The Bear and the Dragon

didn’t mean that he approved of President Ryan, of course, but switching over from canasta to poker made an interesting change. Scott Adler liked poker, didn’t he? Maybe that explained why he got along so well with that yahoo in the White House.

It was a short drive back to the embassy. The Americans in the delegation rode mainly in silence, blessing the few minutes of quiet. The hours of precise diplomatic exchange had had to be attended to in the same way a lawyer read a contract, word by goddamned word, seeking meaning and nuance, like searching for a lost diamond in a cesspool. Now they sat back in their seats and closed their eyes or looked mutely at the passing drab scenery with no more than an unstifled yawn, until they pulled through the embassy gate.

About the only thing to complain about was the fact that the limousines here, like those everywhere, were hard to get in and out of, unless you were six years old. But as soon as they alighted from their official transport, they could see that something was wrong. Ambassador Hitch was right there, and he hadn’t bothered with that before. Ambassadors have high diplomatic rank and importance. They do not usually act as doormen for their own countrymen.

“What’s the matter, Carl?” Rutledge asked.

“A major bump in the road,” Hitch answered.

“Somebody die?” the Deputy Secretary of State asked lightly.

“Yeah,” was the unexpected answer. Then the ambassador waved them inside. “Come on.”

The senior delegation members followed Rutledge into the ambassador’s conference room. Already there, they saw, were the DCM-the Deputy Chief of Mission, the ambassador’s XO, who in many embassies was the real boss-and the rest of the senior staff, including the guy Gant had figured was the CIA station chief. What the hell? TELESCOPE thought. They all took their seats, and then Hitch broke the news.

“Oh, shit,” Rutledge said for them all. “Why did this happen?”

“We’re not sure. We have our press attache trying to track this Wise guy down, but until we get more information, we really don’t know the cause of the incident.” Hitch shrugged.

“Does the PRC know?” Rutledge asked next.

“Probably they’re just finding out,” the putative CIA officer opined. “You have to assume the news took a while to percolate through their bureaucracy.”

“How do we expect them to react?” one of Rutledge’s underlings asked, sparing his boss the necessity of asking the obvious and fairly dumb question.

The answer was just as dumb: “Your guess is as good as mine,” Hitch said.

“So, this could be a minor embarrassment or a major whoopsie,” Rutledge observed. “Whoopsie” is a term of art in the United States Department of State, usually meaning a massive fuckup.

“I’d lean more toward the latter,” Ambassador Hitch thought. He couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for why this was so, but his instincts were flashing a lot of bright red lights, and Carl Hitch was a man who trusted his instincts.

“Any guidance from Washington?” Cliff asked.

“They haven’t woken up yet, have they?” And as one, every member of the delegation checked his watch. The embassy people already had, of course. The sun had not yet risen on their national capital. What decisions would be made would happen in the next four hours. Nobody here would be getting much sleep for a while, because once the decisions were made, then they’d have to decide how to implement them, how to present the position of their country to the People’s Republic.

“Ideas?” Rutledge asked.

“The President won’t like this very much,” Gant observed, figuring he knew about as much as anyone else in the room. “His initial reaction will be one of disgust. Question is, will that spill over into what we’re here for? I think it might, depending on how our Chinese friends react to the news.”

“How will the Chinese react?” Rutledge asked Hitch.

“Not sure, Cliff, but I doubt we’ll like it. They will regard the entire incident as an intrusion-an interference with their internal affairs-and their reaction will be somewhat crass, I think. Essentially they’re going to say, ‘Too damned bad.’ If they do, there’s going to be a visceral reaction in America and in Washington. They don’t understand us as well as they’d like to think they do. They misread our public opinion at every turn, and they haven’t shown me much sign of learning. I’m worried,” Hitch concluded.

“Well, then it’s our job to walk them through this. You know,” Rutledge thought aloud, “this could work in favor of our overall mission here.”

Hitch bristled at that. “Cliff, it would be a serious mistake to try to play this one that way. Better to let them think it through for themselves. The death of an ambassador is a big deal,” the American ambassador told the people in the room, in case they didn’t know. “All the more so if the guy was killed by an agent of their government. But, Cliff, if you try to shove this down their throats, they’re going to choke, and I don’t think we want that to happen either. I think our best play is to ask for a break of a day or two in the talks, to let them get their act together.”

“That’s a sign of weakness for our side, Carl,” Rutledge replied, with a shake of the head. “I think you’re wrong on that. I think we press forward and let them know that the civilized world has rules, and we expect them to abide by them.”

What lunacy is this?” Fang Gan asked the ceiling. “We’re not sure,” Zhang Han San replied. “Some troublesome churchman, it sounds like.”

“And some foolish policeman with more gun than brains. He’ll be punished, of course,” Fang suggested.

“Punished? For what? For enforcing our population-control laws, for protecting a doctor against an attack by some gwai?” Zhang shook his head. “Do we allow foreigners to spit upon our laws in this way? No, Fang, we do not. I will not see us lose face in such a way.”

“Zhang, what is the life of one insignificant police officer next to our country’s place in the world?” Fang demanded. “The man he killed was an ambassador, Zhang, a foreigner accredited to our country by another-”

“Country?” Zhang spat. “A city, my friend, no, not even that-a district in Rome, smaller than Qiong Dao!” He referred to Jade Island, home of one of the many temples built by the emperors, and not much larger than the building itself. Then he remembered a quote from Iosef Stalin. “How big an army does that Pope have, anyway? Ahh!” A dismissive wave of the hand.

“He does have a country, whose ambassador we accredited, in the hope of improving our position in the diplomatic world,” Fang reminded his friend. “His death is to be regretted, at the least. Perhaps he was merely one more troublesome foreign devil, Zhang, but for the purposes of diplomacy we must appear to regret his passing.” And if that meant executing some nameless policeman, they had plenty of policemen, Fang didn’t add.

“For what? For interfering with our laws? An ambassador may not do such a thing. That violates diplomatic protocol, does it not? Fang, you have become overly solicitous to the foreign devils,” Zhang concluded, using the term from history to identify the lesser people from those lesser lands.

“If we want their goods in trade, and we want them to pay for our goods so that we might have their hard currency, then we must treat them like guests in our home.”

“A guest in your home does not spit on the floor, Fang.”

“And if the Americans do not react kindly to this incident?”

“Then Shen will tell them to mind their own affairs,” Zhang replied, with the finality of one who had long since made up his mind.

“When does the Politburo meet?”

“To discuss this?” Zhang asked in surprise. “Why? The death of some foreign troublemaker and a Chinese … churchman? Fang, you are too cautious. I have already discussed the incident with Shen. There will be no full meeting of the Politburo for this trivial incident. We will meet the day after tomorrow, as usual.”

“As you say,” Fang responded, with a nod of submission. Zhang had him ranked on the Politburo. He had