by Tom Clancy
“We go to the lounge for a few minutes before your aircraft is ready,” a French air force colonel explained. “Perhaps you wish to freshen up?”
“Merci, mon commandant,” Ding replied. Yeah, he thought, the Frenchies do know how to make you feel safe.
“Thank you for helping to arrange this,” Adler said to his friend. They’d been FSOs together, once in Moscow and once more in Pretoria. Both had specialized in sensitive assignments.
“It is nothing, Scott.” Which it wasn’t, but diplomats talk like diplomats even when they don’t have to. Claude had once helped him get through a divorce in a uniquely French way, all the while speaking as though conducting treaty negotiations. It was almost a joke between the two. “Our ambassador reports that he will be receptive to the right sort of approach.”
“And what might that be?” SecState asked his colleague. They got out at what appeared to be the base officers club, and a minute later found themselves in a private dining room, with a carafe of fine Beaujolais on the table. “What’s your take on this, Claude? What does Daryaei want?”
The shrug was as much a part of the French character as the wine, which Claude poured. They toasted, and the wine was superb even by the standards of the French diplomatic service. Then came business.
“We’re not sure. We wonder about the death of the Turkoman Premier.”
“You don’t wonder about the death of—”
“I do not believe anyone has doubts about that, Scott, but that is a long-standing business, is it not?”
“Not exactly.” Another sip. “Claude, you’re still the best authority on wine I know. What’s he thinking about?”
“Probably many things. His domestic troubles—you Americans don’t appreciate them as well as you should. His people are restless, less so now that he’s conquered Iraq, but the problem is still there. We feel that he must consolidate before he does anything else. We also feel that the process may turn out to be unsuccessful. We are hopeful, Scott. We are hopeful that the extreme aspects of the regime will moderate over time, perhaps not very much time. It must. It is no longer the eighth century, even in that part of the world.”
Adler took a few seconds to consider that, then nodded thoughtfully. “Hope you’re right. The guy’s always scared me.”
“All men are mortal. He is seventy-two, and he works a hard schedule. In any case, we have to check on him, do we not? If he moves, then we will move, together, as we have done in the past. The Saudis and we have talked on this matter also. They are concerned, but not overly so. Our assessment is the same. We counsel you to keep an open mind.”
Claude might be correct, Adler thought. Daryaei was old, and consolidating the rule over a newly acquired country wasn’t exactly a trivial undertaking. More than that, the easiest way to bring a hostile country down, if you have the patience for it, was to be nice to the bastards. A little trade, a few journalists, some CNN, and a couple of G-rated movies, such things could do wonders. If you have the patience. If you had the time. There were plenty of Iranian kids in American universities. That could be the most effective means for America to change the UIR. Problem was, Daryaei had to know that, too. And so here he was, Scott Adler, Secretary of State, a post he’d never expected to approach, much less have, and he was supposed to know what to do next. But he’d read enough diplomatic history to know better.
“I’ll listen to what he has to say, and we’re not looking to make any new enemies, Claude. I think you know that.”
“D’accord.” He topped off Adler’s glass. “Unfortunately, you will find none of this in Tehran.”
“And two is my limit when I’m working.”
“Your flight crew is excellent,” Claude assured him. “They fly our own ministers.”
“When has your hospitality ever been lacking?”
FOR CLARK AND Chavez it was Perrier, cheaper to buy here, they both imagined, though the lemons probably were not.
“So how are things in Washington?” a French counterpart asked, just killing time, or so it seemed.
“Pretty strange. You know, it’s amazing how quiet the country is. Maybe having a lot of the government turned off helps,” John said, trying to dodge.
“And this talk of your President and his adventures?”
“Sounds like a lot of movie stuff to me,” Ding said, with the open face of honesty.
“Stealing a Russian sub? All by himself? Damn.” Clark grinned. “I wonder who made that up?”
“But the Russian spy chief,” their host objected. “It is he, and he’s been on the television.”
“Yeah, well, I bet we paid him a ton of money to come across, too.”
“Probably wants to do a book and make some more.” Chavez laughed. “Sumbitceh’ll get it, too. Hey, mon ami, we’re just worker bees, okay?”
It didn’t fly any better than a lead glider. Clark looked into their interrogator’s eyes and they just clicked. The man was DGSE, and he knew Agency when he saw it.
“Then be careful of the nectar you will find where you are going, my young friend. It is, perhaps, too sweet.” It was like the start of a card game. The deck was out, and he was shuffling. Probably just one hand, and maybe a friendly one, but the hand had to be played.
“What do you mean?”
“The man you go to meet, he is dangerous. He has the look of one who sees what we do not.”
“You’ve worked the country?” John asked.
“I have traveled through the country, yes.”
“And?” This was Chavez.
“And I have never understood them.”
“Yeah,” Clark agreed. “I know what you’re saying.”
“An interesting man, your President,” the Frenchman said again, and it was pure curiosity, actually an endearing thing to see in the eyes of an intelligence officer.
John looked right in those eyes and decided to thank the man for his warning, one pro to another. “Yeah, he is. He’s one of us,” Clark assured him.
“And those entertaining stories?”
“I cannot say.” Delivered with a smile. Of course they’re true. You think reporters have the wit to make such things up?
Both men were thinking the same thing, and both men knew it, though neither could speak it aloud: A shame we cannot get together some evening for a dinner and some stories . But it just wasn’t done.
“On the way back, I will offer you a drink.”
“On the way back, I will have it.”
Ding just listened and watched. The old bastard still had it, and there were still lessons to learn from how he did it. “Nice to have a friend,” he said five minutes later on the way to the French aircraft.
“Better than a friend, a pro. You listen to people like him, Domingo.”
NOBODY HAD EVER said that governance was easy, even for those who invoked the word of God for nearly everything. The disappointment, even for Daryaei, who’d been governing Iran for nearly twenty years in one capacity or another, was in all the petty administrative rubbish that reached his desk and took from his time. He’d never grasped that it was almost entirely his fault. His rule was fair by his own reckoning, but harsh by most others. Most violations of the rules mandated death for the miscreant, and even small administrative errors on the part of bureaucrats could entail the end of a career—that degree of mercy depended on the magnitude of the error, of course. A bureaucrat who said no to everything, noting that the law was clear on an issue, whether it was or not, rarely got into trouble. One who broadened the scope of the government’s power over the most minor of day-to-day activities was merely adding to the scope of Daryaei’s rule. Such decisions came easily and caused little in the way of difficulty to the arbiter in question.
But real life wasn’t that simple. Practical questions of commerce, for example, just the way in which the country did business in everything from the sale of melons to the honking of auto horns around a mosque required a certain degree of judgment, because the Holy Koran hadn’t an
ticipated every situation, and neither had the civil law been based upon it. But to liberalize anything was a major undertaking, because any liberalization of any rule might be seen as a theological error—this in a country where apostasy was a capital crime. And so the lowest-level bureaucrats, when stuck with the necessity of saying yes to a request, from time to time, tended to hem and haw and kick things upstairs, which gave a higher-level official the chance to say no, which came just as easily to them after a career of doing so, but with somewhat greater authority, somewhat greater responsibility, and far more to lose in the event that someone higher still disagreed with the rare and erroneous yes decision. All that meant was that such calls kept perking up the pyramid. In between Daryaei and the bureaucracy was a council of religious leaders (he’d been a member under Khomeini), and a titular parliament, and experienced officials, but, disappointingly to the new UIR’s religious leader, the principle held, and he found himself dealing with such weighty issues as the business hours for markets, the price of petrol, and the educational syllabus of grade-school females. The sour expression he’d adopted for such trivial issues merely made his lesser colleagues all the more obsequious in their presentation of the pros and cons, which added an additional measure of gravity to the absurd, while they sought favor for being strict (opposing whatever change was on the table) or for being practical (supporting it). Earning Daryaei’s favor was the biggest political game in town, and he inevitably found himself as tied down as an insect in amber by small issues, while he needed all his time to deal with the big ones. The amazing part is that he never understood why people couldn’t take some initiative, even as he destroyed people on occasion for taking any.
So it was that he landed in Baghdad this evening to meet with local religious leaders. The issue of the day was which mosque in need of repair would get repaired first. It was known that Mahmoud Haji had one personal favorite for his own prayers, another for its architectural beauty, and yet a third for its great historical significance, while the people of the city loved yet another—and wouldn’t it be a better idea, politically, to deal with the maintenance needs of that one first, the better to ensure the political stability of the region? After that came a problem with the right of women to drive cars (the previous Iraqi regime had been overly liberal on that!), which was objectionable, but was it not difficult to take away a right already possessed, and what of women who lacked a man (widows, for example) to drive them, and also lacked the money with which to hire one? Should the government look after their needs? Some—physicians for one example, teachers for another—were important to the local society. On the other hand, since Iran and Iraq were now one, the law had to be the same, and so did one grant a right to Iranian women or deny it to the Iraqi? For these weighty issues and a few others, he had to take an evening flight to Baghdad.
Daryaei, sitting in his private jet, looked over the agenda for the meeting and wanted to scream, but he was too patient a man for that—or so he told himself. He had something important to prepare for, after all. In the morning he’d be meeting with the Jew American foreign minister. His expression, as he looked through the papers, frightened even the flight crew, though Mahmoud Haji didn’t notice that, and even if he had, would not have understood why.
Why couldn’t people take some initiative!
THE JET WAS a Dassault Falcon 900B, about nine years old, similar in basic type and function to the USAF VC- 20B twin-jet. The two-man flight crew was a pair of French air force officers, both rather senior for this “charter,” and there was also a pair of cabin attendants, both female and as charming as they could be. At least one, Clark figured, was a DGSE spook. Maybe both. He liked the French, especially their intelligence services. As troublesome an ally as France occasionally was, when the French did business in the black world, they damned well did business as well as any and better than most. Fortunately, in the case at hand, aircraft are noisy and hard to bug. Perhaps that explained why one attendant or the other would come back every fifteen minutes or so to ask if they needed anything.
“Anything special we need to know?” John asked, when the latest offer was declined with a smile.
“Not really,” Adler replied. “We want to get a feel for the guy, what he’s up to. My friend Claude, back at Paris, says that things are not as bad as they look, and his reasoning seems pretty sound. Mainly I’m delivering the usual message.”
“Behave yourself,” Chavez said, with a smile.
The Secretary of State smiled. “Somewhat more diplomatically, but yes. What’s your background, Mr. Chavez?”
Clark liked that one: “You don’t want to know where we got him from.”
“I just finished my master’s thesis,” the young spook said proudly. “Get hooded in June.”
“Where?”
“George Mason University. Professor Alpher.”
That perked Adler’s interest. “Really? She used to work for me. What’s the thesis on?”
“It’s called ‘A Study in Conventional Wisdom: Erroneous Diplomatic Maneuvers in Turn-of-the-Century Europe.’”
“The Germans and the Brits?”
Ding nodded. “Mainly, especially the naval races.”
“Your conclusion?”
“People couldn’t recognize the differences between tactical and strategic goals. The guys supposed to be thinking ‘future’ were thinking ‘right now,’ instead. Because they confused politics with statecraft, they ended up in a war that brought down the entire European order, and replaced it with nothing more than scar tissue.” It was remarkable, Clark thought, listening to the brief discourse, that Ding’s voice changed when discussing his school work.
“And you’re an SPO?” SecState asked, with a certain degree of incredulity.
A very Latino grin reappeared. “Used to be. Sorry if I don’t drag my knuckles on the ground like I’m supposed to, sir.”
“So why did Ed Foley lay you two on me?”
“My fault,” Clark said. “They want us to take a little stroll around and get a smell for things.”
“Your fault?” Scott asked.
“I was their training officer, once upon a time,” John explained, and that changed the complexion of the conversation entirely.
“You’re the guys who got Koga out! You’re the guys who—”
“Yeah, we were there,” Chavez confirmed. SecState was probably cleared for all that. “Lots of fun.”
The Secretary of State told himself that he should be offended that he had two field spooks with him—and the younger one’s remark about being a knuckle-dragger wasn’t that far off. But a master’s from George Mason...
“You’re also the guys who sent that report that Brett Hanson pooh-poohed, the one about Goto. That was good work. In fact, it was excellent work.” He’d wondered what these two were doing on the SNIE team for the UIR situation. Now he knew.
“But nobody listened,” Chavez pointed out. It may have been a deciding factor in the war with Japan, and a very hairy time for them in that country. But it had also given him some real insight into how diplomacy and statecraft hadn’t changed very much since 1905. It was an ill wind that blew no one good.
“I’ll listen,” Adler promised. “Let me know what your little stroll turns up, okay?”
“Sure will. I guess you have need-to-know on this,” John observed, with a raised eyebrow.
Adler turned and waved to one of the attendants, the pretty brunette one whom Clark had tagged as a certain spook. She was just as charming as hell, and drop-dead pretty, but seemed a little too clumsy in the galley to be a full-time flight attendant.
“Yes, Monsieur Minister?”
“How long until we land?”
“Four hours.”
“Okay, then, could we have a deck of cards and a bottle of wine?”
“Certainly.” She hustled the twelve feet to get them.
“Not supposed to drink on duty, sir,” Chavez said.
“You’re off-duty until we land,”
Adler told them. “And I like to play cards before I go into one of these sessions. Good for the nerves. You gentlemen up to a friendly game?”
“Well, Mr. Secretary, if you insist,” John replied. Now they’d all get a read on the mission. “A little five-card stud, maybe?”
EVERYBODY KNEW WHERE the line was. No official communiques had been exchanged, at least not between Beijing and Taipei, but it was known and understood even so, because people in uniform tend to be practical and observant. The PRC aircraft never flew closer than ten nautical miles (fifteen kilometers) to a certain north-south line, and the ROC aircraft, recognizing that fact, kept the same distance from the same invisible bit of longitude. On either side of the line, people could do anything they wanted, appear as aggressive as they wished, expend all the ordnance they could afford, and that was agreed to without so much as a single tactical radio message. It was all in the interest of stability. Playing with loaded guns was always dangerous, as much so for nation-states as for children, though the latter were more easily disciplined—the former were too big for that.
America now had four submarines in the Formosa Strait. These were spotted on—under—the invisible line, which was the safest place to be. A further collection of three ships was now at the north end of the passage, a cruiser, USS Port Royal, along with destroyers The Sullivans and Chandler. All were SAM ships, equipped with a total of 250 SM2-MR missiles. Ordinarily, they were tasked to guard a carrier from air attack, but “their” carrier was in Pearl Harbor having her engines replaced. Port Royal and The Sullivans—named for a family of sailors wiped out on the same ship in 1942—were both Aegis ships with powerful SPY radars, which were now surveilling air activity while the submarines were handling the rest. Chandler had a special ELINT team aboard to keep track of voice radio transmissions. Like a cop on the beat, they were not so much there to interfere with anyone’s exercises as to let people know that The Law was around, in a friendly sort of way, and as long as they were, things would not get out of hand. At least that was the idea. And if anyone objected to the presence of the American ships, their country would note that the seas were free for the innocent passage of all, and they weren’t in anyone’s way, were they? That they were actually part of someone else’s plan was not immediately apparent to anyone. What happened next confused nearly everyone.