The Bear and the Dragon

“Oh, he was the target? I thought they were after the pimp,” Kirillin objected.

“You guys want to tell us what you’re talking about?” Clark asked.

“A few weeks ago, there was an assassination attempt in Dzerzhinskiy Square,” Shelepin responded, explaining what they’d thought at the time. “But now it appears they hit the wrong target.”

“Somebody tried to waste Golovko?” Domingo asked. “Damn.”

“Who was it?”

“The man who arranged it was a former KGB officer named Suvorov-so we believe, that is. He used two ex- Spetsnaz soldiers. They have both been murdered, probably to conceal their involvement, or at least to prevent them from discussing it with anyone.” Shelepin didn’t add anything else. “In any case, we have heard good things about your Rainbow troops, and we want you to help train my protective detail.”

“It’s okay with me, so long as it’s okay with Washington.” Clark stared hard into the bodyguard’s eyes. He looked damned serious, but not very happy with the world at the moment.

“We will make the formal request tomorrow.”

“They are excellent, these Rainbow people,” Kirillin assured him. “We’re getting along well with them. Anatoliy used to work for me, back when I was a colonel.” The tone of voice told what he thought of the younger man.

There was more to this, Clark thought. A senior Russian official didn’t just ask a former CIA officer for help with something related to his personal safety out of the clear blue. He caught Ding’s eye and saw the same thought. Suddenly both were back in the spook business.

“Okay,” John said. “I’ll call home tonight if you want.” He’d do that from the American Embassy, probably on the STU-6 in the station chief’s office.

CHAPTER 37 Fallout

The VC-137 landed without fanfare at Andrews Air Force Base. The base lacked a proper terminal and the attendant jetways, and so the passengers debarked on stairs grafted onto a flatbed truck. Cars waited at the bottom to take them into Washington. Mark Gant was met by two Secret Service agents who drove him at once to the Treasury Department building across the street from the White House. He’d barely gotten used to being on the ground when he found himself in the Secretary’s office.

“How’d it go?” George Winston asked.

“Interesting, to say the least,” Gant said, his mind trying to get used to the fact that his body didn’t have a clue where it was at the moment. “I thought I’d be going home to sleep it off.”

“Ryan’s invoking the Trade Recovery Act against the Chinese.”

“Oh? Well, that’s not all that much of a surprise, is it?”

“Look at this,” SecTreas commanded, handing over a recently produced printout. “This” was a report on the current cash holdings of the People’s Republic of China.

“How solid is this information?” TELESCOPE asked TRADER.

The report was an intelligence estimate in all but name. Employees within the Treasury Department routinely kept track of international monetary transactions as a means of determining the day-to-day strength of the dollar and other internationally traded currencies. That included the Chinese yuan, which had been having a slightly bad time of late.

“They’re this thin?” Gant asked. “I thought they were running short of cash, but I didn’t know it was quite this bad …”

“It surprised me, too,” SecTreas admitted. “It appears that they’ve been purchasing a lot of things on the international market lately, especially jet engines from France, and because they’re late paying for the last round, the French company has decided to take a harder line-they’re the only game in town. We won’t let GE or Pratt and Whitney bid on the order, and the Brits have similarly forbidden Rolls-Royce. That makes the French the sole source, which isn’t so bad for the French, is it? They’ve jacked up the price about fifteen percent, and they’re asking for cash up front.”

“The yuan’s going to take a hit,” Gant predicted. “They’ve been trying to cover this up, eh?”

“Yeah, and fairly successfully.”

“That’s why they were hitting us so hard on the trade deal. They saw this one coming, and they wanted a favorable announcement to bail them out. But they sure didn’t play it very smart. Damn, you have this sort of a problem, you learn to crawl a little.”

“I thought so, too. Why, do you think?”

“They’re proud, George. Very, very proud. Like a rich family that’s lost its money but not its social position, and tries to make up for the one with the other. But it doesn’t work. Sooner or later, people find out that you’re not paying your bills, and then the whole world comes crashing in on you. You can put it off for a while, which makes sense if you have something coming in, but if the ship don’t dock, you sink.” Gant flipped some pages, thinking: The other problem is that countries are run by politicians, people with no real understanding of money, who figure they can always maneuver their way out of whatever comes up. They’re so used to having their own way that they never really think they can’t have it that way all the time. One of the things Gant had learned working in D.C. was that politics was just as much about illusion as the motion-picture business was, which perhaps explained the affinity the two communities had for each other. But even in Hollywood you had to pay the bills, and you had to show a profit. Politicians always had the option of using T-bills to finance their accounts, and they also printed the money. Nobody expected the government to show a profit, and the board of directors was the voters, the people whom politicians conned as a way of life. It was all crazy, but that was the political game.

That’s probably what the PRC leaders were thinking, Gant surmised. But sooner or later, reality raised its ugly head, and when it did all the time spent trying to avoid it was what really bit you on the ass. That was when the whole world said gotcha. And then you were well and truly got. In this case, the gotcha could be the collapse of the Chinese economy, and it would happen virtually overnight.

“George, I think State and CIA need to see this, and the President, too.”

Lord.” The President was sitting in the Oval Office, smoking one of Ellen Sumter’s Virginia Slims and watching TV. This time it was C-SPAN. Members of the United States House of Representatives were speaking in the well about China. The content of the speeches was not complimentary, and the tone was decidedly inflammatory. All were speaking in favor of a resolution to condemn the People’s Republic of China. C-SPAN2 was covering much the same verbiage in the Senate. Though the language was a touch milder, the import of the words was not. Labor unions were united with churches, liberals with conservatives, even free-traders with protectionists.

More to the point, CNN and the other networks showed demonstrations in the streets, and it appeared that Taiwan’s “We’re the Good Guys” campaign had taken hold. Somebody (nobody was sure who yet) had even printed up stickers of the Red Chinese flag with the caption “We Kill Babies and Ministers.” They were being attached to products imported from China, and the protesters were also busy identifying the American firms that did a lot of business on the Chinese mainland, with the aim of boycotting them.

Ryan’s head turned. “Talk to me, Arnie.”

“This looks serious, Jack,” van Damm said.

“Gee, Arnie, I can see that. How serious?”

“Enough that I’d sell stock in those companies. They’re going to take a hit. And this movement may have legs …”

“What?”

“I mean it might not go away real soon. Next you’re going to see posters with stills from the TV coverage of those two clerics being murdered. That’s an image that doesn’t go away. If there’s any product the Chinese sell here that we can get elsewhere, then a lot of Americans will start buying it elsewhere.”

The picture on CNN changed to live coverage of a demonstration outside the PRC Embassy in Washington. The signs said things like MURDERERS, KILLERS, and BARBARIANS!

“I wonder if Taiwan is helping to organize this …”