by Unknown
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39*
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Camp David, Maryland, USA*
Camp David, on the Catoctin Mountain in Maryland, was a thirty-minute helicopter journey from Washington. In winter Aspen, the presidential lodge, a single-storey, four-bedroom stone-and-timber building, sat on a bed of snow amid clusters of stark, leafless trees. It was created by Franklin Roosevelt and over the years each president had added his own touch. Jim West had yet to do so.
Their first winter in office after the inauguration was so harsh that the Wests never made it to Camp David. The mountains kept the temperature five to ten degrees colder than in Washington, and snowstorms made helicopter landings precarious. Then, in the spring, Valerie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Secondary cancers were found in the lymph nodes. As she became more ill and exhausted from chemotherapy, the constant presence of the secret service began to irritate her. Rather than rest in unfamiliar surroundings, Valerie chose to stay either in the White House or go to their family ranch in Virginia.
As West changed out of his suit in the bedroom with its spectacular winter mountain views, he was glad of his decision to bring everyone down here for the summit. Valerie's voice and presence was everywhere in the White House. During their long marriage, they had talked constantly about the presidency. As a young politician, he had taken her around the White House rooms and, as he became more successful, they frequently found themselves as guests there. Her death, sudden but painful as it was, had probably affected him more than he allowed himself to examine. To lose a soulmate of more than thirty years had to change a man. Was it madness when he found himself making a cup of coffee for both of them, or when he spoke aloud while reading a newspaper article on something that would have interested Valerie? Was it forgetfulness? Or was it wishful thinking?
Whatever the answer, he felt the unfamiliarity of Camp David was helping. There was a sense of stepping into a hotel more than a home. They had never slept together in this bedroom. Her clothes had never hung in the wardrobe. He had never watched her walk around after an evening with guests, smelling her perfume and watching her slip off her dress and kick off her shoes. Perhaps, he thought, he would note in his diary that the summit of world leaders at Camp David would be the weekend that he was able to move on; not to forget, nor to end the love, but to stop grieving and start living again.
He opened the door and stepped into the narrow, short corridor down to the long reception room, elegantly but sparsely decorated by his predecessor, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and freshly fallen snow on the patio outside.
The small, energetic figure of Toru Sato was bent over a telescope as Mary Newman explained quietly in his ear the history of the Monocacy Valley spread out in the national park below them.
'Prime Minister,' said West, speeding up his step and stretching out his hand. 'I do appreciate your coming. I hope it's not too cold for you.'
If Sato retained any ill will from their earlier blunt exchange, he didn't show it. 'Japan has inhospitable winters as well,' he replied, taking the President's hand. 'But I do not have any place as beautiful and as close to Tokyo to retreat to in times of crisis.'
'Come,' suggested West, ushering Sato to a sofa and taking the one at right angles to him. Newman quietly slipped away leaving the two men together, having made sure pots of tea and coffee had been delivered to the table, together with a jug of water and notepads and pencils.
'I wanted to have a private word before the others arrive, Prime Minister,' said West. Sato had not invited him to use any other more familiar term of address, so West stuck to the formal approach. 'India and Pakistan are on the verge of war. We believe Pakistan has some kind of new practical support coming from North Korea, but we have no idea what it is. We do know, however, that both countries are under new military rulers.'
'And North Korea has killed fifty-eight of your citizens by firing a missile on to Japanese soil,' reminded Sato.
'Correct,' said West. 'In complete confidence I tell you that Jamie Song, having agreed to our carrying out pre-emptive strikes on North Korea, has now said we cannot strike above the fortieth parallel which would leave many of the launch sites intact. You know that Vasant Mehta has thrown out a challenge to us - either go in and take Pakistan or he's going to offer it to the Chinese.' West, his brow deliberately furrowed and his hands clasped together, looked straight at Sato. Newman had advised him to express humility. West hoped it was showing through. 'Prime Minister, I need your advice and your help. This is why I have come to you first.'
For a long time, Sato sat upright, looking out the window and saying nothing. He leaned forward and poured himself a cup of green tea from a pot. He drank it slowly, holding the cup precisely by the handle and keeping it close to his lips for each sip. When he had finished, he returned it to the saucer and wiped his mouth with a paper serviette.
'Really, you are talking to me about China, Mr President,' he said. 'If China was our ally, we could close down North Korea tomorrow. But it is not and that is where the problem lies. If China was our ally, in that it had the same goals as us, we could have negotiated an end to its military support for Pakistan and none of this terror culture would have been able to grow. But China is not our ally. In all my time in politics, Japan's relationship with China has remained haunted by the past. Our nationalist politicians continue to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours men who were war criminals. We have had issues with our history books which sanitize the brutality of our occupying forces in China and elsewhere in Asia. But they are no different from American history books which gloss over your government's treatment of the native Americans, or the British who glorified their era of colonization.'
He stood up and moved to the window, then turned to face the room, showing an alertness in his eyes and remarkably swift movements that belied his age. West watched, but stayed silent.
'There is nothing we can do to rid ourselves of our history. China knows that, which is why it is using it,' said Sato, flipping his hand over as if to dismiss that section of his argument. 'But there is something far deeper and far more dangerous. We have a profound mutual distrust for each other because we are rivals for regional leadership. In the past century, with China's weakness, this has not been an issue. But she is no longer weak, and never in our history have both Japan and China been so powerful at the same time. China is wary that we are building a stronger military and that we are planning to project power again. It is also concerned about our alliance with the United States, our technology exchanges, our joint missile programme. It is suspicious of anything that would help Japan rid itself of shame. Yes, China and Japan have common ground, but it is limited. We are all part of the global economy. We are both big players in it. We both want stability on the Korean peninsula, but I doubt we will ever agree on how it is to be accomplished. Neither of us want nuclear war between India and Pakistan, but again, will we ever agree on how to create peace there?'
Sato paused again, wiping his finger down the condensation on the window, and touching his face with the cold moisture.
'What would you do if you were Jamie Song?' prodded West.
Sato laughed softly, glanced at West and then concentrated back on the window. 'A statesman has to decide who he is. Is he a statesman? Does he protect the interests of his state? Is he a philanthropist? Does he hand out largesse to societies less fortunate than his without asking for anything in return? Is he a humanitarian? Does he cast a searchlight around the world and find societies that need saving from their own stupidity or lack of luck? In order to recover from the loathing showered upon us, Japan has been both philanthropic and humanitarian. But I believe, Mr President, we should accept that all of us ultimately are simply statesmen. Therefore the bedrock of our interest is what is best for our nation, and,' he added with a quick smile, 'our own reputations.'
'I'm not sure you have completely answered my question,' said West.
Sato returned to the sofa and leant on the arm, brin
ging himself closer to the President. 'Yes, of course. You want me to read the mind of Jamie Song. If I were him, I would do everything to drive a wedge between the US and Japan,' he said, pointing his finger back and forth between the two of them. 'If he breaks that, he breaks everything that has underpinned our success since the Second World War. Also, if I were Jamie Song, I would calculate exactly when the conditions would be right for China to make the move to be the top dog in Asia. Is it now, when India is weakened by Pakistan, and Japan and the United States are threatened by North Korea? Or should China wait another fifty years, when he is long dead and the next opportunity arises?' He shrugged. 'Would I, if I were Jamie Song, make a move now? Of that I am not sure, as I suspect he is not sure.'
'And what would you do as Prime Minister of Japan?' nudged West.
'A good statesman will take any opportunity to make his nation great. I am an elderly man now, Mr President, and I know my people. I sense perhaps they feel that they cannot rid themselves of the legacy of the bad war of the last century without fighting a good one. There is an idea among us that we have to become a complete nation once again and put the spectre of our brutal past behind us.'
'By fighting another war?' asked West sceptically.
'Our economic success didn't do the job,' Sato answered with a regretful smile.
'And in order to stop that, I have to go to war with North Korea?' said West, his voice hardening.
'And take us as your ally. Yes. But China will never allow it.' Sato shook his head and clasped his hands together. 'I cannot tell you how to run your foreign policy,' he said. 'I am only telling you the pressures on me.'
'I'm not sure exactly what you are implying, Prime Minister,' said West, holding Sato's gaze.
'I'm implying that Jamie Song might have won already, and Japan might soon have to act on its own. Sitting in the security of Camp David is very different from sitting in Tokyo where a missile could strike us at any time. Don't forget, Mr President, that the Japanese are the only people who know what it is like to be on the receiving end of a nuclear explosion.'
Sato's eyes bored into West, sending a chill through the room that made the ravaging cold outside a more hospitable place to be.*
*****
'Where's Sato now?' asked Stuart Nolan, making sure no more than three drops of water fell into his glass of malt whisky to release the peat aroma. He took a sip, cupped his hands around it and leant back on the sofa.
'We put him in Birch,' said Newman, referring to one of the guest chalets. 'He has a young assistant with him by the name of Kiyoko Miyake. She's in Dogwood. Both chalets have just been done up and are a few yards apart.'
Nolan chuckled. 'No wonder the wily old bastard looks so young.'
'I hope you have the finer brain,' said West. 'Tom Patton's running late. Something's cropped up, and the Homeland Security Secretary is one person even the President doesn't prise away from his job.'
The US President and the British Prime Minister sat at opposite ends of a long sofa. John Kozerski and Charles Colchester had taken hardback chairs side by side in front of the window. At a dining table at the other end of the room, Brock, Newman and Pierce, who had just arrived from the Pentagon, worked on office papers, while occasionally chipping into the conversation. A faint smell of wood smoke wafted through the room from a log fire in the stone grate at the end.
'While we're waiting for Tom, tell me what you make of Sato,' said West.
'From the way you told it, Jim,' replied Nolan, 'I think he was giving it to you pretty straight. He's giving you a choice between Japan and China, and he's saying that, if needs be, Japan has the wherewithal and political motivation to go it alone.'
'What do you mean by wherewithal?' said West uneasily.
'Military muscle. That's what underscores it all.'
'Sato was talking about their nuclear capability,' said Brock from behind them. 'Declaring nuclear weapons has been linked before to the line about the bad war-good war.'
'That's all we need,' said West. 'India and Pakistan blowing each other up and China and Japan doing the same so they can become "complete nations" again. I've never heard so much bullshit.'
'If he sees it through, Mr President, it could mean an end to our bases in Japan,' said Chris Pierce. 'Anyone wants to weaken our presence in Asia, the Japanese only have to throw us out.'
'Would they ever do that?' wondered West aloud.
'The Philippines did,' said Nolan, pushing tobacco down into his pipe with a broken match, but not seeming to want to light it yet.
'We got thrown out of Vietnam. But it didn't make a damn bit of difference,' growled West.
'Good point,' muttered Nolan, interested as much in his pipe as in the conversation.
West cocked his head and turned round to look behind him. 'Chris, what's your take on what would happen if they threw us out?'
'It wouldn't be good, but we would manage,' said Pierce. 'We went back into the Philippines during the War on Terror. The Vietnamese would be happy to have us. We could increase our presence in South Korea. We've got ship repair facilities in Singapore. It wouldn't be the weakening blow the press would make it out to be.'
'Do you agree with that, Mary?' said West, squinting against a shock of sunlight which had broken through the thick blanket of snow falling on the lodge, spilling light on to the President's face.
'Our trade and diplomacy would continue,' said Newman, 'But our relationship with Japan would be more bland. I imagine our natural emphasis would shift to China.'
'Pete?'
'When New Zealand refused us ship visits in the 1980s, we cut them out of the intelligence loop. We would do the same with Japan. If they threatened to go nuclear, we would stop dual-use technology transfers. There's a heap of things which would run against them. I can't see what they would gain from it, frankly.'
'Let me say this,' said Nolan, putting his pipe face up in the clean ashtray. 'If we threw you out, closed the airbases, mothballed Menwith Hill and Fylingdales and all that, Britain as a nation which punches above its weight and - if I may say so - so skilfully provides that bridge between America and Europe, would be stuffed. The only reason to do it would be ideological, not pragmatic. In Britain, we were driven by ideological strains in the sixties and seventies. I was a young politician then and, believe me, you ignore them at your peril. Japan is suffering the same fate now. What I might suggest, Jim, is that you challenge Sato to say exactly where his leadership lies on this. If it's a case of him facing down his electorate and the Young Turks in his party, he must do that. If he himself is leading a pro-nuclear, pro-military, anti-American movement, then you must find another ally.'
'Well put, Stuart,' congratulated West, turning back on to the sofa again. 'Now in your inimical and avuncular style, tell me what was said between you and Andrei Kozlov on your trip down.'
'Marine One is not the quietest of aircraft,' replied Nolan. 'He had Alexander Yushchuk, his intellectual muse, with him. Charles dealt with Yushchuk mainly.'
'Yushchuk kept his own counsel,' said Colchester. 'The most I got out of him was a comparison of winter temperatures between Washington and Moscow.'
'And the only nugget of interest Kozlov said,' continued Nolan, 'was - and I'll quote him directly - "Have we been summoned because Jim West realizes his country's superpower shelf life is almost over?"' Nolan picked up his pipe and flicked on his lighter. Just as he was about to touch the tobacco with the flame, he flicked it off again. 'That from a man whose nation has seen its empire come and go a couple of times. So I replied - and what a pompous ass I am sometimes. I said, "Democracies are like rechargeable batteries, Andrei. There's no such thing as a shelf life."'
He lit his pipe, drawing on it as a blast of cold air swept through the room, blowing around sheets of paper from Colchester's file.*
*****
Tom Patton appeared before the staff could close the outside door of the lodge, bringing the rush of weather inside. The Filipino butler helped
him off with his coat and shook the melting snow on to the stone tiles in the hallway.
'Sorry I'm late, Mr President,' said Patton, brushing down his lapels. He ran his hand through his hair, shaking the water on to the floor tiles. He turned to look behind him and stepped to one side to let through a less ruffled Caroline Brock. Peter Brock stood up, eyebrows raised. He had had no idea his wife was coming to Camp David in an official capacity. The others, including West, Nolan, even Newman, were all on their feet. Caroline Brock often had that effect on a room.
'Stuart, Charles,' said West, 'Tom Patton you may know from his regular television appearances. Caroline Brock is the better half of Pete over there. But I suspect her being here is to do with something altogether more sinister.'
Patton put his briefcase by the side of the coffee table and took a seat next to the President. For a moment Caroline was left unsure of where to sit until Nolan said, 'Mrs Brock, it would be my pleasure to have you next to me.'
'Is Campbell here yet?' asked Patton.