Two Peasants and a President

by Frederick Aldrich

  “Do I hear the dust bin rattling?” asked Shumer.

  “That you do, my friend, that you do. And nobody knows better how to handle dirt than the Boston Sanitation Department. Our friend Baines had an ugly divorce; it cost him his wife, his girlfriend and a half a million bucks. But everybody who wanted to already beat him up on that score. Presumably he’s a lonely, horny ex-Marine. Aside from that, he doesn’t appear to have any major vulnerabilities that I know of.”

  “And I presume it would be far more convenient for us if he had a vulnerability,” said Shumer.

  “We’re way beyond convenient here, Stuart. The entire expansion of government that we’ve worked so hard for is in jeopardy. I don’t have to tell you how it works. Boston was built on a simple system. I do you a favor, like giving you a job, and you owe me. And the currency of repayment is your vote. The fact that the Democrats have controlled Boston for decades is testament to how well it works. We’re making the system work in Washington too. But the lifeblood of the system is money, and unless we find more, and soon, everything we’ve done is in danger of collapsing. There’s nowhere to get that money other than China, and Baines is endangering that.”

  Shumer leaned back in his chair, his hands knitted behind his head. “Mr. President, what you are talking about, if I understand you, isn’t something new. There have always been those whose actions endanger the greater good. Sometimes it becomes necessary for the benefit of all to cause those people to reconsider their actions. I believe that Senator Baines can be persuaded to see the light.”

  The president smiled broadly. Those who didn’t know Stuart Shumer well often assumed he was a mere functionary, one who was uncomfortable on his feet and preferred to work behind the scenes. But those in his inner circle knew him to be a highly skilled operative, capable of dealing with challenges and keeping promises. He was also someone whom it was very unwise to underestimate.

  As the president’s motorcade pulled away into the night, there were a few offices where the lights still burned, offices whose occupants, like elsewhere across the nation, were putting in the extra effort it takes to stand out, to make money in hard times, to make a difference. One, directly across the street from Stuart Shumer, belonged to a successful real estate investor who buys and sells desirable properties in Boston’s old warehouse area. Shumer’s people had checked out everyone in the building across the street, including this one; it’s good policy to know who one’s neighbors are.

  But the owners of the office across the street had successfully veiled the true ownership of their business. Real estate, in fact, did make them a great deal of money. But information was their real currency.

  14

  In the well of the Senate

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have grown so accustomed to speaking of such astounding sums regards our national debt and spending, that I believe we are becoming numb. The American people, to most of whom $1,000 is a good deal of money, have become glassy-eyed at the level of indebtedness that is being heaped upon their children and grandchildren. There are some in this chamber who cynically rely on precisely that to continue to enslave future generations.”

  “Allow me to put this in terms that one of the hard-working wage earners who pay our salaries could relate to. If a taxpayer were to spend one dollar every second of every day, it would take eleven and one-half days to spend one million dollars. Spending one dollar every second of every day, it would take more that thirty-one years to spend a billion dollars. Likewise it would take 32,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.”

  “Yet every few weeks we ask our countrymen to allow us to spend that much in addition to the trillions of dollars in debt that we have already heaped upon them. How in good conscience can we do that to our citizens and their families?”

  “From 1791, the year in which the United States first took on debt, it took until 2002 to amass $5.98 trillion in debt. That’s 211 years! It took just seven more years to double that to $12 trillion. And just one more year to reach $14 trillion.”

  “A well known Marxist professor at a prestigious University and friend to some in this administration has said that the way to change the government, to get rid of the Constitution, and move to Marxism/Socialism is to collapse the system.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are well on our way to doing exactly that. I, for one, do not intend to let this great nation become a Marxist state regardless of what this president and his Marxist college professor friends want. I do not intend to allow the far-left to dismantle the Constitution. And I do not intend to allow some members of this body to continue to push our spending skyward until this nation collapses from its debt. Today we are facing a threat the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930’s. It is not coming from a Nazi Germany. It is not coming from a Communist Soviet Union. It is coming from within this body and we must stop it now!”

  “Does anyone in this room actually believe that China continues to buy our debt because they believe we are sound fiscally? Does anyone actually believe that our treasury secretary has been going to China to lecture them on floating their currency in order to make our products more competitive?”

  “I’ll tell you what I believe he’s been doing. He hasn’t been telling the Chinese a damn thing. They’ve been telling him, telling him what they expect us to do if we want them to continue to fund this administration’s unprecedented expansion of the federal government.”

  “They expect us to cede to them the entire South China Sea! All one million, four hundred thousand square miles of it - one of the most oil and gas rich areas on the planet. They expect us to allow them to control waters that are twelve hundred miles from their coast and adjacent to the coastlines of at least six other nations.”

  “Several days ago, in the middle of the night, a modern Chinese Navy frigate challenged a Philippine naval craft that was older than many of you. At the same time, a lurking Chinese submarine sank the Philippine ship with all hands aboard, this only seventy miles off the shores of the Philippines and more than seven hundred miles from China.”

  “China would like the world to believe that their frigate only fired warning shots across the Filipino’s bow, which is true. They did not expect the world to learn that their submarine sank the Filipino ship. This administration was not planning on telling you that. I just did.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we pick ourselves up and learn to live within our means. It is time to tell this administration that we want a government that we control, not a government that controls us. And it’s time we tell the Chinese that we don’t want anymore of their damn money!”

  *******

  By the time Senator Baines had finished his speech, the veins in the Senate Majority Leader’s neck were swelling. His face had gone from its normal pallid pink to half-shades shy of purple. He knew that every reporter in the capitol was at this moment rushing to file a story that would lead the nightly news broadcasts from Shreveport to Singapore.

  There would be no sweeping this one under the rug. The wily old Senate Majority Leader had weathered his share of storms, but this typhoon would spawn tsunamis worldwide. In recent months Senator Baines had on several occasions shone a light on China, exposing back door deals and sell outs which had severely disadvantaged the United States, thereby upping the level of anti-China sentiment dramatically. Now the questions that would inevitably be raised by events in the South China Sea could threaten the presidency itself.

  Rausch’s cell phone was buzzing angrily before he was even out of the chamber. Fishing it out of his pocket he flipped it open. The display flashed what he already suspected: The White House.

  15

  CBC Evening News

  “We have breaking news to share at this hour,” the familiar voice of Gayle Mansfield announced. Normally, her network had no problem ignoring a story that reflected poorly on the president or the administration. In fact, there were many who had simply stopped looking to CBC for ‘news.’ But the vestiges
of stature once shared by the big three broadcast networks still attracted the sublimely naive and gullible to whom critical thinking is a foreign concept. Ignoring another important story had left considerable egg on the network’s face when they were belatedly forced to report on events that had been widely discussed elsewhere. So this time, they decided not to further trash their own ratings.

  “Republican Senator Virgil Baines, in a speech less than one hour ago, claimed that the Philippine warship lost in the South China Sea was in fact sunk by a Chinese submarine. China has maintained that their frigate only fired warning shots across her bow as part of a campaign to assert sovereignty over an area of more than 1.4 million square miles.”

  “China has also previously insisted that the Philippine vessel was in Chinese waters, in spite of the fact that the Filipino ship was sunk approximately seventy miles west Palawan, the largest island in the southern-western Philippines, and more than seven hundred miles from China.”

  “Response in the Philippine capitol of Manila has been swift and violent. Rock-throwing mobs surrounded the Chinese embassy and only quick action by the military prevented further violence. The Philippine government has requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council.”

  “Calls to the White House and the Chinese embassy have not been returned. We will continue to bring you breaking news on this story as we receive it.”

  ******

  The president stabbed the remote with his thumb and tossed it on the coffee table in the oval office. “Damn!” he uttered. His chief of staff and press secretary sat stone-faced. The door flew open and the first lady burst in, slamming the door in the face of the Secret Service agent trailing her.

  “That son of a bitch! Who the hell does he think he is?”

  The timid and unctuous press secretary cast his eyes downward, hoping to avoid the attention of a first lady who had on more than a few occasions addressed him as a principal might speak to a pubescent seventh grader. In truth, he was terrified of her and he had never seen her this ugly before.

  “We’ve got to come up with a response, and quickly,” she said. Looking over at the cowering press secretary she ordered: “Out!” Less than six seconds later the door had closed behind him.

  “What’s Stuart doing?” the first lady demanded.

  “He’s sewing a Boston necktie,” the president responded, referring to an old Boston machine trick, something that could be hung around the neck of a political opponent.

  “What kind of necktie?” she continued.

  “Let‘s just say it involves a hidden video camera,” replied the president.

  “What are you planning to tell the press?”

  In truth the president hadn’t come up with the answer to that question. Obviously there’d been a major leak, but with the USS Hawaii still in the Pacific, that left only the Department of Defense and a few members of the cabinet and national security team. The president thought he had a pretty good idea, but he was not yet certain and a cabinet shake up in the midst of a crisis would only make him appear more inept, not to mention dishonest.

  “If you’d get out of my face for a minute,” he shot back at her, “I might be able to come up with an answer.” His chief of staff sat wishing he’d been expelled along with the press secretary. As was her custom, the first lady retreated not an inch, and he was getting weary of being forced to listen to her frequent tirades.

  “It was that bastard, Benedict,” she ranted, “he’s always wanted a show down with China. I told you he was a bad idea.”

  “Would you rather have seen him nominated for president?” the president asked. There was no reply.

  “It seems pretty clear,” the Chief of Staff said, finally summoning the courage to speak, “if it’s confirmed that we knew about the sub, the Republicans will trumpet it all over Washington and the right-wing media will crucify us for being too cowardly to stand up to the Chinese. If we climb on the anti-China bandwagon we can kiss any future investments goodbye – end of expansion, end of administration.”

  “Unless we want to just sit around slitting our wrists,” he continued, “there’s only one decision that can be made: deny everything. We deny it. China denies it. Larimer denies it. There’s not a damn shred of proof out there that we don’t control. That leaves Baines hanging in the wind with a preposterous, unfounded rumor. And once we’ve tied our little necktie around his neck, his credibility will crumble and he’ll look like just another lecherous loose cannon.”

  The first lady looked at the president as if to say: ‘You got any better ideas?’

  “I’m starting to see a certain beauty in all this,” said the president. “We destroy Baines’ credibility and the Chinese owe us for a change. With us holding their dirty little secret, they have no choice but to continue buying our Treasuries. Tell numb nuts, our beloved press secretary, what he’s going to need to say in his briefing.”

  “Don’t you think you should to address this personally?” said the first lady.

  “No, I do not!” replied the president, tiring of her interference. “My involvement would just add credence in the minds of some. It’s got to look like this whole thing is so preposterous that the president wouldn’t stoop to even speak about it.”

  16

  Embassy of the People’s Republic of China – Washington, DC

  Call volume since the sinking of the Philippine warship had been higher than Ambassador Li could remember. The switchboard was overwhelmed and, as was the embassy’s policy, it was simply shut down and a recording activated. Those whom the embassy felt important enough had alternate numbers to use.

  The Philippine government was pressing the UN for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Beijing not only repeated its official position that only warning shots were fired, but then it doubled down: ‘China, having been the victim of repeated warlike acts in the South China Sea, over which it enjoys indisputable sovereignty, reserves the right to sink any foreign vessel entering Chinese waters without its permission,’ stated the official announcement from the Foreign Ministry.

  It was a stunning announcement, equivalent to Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz but with far more power backing it up. While Iran was well aware that it would ultimately lose any confrontation with the United States Navy, China evidently now felt itself in a position to back up those words.

  To those who had been following the rise of Chinese military power, this was hardly a surprise; rather it was an inflection point in a plan that China had been implementing for many years. Some had felt that it would be several years before China would feel confident enough to make such a bold move, but experienced China hands understood that at some point it would become inevitable. Few remembered the prescient words of Deng Xiaoping, the man largely responsible for China’s rise as an economic powerhouse: “Hide your strength, bide your time.”

  Ambassador Li assumed that his government was not sharing all the details of the incident with him; it seldom did. But he was well aware that US-China relations had just entered a dangerous new phase. What had been notably absent in the Chinese declaration was any pretense of diplomatic language. It was a clear threat, a line which China now dared the United States to cross.

  It was approximately 6:00 pm when there was a knock on the door of the ambassador’s office. As his aide entered, the ambassador noticed the DVD in his hand.

  “Yes, what is it?” he said crisply.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Ambassador, but I believe you will want to watch this,” replied the aide.

  “The familiar voice and visage of the CBC News anchor once again greeted the ambassador. He had watched her broadcasts many times, some with amusement, occasionally with concern, but this time he had the feeling that there would be nothing amusing in her words. He was not proven wrong. By the time her report had concluded, the ambassador’s normally stony countenance had drained like melting mascara from his face. His aide thought he detected a slight trembling in his hands
.

  It would not be necessary to transmit the file contained on the DVD to Beijing because they too made daily recordings of all major news broadcasts. Based on what he had seen, the ambassador assumed his private phone would be ringing in a matter of seconds. He was not disappointed. After the usual procedures to ensure that the call was secure, he heard the familiar voice of the most senior aide to the Chinese president.

  “Good evening, Mr. Ambassador. I assume that you have already been informed of this evening’s American news broadcasts.”

  “I have,” replied the ambassador.

  “Then you know,” continued the aide, “that it casts us in a rather bad light. Furthermore, it forces us to take additional measures, both here and in America.” The aide obviously was not going to specify what those measures were. “The President,” he continued, “has instructed me to advise you that a certain personnel will be in the air in approximately one hour. You, yourself, will attend to formalities at the airport.”

  “I will see to it personally,” replied the ambassador.

  The secure link clicked off and the ambassador was again alone with his aide, who noted that the ambassador’s face was now a pale shade of gray. Ambassador Li was a career diplomat, but he was also something of a historian, and he knew well the risks involved in China’s gambit. China was now employing its considerable leverage in a way it had never dared before. It was also backing the young American president into a corner.

  17

  About an hour after robo-doc visited her, the food came, that is, if you could call it food. A plastic tray, a plastic bowl of rice, some veggies and meat she couldn’t identify. And chopsticks. Oh God, Not chopsticks, she thought. What had been kind of romantic on the junk, now seemed like a cruel joke. She left the meat, not wanting to know what it was, and ate the rice and veggies with her fingers.