The South Lawn Plot

by Ray O'Hanlon

  “Well, yes, vaguely,” Pender responded. He felt uncomfortable because he was uncertain.

  “Yes,” said Robinson. I think we talked about churches and such. You were on a bit of a tour. You're Roman Catholic if I remember correctly.”

  “Just Catholic. And lapsed,” said Pender, folding his arms in impatience. Robinson did not take the hint.

  “Sorry. But you know where we come from, always the geographic prefix. I'm Catholic myself in fact. Lapsed as well, though. Very lapsed.”

  “You're in the right town then.”

  “Yes indeed,” said Robinson, laughing. “Better than Kabul for sure. Anyway, I'm delighted you popped over. I'm aware of your interest in this Washington bash. It will be at the White House, that's confirmed now. We've put together the guest list, and invitations have been posted. You're on the press list, of course, delighted that you will be there. In the meantime, however, you'll have a little time to fill. Are you planning on staying all the while in New York?”

  “No,” said Pender. “I'll be heading up to New England for a few days, Maine in particular. It's for a coffee table book. A break from, well, you know.”

  Robinson nodded.

  “Maine is wonderful, though I've not been. By the way, and you're probably the first to hear this, but the prime minister will be at the White House event as will of course the American president and perhaps the Irish prime minister, though we're not quite sure about that yet. It should be quite the occasion, memorable for sure.”

  Pender turned slightly and stared out the office window.

  “I have not the slightest doubt that it will be.”

  48

  “You WOULD THINK that at this stage of the game we would have someone on hand to scan a room for bloody bugs.”

  Manning was standing beside the window staring outwards. The air outside was shimmering. It was close to a record heat wave for May.

  For a few moments Nesbitt did not respond. He was scanning a speech that Evans was due to deliver at a conference.

  “Well,” he said eventually, “strictly speaking, if you're going to bring in spooks to your embassy, you have to clear it first with the Americans, because we're friends, not enemies you understand.

  “Then there's the matter of all the technical gizmos that would be used to sweep a building. We would probably have to hire them, and that would get around. One thing the government likes is the fact that the world doesn't worry too much about us having much of an intelligence operation.

  “We don't have an MI6, CIA or SDECE and that can be an advantage sometimes. You would be surprised what little gems we've picked up over the years by virtue of simply not being taken notice of. It's a case of what the butler saw rather than what the bug heard. But anyway, that's the way it is, so we hire what's his name, Mr. G-Man, Voles.”

  “I wasn't able to track him as he went through the building,” said Manning.

  “What if he's freelancing for the Brits as well? He could just as easily plant a bug for them as find one for us.”

  Nesbitt nodded. “That's true. But he would also know that one of us might suspect that and check his work out. He needs a good reputation to keep his business going. If he was double dealing it would eventually become apparent, and that would be the end of his work in this town. Besides, I got a look at his bill. He certainly doesn't need to double dip.”

  Manning shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay, nobody gets to listen in on her ladyship's midnight adventures. Meanwhile, the days are dropping like flies. This trade conference at the White House is turning into a monster. And the hilarious thing is that the guest of honor is some Taiwanese guy who might not have a country by then. I hope his money is in Switzerland. June thirteenth, that's not much more than a month away. I assume that downstairs and our British and American friends got the invitations out.”

  Nesbitt looked up. “I believe they went out last week actually. But you're right. I hardly see this affair going on if mainland Chinese troops are swarming through the streets of Taipei. Why would the guy possibly be thinking of Belfast? Why is he thinking of it in the first place?”

  “I would think that's obvious,” said Manning, half turning towards his colleague. “He's moving his operations out of Taiwan to London. I'll bet he's in line for British citizenship if he hasn't got it already. The rich always get to flee before the storm. It must be getting pretty hairy at State, and across the river. The Americans are getting very worked up over all of this.”

  “As you would expect,” said Nesbitt. “Still, it must be exciting for their diplomats. I hope it doesn't sound perverse, but I envy them in a way in times like this. Maybe we'll end up in a war with Andorra, or Lichtenstein. Battle of the mice.”

  Manning let out a snort. “I can't speak for Lichtenstein but I met a guy from Andorra in Brussels a few years back. I would not underestimate a people who have spent history scrunched up between the French and the Spanish. We could easily lose that scrap.”

  Nesbitt did not respond. He had set down the text of the ambassador's speech and had moved on to The Washington Post.

  “Jesus, this Taiwan business is getting serious,” he said. “It seems to be running away from everybody. The Chinese look like they are gearing up to level Taipei with missiles, and the Yanks are calling up every aircraft carrier they can muster.

  “It's hard to know what to make of it. I see here they are not even talking to each other on the Security Council. The Brits are four square behind the Americans of course, but the French are being awkward and the Russians are just sitting on their hands. This thing could really go off; world war bloody three.”

  “Yeah,” said Manning. “I'm sure the Americans are sorely pissed off with the Taiwanese for pushing this independence idea to the edge. They would rather things went on as they were, ad infinitum.”

  “The Security Council is convening tonight,” said Nesbitt, turning to an inside page. “Pity we're not on it at the moment. That would be fun for the boys and girls up in New York. They would be eyewitnesses to history. Where were you, daddy, when the world ended?”

  “It's not going to go that far,” Manning said. “This is going to be like the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Chinese will back down.”

  Nesbitt, his head almost hidden behind the open newspaper, let out a low humming noise. It was his way of neither agreeing, nor disagreeing.

  “I'm not so sure you're right,” he said. “Stranger things have happened. Put it this way, the Chinese unleash a salvo of rockets. Say they demolish a few high profile buildings in Taipei, the stock market and a big bank or two. What do you think all the moneybags tycoons in the place are going to do then?

  “They'll be right up the arses of every politician who clings to even the barest notion of independence. Next thing, somebody proposes a revised referendum with two questions: Independence, or a Hong Kong-style deal with twenty years of near absolute autonomy, preservation of the capitalist system and eventual union with the motherland, and everyone's happy.

  “Let's face it, all the original Kuomintang guys are either dead or pickled. As long as they can go on making money I don't think the real movers and shakers in Taiwan are going to lose much sleep at night. What they want is to be independent from the kind of uncertainty that has hung over the place for years. And the Americans would be delighted with all this. They would be off the hook, and a major stumbling block to even more trade with China would be kicked back into the Ming Dynasty. I think the Chinese know exactly what they are at, and I think they will get what they want. Okay, so there's no out and out war, but the Olympics are ancient history, Beijing is on to a far bigger big project, reunification, and I think they are going to get it. We could have done this years ago with Northern Ireland if we had a four-million-man army.”

  Manning was laughing. “You know, Frank, I really think the world's nations should elect you dictator. Planet Earth would be a better place with you giving the orders. Even Evans might be convinced after a
few days of Pax Nesbitt. But I'm still not so sure. You might be underestimating Packer.”

  “He's a tough bastard all right, and maybe just a little crazy,” said Nesbitt. “And his people in Congress are wearing a lot of war paint. I would agree that he might just ram himself into the middle of the Taiwan Straits and force the Chinese to back off. But that's expecting a lot from the Chinese. You know this whole saving face thing.”

  “I think he's a bluffer, though a good one,” Manning responded. “Remember that coup down in central America last year? He was going to send in the cavalry one minute, and then he just ignored it, let it slide.”

  “That just means he might simply be smart. Doesn't like to blunder into things,” Nesbitt retorted. “Besides, he never went this far in that coup. This time it's different. The US Navy is already in harm's way, and the Taiwan Straits are becoming so crammed with ships that they could start colliding any minute for sheer lack of space. I think we're looking at a dust-up, and it could go all the way, pal.”

  “Maybe you're right. Time to head for the hills. Speaking of dust-up. I think I see the very man right now,” said Manning, his face against the window and eyes looking out to his left.

  “It's Packer's helicopter, what do they call it, Marine One. Yep, there's the second one and the third can't be far behind. He's taking the long way around from Andrews or wherever. Looks like he's heading home for his lunch. Christ, must be great to have your own helicopter.”

  Nesbitt put down his newspaper. “I suppose it is,” he said. “Check them out. If he's mounted machine guns on the sides of those things it means we're definitely going to the mattresses. I fancy a bit of lunch myself. Are you hungry?”

  49

  THE PRESIDENT LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. His lunch would be just about ready. If so, it would be the first thing to go off without a hitch in at least a week.

  He glanced around. The White House staff members and his Secret Service detail were looking busy, preparing for the landing on the South Lawn. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. He wanted to tell them all to relax but knew that would be a waste of time.

  William Packer liked to make people feel easy around him. It was his nature. But the job kept getting in the way. So they fussed and fidgeted as he looked on, just the slightest hint of amusement on his sun-lined face.

  Marine One was second in line of the three-helicopter flight. In a few seconds, Packer knew, the lead chopper would make room for his machine to make the final approach, across the Mall, over the waving crowds and across the last few yards to the touchdown point on the green sward at the back of the executive mansion.

  The crowds of tourists were moved from the White House railings every time the president took off or landed. It had been so since September 11. Packer had argued to allow folks return to the railings at all times, but the Secret Service had opposed the idea. What difference, he had argued, were a few yards?

  As in just about all matters dealing with presidential security, the Service had prevailed. It had thrown up lines of defense that had to do with bullet range, line of sight and angles of fire. So the folks would stay corralled behind a line of barriers roughly forty yards from the black railings.

  Packer's unhappiness with the reality of the post-9/11 presidency and its even more stringent security rules, were, however, of less importance now than the possibility of the United States and China going at each other's throat in the seas off Taiwan.

  It was against the backdrop of this apocalyptic scenario that he had made the latest trip to Camp David. Packer didn't quite see the point of the journey, but he had acquiesced with the views of his top advisors that movement itself could send necessary and desired messages to the Chinese and the American public. The president huddling in the Maryland hills with his Cabinet would be just one more public strand in America's deadly serious warning to the Chinese.

  The problem was that the warning would ultimately prove to be just that. The United States had no intention of going to war on behalf of the Taiwanese. At the same time, of course, the trick was to convince Beijing that the reality was otherwise; hence the massive show of force of recent days, three carrier task forces and a fourth on the way.

  Packer was not given, as so many of his predecessors were, to ruminating on what past occupants of the nation's highest office would have done in the kind of tinderbox situation that he himself was now facing. He was not a presidential historian, not the type of president who would stand in front of portraits of former occupants of the White House silently asking them for sage advice, or a tip on how to get out of a political jam.

  Lately, however, Packer had been thinking about John Kennedy. He had asked to see records of the meetings presided over by the young president in the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In those dusty minutes he could clearly see how close the human race had come to annihilating itself. The problem was that Packer now found himself playing the role of the Russians. It was he who was bringing the missiles on ships into someone else's backyard. It was the Chinese who were looking at an offshore island with a view to what they felt was necessary regime change.

  But, already, the Chinese were much more advanced down the road to conflict than the U.S. had ever been in 1962. Packer was uncomfortable with what he felt was his country's weak hand, even during the present bluffing stage. He wondered constantly if the Chinese had correctly read Washington's intentions even before the first task force had reached the Taiwan Straits.

  He was all too aware of Beijing's plan. It had sent a shudder right through his body when the CIA document had been placed on his desk just a few weeks and a lifetime ago. At first he had trouble believing it, wanted to hear it straight from the mouths of the people over at Langley.

  And so he had listened, impatiently, to the story behind the intelligence, the assembling of the grand conclusion from so many snippets and trickles, rumors and hard intelligence that had been pulled together over many months, some of it with the help of allied intelligence agencies such as the British MI6 and even the French SDECE, an outfit that seemed able to work its way into some corners of the world a lot less obviously than the Brits or the Company.

  The Chinese had decided that one nuke dropped on a military base as far from Taipei as possible would be enough to bring Taiwan to heel without blowing it completely into the skies. Beijing had calculated that the United States would not retaliate with nuclear weapons and would immediately shy away from a conventional war because it would simply be un-winnable.

  For one thing, there was the matter of where such a war could be fought. Not on mainland Chinese soil, for sure, and not even on Taiwan. The Chinese would not land troops on the island in advance of surrender by the Taiwanese. They would simply sit back after their one nuke, brace for the global uproar, ultimately ignore it, watch the Taiwanese economy collapse, face off against the US Navy, suffer the loss of some ships if need be so as to allow Washington, ironically, a little Asian-style face saving, and then simply threaten a second nuclear attack.

  At this point who would disbelieve them? Not the Americans. They would be facing the horrifying option of having to drop a nuclear missile on Chinese soil, and that, the Chinese leadership well knew, was not going to happen.

  Yep, Packer had said to himself after digesting the CIA document, the bastards have us well and truly screwed.

  Packer's legacy instincts kicked into overdrive. He could not appear to be weak-willed or spineless in the face of Beijing's naked aggression. So he had ordered the greatest concentration of US naval forces since the Pacific islandhopping campaign of World War II. He had gone on television talking tough and reassuring the American people that the United States would stand behind the integrity of Taiwan.

  Naturally, commentators had immediately jumped on this presidential play with words. The president had stated “integrity” of Taiwan, not its sovereignty. Packer had simply ignored the press and had begun the late night meetings and shuttle trips to Camp David.

  A
t the same time, Packer had ratcheted up several of the arguments he had been having with Congress. As much as possible, his inner team had repeated over and over, try to keep at least part of public attention on domestic issues, even as the nation was seemingly marching, or sailing, to the brink of all out war.

  “How about I juggle half a dozen golf balls and eat fire at the same time?” had been Packer's retort. But he knew they were right. And so he had shuttled back and forth on Marine One. Unknown to the American public, he had used Camp David to catch up on much needed rest as much as planning for the supposed defense of a longtime American ally.

  He was exhausted, unable to switch off his mind or block out the crescendo of thoughts, mostly dark ones. The clearest thought of all was of little comfort. He should have been a country lawyer like his father.

  He barely noticed the bump as the helicopter landed and the “Excuse me, Mr. President, you're home,” from the aide to his left. Home was not the White House right now. It was back in Oklahoma with his beehives. The early days of the Packer administration had been dominated by headlines containing the word “buzz,” allusions to the new president being as busy as a bee and suggestions from columnists aligned with the other party that his Secret Service codename should be “Drone.”

  He had smiled then, wondered how the press could be so obvious with its little puns. It seemed like a million years ago. And it was. The word of the moment wasn't buzz anymore. It was bomb.

  Packer unclipped his seat belt and slowly stood. He instinctively stooped in the helicopter's cabin, reserving the full stretch of his six feet three inches until he walked through the door, saluted the Marine Corps guard at the bottom and waved in the general direction of the small crowd of greeters out back of the presidential mansion.

  It was a ritual that had been in place for as long as the president had used helicopters. It was staple filler on the evening newscasts. It was a moment to be president without any complications. But it would be just a moment. Inside the White House, he knew, would be yet more jarring reports from the other side of the world, more decisions to be made or not made, more meetings and preparations for a full presidential news conference two days hence.