“I am General Morgan Carrie,” she said to the group. “At the request of the president I assumed the directorship of Op-Center commencing at eight-thirty this morning. Unfortunately, I have no information regarding the disposition of former-director Hood. Perhaps one of you has spoken with him?”
Most eyes looked down. A few heads shook slowly.
“I will be pleased to share whatever information I am provided about Mr. Hood,” Carrie said.
“We had our differences, General, but he is our friend,” Bob Herbert said.
Carrie looked at him. “I am happy to hear that, Mr. Herbert. It gives me something to shoot for.”
“That isn’t why I mentioned it,” Herbert replied. “When General Mike Rodgers was dismissed six months ago, Paul Hood was up front about it. He was unhappy. He was apologetic. And he was sensitive to the fact that none of us was going to like it. This team has never relied on information that was ‘provided’ to us. We dig it up. I want to make sure we know what happened to Paul, why, and how.”
“Or else?” General Carrie asked. There seemed to be a threat in Herbert’s tone. She did not like being challenged any more than she liked being patronized.
“Think of it as the intelligence equivalent of leaving one of your troops behind in battle,” Herbert told her. “Leave unanswered questions lying around, and you will have a command, but you won’t have trust or respect.”
“That would be my problem,” she replied sharply. “Your responsibility will be to do your job, not mine.”
“My job description includes advising the director,” Herbert said, unfazed. “I believe I have just done that, General Carrie.”
Carrie unfolded her hands and leaned on the table. The annual evaluation Hood had written of Bob Herbert included a notation that the intelligence chief tended to challenge everyone. Hood saw it as an “often productive if frequently exasperating exercise.” Hood had not understated the case.
“Do you have any other advice for me, Mr. Herbert?” she asked.
“None at present, General.”
“Good. Then I have some for you. There is a line between advice and criticism, and you just crossed it. Sometimes it’s a word or a phrase; sometimes it’s a tone. But cross it again in my presence, Mr. Herbert, and I will be able to tell this team exactly what happened to the former intelligence director of Op-Center.”
The general took a moment to study their reactions. She felt like the new Medusa: they were six faces cut in stone. Even Herbert. The irony was that she did not disagree with what Herbert had said. In the military, information was passed down through channels, not dug up. Op-Center was a civilian agency, more aggressive, more contraceptive than reactionary. She would have to get used to their way of doing things. But on her timetable, not his.
“I will be meeting with you all individually as time and responsibilities permit, starting with Bob.” She looked at him. “Perhaps we can scroll things back and start fresh.”
Herbert’s cheek twitched, and he dipped his forehead quickly as though he were a base coach giving signals. She took that for a “Go.” Lowell Coffey and Liz Gordon both smiled slightly. The general’s attempt to reach out to Herbert apparently had scored points with them. Either that or they knew she was wasting her time.
She would find out soon enough.
“In the meantime, I need your help,” General Carrie went on. She made that sound as conciliatory as possible without sounding weak. She opened her folder and looked at a printout. “There was an alert on my computer from Hot Button Operations upstairs. They looked into a pair of explosions that occurred this morning, one in Charleston, South Carolina, at five A.M. and the other in Durban, South Africa, at around five P.M. local time. The HoBOs suggest the attacks may have something in common. According to the Charleston Police Department, the ship that was blown up in their harbor was carrying illegal Chinese workers. The attack overseas three hours later destroyed sugarcane silos owned by a Chinese firm. The HoBOs suggest the second explosion was too swift to be retaliation, but both may be first shots in a broad war of some kind.” She looked across the table. “Suggestions?”
“We had evidence that the Chinese were becoming increasingly involved in African affairs nearly a year ago,” Ron Plummer said. “They were involved in diamond operations in Botswana.”
“That was part of the attack on the Catholic church there?” Carrie asked.
“Yes. We believed at the time that some faction of the Chinese government would have benefited from destabilization in the region,” Plummer said.
“We filed a formal white paper through our embassy in Beijing,” Coffey told her. “Our ambassador received a response from the director of the International Security Committee of the National People’s Congress. She strongly denied that Beijing was engaged in official activities on the African continent outside their embassies, and also disavowed any private misdeeds that might be going on.”
“I should point out that the Chinese are usually pretty forthright about their involvements abroad,” Plummer added. “When they feel possessive about something, such as the oil deposits in the Spratly Islands, they go after them openly.”
“Which doesn’t mean much in this case,” Coffey said. “The letter from the DISC didn’t preclude the involvement of private individuals inside and outside the government.”
“You’re talking about a black economy,” the general said.
“Not just that,” Plummer replied. “Many wealthy Chinese invest overseas because constraints on ownership of businesses and property are much less restrictive than in the PRC.”
“But the illegal workers would have been what you suggest, General, a black market,” Darrell McCaskey said. “They get smuggled in for an average price of two hundred grand each. They stay indentured, working as prostitutes or cheap labor, until that sum is repaid. Since half the money they earn is sent to relatives in China, they are effectively enslaved for life. The FBI has been playing catch-up with these undocumented Chinese workers for decades. The Bureau has actually been losing ground since resources have been shifted to Homeland Security and the tracking of illegals from Malaysia, the Philippines, and the Middle East.”
“Maybe we need to change the way the search is carried out,” the general said.
“What are your thoughts?” Herbert asked.
The intelligence chief sounded challenging rather than beaten. Carrie wondered if Bob Herbert knew the meaning of the word defeat. Or humility.
“HoBOs says that Chinese-Americans represent four percent of the national population,” Carrie said. “Most of those people are concentrated in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Those are not areas in which we want to see a potential conflict spread. I suggest we have a look to see if there’s a war brewing. Who takes point on that?”
“That depends where we want to run the operations,” Herbert said. “Two of our stringers, Dave Battat and Aideen Marley, are familiar with Africa. One of our local people can shoot down to Charleston.”
“That’s catch-up,” she said. “I want to get ahead of this. What kind of resources do we have in Beijing?”
“A few stringers,” Herbert told her. “Our contact with the Chinese has been in proxy settings.”
“Korea and Vietnam redux,” Plummer said.
“Well, we know how those turned out,” Carrie said wistfully. “Maybe it’s time to change the dynamics.”
“Excuse me, General, but did you see action in Vietnam?” Liz inquired.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“It’s the first time you looked away from the table,” she said. “Like you were looking back.”
Carrie felt exposed but decided that was not necessarily a bad thing. It told the group a little about her past, something that might start to earn her the respect Herbert had spoken about. Liz Gordon was wearing a slightly satisfied look, one that suggested it was exactly why the psychologist had asked the question.
The general leaned
forward again. “Bob, maybe you can canvass the team and your resources, and we can have our sit-down over lunch in my office. We can go through whatever thoughts you have then and pin down a course of action.”
Herbert nodded, this time more affirmatively.
The general closed the folder, then took a sip of water. “If there’s nothing else, I want to thank you all for sharing your time and thoughts. I also want to assure you that we will never forget or slight the contributions of those who came before us—Paul Hood, Mike Rodgers, and especially the men and women who gave more than just their time and industry—Martha Mackall, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires, and the heroes of Striker.”
Darrell McCaskey pounded the table lightly with the side of his left fist, a gesture of tribute echoed by everyone else in the room.
Including Bob Herbert.
And for a moment, the Tank seemed almost like home to General Carrie.
NINE
Beijing, China Monday, 10:46 P.M.
The twentieth-century Chinese Communist leader Liu Shao-ch’i once said that there could be no such thing as a perfect leader in China. The nation was too large, its population too diverse.
“If there is such a leader,” the philosopher-politician posited in a collection of his writings, “he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose to look like an elephant.”
Balding, stocky Prime Minister Le Kwan Po was not sure he agreed that China was ungovernable. But it was true that leading this nation of provinces with vastly different histories and needs required an individual of uncommon wisdom and resourcefulness. There is a tale told about the last dowager empress of China, Tz’u-hsi, whose reign was marked by the rise and fall of the turbulent Boxer Rebellion. The insurrection was named for the men at the center of the revolt, the secret society of the Righteous Harmonious Fists, which was founded in 1898 and fought to keep China from falling under the undue influence of foreigners. The empress approved of the modern conveniences brought by British, Russians, Japanese, and Americans, devices such as telegraphs and trains. But she disapproved of missionaries and foreign influence over Chinese affairs. It was a difficult balance to support them both.
One morning, a Boxer was captured after murdering a British businessman on his way to the embassy. The Boxer beat him to death in his carriage, the businessman’s Chinese driver having run off at the sight of the attacker. One of Tz’u-hsi’s advisers wanted the Boxer beheaded. Another counselor warned that to do so would only encourage the Boxers to hit harder. The empress allowed the execution to take place, though not for the attack on the foreigner. In her decree she stated that the man’s actions had set one of her ministers against the other and disturbed the tranquillity of the morning. For that crime, and that only, he was to die.
Le Kwan Po contemplated the complexities of gestures and appearances as his state car pulled away from the government building at No. 2, Chaoyangmen Nandajie, Chaoyang District, in Beijing. His own life was full of such careful maneuvers. For example, the prime minister had two cars. One was a Chinese-made Lingyang, the Antelope, and the other a more comfortable Volkswagen Polo manufactured at the German-run plant in Shanghai. He rode the Antelope in Beijing, the Polo in the less populated countryside.
Always a balance for appearances, he thought. Please the nationalists while holding something out for potential foreign investors.
Except for the driver, the prime minister was the only passenger in the chauffer-driven car. Typically, an aide and a secretary rode home with the sixty-six-year-old native of the remote Xizang Zizhiqu province near Nepal. But the prime minister felt like being alone tonight. He wanted to reflect on the disturbing events of the day.
He looked out the window as the car drove past the lighted monuments and palaces surrounding Tian’anmen Square. It was a hot and rainy night. Large drops ran down the window. They smeared the lights of the city—fittingly, on a day when nothing was clear. The driver guided the small sedan through narrow side streets. At this hour, in this weather, the lanes were sparsely populated with the carts and bicycles that filled them during the day. The vehicle moved quickly toward Le Kwan Po’s nearby Beijing residence on the top floor of the exclusive Cheng Yuan Towers apartment complex. The prime minister had another official home, a weekend retreat in the Beijing suburbs at the foot of Shou’an Mountain near Xiangshan Park. During the week the prime minister preferred to remain in the city. That allowed him to work as late as possible. It also permitted him to stay synchronized with the pulse of Beijing.
It enabled him to watch those who wanted his job or sought to remove him as a thoughtful, mediating influence.
The prime minister enjoyed the tranquillity of the countryside, yet that scenic, agrarian world was China’s past. The future was in the increasingly cosmopolitan capital and cities like Shanghai, with their proliferation of students and businessmen—many of them from rich Taiwan, the supposed enemy. That was another act for an acrobat greater than any the Beijing Opera had yet produced: solving the Taiwan question. Chinese businesses were growing enormously due to investments coming across the strait. The Chinese military was being held to the budgetary levels of previous years as the threat from both Taipei and Russia was diminished. That did not make high-ranking career officers happy. Fewer commands meant fewer promotions. It caused grumbling up and down the ranks.
Though Le Kwan Po knew what the empress experienced a century ago, he did not have her wisdom. He had not fought wars and rivals, dealt with prejudice against his gender and heritage, nor had to guard against or formulate regicidal plots. He was simply a conservative career politician, the son of a schoolteacher mother. His father had been a village magistrate at twenty-one and had risen regularly to positions in town, county, municipality, province, and finally the central government. He was not the prime minister solely because of his experience in government. He was here because, unlike his colleagues, he had not made any serious missteps. His background was spotted and propped with careful alliances and cautious agendas.
Even more important than the ruthless will of the dowager empress, however, the prime minister did not have her unilateral authority to act. In addition to the president and vice president above him, there was a cabinet with very powerful and ambitious ministers and the National People’s Congress with its proliferation of special interests, both local and personal.
The current struggle between Chou Shin, head of the secretive 8341 Unit of the Central Security Regiment, and People’s Liberation Army hero General Tam Li was outside the prime minister’s experience. According to reports Le Kwan Po had received from the Ministry of State Security—the Guojia Anquan Bu, or Guoanbu—the two rivals had begun a long-simmering face down today in two foreign ports. And that was just part of the problem. Tam Li was one of those officers who was unhappy with the lack of growth in the military. If his two displeasures converged, and he wished to express them at home, he could be a formidable threat to the stability of the nation.
It was just like it was in feudal times, when every man of importance had centuries of hate behind him. Then, even if a man was willing to look past personal differences with another, the shadow of their ancestors would not allow it.
It was quite a burden, the prime minister reflected.
It was also easier to defend clan honor centuries ago, when a man was surrounded by like-minded individuals, and vast distances made confrontation an occasional matter. Today, the few men who harbored different loyalties, who had different goals, were in very close proximity. For the most part they managed to work together in the name of nationalism.
But not always.
The rain tapped on the roof. The prime minister reached into the vest pocket of his white trench coat. He withdrew a case of cigarettes and lit one. He sat back. Whenever China finally managed to reverse the trend and spread its influence around the world, there were two things he hoped. First, that his people would learn to make a car as good as a BMW or a Mercedes. And second, that they
could produce a cigarette as soul-satisfying as a Camel.
The prime minister did not know how he wanted to pursue this conflict between proud, stubborn, influential members of the government. It was not a matter he wished to present to the president or vice president. Disputes between officials, even those with international ramifications, were the responsibility of the prime minister. He was supposed to be able to settle them.
Le Kwan Po wished that securing peace was as easy as sacrificing a minor third party, the way the dowager empress did with the Boxers. Of course, that only delayed the inevitable, having to deal with the rebellion itself. The foreign powers sent their own armies to China to crush the nationalists. Not only did the empress decline to stop them, she embraced their Western ways.
China did not.
The dynasty fell shortly after Tz’u-hsi’s death. Nationalist forces were so upset with her legacy that they blasted open the royal tomb, stole the riches, and mutilated her remains. The anti-imperial backlash allowed Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek to come to power, each espousing a form of Western-style republic that opened wounds and created political and ideological chaos. It was not until Mao Tse-tung and the Communists came to power in 1949 that order was truly restored.
That had been a proud time, centuries in the making. Le Kwan Po remembered hearing his father read of the events from newspapers that were published in a tiny print shop in their small village of Gamba. The prime minister’s uncle set type there in the evening. During the day, he worked in a quarry that was literally in the shadow of Mount Everest. The young Le could still vividly remember the joy in his father’s voice as he read about the end to the civil war that had tortured a nation already bleeding from the long war with Japan. He was almost giddy about the victory of the Communists over the republicans—who had the temerity to call themselves nationalists—certain it would help those who had to work all day, every day, just to support a small family in an extremely modest lifestyle.
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