Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller

by Norton, Doug

  But Dorn deployed none of those facts in rebuttal; his anger obliterated caution. Instead, in a voice choked with frustration and fear, he uttered a single sentence: “Mr. President, that is either the wisest decision—or the most foolish—any president ever made!”

  The words hung heavily in the air, kept aloft by both men’s desire to preserve their relationship and by mutual shock that their disagreement was so profound. The room felt hot, stuffy, thick with unreleased anger.

  Martin’s eyes popped, then narrowed to slits. Rick acknowledged his outrage—how dare he!—then sent it away. He leaned back.

  “John, I know you feel strongly about this, and I appreciate that you’ve come to me. Candid discussions will continue in the NSC; that’s what it was created for. I want to hear all views in those meetings, especially yours. I promise you I’ll think hard about what you’ve said today.”

  Martin rose and, impelled by his instinct to smooth disagreement, held out his hand, as if they were fellow senators after a contentious committee meeting. Dorn, feeling his head whirling at Martin’s sweeping, unmoored vision, took it, without meeting his eyes.

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  Alone, Rick sat down and exhaled heavily. His national security advisor had come very close to calling him a fool. Bart had warned against giving the post to an outsider. Was Dorn, like Griffith, a loose cannon? Disloyal?

  Or could he be right?

  Chapter 23

  Rick felt their tension as he entered. I bruised a lot of egos when I left the last meeting, to shake them out of their ruts. I hope I won’t need to repeat that performance today, but if they still haven’t come around, I may just have to dispense with these meetings and drive everything myself!

  The NSC waited around a rosewood table in a conference room dominated by five large video screens. Staff and experts were along the walls. shelved in their chairs like reference books Several odd-looking semicircular glass enclosures, of the type that usually contained revolving doors, bulged from the walls, each sheltering a pair of encrypted telephones, one with video and one without. Intended to permit a participant to step away for a private conversation, they existed because of some techie with a big budget and a desire to make the world’s coolest conference room. No one used them. Anne Battista spoke for all when she said, “Standing in one of those bubbles makes me feel like I’m stripping in Macy’s window.”

  Plastic water bottles and paper cups were positioned within reach of the participants. Several laptops gaped open near their owners. Encrypted smart phones sat on every blotter, and people hurriedly fingered them to silence their bleeps, wondering what mood would sweep into the room with the president.

  Dorn looked apprehensively toward the president, wondering whether Martin, or maybe Guarini, would make those little moves that show he’d lost the president’s confidence.

  Martin made a go-ahead gesture.

  “Mr. President, I’ll start by summarizing the courses of action we’ve developed. We believe that taken together they constitute an initial response to Paternity’s implication of North Korea, plus a way forward. We also believe that we should have your decision on these measures today or in the very near future.”

  Martin’s face revealed nothing as he waited, fingers steepled on the table. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t, he thought. It depends on what you offer.

  Dorn read from notes: “The United States will declare that Las Vegas was destroyed by a North Korean nuclear weapon and that we hold the North Korean government responsible; that any further such attack will cause a full nuclear retaliatory response on North Korea; that we will lead the UN to condemn North Korea for a breach of international peace and security, a finding that obligates the UN to address the matter; that we go to the UN for sanction and cooperation for a blockade; and that we convene two summit conferences—NATO, and the Northeast Asia regional powers: China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

  “Subsequently, we propose demanding that Kim step down, going to Congress for authorization to use force if necessary to remove him, and making a comprehensive proposal for a UN-led scheme to prevent nuclear terrorism by denying terrorists access to nuclear weapons or materials.”

  His list complete, Dorn looked uncertainly at Martin.

  Not bad, thought the president. I see Bruce got the nuclear option back in, and I’m not having it, but their thinking is coming along.

  The president looked around the table, his gaze a sunlamp warming Dorn as he spoke. “Overall, this is a good package. I do want to tweak it, and I’m not going along with the threat to nuke North Korea.

  “You don’t mention any terrorist group. I suspected al-Qaeda and told the country that the day it happened. I still suspect them. So, why not say that?”

  The attorney general spoke from Martin’s right: “Because, so far, we have no evidence at all linking any person or entity other than Kim and the DPRK to Las Vegas.”

  “Besides which,” the vice president barged in, “by laying it all at Kim’s door we have the possibility he will not only deny it but finger the terrorists, and, if we make no mention of al-Qaeda, they might not be able to stand being ignored and make their claim.”

  They’re right, thought Martin, let’s put some pressure on North Korea and see what happens.

  “OK, Bruce.

  “Anybody else. . . . No? Fine, that’s the way we’ll go.”

  Dorn relaxed a little; the president wasn’t going to retaliate, at least right now, for his blunt words in the private office. But he felt the emotional barrier between them and he knew that Guarini, and maybe Battista, would sense it the way sharks sense an injured fish.

  “The second item was threatening a nuclear response. I remember my grandfather—he was a Chesapeake waterman—saying that if you have to tell people you’re tough, then you’re not. Real toughness doesn’t need to be announced. It’s obvious that we could obliterate North Korea. I don’t need to say that, and if I do, some people who would otherwise support us would call it saber rattling and back away. I want Kim to be the one sounding warlike, which he surely will when we point to him. Who disagrees?”

  Surprise and irritation flared in Guarini. Who disagrees? That’s not inviting debate; it’s trying to bulldoze the NSC! Who’s he after? What happened to the guy who wanted a full exchange of views?

  Seeing Griffith gather himself, his shoulders tensing, Guarini spoke: “Mr. President, the number of dead and missing is nearing eighty thousand. A lot of Americans—not all of them right-wingers, by any means—want payback. Right now that’s focused on al-Qaeda, but when we announce that North Korea’s responsible, a lot of folks, including some big-name bloggers and newspaper editors, are going to call for retaliation. Plus, the scholars of nuclear deterrence will point out that it needs to be restored, which is an indirect way of urging retaliation.

  “We all agree with you a nuclear strike should be our last option, not our first. The part about retaliation isn’t really a threat. It is, as you just said, a statement of the obvious. Making it gives you some pushback against the nuke ’em now crowd and also against the think tanks’ hand-wringing over the failure of deterrence.”

  We aren’t goin’ there! thought Rick. Once we suggest nuclear retaliation, it’ll suck all the air out of the room. Nothing else will get any attention from the press. “Well, Bart, I just don’t want to make a chest-pounding threat like that. How else could we do what you recommend?”

  “How about by low-keyed actions and leaks?” said the secretary of defense, as intent as Guarini at heading off a clash between Martin and Griffith.

  “Like what, Eric?”

  “Like . . . we make some unannounced but discoverable moves with the nuclear force. Say . . . we surge missile sub deployments to get an extra boat or two to sea. We deploy strategic nuclear bombers to Guam . . . I’m sure Mac and the chiefs can come up with more ideas. Maybe we leak that we’re updating nuclear strike plans. Things like that. And we need to go to higher
alert in the region in anyway, to be prepared for what Kim might do after we finger him.”

  Bart’s probably right, thought Martin. This is a bit of chest-pounding for those who want it, but it’s not me on camera. OK.

  “Bart and Eric, I take your points. We’ll do it that way.”

  OK, we’re two for two! Cheerfully, Martin shifted his gaze to Anne Battista and UN Ambassador Oscar Neumann sitting across the table from her. “Anne, how about you and Oscar tell me how the UN will play in this package of ours? I believe the UN is an important resource.”

  “Well, Mr. President, I have some ideas, but Oscar’s our expert. Oscar, why don’t you walk us through this?”

  Neumann began eagerly. “With respect to obtaining a Security Council resolution condemning North Korea, there’s good news and bad news. The good is, it’s not unprecedented. In fact the council has done that before where North Korea was concerned, in 1950. The council also found, in 1991, that when Iraq invaded Kuwait it committed a breach of international peace and security. The bad is this time we don’t have tens of thousands of troops crossing a border. There are no North Korean attackers to show on CNN. So, getting the resolution depends on presenting credible evidence that North Korea bombed Las Vegas. I don’t have to tell you that since the 2003 WMD fiasco U.S. credibility isn’t high at the UN. It will be a struggle to get what we want from the Security Council.”

  Martin’s face became a thundercloud.

  What the hell—in for a penny, in for a pound, thought Battista, who said, “Oscar, what about UN approval for a blockade to prevent North Korea from passing more nukes to terrorists?”

  Neumann pursed his fleshy lips, aware that his boss was pushing him onto thin ice. “More of the same, I’m afraid. There are precedents; after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait the council approved a resolution that, although it never used the word, sanctioned a blockade of Iraq. After the DPRK’s first nuclear test in 2006 the Security Council passed a resolution, 1718, that could be used to legitimize international inspections of all shipments moving in or out of the DPRK. But neither China nor South Korea wants to impede North Korea’s trade because they fear a complete collapse of the country if they do that. Neither wants the chaos and risk from North Korea falling apart right next door. With its veto in the Security Council, China can stop us cold.”

  I can’t believe, thought Martin, how frozen and unimaginative professional diplomats are. They make the generals seem forward-thinking!

  “Ambassador Neumann, I’m going to give you the same reality check I gave your colleagues! The game changed on June thirteenth! Terrorists with nukes aren’t just a problem; they’re annihilation itself! The old equations for calculating self-interest no longer apply. If you have as much diplomatic skill as I have been told you have, you’ll be able to make them understand that. If you cannot, I’ll replace you with someone who can!”

  The president’s threat left everyone unsettled. In Griffith’s case, it was more than unsettled. He was boiling. This is outrageous! If this man doesn’t hear what he wants to hear, he shoots the messenger. We can’t have this!

  Guarini felt Griffith’s anger rising but kept silent. It was the secretary of defense who maneuvered them around the wreckage, speaking calmly, as if Martin’s outburst never happened.

  “Mr. President, it seems to me we’ve reached a workable plan—challenging, but workable. May I suggest we direct the staff to follow up, then meet again tomorrow afternoon?”

  OK, I’d give them about a B-minus this time, and if I slap down someone else, they’ll sulk. Martin agreed and left to prepare for calls to the leaders of China, South Korea, and Japan.

  Griffith, too, had some calls to make, but his were local.

  Chapter 24

  As he often did when receiving sudden and momentous news China’s president, Ming Liu, let his mind go blank, then thought of earth, trees, and sky and waited for ideas to grow. Soon they began to appear, like shoots poking through soil into spring sunshine. Except in this case there was no sunshine.

  Ming leaned back in a wicker armchair and gazed out the window at his beloved vegetable garden. He braced his elbows against his chest, steepled his fingers, and rested his chin on them. I must call Jia and Chen, but first, I will think a few minutes.

  Parts of President Martin’s call began to replay themselves. Martin’s tone of voice was hard to read because his own English was poor. Still, his impression mirrored that of his interpreter: It was the voice of someone under great strain and carried much sadness.

  Next to appear in his mind’s eye was the dissolute face of Kim Jong-il. Damn that man! Whether or not he had done it, his behavior over many years had made him the Americans’ prime target, and an inviting one at that. Kim was outrageous, capricious—no, crazy—and that prepared the world to believe he was fool enough to have done what Martin was soon to announce: detonate a nuclear bomb in an American city. He had to admit that soon after hearing about the explosion he, Ming, had wondered if Kim was involved. He had pushed the thought away, and now here it was again, not a thought, not a suspicion, but an assertion by the leader of a country easily capable of erasing all life in North Korea. Which direction would the radioactive fallout drift? He needed to find out, since only the Yalu River separated North Korea from China.

  Martin said he wanted to avoid nuclear retaliation if there was any other way to make his country safe again and give a just response to Kim’s attack. I believe him. That’s the only thing about this that is not a disaster for China. The rest—it’s all terrible news for us.

  Well, perhaps not entirely terrible. The likely outcome, loss of North Korean sovereignty, is certainly bad. Our buffer will be gone. But . . . Martin knows he needs China’s support to accomplish anything other than nuclear retaliation. He told me that I’m the first foreign leader he’s called and that he will call only Gwon and Kato before making his announcement two days from now. He’s acknowledging that China is much more important in this crisis than Russia. I’m certainly not going to hear any more prattle from him about human rights, or about our currency! So, it’s not all bad.

  A few minutes later Ming had Foreign Minister Jia Jinping and National Defense Minister Chen Shaoshi on the line.

  “Martin wants to convene a five-party conference immediately to agree upon measures to screen or block all North Korean exports so that no more of Kim’s bombs get to terrorists. Us, Russia, South Korea, Japan and them. He wants us to host it. What do you think, Jia?”

  Jia marshaled his thoughts. After perhaps five seconds, he said, “It’s not unprecedented. This is actually a revival of the Six-Party Talks of the Bush administration, but without North Korea.”

  Ming knew his foreign minister had no initiative, so he was not surprised by Jia’s non-answer. He was, however, surprised by what Jia said next.

  “Have you spoken with Comrade Kim yet?”

  Ming had in fact thought of it while contemplating his garden, but let it go. What was to be gained? It would be an unsatisfying conversation and would, as always, leave him feeling soiled. Kim was a liar, a lecher, and a bombastic idiot. But . . .

  Ming said, “To what purpose, Jia? He’ll deny it, and then probably make some outrageous public statement that will preempt President Martin’s speech to Congress. I’ve just told you how China can gain from working with Martin in his time of desperate need; why risk that opportunity? Martin would surely know where Kim’s information came from!”

  “I know, but isn’t it possible the Americans are wrong or are lying, that the bomb was not North Korean? I’m sure, Comrade President, you would want to be prepared for that possibility.”

  Ming sighed. “Jia, surely you have no doubt that Kim is erratic enough to do something like this and that the analysis of nuclear explosions has been a well-established fact ever since China and others did it in the fifties and sixties? And, yes, the Americans could be lying, but I doubt it. Martin said he was going to make the evidence available for independent v
erification.”

  Chen Shaoshi’s voice sounded from the speakerphone. As he listened, Ming lit a cigarette. “Comrades, there’s nothing for us in telling Kim what’s up. In fact there’s a risk: if Kim responds by doing something that frightens the South Koreans and makes him look guilty—the man is crazy enough to admit it and dare the Americans to do something about it—that will make Martin’s task easier. We want him to need China badly in order to assemble his coalition. That way he will be forced to give us something substantial in return, as you said Comrade President—Taiwan Province, perhaps, or a reduction in military sales to Japan. We have Martin by the balls and I want to keep it that way.”

  “Jia, I think Chen just summed up the situation. No, I’m not going to call Comrade Kim.”

  “Comrade President.” It was Chen again. “Did Martin say whether he was taking any immediate military measures?”

  “Yes, Chen. He is sending several cruisers to the waters between Korea and Japan. They have rockets that can shoot down ballistic missiles that Kim might launch toward Japan. When he speaks to Gwon, Martin will offer to send Patriot antimissile batteries to protect South Korea. And today he has ordered the American aircraft carrier that is based in Japan to put to sea and move within attack range of North Korea. He assured me that when the danger is resolved, his ships will leave.”

  “That’s what I would do, in his place,” said the defense minister. “I think I will send a submarine or two and perhaps some destroyers to help the Americans remember that we have a true navy now.”

  After emphasizing that Kim was not to be alerted and directing Jia to be skeptical but helpful when his American counterpart arrived in about fifteen hours, Ming hung up.

  China’s president exhaled, crushed out the cigarette, and went into his garden. He was a husky six-footer who walked with a slight limp. His hands were large enough to palm a basketball.