The Bear and the Dragon

an old woman.”

That made the other minister smile. “Old woman? No, Fang, you are a comrade of many years’ standing, and one of our most thoughtful thinkers. Why, do you suppose, I brought you onto the Politburo?”

To get my votes, of course, Fang didn’t answer. He had the utmost respect for his senior colleague, but he wasn’t blind to his faults. “For that I am grateful.”

“For that the people ought to be grateful, you are so solicitous to their needs.”

“Well, one must remember the peasants and workers out there. We serve them, after all.” The ideological cant was just perfect for the moment. “This is not an easy job we share.”

“You need to relax a little. Get that girl Ming out there, take her to your bed. You’ve done it before.” It was a weakness both men shared. The tension of the moment abated, as Zhang wished it to.

“Chai sucks better,” Fang replied, with a sly look.

“Then take her to your flat. Buy her some silk drawers. Get her drunk. They all like that.”

“Not a bad idea,” Fang agreed. “It certainly helps me sleep.”

“Then do it by all means! We’ll need our sleep. The next few weeks will be strenuous for us-but more so for our enemies.”

“One thing, Zhang. As you said, we must treat the captives well. One thing the Americans do not forgive rapidly is cruelty to the helpless, as we have seen here in Beijing.”

“Now, they are old women. They do not understand the proper use of strength.”

“Perhaps so, but if we wish to do business with them, as you say, why offend them unnecessarily?”

Zhang sighed and conceded the point, because he knew it to be the smart play. “Very well. I will tell Luo.” He checked his watch. “I must be off. I’ve having dinner with Xu tonight.”

“Give him my best wishes.”

“Of course.” Zhang rose, bowed to his friend, and took his leave. Fang took a minute or so before rising and walking to the door. “Ming,” he called, on opening it. “Come here.” He lingered at the door as the secretary came in, allowing his eyes to linger on Chai. Their eyes met and she winked, adding a tiny feminine smile. Yes, he needed his sleep tonight, and she would help.

“The Politburo meeting ran late this day,” Fang said, settling into his chair and doing his dictation. It took twenty-five minutes, and he dismissed Ming to do her daily transcription. Then he had Chai come in, gave her an order, and dismissed her. In another hour, the working day ended. Fang walked down to his official car, with Chai in trail. Together they rode to his comfortable apartment, and there they got down to business.

Ming met her lover at a new restaurant called the Jade Horse, where the food was better than average.

“You look troubled,” Nomuri observed.

“Busy time at the office,” she explained. “There is big trouble to come.”

“Oh? What sort of trouble?”

“I cannot say,” she demurred. “It will probably not affect your company.”

And Nomuri saw that he’d taken his agent to the next-actually the last-step. She no longer thought about the software on her office computer. He never brought the subject up. Better that it should happen below the visible horizon. Better that she should forget what she was doing. Your conscience doesn’t worry about things you’ve forgotten. After dinner, they walked back to Nomuri’s place, and the CIA officer tried his best to relax her. He was only partially successful, but she was properly appreciative and left him at quarter to eleven. Nomuri had himself a nightcap, a double, and checked to make sure his computer had relayed her almost-daily report. Next week he hoped to have software he could cross-load to hers over the ’Net, so that she’d be transmitting the reports directly out to the recipe network. If Bad Things were happening in Beijing, NEC might call him back to Japan, and he didn’t want SONGBIRD’S reports to stop going to Langley.

As it happened, this one was already there, and it had generated all manner of excitement.

It was enough to make Ed Foley wish he’d lent a STU to Sergey Golovko, but America didn’t give away its communications secrets that readily, and so the report had been redrafted and sent by secure fax to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, then hand-carried to SVR headquarters by a consular officer not associated with the CIA. Of course, now they’d assume that he was a spook, which would cause the Russians to shadow him everywhere he went, and use up trained personnel of the FSS. Business was still business, even in this New World Order.

Golovko, predictably, bounced hard off his high office ceiling.

John Clark got the news over his secure satellite phone. “What the hell?” RAINBOW Six asked, sitting still in his personal car not far from Red Square.

“You heard me,” Ed Foley explained.

“Okay, now what?”

“You’re tight with their special-operations people, right?”

“Somewhat,” Clark allowed. “We’re training them.”

“Well, they might come to you for advice of some sort. You have to know what’s happening.”

“Can I tell Ding?”

“Yes,” the DCI agreed.

“Good. You know, this proves the Chavez Premise.”

“What’s that?” Foley asked.

“He likes to say that international relations is largely composed of one nation fucking another.”

It was enough to make Foley laugh, five thousand miles and eight time zones away. “Well, our Chinese friends are sure playing rough.”

“How good is the information?”

“It’s Holy Writ, John. Take it to the bank,” Ed assured his distant field officer.

We have some source in Beijing, Clark didn’t observe aloud. “Okay, Ed. If they come to me, I’ll let you know. We cooperate, I presume.”

“Fully,” the DCI assured him. “We’re allies now. Didn’t you see CNN?”

“I thought it was the Sci-Fi Channel.”

“You ain’t the only one. Have a good one, John.”

“You, too, Ed. Bye.” Clark thumbed the END button and went on just to himself: “Holy jumpin’ Jesus.” Then he restarted the car and headed off to his rendezvous with Domingo Chavez.

Ding was at the bar that RAINBOW had adopted during its stay in the Moscow area. The boys congregated in a large corner booth, where they complained about the local beer, but appreciated the clear alcohol preferred by the natives.

“Hey, Mr. C,” Chavez said in greeting.

“Just got a call from Ed on my portable.”

“And?”

“And John Chinaman is planning to start a little war with our hosts, and that’s the good news,” Clark added.

“What the fuck is the bad news?” Chavez asked, with no small incredulity in his voice.

“Their Ministry of State Security just put a contract out on Eduard Petrovich,” John went on.

“Are they fuckin’ crazy?” the other CIA officer asked the booth.

“Well, starting a war in Siberia isn’t exactly a rational act. Ed let us in because he thinks the locals might want our help soon. Supposedly they know the local contact for the ChiComms. You have to figure a hot takedown’s going to evolve from this, and we’ve been training their troopies. I figure we might be invited in to watch, but they probably won’t want us to assist.”

“Agreed.”

That’s when General Kirillin came in, with a sergeant at his side. The sergeant stood by the door with his overcoat unbuttoned and his right hand close to the opening. The senior officer spotted Clark and came directly