Currency War

by Lawrence B. Lindsey

  Ben knew he was facing a worthy adversary. Li had obviously thought through his strategy and Ben knew that if Li played his cards perfectly, he very well might win. The only comfort Ben took was that Li would not be left alone to play his hand. The politicians in China, like politicians everywhere, thought they knew better. Ben knew that his best chance was having the Chinese politicians, not Li, play the hand. Ben also knew that if U.S. politicians took charge, he wouldn’t be able to play his cards well either.

  Li sat quietly, assessing Ben. The American’s work as both an academic and financial adviser was legendary. He was not some mere academic economist caught up in theories from the middle of the last century. Ben was a practitioner. His clients got rich in part by using his advice. He would know how to confront China’s moves in global markets. Li knew Ben must have some trick up his sleeve. But he also knew that the American political system was even more complicated than China’s. That meant more politicians seeking the limelight by grandstanding about Federal Reserve policies. In the last decade, Trump’s constant threats against the man he had appointed as chairman were legendary. Li was hoping that Ben would face the same obstacles with President Turner, considered a legendary grandstander in his own right.

  Finally Li said, “Ben, thank you so much for coming all this way. I know you have a plane to catch. I believe we understand each other well, and this meeting helped in that regard. Fortunately, we did not have our first meeting at one of those G20 summits, where there are too many prying eyes and ears. I hope we continue to be able to have frank and candid conversations.” He stood and extended his hand to Ben.

  “Governor Li,” Ben said as they shook, “I share your desire to continue to have frank and candid exchanges. I think we both agree that despite our countries’ differences, we both want to minimize the needless pain they could suffer in this conflict.”

  Li nodded in tacit acknowledgment and began to escort Ben to the door, which opened well before they got there. It was all too convenient. Ben knew that someone had been listening in on the entire conversation and knew exactly when to open the door.

  The men shook hands one last time. Zhang Jin escorted Ben down the elevator to their car in the basement.

  There was something in Ben’s mind about Li’s body language that hinted at a touch of insecurity. He thought about Li’s comment that if the People’s Bank of China was holding gold, then the common people would treasure the yuan. That suggested they weren’t treasuring it all that much at the moment.

  He had read CIA briefing memos about what was happening in some of the more remote Chinese cities. Sporadic reports of bank runs and heavy-handed responses by the authorities were becoming more frequent. With any luck, the politicians would become nervous and force Li to move more quickly than he otherwise would. That would deprive Li of the time he needed to get things ready to roll.

  Ben continued to analyze the conversation with Li as he rode to the airport. Li was nervous. He was reticent to talk freely and clearly hoped they could reach an understanding that benefited both of their people without either resorting to what amounted to an economic nuclear option. To Ben this meant that Li knew he didn’t hold all the cards.

  Then he glanced out the window of the limousine to see those mobs forming in the streets, realized why they were forming, and then got out of that damn limousine so he could see a bank run in real time.

  * * *

  What the hell had he been thinking? Had he been driven by a vision of himself as an aged academic, regaling his students with the story he’d tell every year? I was in Beijing during their great bank run, the one where the troops fired on the crowds. And I hid in a dumpster with—

  He hoped that was not it. His psyche demanded relevance in the present and not some reminiscence of past days of glory.

  He started to cough but fought to keep it silent. The stench in the dumpster was getting to him. Jin didn’t even look up, still curled against him, phone clutched in her hands, still shivering. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. At least, for the moment, the shooting had stopped. He did nothing to reveal their position, still feeling that even the relatively thin wall of metal provided them with some semblance of safety.

  I’d better survive this, or Bernadette’s going to kill me, he thought. Never mind that. She’s going to kill me anyway after I tell her how I survived. Not enough that I stepped out into the middle of a riot. I had to do it with my minder in tow.

  Maybe it was a male thing, but he suddenly realized how few of the details about Jin he had shared with Bernadette. But he couldn’t hide this one and in telling his tale it would become clear how much he had neglected to tell her.

  Yeah. Forget the rioters. Forget the soldiers firing on the crowd. Bernadette’s the real hell I’m going to have to face.

  * * *

  The pounding on the outside of the dumpster nearly made Ben wet himself.

  He had resigned himself to lying there in his disgusting, dire state, thinking maybe if he could sleep the time would pass. But insistent pain from his shoulder wouldn’t allow it. He ended up staring at the shaft of light beaming in from the hole left by a round from an AK-47.

  He wasn’t sure how long it had been since things had grown quiet. The shooting was the first thing to stop. Then the crying and whimpering, the shouting of orders in Mandarin. Ben was in shock and couldn’t bother even to get the gist of what was being said. The trucks had come, with their huge diesel motors. They sat and idled, men grunted, people groaned. Then the trucks left, and it grew eerily silent. Ben thought for certain that there should be something else out there, the sound of propaganda music from loudspeakers, or the sounds of a broom sweeping up broken glass and spent bullet casings. But there was nothing.

  That was, until the banging on the side of the dumpster, rhythmic and intentional. Ben didn’t know whether this meant the end of his life or a return to the one he had left behind forever when he and Jin had hopped into the dumpster. Shouts in Mandarin came from outside the metal walls that had once provided shelter. Jin shouted back and there was a squeal as the rusty hinges of the lid started to move. Ben was blinded as light streamed in.

  A face appeared at the opening, a young soldier with an official People’s Army helmet. His expression changed from mission accomplished to damn, that stinks in an instant and he stepped away.

  Zhang Jin stood slowly, trying at first to shake off the stuff that clung to her, but quickly gave up and began to give orders to the soldier, who in turn passed her commands on to someone nearby.

  Ben stood now, realizing the futility of trying to shed the putridness that had soaked into his clothes. His head popped out of the opening and he saw that the alley had been cleared with the exception of a single military truck and a limousine, this one different from the one he had been riding in. A dozen or so soldiers occupied the alley, picking through debris and inspecting other dumpsters. When they saw the tall Caucasian stick his head up, they all quit working and made their way toward the truck.

  He looked at Jin. Clothes disheveled, covered in grime and hair askew, she looked like a chewed rat. He was sure he didn’t look much better.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything, just started trying to climb over the walls of the dumpster. He bent down, cupped his hand under her raised foot, and boosted her up, a more elegant solution than the one that had gotten her in there hours before. Ben hoisted himself over the top of the dumpster, putting most of the weight on the arm and shoulder that was not throbbing. He did a vault into the alley. Not bad for someone my age, he thought, and then vowed to double down on his workouts. There was a real advantage to upper body strength.

  A man in an officer’s uniform stalked up and was having a heated discussion with Jin as Ben tried to scrape grease and fish intestines off his suit. He was so numb that the Mandarin still wasn’t clicking with him. All he could tell was that the conversation was not a happy one.

  Seeing Ben, the officer motion
ed at him and looked at his injured shoulder. More yelling at Jin, who appeared not to be giving any ground. They appeared to be of roughly equal rank but in different silos of the state’s security apparatus. This battle was as much a contest between competing bureaucracies as between two individuals.

  When the tirade was over, the officer walked them out of the alley toward a waiting staff car. Ben didn’t need any arm-twisting. Jin gathered as much dignity as she could and followed in a way that told the officer she was doing her job and not merely following his orders. The soldiers around them were quick to step out of the way, turning their faces as the grimy pair passed. Another soldier emerged from the driver’s seat and started to open the door for them, but his face puckered and he said something to the officer. The officer shouted, and in a moment, two more soldiers appeared, each with a tarpaulin that they hesitantly wrapped around Ben and Jin.

  More conversation and Jin said, “We are to ride in the truck instead.”

  “Makes sense, I guess,” Ben mumbled. Detailing the staff car after they had been in it would be a thankless task. Better to ride in something that could be hosed off.

  The soldiers carefully boosted the two of them up and they took places on the bench next to the driver’s compartment. The benches then filled up with soldiers, although they took care to keep their distance from the duo. The engine fired, vibrating the soles of their feet, their butts, and their backs, and pulled out of the alley. Looking past the soldiers out the rear of the bed, he could see the street was deserted.

  “Can we talk,” he said to Jin in a low voice.

  She nodded. “They’re mostly boys who don’t care to know English.”

  Ben nodded at the street. “Curfew?”

  “Most likely.”

  “How long?”

  “Until the insurgents who caused this unfortunate uprising can be identified and any survivors punished.”

  Ben gave her an incredulous look.

  “There’s something you Americans say, ‘It is what it is.’ ”

  “What happens now?”

  Jin didn’t look at him. “Our finest doctors will treat your shoulder. Probably after you have had the chance to clean up.”

  Ordinarily Ben would have laughed, but her growing distance alarmed him.

  “What about you?”

  Her expression didn’t change. “Well, the crowd burned the limousine. And our driver did not make it. He was the lucky one. I have brought shame upon my organization and my superiors.”

  He waited for her to say something else. She didn’t. He felt a sudden pang of regret, afraid she was looking at a life of indentured servitude, making tennis shoes or iPhones for the rest of her life. He wanted to tell her he was sorry again but wasn’t sure it would mean anything in the moment.

  He asked, “Is there something I can do for you to help your situation?”

  A long pause from Jin. “Please do not.”

  “I should have let you make your call when you first had the chance. I didn’t realize what you were doing.”

  “You thought I was doing what every other poor citizen was doing out there on the street.” She finally looked at him. “I am grateful to you, Ben Coleman. If I had stood there talking on the phone, I likely would have been killed. You saved my life.”

  “But did I really?”

  She broke eye contact to stare at the flapping canvas side. “It is what it is.”

  Ben wanted to smack whoever had taught her that expression. “Listen, Jin—”

  “No,” she said. “It is time for you to listen. You need to go home and do your important things, things that are bigger than what happens to me. Things the world needs to know.” For a moment she showed that same tight-lipped expression that Li had hours ago.

  “But I know people. Important people. I can—”

  “No,” Jin said. “You are so typically American. When you see a problem, you want to jump in and fix it. You want to make everything better, but you don’t realize that what makes things better for Americans doesn’t always work in the rest of the world. But still you go on, trying to make the world American.

  “So do not make those promises, Ben Coleman. You Americans, your films, your television, your culture, are all full of them. ‘I can help you. I can come for you. Be faithful. Wait for me. I will find you.’ And the solutions they show are all so ridiculous. They have no idea how things work, let alone how things work in my part of the world.”

  The truck lurched to a halt. The solders sprang to their feet, as did Jin, leaving Ben sitting. For the first time in ages he was at a loss for words as the soldiers helped her out of the truck, eyes rolling at her smell, laughing as she walked away.

  He rose to his feet, his shoulder reminding him it needed attention. She was right, he realized. He wanted to do that American thing, to shout out at her that it was all right, he’d pull the strings, he’d fix it.

  She disappeared through a door. The soldiers helped Ben off the truck next, and he could hear their snickers and grunts of disgust from the stink he was giving off. Once off, he started to walk, but they shouted and pointed, directing him to a different door than the one that Jin had used.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “HONEY, I’M HOME.”

  Ben dropped his suitcases on the floor. There was a deafening silence in return.

  Bernadette entered the foyer from the living room, the faintest of smiles on her lips. Her red hair was brushed back off her shoulders and her green eyes flickered uncertainly.

  “A bit late, aren’t you?” After all these years, he still found her British accent delightful, but today it did nothing to mask the undercurrent of anger in her voice.

  “Let’s say a bad day at the office.” Ben chuckled to break the mood. It didn’t work.

  Bernadette said, “The State Department already briefed me. Let me get you to bed.”

  “Don’t get any wild ideas,” Ben said. Another attempt at humor.

  “I know. You need your sleep. I know how jet lag hits you, and the office will need you first thing in the morning.”

  He slogged to the stairs and once they were in the bedroom, he threw his bag on the bed and started to undress. Bernadette opened his suitcase and began to unpack.

  “Where’s your pinstripe suit?” she asked.

  “No amount of dry cleaning would’ve solved that problem.”

  “Do tell.”

  Ben pulled his shirt off. “Well, there was this little riot and I ended up in a dumpster for safekeeping along with the discards from half a dozen restaurants.”

  “You poor darling. You must have been so lonely and frightened in there.”

  Ben dodged. “Yes. I need a shower to get that fourteen-hour flight off of me.”

  Bernadette finished inspecting his luggage and turned down the sheets on his side of the bed.

  While he was in the shower, she began to unpack his suitcase. From the top drawer of her nightstand, she took a small handheld device and carefully ran it over his clothes and the suitcase. Then she double-checked the seams between the inner lining and the outer part of the case.

  Ben emerged from the shower toweling off his hair, thinking it would take four or five more before he could live with himself.

  Bernadette said, “They didn’t bug you this time.”

  He slipped on a pair of boxer shorts and sat down on the bed.

  Bernadette opened his toiletry case and thought, No condoms. She knew he wasn’t the cheating type, but she had more than the usual wife’s interest in the matter. Given his job, he would be a natural target and she knew he would be naïve. She had to be his protector.

  “Sleep at all on the plane?”

  “I may have dozed off for a few minutes. Adrenaline was still pumping, and I knew I was in a vulnerable position. It might have been a Gulfstream Five, but it still belonged to the Chinese military.”

  “Honey, you know you were vulnerable during your entire stay. In more ways than you might imagine.”
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  “What do you mean?”

  “Dearest, I love you, but in some matters you’re hopeless.”

  Ben knew he had married a strong, independent woman, but he always became disconcerted when she reminded him of that fact. He still believed he wore the pants in the family. Like many wives, Bernadette let him pretend that this was the case. Every now and then, however, she reminded him there were limits.

  “I was safe the entire time. I knew what I was doing.”

  “Do tell. Getting out of your car and running into a mob outside of a bank is the sign of a man concerned for his own safety? That was reckless, Ben. There’s a reason why VIPs are transported around in limousines with bulletproof glass and a touch of extra metal in the doors. You knew your driver was professionally trained for that purpose. And you doubtless had someone with you to make sure you were safe.”

  “But I’ve never seen an actual bank run. Only in pictures.”

  “And there’s a very good reason for that. A picture is worth a thousand words. What was it that the pictures didn’t convey? Does a bank run have a particular smell to it? Do the rioters look any different in a bank run than they do in a standard riot?”

  “Actually, they do. They were more desperate than angry. You could see the desperation on their faces. Rioters are angry and out to destroy. People in bank runs are there to protect everything they’ve worked their lives for.”

  Color rose in her face. “There you go again with your literal interpretation of things. What I really want to know is why you felt you had to get out of that fucking limousine.”

  Ben looked into her eyes. “Okay,” he said. “How many videos of the Stones in concert do you have, bootlegs and all?” He waited a beat. “You don’t know, do you? And we’ve watched them how many times, and yet you never reacted to them like you did when I got us those tickets on the fifth row. It was all I could do to keep you under control. I thought for sure you were going to throw your panties on the stage.”