“You know, Scott, I’ve never really landed on people this hard before.”
“Ever want to?”
“The Israelis a few times. South Africa,” he added thoughtfully.
“But never the Chinese or Japanese?”
“Scott, I’ve never been a trade guy before, remember?” But he was this time, because the mission to Beijing was supposed to be high-profile, requiring a higher-level diplomat instead of someone of mere ambassadorial rank. The Chinese knew this already. In their case negotiations would be handled publicly by their Foreign Minister, though they would actually be run by a lesser-ranked diplomat who was a foreign-trade specialist, and who had experienced a good run of luck dealing with America. Secretary Adler, with President Ryan’s permission, was slowly leaking to the press that the times and the rules might have changed a little bit. He worried that Cliff Rutledge wasn’t exactly the right guy to deliver the message, but Cliff was the on-deck batter.
“How are you working out with this Gant guy from Treasury?”
“If he were a diplomat, we’d be at war with the whole damned world, but I suppose he does know numbers and computers, probably,” Rutledge allowed, not troubling to hide his distaste for the Chicago-born Jew with his nouveau-riche ways. That Rutledge had been of modest origins himself was long forgotten. A Harvard education and a diplomatic passport help one forget such distasteful things as having grown up in a row house, eating leftovers.
“Remember that Winston likes him, and Ryan likes Winston, okay?” Adler warned his subordinate gently. He decided not to concern himself with Cliff’s WASP-ish anti-Semitism. Life was too short for trivialities, and Rutledge knew that his career rested in Scott Adler’s hands. He might make more money as a consultant after leaving the State Department, but being fired out of Foggy Bottom would not enhance his value on the free-agent market.
“Okay, Scott, and, yeah, I need backup on the monetary aspects of this trade stuff.” The accompanying nod was almost respectful. Good. He did know how to grovel when required. Adler didn’t even consider telling Rutledge about the intelligence source in his pocket, courtesy of POTUS. There was something about the career diplomat that failed to inspire trust in his superior.
“What about communications?”
“The Embassy in Beijing has TAPDANCE capability. Even the new phone kind, same as the airplane.” But there were problems with it, recently fielded by Fort Meade. The instruments had trouble linking up with each other, and using a satellite lash-up didn’t help at all. Like most diplomats, Rutledge rarely troubled himself with such trivialities. He often expected the intelligence to appear as if by magic, rarely wondering how it had been obtained, but always questioning the motives of the source, whoever that might be. All in all, Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.
But on the plus side, Adler admitted to himself, Rutledge was a competent diplomatic technician who knew how the banter worked, and how to present a position in the gentlest possible but still firm terms. The State Department never had enough of those. As someone had once remarked of Theodore Roosevelt, “The nicest gentleman who ever slit a throat.” But Cliff would never do that, even to advance his own career. He probably shaved with an electric razor, not for fear of cutting himself so much as fear of actually seeing blood.
“When’s your plane leave?” EAGLE asked his subordinate.
Barry Wise was already packed. He was an expert at it, as well he might be, because he traveled about as much as an international airline pilot. At fifty-four, the black ex-Marine had worked for CNN since its beginnings more than twenty years before, and he’d seen it all. He’d covered the contras in Nicaragua, and the first bombing missions in Baghdad. He’d been there when mass graves were excavated in Yugoslavia, and done live commentary over Rwanda’s roads of death, simultaneously wishing that he could and thanking God that he could not broadcast the ghastly smells that still haunted his dreams. A news professional, Wise regarded his mission in life to be this: to transmit the truth from where it happened to where people were interested in it-and helping them to become interested if they were not. He didn’t have much of a personal ideology, though he was a great believer in justice, and one of the ways to make justice happen was to give the correct information to the jury-in his case, the television-watching public. He and people like him had changed South Africa from a racist state into a functioning democracy, and he’d also played a role in destroying world communism. The truth, he figured, was about the most powerful weapon in the world, if you had a way of getting it to the average Joe. Unlike most members of his business, Wise respected Joe Citizen, at least the ones who were smart enough to watch him. They wanted the truth, and it was his job to deliver it to them to the best of his abilities, which he often doubted, as he constantly asked himself how well he was doing.
He kissed his wife on the way out the door, promising to bring back things for the kids, as he always did, and lugging his travel bag out to his one personal indulgence, a red Mercedes two-seater, which he then drove south to the D.C. Beltway and south again toward Andrews Air Force Base. He had to arrive early, because the Air Force had gotten overly security-conscious. Maybe it was from that dumbass movie that had had terrorists getting past all the armed guards-even though they were merely Air Force, not Marines, they did carry rifles, and they did at least appear to be competent-and aboard one of the 89th Military Airlift Wing’s aircraft, which, Wise figured, was about as likely as having a pickpocket walk into the Oval Office and lift the President’s wallet. But the military followed its own rules, senseless though they might be-that was something he remembered well from his time in the Corps. So, he’d drive down, pass through all the checkpoints, whose guards knew him better than they knew their own CO, and wait in the plush Distinguished Visitors’ lounge at the end of Andrews’ Runway Zero-One Left for the official party to arrive. Then they’d board the venerable VC-137 for the endless flight to Beijing. The seats were as comfortable as they could be on an airplane, and the service was as good as any airline’s first class, but flights this long were never fun.
Never been there before,' Mark Gant said, answering George Winston’s question. ”So-what’s the score on this Rutledge guy?'
The SecTreas shrugged. “Career State Department puke, worked his way pretty far up the ladder. Used to have good political connections-he was tight with Ed Kealty once upon a time.”
The former stock trader looked up. “Oh? Why hasn’t Ryan fired his ass?”
“Jack doesn’t play that sort of game,” Winston replied, wondering if in this case principle was getting in the way of common sense.
“George, he’s still pretty naive, isn’t he?”
“Maybe so, but he’s a straight shooter, and I can live with that. He sure as hell backed us up on tax policy, and that’s going to pass through Congress in another few weeks.”
Gant wouldn’t believe that until he saw it. “Assuming every lobbyist in town doesn’t jump in front of the train.”
That engendered an amused grunt. “So, the wheels get greased a little better. You know, wouldn’t it be nice to close all those bastards down …?”
“I’ll settle for squeezing those Chinese bastards on the trade balance. Ryan’s going to back us up?”
“All the way, he says. And I believe him, Mark.”
“I guess we’ll see. I hope this Rutledge guy can read numbers.”
“He went to Harvard,” Secretary Winston observed.
“I know,” Gant said back. He had his own academic prejudice, having graduated from the University of Chicago twenty years earlier. What the hell was Harvard except a name and an endowment?
Winston chuckled. “They’re not all dumb.”
“I suppose we’ll see, boss. Anyway”-he lifted his suitcase up on its rollers; his computer bag went over his shoulder-“ my car’s waiting downstairs.”
“Good trip, Mark.”
Her name was Yang Lien-Hua. She was thirty-four, nine months pregnant, and very frightened. It was her second pregnancy. Her first had been a son whom they had named Ju-Long, a particularly auspicious given name, which translated roughly as Large Dragon. But the youngster had died at the age of four, bumped by a bicycle off
