by Clancy, Tom
Li-Li was a handsome woman with a round face framed by long, gray hair worn in a bun. She was dressed in a red silk robe and matching scarf. She was smoking a cigarette. When Le Kwan Po finished his apricots, he would join her in another smoke. Throughout Le Kwan Po’s adult life, Li-Li had been his most valuable and trusted friend and adviser. She possessed a calm wisdom that was characteristic of those who had been raised in a temple. In the case of Li-Li, it was the seventeenth-century Qingshui Yan Temple in the state of Fujian. Her widowed mother cooked meals for the priests, the acolytes, and the pilgrims. The women lived in a very small room behind the mountainside structure. Some might have described it as a boring life. To Li-Li it was a reflective life. She met her future husband when he came through the region with fellow soldiers. The mountain unit stayed at the temple for nearly three weeks while they pursued remnants of the Guomindang, the nationalists who were hiding in these remote regions. “The soldier and the lady,” as her mother called them, quickly discovered they shared a love of two things. One was the mountains. They enjoyed being where they could look up at the sun yet down upon the clouds. They enjoyed the grandeur of the sharp-edged peaks and the flora that dug its roots into the rock to thrive there. Li-Li marveled that such a small, delicate tendril could split stone.
Just as the revolutionary ideology of Mao did in 1919. He did not work and study in Europe as all the other Communist leaders did. He moved among the peasants to invent his own form of government. He put small roots in the rich soil of the Chinese working class where they grew into a powerful nation.
A hybrid, like apricots and tea.
The other thing Li-Li and Le Kwan Po enjoyed was a lively discussion. She was always confident, soft-spoken, but very, very sure of her point of view. Some would say smug. Perhaps that was because Li-Li was raised in an environment where rules were incontrovertible. Le Kwan Po was more balanced in his thinking, more willing to listen to all sides.
The prime minister and his wife had been discussing the radical differences between the two men. She believed her husband should work behind the scenes to undermine the men.
“Remove their support structure, and they will fall,” she counseled. “What you must do is relocate their aides, their allies, their confidants.”
“This does not need to be so complicated,” he replied dismissively.
“Not this,” she agreed. “But you are not doing it just to stop these men. This situation is about the future. By undermining their network of conspirators, you will discourage others.”
“Fear is not a deterrent,” Le replied. “Even overwhelming force can be resisted, if not at the moment, then over time. The only thing that causes a permanent change is reason.”
“We have had this discussion before,” the woman reminded him. “The stakes are higher now. Do you believe you can convince these men that compromise is better than whatever they are after?”
Le nodded once. “They want power. But apart from that, men want to survive.”
“You just said fear does not work.”
“Not the act,” Le replied. “But the threat. That is different.”
Li-Li took a long puff on her cigarette. “What can you do to threaten their security? You cannot dismiss them. You cannot demote them.”
That was when De Ming Wang, the minister of foreign affairs, called on the prime minister’s cell phone. De Ming informed him about the explosion in Taipei. Le was not happy to learn of the disaster nor to hear of it from De Ming. The foreign minister wanted very much to become prime minister. Typically, De Ming withheld information to make rivals look ineffective. If the foreign minister were providing information, it was to maneuver someone into a situation that could prove difficult or embarrassing.
“Three incidents in one day,” De Ming said in conclusion. “We need to contain this situation immediately.”
His motives did not change the fact that the foreign minister was right. Which is what made him a danger.
“Was this Chou’s doing?” Le asked. “Those clubs in Taiwan host disreputable sorts—”
“This was very elite, and it employed girls from Guangdong province. The freighter this morning carried workers from Guangdong.”
That was not proof. But it was not a good sign.
“I will handle this,” the prime minister said.
“What can I do to assist?” De Ming asked solicitously.
Le lit a cigarette, blew smoke, and thought for a moment. This was a delicate situation. If De Ming were directly involved in any talks, he could sabotage the prime minister’s efforts at peacemaking. If De Ming were not involved, and those efforts failed, the foreign minister could go to the National People’s Congress and ask for a noconfidence vote on the prime minister. In a situation like this, Le felt it might be best to keep his enemy close.
“I will call Chou and Tam Li and arrange a meeting,” the prime minister replied. “I would like you to attend.”
“Certainly. When would you like to meet?”
“I will let you know,” Le replied cautiously. He folded away the phone and tapped it as he looked across the table at his wife. He told her what had happened. “War between these two men will force others to take sides,” he concluded. “I need to do something about it.”
“You are anxious. You should wait until morning before contacting them,” Li-Li suggested softly.
“I cannot afford to let the situation escalate.”
“You are also tired,” his wife insisted. “Mao said that a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”
“They are tired as well.”
“Not so tired that they won’t perceive this as what it is,” Li-Li said.
“Oh? And what is that?”
“Desperation, not strength. Wait. And let the foreign minister wait.”
Le Kwan Po shook his head. “There is a difference between someone who is desperate and someone who is decisive. I have to find out if either of these men were involved in the attack.”
“Why would they tell you?” Li-Li asked. “You were reluctant to pressure them earlier.”
“I have no choice now,” the prime minister said. “The foreign minister will use this against me.”
“Then you are desperate.”
Le took two quick puffs, then reached for his phone. “I am motivated,” he replied.
“What will you say to them when you meet?”
“I will reason with them,” he replied. “That is what I do.”
“Please. If you must, call them now but see them tomorrow,” Li-Li urged. “If you sit together tonight, they will say nothing or throw charges at one another. You will simply be a mediator.”
“What will I be tomorrow?”
“More in control of the situation,” she replied. “They will wonder why you waited to see them.”
“They will wonder with good reason. I myself don’t see the sense of it,” Le protested.
The prime minister was not comfortable playing these psychological games. His success in politics was due to evenhandedness. He possessed a tireless devotion to the party but a willingness to allow that what worked in the twentieth century could not be cleanly adapted to the twenty-first.
Still, Li-Li was correct. These were very different circumstances. Chou and Tam Li had always fought for position and influence, but they had never resorted to murder or attacks on one another’s holdings.
But silence? he thought. The prime minister regarded his wife. How does one turn silence into a perfect weapon? he asked himself. Silence is like clay. Others can read into it what they wish. The question Le had to ask himself was whether his wife was correct, and the men would perceive it as strength. Or whether he was right, and they would regard it as weakness. He continued to look across the table. Li-Li looked back. Her sweet face was visible through the snaking smoke of their cigarettes, through the fainter mist of their tea. Her eyes were impassive, the thin lips of her mouth pulled in a firm yet delicate line. Le did not know for certain wh
at she was thinking. He assumed it was critical of haste.
You assume the worst based on her silence. That supported what his wife had been saying about the value of silence. But you know her, he reminded himself. You already know how she feels.
Unfortunately, the men he was dealing with would regard his silence as indecision. He had to confront them.
Le crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and picked up his telephone. He scrolled through the stored listing of cell phone numbers.
“You are calling them,” his wife said.
“Yes.”
“To meet when?”
“Now,” he replied.
“To reason with them?”
“At first.”
Li-Li stubbed out her own cigarette. “They will not listen. And what will you do if it fails?”
Le Kwan Po regarded her before accessing the first number. “Three nations suffered covert attacks today. As the prime minister of China, I have ways of passing information to those nations. Information such as the names of the people who organized the bombings. I need never soil my hands.”
Li-Li smiled as she rose. “I like that reasoning,” she said as she left the small kitchen area to give her husband privacy.
FIFTEEN
Arlington, Virginia Monday, 2:44 P.M.
Since his days as a military commander in Vietnam, Mike Rodgers maintained that there were two phases to any operation. This belief was borne out during his tour of duty at Op-Center, where the general was both deputy director under Paul Hood and commander of the elite rapid deployment military unit Striker. It was also proving to be true at Unexus.
The first stage of a project was the booster phase. Whether it was a military incursion, a research program, or even a business deal, it always started with heavy lifting. Someone had to have and then sell an idea. Once it was successfully off the ground, it entered the pitch-and-yaw phase. That was a time of fine-tuning. The project had a life of its own. All the creator could do at that point was make sure it did not crash or self-destruct.
In science, the pitch-and-yaw rockets were on different sides. That was how the projectile kept its balance. In every other venture, opposing forces were not always beneficial.
The Chinese operation, as Rodgers called it, was in the pitch-and-yaw stage. The scientists had specific requirements, the investors in Europe and the United States had needs, and now the Chinese had concerns. Some of them conflicted, such as the propulsion engineers needing access to the booster and the Chinese not wanting them entering the gantry area without Chinese scientists, who had their own ideas about how things should be done.
Rodgers was kept from addressing the launch security matter as he worked to settle these problems. He was aided by fifty-one-year-old Yoo-Jin Yun, his translator, who had the most singular background of anyone he had ever met. She was the daughter of a suspected North Korean spy who was repeatedly raped by her South Korean interrogators. Her mother was fifteen years old at the time. Yoo-Jin was born nine months later. She was raised to believe that communication was the key to world peace—and to survival. Mandarin and Cantonese were two of the twenty-seven Pacific languages and dialects she spoke. The short, trim woman sat in the office next to Rodgers’s on the top floor of the six-story Unexus tower. Just being around her gave Rodgers a sense of world access he had never before experienced. And meeting her mother, Ji-Woo, had also enriched him. The older woman lived with her daughter and often drove her to work. She had relocated to Seoul in 1955 and raised her daughter on her own, cleaning office buildings at night and the Sangbong bus terminal by day to put her through school. Ji-Woo had nursed the beauty that had come of tragedy. Bob Herbert could take lessons from her about living with adversity.
So could I, Rodgers had to admit. Testosterone had a way of overpowering intellectual equanimity and good intentions.
Rodgers rose from behind his opaque glass-topped desk. He went to a small stainless steel refrigerator hidden in a dark corner of the office and got himself a ginger ale. He was dressed in shirtsleeves, a tightly knotted black silk tie, and Bill Blass slacks. His sharply pressed suit jacket hung on a wooden hanger behind the door. Rodgers always wore it when the door was open or whenever he was videoconferencing. He felt strangely powerless without a uniform of some kind. The retired general had come to this job after serving on the abortive presidential campaign of Senator Donald Orr of Texas. It was the murder of a British computer magnate, William Wilson, that precipitated the senator’s downfall. The founder of Unexus, industrialist Brent Appleby, knew Wilson well. Appleby attended the trial and was impressed with Rodgers’s frankness and composure. He asked the retiring general to become president of the new operation. Rodgers accepted with a handshake on the steps of the District of Columbia Federal Circuit Courthouse on Madison Place NW.
Rodgers returned to his desk with the can of soda and a cork coaster. In addition to the usual distractions, Mike Rodgers was not sure how he felt about calling Paul Hood. Rodgers had been allowed to resign from Op-Center after it was downsized. Though the cutbacks were not Hood’s fault, Rodgers felt the director had not fought hard to keep him. He understood why. Paul Hood had the larger picture in mind, the continuation of Op-Center in the wake of severe budget cuts. Striker had been decommissioned after a successful but costly intervention in Kashmir. At that time there was not a great deal for an army general to do.
But understanding and forgiving were not the same.
Now Paul Hood had been replaced. Maybe the White House position was better for Hood in some ways. But it was still a very sudden take-it-or-leave-it offer, not the kind of move that fattened a man’s ego. Rodgers did not need to gloat. That was in Bob Herbert’s nature, not his own. However, he also did not want to be a friend to Hood. That was a status Hood had never earned.
As soon as there were no other emergencies to handle, Rodgers was finally able to call the White House switchboard. They put him right through. That was how Rodgers knew that Hood was reporting to the Oval Office. He had been given cabinet-level treatment. Someone had literally walked his extension information to the switchboard rather than E-mailed it, where it might go unattended for hours. The name Paul Hood had been placed before the bank of operators so they knew who he was, where he was, and what his title was.
It also puts the president’s fingerprints all over Hood, Rodgers reflected. Unlike Op-Center, where a man was measured by his abilities, Hood’s fate was tied to that of the new chief executive. Whatever Hood himself did, he could be elevated or scapegoated at the whim of Dan Debenport.
“This is Paul Hood.”
“Christ, Paul. Didn’t they even give you an assistant?”
It took a moment for Hood to place the voice. “Mike?”
“It is,” Rodgers replied. “Bob told me where to find you.”
“Jeez, I’m glad he did! How the hell are you?”
“I’m doing terrific,” Rodgers assured him. “The change has been good for me.”
“I can imagine,” Hood said. “Unexus ain’t small potatoes.”
“No. Lots of starch here,” Rodgers joked, glancing at his jacket.
“How does it feel being in the private sector for the first time?”
“I’m happy, and my bank account is happy,” Rodgers admitted. “Speaking of changes—”
“Yeah. This is a big one. A sudden one,” Hood said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m tucked in the corridors of power without an assistant,” Hood said. “I’m told there will be a couple of them waiting in my other office down the road. An office that has a window, I hope.”
“That would be nice,” Rodgers said. He had a fleeting screw you moment as he looked out his own large floor-toceiling window. The Washington Monument rose in the distance, stone white against a cloudless blue sky.
“Bob tells me you’re enjoying what you’re doing,” Hood went on.
“I’m still fighting with powers from across the sea but usually with less blo
odshed,” Rodgers said. The banality of this conversation was painful. Still, after six months of silence the quasi-hail-fellow-well-met dialogue was necessary. “So what can you tell me about this new position of yours?”
“Not a hell of a lot, yet,” Hood said. “New is the operative word. The job is just some five or six hours old.”
“Has it got a title?”
“A lofty-sounding one. I’m special envoy to the president.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Rodgers asked.
“Well, I’m still a bit unclear about that,” Hood admitted. “The position was described as ‘an international intelligence troubleshooter, unaffiliated with any group but with access to the resources of all of them.’ ”
“What about political access through the president?”
“You mean working heads of state?” Hood asked.
“Exactly. In particular, I wonder if that includes getting the ear of the Chinese prime minister?”
“I don’t know. Does it pertain to intelligence troubleshooting?”
“It does,” Rodgers said.
“Impacting the private or public sector?”
“Public there, private here.”
“ ‘Here’ meaning Unexus.”
“Right,” Rodgers said.
“Maybe you had better give this to me from the top,” Hood suggested.
Paul Hood had never been an evasive, cover-your-ass bureaucrat, and that was not what was happening here. He sounded like a man who really did not know the mechanics, let alone the parameters of his job. Since it had only been in existence for one morning, that was understandable.
Rodgers told him what had happened with Le Kwan Po and the Xichang space center and the exclusion of the Guoanbu from the equation. Hood seemed surprised to hear that. Unlike Washington, Chinese intelligence agencies shared information with each other and with the impacted ministries.
“What you really need to know is whether the prime minister has specific information or concerns that your satellite may be a target,” Hood said.
“Their satellite, our subcontract,” Rodgers said.