by Tom Clancy
“Well, that was lively,” Gant observed, as soon as they were outside.
Rutledge actually had himself a nice grin. “Yeah, it was kind of diverting, wasn’t it?” A pause. “I think they’re exploring how far bluster can take them. Shen is actually rather a sedate kind of guy. He likes it nice and gentle most of the time.”
“So, he has his instructions, too?” Gant wondered.
“Of course, but he reports to a committee, their Politburo, whereas we report to Scott Adler, and he reports to President Ryan. You know, I was a little mad about the instructions I had coming over here, but this is actually turning into fun. We don’t get to snarl back at people very often. We’re the U.S. of A., and we’re supposed to be nice and calm and accommodating to everybody. That’s what I’m used to doing. But this-this feels good.” That 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 attaché 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 much influence with the foreign and defense ministries, and the ear of Xu Kun Piao. Fang had his own political capital-mainly for internal matters-but less such capital than Zhang, and so he had to spend it carefully, when it could profit himself. This was not such a case, he thought. With that, he went back to his office and called Ming to transcribe his notes. Then, later, he thought, he’d have Chai come in. She was so useful in easing the tension of his day.
He felt better on waking this morning than was usually the case, probably because he’d gotten to sleep at a decent hour, Jack told himself, on the way to the bathroom for the usual morning routine. You never got a day off here, at least not in the sense that most people understood the term. You never really got to sleep late-8:25 was the current record dating all the way back to that terrible winter day when this had begun-and every day you had to have the same routine, including the dreaded national security briefing, which told you that some people really did believe that the world couldn’t get on without you. The usual look in the mirror. He needed a haircut, Jack saw, but for that the barber came here, which wasn’t a bad deal, really, except that you lost the fellowship of sitting in a male place and discussing male things. Being the most powerful man in the world insulated you from so many of the things that mattered. The food was good, and the booze was just fine, and if you didn’t like the sheets they were changed at the speed of light, and people jumped to the sound of your voice. Henry VIII never had it so good … but Jack Ryan had never thought to become a crowned monarch. That whole idea of kingship had died across the world except in a few distant places, and Ryan didn’t live in one of them. But the entire routine at the White House seemed designed to make him feel like a king, and that was disturbing on a level that was like grasping a cloud of cigarette smoke. It was there, but every time you tried to hold it, the damned stuff just vanished. The staff was just so eager to serve, grimly-but pleasantly-determined to make everything easy for them. The real worry was the effect this might have on his kids. If they started thinking they were princes and princesses, sooner or later their lives would go to hell in one big hurry. But that was his problem to worry about, Jack thought as he shaved. His and Cathy’s. Nobody else could raise their kids for them. That was their job. Just that all of this White House crap got in the way practically all the time.
The worst part of all, however, was that he had to be dressed all the time. Except in bed or in the bathroom, the President had to be properly dressed-or what would the staff think? So, Ryan couldn’t walk out into the corridor without pants and at least some kind of shirt. At home, a normal person would have padded around barefoot in his shorts, but while a truck driver might have that freedom in his own home, the President of the United States did not have that freedom in his.
Then he had to smile wryly at the mirror. He bitched to himself about the same things every morning, and if he really wanted to change them, he could. But he was afraid to, afraid to take action that would cause people to lose their jobs. Aside from the fact that it would really look shitty in the papers-and practically everything he did made it into the news-it would feel bad to him, here, shaving every morning. And he didn’t really need to walk out to the box and get the paper in the morning, did he?
And if you factored out the dress code, it wasn’t all that bad. The breakfast buffet was actually quite nice, though it wasted at least five times the food it actually served. His cholesterol was still in the normal range, and so Ryan enjoyed eggs for his morning meal two or even three times a week, somewhat to his wife’s distaste. The kids opted mainly for cereal or muffins. These were still warm from the downstairs kitchen and came in all sorts of healthy-and tasty-varieties.
The Early Bird was the clipping service the government provided for senior officials, but for breakfast SWORDSMAN preferred the real paper, complete with cartoons. Like many, Ryan lamented the retirement of Gary Larson and the attendant loss of the morning Far Side, but Jack understood the pressure of enforced daily output. There was also a sports page to be read, something the Early Bird left out completely. And there was CNN, which started in the White House breakfast room promptly at seven.
Ryan looked up when he heard the warning that kids should not see what they were about to show. His kids, like all other kids, stopped what they were doing to look.
“Eww, gross!” Sally Ryan observed, when some Chinese guy got shot in the head.
“Head wounds do that,” her mother told her, wincing even so. Cathy did surgery, but not that sort. “Jack, what’s this all about?”
“You know as much as I do, honey,” the President told the First Lady.
Then the screen changed to some file tape showing a Catholic Cardinal. Then Jack caught “Papal Nuncio” off the audio, leaning to reach for the controller to turn the sound up.
“Chuck?” Ryan said, to the nearest Secret Service agent. “Get me Ben Goodley on the phone, if you could.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” It took about thirty seconds, then Ryan was handed the portable phone. “Ben, what the hell’s this thing out of Beijing?”
In Jackson, Mississippi, Reverend Gerry Patterson was accustomed to rising early in preparation for his morning jog around the neighborhood, and he turned on the bedroom TV while his wife went to fix his hot chocolate (Patterson didn’t approve of coffee any more than he did of alcohol). His head turned at the words “Reverend Yu,” then his skin went cold when he heard, “a Baptist minister here in Beijing …” He came back into the bedroom just in time to see a Chinese face go down, and shoot out blood as from a garden hose. The tape didn’t allow him to recognize a face.
“My God … Skip … God, no …” the minister breathed, his morning suddenly and utterly disrupted. Ministers deal with death on a daily basis, burying parishioners, consoling the bereaved, entreating God to look after the needs of both. But it was no easier for Gerry Patterson than it would have been for anyone else this day, because there had been no warning, no “long illness” to prepare the mind for the possibility, not even the fact of age to reduce the surprise factor. Skip was-what? Fifty-five? No more than that. Still a young man, Patterson thought, young and vigorous to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to his flock. Dead? Killed, was it? Murdered? By whom? Murdered by that communist government? A Man of God, murdered by the godless heathen?
Oh, shit,” the President said over his eggs. “What else do we know, Ben? Anything from SORGE?” Then Ryan looked around the room, realizing he’d spoken a word that was itself classified. The kids weren’t looking his way, but Cathy was..“Okay, we’ll talk about it when you get in.” Jack hit the kill button on the phone and set it down.
“What’s the story?”
“It’s a real mess, babe,” SWORDSMAN told SURGEON. He explained what he knew for a minute or so. “The ambassador hasn’t gotten to us with anything CNN didn’t just show.”
“You mean with all the money we spend on CIA and stuff, CNN is the best source of information we have?” Cathy Ryan asked, somewhat incredulously.
“You got it, honey,” her husband admitted.
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense!”
Jack tried to explain: “CIA can’t be ever
ywhere, and it would look a little funny if all our field spooks carried video-cams everywhere they went, you know?”
Cathy made a face at being shut down so cavalierly. “But-”
“But it’s not that easy, Cathy, and the news people are in the same business, gathering information, and occasionally they get there first.”
“But you have other ways of finding things out, don’t you?”
“Cathy, you don’t need to know about things like that,” POTUS told FLOTUS.
That was a phrase she’d heard before, but not one she’d ever learned to love. Cathy went back to her morning paper while her husband graduated to the Early Bird. The Beijing story, Jack saw, had happened too late for the morning editions, one more thing to chuff up the TV newsies and annoy the print ones. Somehow the debate over the federal education budget didn’t seem all that important this morning, but he’d learned to scan the editorials, because they tended to reflect the questions the reporters would ask at the press conferences, and that was one way for him to defend himself.
By 7:45, the kids were about ready for their drive to school, and Cathy was ready for her flight to Hopkins. Kyle Daniel went with her, with his own Secret Service detail, composed exclusively of women who would look after him at the Hopkins daycare center rather like a pack of she-wolves. Katie would head back to her daycare center, the rebuilt Giant Steps north of Annapolis. There were fewer kids there now, but a larger protective detail. The big kids went to St. Mary’s. On cue, the Marine VH-60 Blackhawk helicopter eased down on the South Lawn helipad. The day was about to start for real. The entire Ryan family took the elevator downstairs. First Mom and Dad walked the kids to the west entrance of the West Wing, where, after hugs and kisses, three of the kids got into their cars to drive off. Then Jack walked Cathy to the helicopter for the kiss goodbye, and the big Sikorsky lifted off under the control of Colonel Dan Malloy for the hop to Johns Hopkins. With that done, Ryan walked back to the West Wing, and inside to the Oval Office. Ben Goodley was waiting for him.