Rachel poked her head into Andrea’s office. “What’s going on? Everything okay, sweetie?”
Andrea was too tired and too angry to lie. Besides, why bother? No lie would have worked. “Just burning off the anger. Don’t worry. I’m only taking it out on inanimate objects. At least it’s not Mason or his damned Gang or any of those military guys that hate my guts.”
“Okay, sweetie. Just don’t hurt yourself.”
Her knuckles were still throbbing in pain from her destructive exertions when her computer chimed to an arriving email. She sat down at her desk, saw it was from the State Department, and hit “print.” The printer behind her desk spat out a ten-page document, written in its original Chinese with a State Department translation. It was China’s comprehensive settlement proposal.
She snatched the papers from the printer and, forsaking her dented desk, sat on the couch, propping her feet up on the coffee table.
For once, the Chinese government hadn’t lied. Xiao’s ministry had contacted the United States almost immediately to negotiate a cease-fire and the terms of America’s debt repayment. The Chinese must have prepared it long before now, just waiting for the right time to release it. More evidence of some larger strategy at work.
Andrea’s pulse inched upward with every word she read. The cease-fire proposal was humiliating.
The document said it would allow American naval vessels trapped in Taipei Harbor to leave and let the American forces on Taiwan to honorably retreat from the island. China would retain control of the South China Sea but would allow a corridor under international control to permit international trade through the waterway.
Her eyes grew wide at the next paragraph. China would get to keep Taiwan and give it the Hong Kong treatment. One country, two systems. The Chinese government, her allies, and affiliated bond funds required repayment of the debt in American government property.
“Holy shit,” she muttered. China wasn’t proposing a payment plan. It was proposing a bankruptcy repossession! China would adjudicate America’s bankruptcy the old-fashioned way: by repossessing collateral. It was going to seize American government property.
She quickly read the next paragraph out loud: “‘China requires representatives of the Chinese government enter the United States to personally identify the collateral.’”
“Rachel!” Andrea shouted.
A moment later, Rachel rushed in looking flushed. She quickly shut the door behind her.
Andrea held up the document. “Have you seen this?”
Rachel nodded. “Not yet. I—”
“The Chinese are demanding to come onto American soil and take four trillion in American government property to repay the debt. They want PLA soldiers traipsing around the United States, taking federal government property until they’ve grabbed four trillion dollars’ worth,” Andrea said in disbelief.
“Chinese soldiers? On American soil? Taking American government property? What the hell?” Rachel sat down on the couch. “Do the Chinese really want to go down to Alabama and start pulling up monuments and see what happens? They obviously don’t know about our Second Amendment. Our people pack heat. And my granddaddy shot at their sorry asses in Korea. They try to come here and take American property, he might start shooting at them again.”
“Your grandfather’s been dead for twenty years,” Andrea said.
“I know. It wouldn’t stop him.”
Rachel stood, reading glasses affixed to her nose, eyes looking over them at Andrea. Rachel remained in disbelief. “What are they thinking?” she asked.
“They want to rub our noses in it. Humiliate us. It’s a Bob Gibson.”
“A what?”
“A Bob Gibson. You know, baseball Bob Gibson. The Cardinals. He hit his old roommate Curt Flood with a pitch the first time Flood came up to bat against him after Flood went to the Phillies. It was his way of telling Flood ‘we’re not roommates anymore.’ The Chinese are telling the world the United States isn’t running things anymore.”
“Can’t we just auction stuff like a normal bankruptcy?” Rachel asked.
“Guess we can ask the Chinese when we beg them to end the war,” said Andrea. “They’re in the driver’s seat now.”
Andrea stared at the OMB seal on her wall. All the targets of China’s proposed repossession—from the brand-new Smithsonian museums to the new state-of-the-art FBI headquarters to the TSA metal detectors to the renovations of the Capitol—were paid for with money borrowed from China and other foreign countries. If China demanded repayment, China had to be repaid. And if the United States didn’t have the dollars, the only currency left was government property. How else could the country repay the debt?
Andrea didn’t have a good answer.
Which was a problem, because President Murray needed one.
Mason leaned back in his chair and smiled. The Capitol dome visible from his window looked so small and insignificant. That it had fallen into his lap because of the creativity and ruthlessness of his Chinese masters mattered little to him. He was winning. The United States was losing. The capitalists who had ruined his adoptive family’s life were getting their comeuppance. Now all of America would know the humiliation he felt when his family was foreclosed off its farm. Now Americans would experience the pain of not knowing if or when their lives would ever be the same, just as he had. Americans were about to learn about life in a world order dictated by another country.
And that show pony Earl Murray would know what it was like to lose to the unpopular workaholic in the back of the class.
He thought about Acorn and felt a twinge of regret. Maybe he’d knocked off Acorn too quickly. Things were now going better than expected and, deep down, he knew Acorn had helped set it all in motion. Acorn probably didn’t deserve having his guts sprayed across Fort Marcy Park. But more than anything Mason felt triumph. He was a man among boys, a political colossus, getting the job done where weaker men like Acorn failed. He was in control, and President Murray and Andrea Gartner were dancing to his tune.
The office printer started to whir. Mason got up quickly and pulled the incoming document from the machine. The document was in Chinese, with an English translation. At the top it read, “Ceasefire proposal from the People’s Republic of China.”
The first page bore a Ministry stamp. Xu Li must have arranged to provide him a copy.
Mason grinned as he read the peace offer. The balls on his Chinese masters! Demanding American property? Coming to the United States to pick it up? This was some next-level chess. If Americans weren’t fuming before, they were going to be fuming now. The seeds would be ripe for an overthrow of the American government and its capitalist economy.
With the proposed ceasefire terms, Minister Xiao had thrown the ball up to the rim for the alley-oop. Mason needed to slam it home. He called his one remaining staffer into his office.
“Get a press release ready and a press conference set up. I need to respond to the Chinese peace offer that just came in.”
Mason handed his staffer the document. She scanned it and looked up at Mason in horror.
“You can’t agree to this,” she said.
“The hell I can’t.”
“You’re going to let Chinese soldiers come into the United States and just take whatever American property they want?” She looked dumbstruck.
“Only government property. We owe them four trillion dollars. We have to pay it back somehow.”
“What has gotten into you? Four years ago, you were Mr. Anti-Communism. Now you can’t stop caving to these commies.”
“I’m a debt hawk, and we’re repaying our debt,” said Mason, struggling not to look like the cat who ate the canary.
“You can’t be serious.”
“America wants this war to end. They’ll take any bullshit excuse I fling out there. Why not make it sound plausible?”
“I agree. You should make it sound plausible. But the shit you’re spewing so far? It’s not plausible.”
&nb
sp; “You follow this stuff. The Debt Rebel Gang? They don’t give two wet farts about the debt. As long as the Establishment is squealing in pain they’ll be happy.”
His assistant appeared aghast. Mason didn’t care.
She thinks I’m cynical? This is Capitol Hill, sweetheart. Take a number.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s your presser. I’ll notify the media. You write and say what you want.”
“Oh, I plan to.”
“Where do you want to have it?”
“Right here, in this office.”
His assistant left shaking her head to prepare the media alert fax and organize the press conference.
Reporters piled into Mason’s office around two p.m. Mason was behind his desk, the American flag on one side, the Kansas flag on the other. There he was, Lewis Mason, lion of the House, chief appropriator extraordinaire, in all his glory.
Don’t let them see you relishing this. Any hint of glee and people might suspect something.
Mason tried to scare himself straight. Xu Li is watching, he thought. He put on his best more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face. His assistant stood silently in the back of the room.
Sunlight shone into the office from the window behind Mason. As the House appropriations chairman, he got the choice of nearly any office he wanted. He’d picked one with a clear view of the Capitol dome. He wanted to see that dome every day. It reminded him of his mission: to bring that dome down. Or, at least, under China’s heel. He imagined the day when they wheeled out the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and wheeled in Chairman Mao or Lenin. Hell, maybe they’d let Lenin’s embalmed corpse lie in state in the Capitol rotunda. Talk about sticking it to the capitalists.
The press throng assembled in Mason’s office, encircling his desk. Mason spoke with the arrogance of a lord of all he surveyed.
“Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. I have a very short statement to make. As I indicated in my floor speech earlier this week, I will not, under any circumstances, allow legislation to come out of the Appropriations Committee that provides any further funding for the war with China. Andrea Gartner’s scrounging for dollars in the dark corners of the Defense Department budget is completely unconstitutional. A true conservative would not tolerate such violence to constitutional principles.”
Reporters jostled to get their recorders closer to Mason. Camera shutters whirred as they photographed him.
“Nevertheless, Andrea Gartner can scrounge for money for only so long. She knows it, I know it, and the president knows it. They can creatively cobble together war funds for now, but the only real way to fight a war is with a dedicated funding stream. I’m here to tell them no such stream will be forthcoming from my committee.
“If the president wants to unconstitutionally search for pocket change to fight his war, so be it. But he is fighting a war he cannot afford, and one day in the not-too-distant future it will come to a screeching halt when he can’t find any more money. When that happens, American service members will be stuck overseas in harm’s way, unable to defend themselves.”
Mason meant to terrify the country and soften it up for the news he was about to deliver. He interrupted his speech with one of his famous pregnant pauses. Then he dropped his bombshell:
“China has made us a peace offer.”
The gathered reporters scribbled furiously. He was breaking news to make Murray appear as though he was not only stealing money to fight the war, but also keeping information from the American people. He was going to kick President Murray and Andrea Gartner’s asses into next week. They wanted to embarrass him in a televised hearing? Two could play that game. And Mason hadn’t become Appropriations Committee chairman by accident. He could play the game well.
“China is offering to return our sailors trapped in Taiwan and our soldiers fighting there. That is what we want. All China wants is for us to acknowledge its sovereignty over areas over which it traditionally had sovereignty. It will protect the rights of the Taiwanese and permit international shipping in the South China Sea. What more do we want?”
Mason theatrically took a drink from his coffee mug emblazoned with a “Mason for Congress” logo.
“I urge the president to make peace, save the country, and take the deal China is offering. As the Chinese government has made clear, they want us to repay our debt as well. If the shoe were on the other foot, we would want the same. Would you lend money to anyone and not expect repayment? Especially if someone owed you four trillion dollars and was asking for more? Seeing as the Murray administration cannot pay its debts with money, the Chinese want in-kind payment and are willing to come to the United States to get it.
“As a conservative and a deficit reduction supporter, I urge the president to accept the offer and clean the debt slate with China.”
Reporters were writing furiously. Mason could see the reporters processing what he just said and slowly realizing the humiliation in store. Mason smiled. It was a moment of pure political ecstasy. One of those moments that comes once, maybe twice, in a political career.
The crowd erupted into murmurs and questions.
A reporter shouted through the din, “You mean allow China to come to the United States and take property?”
“Yes.”
“Why not sell property at auction and give China the money?”
“China wants the property, not the money.”
“What property?” another reporter asked.
“Any property it wants, within reason. I have it on good understanding the Chinese won’t take classified information or sensitive military hardware or anything of that nature.”
Mason was shaping the battlefield. If the Chinese didn’t get any sensitive property, what was the big deal? In fact, he didn’t give a damn about the property, and, he figured, neither did China. They wanted the imagery. It would be pure propaganda gold.
“Do you think the American people will accept this deal?” another reporter asked.
“Why don’t you ask me if the American people want to get their soldiers and sailors home and out of this messy, unfunded war? What do you think? The answer is yes.”
Mason nodded his head toward his assistant in the back of the room. She piped up. “Any more questions?”
It was three o’clock, and Mason knew reporters were on deadline and wouldn’t have many more questions. Some had already left to file their stories.
“Thank you for coming,” said Mason.
Reporters rushed out of the office. Several stopped in the hall outside the office suite and were dictating stories on their cell phones.
Once the room cleared, Mason’s assistant closed the door, leaving her and Mason alone in the office. Mason was still sitting in his chair. “I hope you’re happy with yourself,” she said. “You’ve just handed China a victory. This might well be China’s most glorious hour.”
No, sweetheart. It’s Lewis Mason’s most glorious hour.
Andrea had watched the Mason press conference on C-SPAN with her jaw open in shock. He had just slammed the ball back at her in their ongoing ping-pong match. She rubbed her forehead, completely flummoxed. How could he man who called himself the Chief RINO Hunter be advocating surrender to China when not one year ago he didn’t care one iota about deficits and was an unabashed China hawk?
Rachel poked her head into Andrea’s office. “The president has called a meeting in the Oval, Andrea. He wants you there ASAP.”
Andrea sighed. The last few weeks had been nothing but circular motion, an orgy of trips to the Hill and the Oval Office, without having made a shred of progress on anything.
“I’ll be there, of course. Help me get ready.”
Andrea and Rachel pulled together a folder of budget documents showing where things stood with the war and projections out for the next several weeks. Prepared for the meeting, Andrea made her way to the Oval Office.
Walking past a mirror in the hall, she saw her unbrushed hair sticking in all directions, a visib
le manifestation of her physical and emotional exhaustion. Her neighbors blamed her for their eviction. Millions around the country blamed her for the destruction of their Social Security. The military blamed her for keeping them from fighting a proper war. And now she might be about to preside over America’s liquidation sale.
I didn’t sign up for this, Andrea thought. She was slipping straight into her familiar feeling-sorry-for-herself zone, but she caught herself.
You did sign up for this. You knew the debt was a mess. You knew a crisis was coming. You wanted to be the hero. You want to save America? No one else is going to solve the problem. Pull yourself together and solve this.
President Murray was seated behind the Resolute desk when Andrea arrived. Vice President Campbell and General Ogden were seated on one couch, padfolios open on their laps. Brooks Powell and the Secretary of State were seated on the couch facing the general.
Andrea walked in sheepishly. “Everyone is here already? I thought I was on time.”
General Ogden shook his head and glowered at her with his heavy-lidded eyes. She had a feeling he’d come loaded for bear. She felt her blood pressure rising and patience dropping. She told herself to stay calm. If she was going to pop off, she was going to do it strategically.
“You’re fine,” said President Murray. “Take a seat.”
Andrea sat down on the couch beside Brooks Powell and opposite General Ogden.
“We need to respond to the Chinese offer and Congressman Mason’s endorsement of it.”
“Yes, sir,” the assembled group said in unison.
“Let me start by saying I’m tempted by the Chinese offer,” said President Murray. “Anything to end this war and get our soldiers and sailors out of there and home.”
Andrea couldn’t believe her ears. She had expected the president to dig in and demand she find more money. General Ogden pursed his lips and began turning red.
Murray reviewed the situation. “We have one week of war funds left, right?”
Debt Bomb Page 23