Trigger Point

by Matthew Glass

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We have a difference of opinion here in the way we see this. We all agree that we feel we’ve been attacked. Okay, John? I agree with that. But what I don’t agree with is what you’re saying when we look at how they feel. You’re painting them as if everything they’re doing is to attack us.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Let me finish! You’re painting them as if they’re on this premeditated kind of campaign. And I’m saying, they might be thinking the same thing about us. Everything we do that we see as defensive, they might see as offensive.’

  ‘They’d be wrong,’ muttered Oakley.

  ‘Doesn’t matter if they’re wrong! Jesus Christ, what matters is what they think! Can’t you see that?’

  ‘Calm down, Bob,’ said Walt Stephenson, the vice-president, beside him. He chuckled. ‘You’ll have a heart attack.’

  Livingstone took another deep breath. ‘Mr President, what matters is what they think. Maybe they think they’re being attacked. Maybe they think the rest of the world thinks that as well. If that’s the case, they’ll do anything not to look weak. Maybe that’s why they announced these measures. They don’t want to do it, but they have to, because otherwise they think everyone else is going to look at them and think they’re backing down. Isn’t that a possibility?’

  ‘Well, if it’s a possibility,’ said Oakley, ‘we need to teach them you don’t do that kind of thing. They need to learn a lesson.’

  Livingstone closed his eyes for a second. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘They need to learn a lesson. Absolutely, John. And I guess now, when we’re in a position of such strength, is the time for us to teach them.’

  The president watched him closely. ‘Bob, do you have any evidence for this?’

  ‘Marion Ellman had a conversation with the Chinese ambassador at the UN. He was talking to her personally. Her feeling is that Zhang’s under internal pressure over this.’ He looked at Ryan Ferris. ‘Have you followed that up?’

  Ferris shrugged. ‘We’ve got nothing from our sources.’

  ‘Ambassador Ellman’s view is interpretation,’ said Gary Rose. ‘There’s nothing more to it than her interpretation of what she heard in a single conversation. Are we really going to make decisions on the basis of that?’

  ‘Show me something better,’ said Livingstone impatiently. ‘Gary, you ask for the evidence and you sit there rolling your eyes and you don’t want to listen to it. Then you say it’s interpretation. And in the meantime, what have we been doing? That hasn’t been based on interpretation? Everything we’ve done so far has been on the basis of the interpretation that the Chinese are trying to smash us, and if you ask me, on the face of it, what we’ve done hasn’t worked. Maybe you think it has, but I don’t. So if you ask me, maybe it’s time to stop making the same mistake over and over and start thinking about an alternative interpretation.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked you,’ muttered Oakley.

  ‘Well, the president did, John!’ Livingstone stopped. His heart was thumping so hard he almost felt ill.

  ‘Okay, guys,’ said Knowles, ‘this isn’t getting us anywhere.’

  There was a tense, angry silence.

  ‘Sir,’ said General Hale. ‘As a military man, I would have to say that the actions of the Chinese are a typical strategy to keep your opponent off balance. In terms of a military campaign, to harry him, if you will, so you knock him off balance and he can’t regain stability.’

  ‘This isn’t a military campaign, General,’ said Livingstone curtly. ‘Perhaps that’s escaped your notice.’

  ‘This is not constructive,’ said the president. ‘Bob, let’s try and make some progress.’ The president looked at the Treasury secretary. ‘What’s the damage here?’

  ‘Once they implement these measures?’ said Opitz. ‘We’re still working on that but ball park, it’s serious. It’s big.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘It’ll have an effect. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. How big it’ll be … that’s harder to say. It also depends on how we respond.’

  ‘Their press has been loud on the measures once they were announced,’ said Ryan Ferris. ‘They’re saying the Chinese economy is a lot more independent of ours this time round and they don’t think there’ll be an effect at all.’

  ‘That’s the line for domestic consumption. It’s got to have an effect.’

  ‘They’re saying they’re going to boost the domestic economy, fiscal stimulus, etc., etc. They’re also saying a lot of the slack will be taken up by exports to Europe and other economies.’

  ‘That depends on what the Europeans do.’

  ‘What are they going to do?’ said Rose. ‘This is a WTO dispute between us and them. The Europeans aren’t getting involved.’

  ‘So bottom line,’ said Knowles, ‘we take a hit. What happens to them?’

  ‘They’ll take a hit,’ said Opitz. ‘How big it’ll be, we need to work on that.’

  ‘No way Zhang would take a risk of a serious hit,’ said Rose. ‘No way he’s putting Chinese workers out of jobs.’

  ‘No way he’s going to put a huge stimulus in, not after what happened last time.’

  ‘He’ll crack down hard. He’ll crack down hard and early.’

  ‘Gary, that doesn’t change the fact that they’ll take a hit. They have to. That’s if they implement the measures they announced against us. Mr President, that’s not a given, by any means, certainly not in full. They’ve got a track record of talking louder than they act.’

  ‘Let’s call their bluff,’ said Oakley.

  The president looked around the table. ‘Do we agree on that?’

  ‘What exactly does that mean?’ said Livingstone. ‘Calling their bluff. What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m saying let’s match them,’ retorted Oakley.

  ‘You mean we take those kind of measures as well?’

  ‘Absolutely. What we’ve done to protect our markets isn’t illegal. It doesn’t contravene any rules.’

  ‘Well, I think you might find that–’

  ‘National emergency. Isn’t that what Susan’s told us, we have a national emergency derogation under WTO rules? I don’t know what we’ve got here if we haven’t got a national emergency so that gives us the right to do what we’re doing.’

  ‘I don’t think they see it–’

  ‘They’re the ones in breach! There’s a process in the WTO for complaint if they have a complaint and they’ve chosen to circumvent that and take the law into their own hands. Well, fine. You want to do that, we can do it too.’

  Livingstone stared at the defense secretary. He felt faint. He pulled at his necktie.

  ‘I’m not sure about that, John,’ said the president. ‘Let’s take it one step at a time. One thing that’s certain is we can’t step back from what we’ve done.’

  ‘But if what we’ve done is right,’ said Rose, ‘if we really believe we’re justified in doing it, then I think John has a point. We’ve done something we have a right to do and now we’ve been attacked. Not through due process, but by a kind of wildcat action. What’s our response?’

  Walt Stephenson, who had made no contribution since the discussion began, cleared his throat. ‘I don’t claim to know too much about finance and foreign affairs, but this thing the Chinese have done does sound awful aggressive.’ He glanced at Bob Livingstone, who was sitting beside him. ‘Bob, you okay?’

  Livingstone nodded. He felt clammy and nauseated.

  ‘You look like hell. You want some water?’

  Livingstone shook his head.

  ‘Okay, well, this does sound awful aggressive. I’m not sure we should take it lying down.’

  Tom Knowles thought about it. There was a logic to what Oakley and Rose had suggested. Accepting the Chinese actions without some kind of retaliation would make it look as if the United States accepted that China was justified in doing what it had done. And yet the idea of taking another step, so soo
n, so belligerently, seemed too much. Rose and Oakley were both strongly in favor of it, but his faith in them had taken a hit in the last few days. And it was clear that Bob Livingstone had a different view, although it wasn’t clear how he would act on it. Stay silent, perhaps.

  He glanced at Livingstone. The secretary of state’s head was bowed, as if he was studying one of the papers in front of him.

  ‘I’m not sure where this goes,’ said Knowles.

  ‘Mr President,’ replied Oakley, ‘we’ve got to come back at them. We let this pass, we look weak.’

  The president glanced at Marty Perez. ‘I assume we have plans for something like this.’

  Perez nodded, looking pained at the thought. ‘We have a set of measures we can activate. In principle it’s the mirror image of what they’ve done to us.’

  Knowles felt pained as well. He didn’t want to announce anything now, not on Christmas Eve. Whatever effect the new market measures had had in restoring a sense of hope – whatever was left after Zhang’s response – would evaporate utterly. If he could somehow get to the holidays, he felt, there would be time to … He didn’t know what. Think it through. Or for something to happen. Something to lessen the tension.

  ‘Sir, I think we should issue a statement,’ said Roberta Devlin. ‘We condemn the measures taken by China and say we’re considering our response. That might be a complaint to the WTO or it might be something considerably more immediate. We could make that sound quite threatening. And reiterate our right to do what we’ve already done, of course.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, the president noticed Ed Abrahams nodding.

  ‘You could also say it’s the holiday season and a time for people to try to step back and find ways to heal their differences. Give it a tone of magnanimity. Put a little statesmanship in there. It might even give them a way to back out.’

  ‘Just puts the whole thing off,’ said Oakley.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with John,’ said Rose. ‘We can put it off for a few days, but we’re going to have to take some action, and it’s going to need to be more than bringing a case to the WTO. I doubt they’re going to back out, as Roberta says. Whether it’s better to have it hanging over us or get it done right away, that’s largely a political consideration.’

  Knowles looked at Livingstone. ‘Bob, what do you think?’

  Livingstone nodded quickly. ‘That’s fine,’ he murmured.

  ‘What’s fine? What Roberta said?’

  Livingstone nodded again. He had lost track of the discussion. He was finding it hard to breathe.

  The president watched him. The secretary of state didn’t say anything else.

  ‘Walt,’ said Knowles to the vice-president, ‘do you want to say anything?’

  Stephenson raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, it’s a tough one.’ He toyed with a pen, getting ready to deliver his opinion. ‘We’re going to have to face them down on this, but maybe Roberta’s right. A little magnanimity the day before Christmas puts us on the moral high ground. On the other hand, if we’re going to have to match them in the end, do we lose anything by waiting? Maybe we do. I don’t see there’s a right and a wrong answer here.’

  The president watched him for a moment. ‘Thanks,’ he said eventually.

  He considered the problem a little longer.

  ‘Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to go with Roberta’s idea. I’ll make a statement along the lines Roberta suggested.’

  ‘And then what?’ said Oakley.

  ‘Then … we’ll see what comes back. Like Marty says, what else can they throw at us? Let them chew on it for a few days. Maybe then we try to make contact and see if they want to talk about it privately. We can still take action if we need to, but this gives us time to think it through a little more. Marty and Susan, you want to work up a plan for that? And let’s have the full numbers for the impact on us and the impact on them. All that stuff. We need to know it. I’m sorry to be asking you to get this done over the holiday. I guess you’re going to have a few people who won’t get much of a Christmas. Tell them I appreciate it.’

  They nodded.

  Rose and Oakley glanced at each other.

  There was silence. One other thing was on the president’s mind. It was still early on Christmas Eve. Dewy and Montez were still somewhere in Sudan. Time was running out, but it wasn’t impossible. He turned to Hale. ‘Any chance of anything happening with our guys, General?’

  ‘It could happen any time, sir. It just takes one sighting, one loose piece of communication, and we’ll find them.’

  ‘Admiral Pressler will let me know as soon as he thinks there’s a chance to go in and get them, right? Any time, night or day.’

  ‘Yes, sir. As soon as he thinks there’s a situation that meets the operational requirements, it’ll be your call.’

  ‘Okay. It’s just if we could somehow manage to–’

  There was a thud. The president looked around. Bob Livingstone’s head had hit the table and he was in the process of sliding off his chair. He fell sideways against the vice-president.

  The vice-president stared at him. For an instant no one moved. Then General Hale jumped up and hauled the secretary of state down on the floor and thumped his chest with a fist. Roberta Devlin grabbed a phone and called for the duty physician from the White House Medical Unit. Three minutes later a doctor and a nurse ran in carrying a portable defibrillator and a bag of drugs. They tore open Livingstone’s shirt and shocked him three times on the floor of the Situation Room, pumping on his chest until a stretcher arrived.

  They were still pumping on his chest as the secretary of state was wheeled out.

  48

  IT WAS A dark, sobering Christmas. Tom Knowles couldn’t remember one like it.

  Bob Livingstone had been pronounced dead in the emergency room of George Washington University Hospital, where he had been taken from the White House. Tom phoned Alicia Livingstone when he heard. Sarah phoned her as well. That afternoon Tom and Sarah flew to Camp David. Tom gazed at the bleak, bare Maryland countryside below him. The landscape matched his thoughts. He thought of Harley Gauss’s widow. It seemed a long time ago now that the airman had died and he had promised to bring his remains home. He hadn’t done it. He thought of that poor young woman in Jacksonville facing up to her first Christmas without her husband. He thought of Pete Dewy and Phil Montez, the two men who were somewhere in Sudan, and what their families must be feeling.

  At Camp David, Steve and his family were there to meet them. He gave Steve a good long hug. He put his arms around the twins and hugged them both at once. Tom felt a tear in his eye and struggled to keep it back.

  By Christmas Day, the date of the funeral had been fixed for the 28th at the National Cemetery in Jefferson City, Missouri. Tom and Sarah had been planning to fly to Nevada on the 27th to spend New Year at their ranch in Elko, but decided to stay on at Camp David before heading to Missouri for the funeral and go to Nevada from there.

  They were dark days. Reflective. The daily CIA briefing continued to take place. The Chinese government hadn’t responded to the statement that Dean Moss had issued in Knowles’ name late in the afternoon of the 24th. Knowles spoke to Gary Rose a couple of times, to Ed Abrahams, to Susan Opitz. Not much. The bare minimum. He spoke with the British prime minister, who called him Christmas Day to offer his condolences over Bob Livingstone’s death and to discuss the statement the president had released. Knowles kept the conversation short. After that he made himself unavailable for any other foreign leader unless President Zhang decided to call up.

  He read. He had hardly got a chance to do that for months. He played grandpa with the twins. He went for walks through the icy grounds of Camp David and did a lot of thinking.

  He called up Dale Lambert, the ex-Idaho senator and presidential candidate who had been a formative influence in his political development. They had a good discussion about all kinds of things, including China. Dale said that he had to do what he had to do
to protect American interests. If it meant facing China down, then that’s what it meant. It wasn’t going to be easy, but then that wasn’t what he had been elected for, to do the easy things.

  He felt that with those few quiet days he was able to gain some distance, to step back from the madness and the frenzy that had engulfed him over the last few weeks in Washington. Soon, he knew, they would engulf him again, which made these days all the more precious. The things that Bob Livingstone had said in that last meeting in the Situation Room stayed with him. In two years, he had barely once rung Bob for advice. Yet now that Livingstone was dead, he found himself wishing he could call him up and hear what he had to say.

  Tom Knowles had doubts. He was deep in confrontation with China, and that was the last thing he wanted. Yet all anyone around him seemed to be able to do was take him further in. Those quiet days, those long walks, seemed to make that clear. Tit for tat didn’t work, he knew that. Tit for tat had to end somewhere. But now you were in, how did you get out without looking weak? No one seemed to be able to tell him that.

  He wondered if President Zhang was wondering the same thing.

  The next time he sat down with Gary Rose and his other advisors, he decided, that was the question he was going to ask. How could he stop the tit for tat? How could he bring it to an end without looking as if he had backed down?

  He had three full days in Camp David. Then early on the 28th he and Sarah were taken back to Washington and flew out to Missouri for Bob Livingstone’s funeral.

  IN MANHATTAN, MARION ELLMAN had spent Christmas thinking as well. Livingstone’s death had put a lot of things in perspective. As had spending time with two young children for what seemed like the first time in months.

  She reread Joel Ehrenreich’s book. It impressed her even more the second time around. She thought a lot about what Liu had said to her. Neither side, the American or the Chinese, was better than the other, she thought. Neither side, she believed, wanted to be in the position in which they found themselves, and yet here they were. No better than two screaming, grasping children. She watched her own two children, and she found herself, for the first time, fearing for them. Really fearing for them. Not the familiar, quotidian fear that every mother feels for her child when they’re out of her sight, when any of the things that can happen every day in this world could happen to them, but fear for the kind of world they were going to inherit.