfully into the phone. “Super. No concessions at all on the shootings?”

“Zip.”

“Anything to be optimistic about?”

“Nothing, Scott, not a damned thing. They’re stonewalling like we’re the Mongols and they’re the Chin Dynasty.”

Somebody needs to remind them that the Great Wall ultimately turned out to be a waste of bricks, EAGLE didn’t bother saying aloud. “Okay, I need to discuss this with the President, but you’re probably going to be flying home soon. Maybe Carl Hitch, too.”

“I’ll tell him. Any chance that we can make some concession, just to get things going?”

“Cliff, the likelihood that Congress will roll over on the trade issue is right up there with Tufts making the Final Four. Maybe less.” Tufts University did have a basketball team, after all. “There’s nothing we can give them that they would accept. If there’s going to be a break, they’re the ones who’ll have to bend this time. Any chance of that?”

“Zero” was the reply from Beijing.

“Well, then, they’ll just have to learn the hard way.” The good news, Adler thought, was that the hard lessons were the ones that really did teach you something. Maybe even the Chinese.

What did that capitalist diao ren say?” Zhang asked. Shen told him what Xue had relayed, word-for-word. ”And what does he represent?”

“We is personal assistant to the American Treasury Minister. Therefore we think he has the ear of both his minister and the American president,” Shen explained. “He has not taken an active part in the talks, but after every session he speaks privately with Vice Minister Rutledge. Exactly what their relationship is, we do not know for certain, and clearly he is not an experienced diplomat. He talks like an arrogant capitalist, to insult us in so crude a way, but I fear he represents the American position more forthrightly than Rutledge does. I think he gives Rutledge the policy he must follow. Rutledge is an experienced diplomat, and the positions he takes are not his own, obviously. He wants to give us some concessions. I am sure of that, but Washington is dictating his words, and this Gant fellow is probably the conduit to Washington.”

“Then you were right to adjourn the talks. We will give them a chance to reconsider their position. If they think they can dictate to us, then they are mistaken. You canceled the airplane order?”

“Of course, as we agreed last week.”

“Then that will give them something to think about,” Zhang observed smugly.

“If they do not walk out of the talks.”

“They wouldn’t dare.” Walk away from the Middle Kingdom? Absurd.

“There is one other thing that Gant man said. He said, not in so many words, that we need them-their money, that is-more than they need us. And he is not entirely wrong in that, is he?”

“We do not need their dollars more than we need our sovereignty. Do they really think they can dictate our domestic laws to us?”

“Yes, Zhang, they do. They apply an astounding degree of importance to this incident.”

“Those two policemen ought to be shot for what they did, but we cannot allow the Americans to dictate that sort of thing to us.” The embarrassment of the incident was one thing-and embarrassing the state was often a capital offense in the People’s Republic-but China had to make such a decision on its own, not at the order of an outsider.

“They call it barbaric,” Shen added.

“Barbaric? They say that to us?”

“You know that Americans have tender sensibilities. We often forget that. And their religious leaders have some influence in their country. Our ambassador in Washington has cabled some warnings to us about this. It would be better if we had some time to let things settle down, and truly it would be better to punish those two policemen just to assuage American sensibilities, but I agree we cannot allow them to dictate domestic policy to us.”

“And this Gant man says his ji is bigger than ours, does he?”

“So Xue tells me. Our file on him says that he’s a stock trader, that he’s worked closely with Minister Winston for many years. He’s a Jew, like lots of them are-”

“Their Foreign Minister is also a Jew, isn’t he?”

“Minister Adler? Yes, he is,” Shen confirmed after a moment’s thought.

“So, this Gant really does tell us their position, then?”

“Probably,” Foreign Minister Shen said.

Zhang leaned forward in his chair. “Then you will make them clear on ours. The next time you see this Gant, tell him chou ni ma de bi.” Which was rather a strong imprecation, best said to someone in China if you had a gun already in your hand.

“I understand,” Shen replied, knowing that he’d never say anything like that except to a particularly humble underling in his own office.

Zhang left. He had to talk this one over with his friend Fang Gan.

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