“That’s funny …” the sergeant observed, to his own surprise.
“What is that?” Sabah asked.
“Excuse me, sir.” The NCO stood and walked over to a corner cabinet, from which he extracted a map, and brought it back to his workstation. “There’s no road there. Look, sir.” He unfolded the map, matched the coordinates with those on the screen–the Predator had its own Global Positioning Satellite navigation system and automatically told its operators where it was–and tapped the right section on the paper. “See?”
The Kuwaiti officer looked back and forth from map to screen. On the latter, there was a road, now. But that was easily explained. A column of a hundred tanks would convert almost any surface into a hard-packed highway of sorts, and that had happened here.
But there hadn’t been a road there before. The tanks had made it over the last few hours.
“That’s a change, Major. The Iraqi army was always road-bound before.”
Sabah nodded. It was so obvious that he hadn’t seen it. Though native to the desert, and supposedly schooled in traveling there, the Iraqi army in 1991 had connived at its own destruction by sticking close to roads, because its officers always seemed to get lost when moving cross-
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country. Not as mad as it sounded–the desert was essentially as featureless as the sea–it had made their movements predictable, never a good thing in a war, and given advancing allied forces free rein to approach from unexpected directions.
That had just changed.
“You suppose they have GPS, too?” the chief master sergeant asked.
“We couldn’t expect them to stay stupid forever, could we?”
PRESIDENT RYAN KISSED his wife on the way to the elevator. The kids weren’t up yet. One sort of work lay ahead. Another sort lay behind. Today there wasn’t time for both, though some efforts would be made. Ben Goodley was waiting on the helicopter.
“Here’s the notes from Adler on his Tehran trip.” The National Security Advisor passed them over. “Also the write-up from Beijing. The working group is getting together at ten to go over that situation. The SNIE team will be meeting at Langley later today, too.”
“Thanks.” Jack strapped into his seat and started reading. Arnie and Gallic came aboard and took their seats forward of his.
“Any ideas, Mr. President?” Goodley asked.
“Ben, you’re supposed to tell me, remember?”
“How about I tell you that it doesn’t make much sense?”
“I already know that part. You guard the phones and faxes today. Scott should be in Taipei now. Whatever comes from him, fast-track it to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
The helicopter lurched aloft. Ryan hardly noticed that. His mind was on the job, crummy though it was. Price and Raman were with him. There would be more agents on the 747, and more still waiting even now in Nashville. The presidency of John Patrick Ryan went on, whether he liked it or not.
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THIS COUNTRY MIGHT be small, might be unimportant, might be a pariah in the international community–not because of anything it had done, except perhaps to prosper, but because of its larger and less prosperous neighbor to the west–but it did have an elected government, and that was supposed to count for something in the community of nations, especially those with popularly elected governments themselves. The People’s Republic had come to exist by force of arms–well, most countries did, Sec-State reminded himself–and had immediately thereafter slaughtered millions of its own citizens (nobody knew how many; nobody was terribly interested in finding out), launched into a revolutionary development program (“the Great Leap Forward”), which had turned out more disastrously than was the norm even for Marxist nations; and launched yet another internal “reform” effort (“the Cultural Revolution”) which had come after something called the “Hundred Flowers” campaign, whose real purpose had been to smoke out potential dissidents for later elimination at the hands of students whose revolutionary enthusiasm had indeed been revolutionary toward Chinese culture–they’d come close to destroying it entirely, in favor of The Little Red Book. Then had come more reform, the supposed changeover from Marxism to something else, another student revolution–this one against the existing political system–arrogantly cut down with tanks and machine guns on global television. Despite all that, the rest of the world was entirely willing to let the People’s Republic crush their cousins on Taiwan.
This was called realpolitik, Scott Adler thought. Something similar had resulted in an event called the Holocaust, an event his father had survived, with a number tattooed on his forearm to prove it. Even his own country officially had a one-China policy, though the unspoken codicil was that the PRC would not attack the ROC–and if it did, then America might just react. Or might not.
Adler was a career diplomat, a graduate of Cornell and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He loved his country. He was often an instrument of his country’s policy, and now found himself to be his
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country’s very voice of international affairs. But what he often had to say was not terribly just, and at moments like this, he wondered if he might himself be doing the same things that had been done sixty years earlier by other Fletcher grads, well-educated and well-meaning, who, after it was all over, wondered how the hell they’d been so blind as not to have seen it coming.
“We have fragments–and actually some rather large pieces from the missile that were lodged in the wing. It is definitely of PRC origin,” the ROC Defense Minister said. “We will allow your technical people to look them over and make your own tests to confirm matters.”
“Thank you. I will discuss that with my government.”
“So.” This was the Foreign Minister. “They allow a direct fligh| from Beijing to Taipei. They do not object privately to the dispatch of an aircraft carrier. They disclaim any responsibility for the Airbus incident. I confess I see no rationale for this behavior.”
“I am gratified that they express interest only in the restoration of regional stability.”
“How good of them,” Defense said. “After they deliberately upset it.”
“This has caused us great economic harm. Again, foreign investors get nervous, and with the flight of their capital, we face some minor embarrassments. Was that their plan, do you suppose?”
“Minister, if that were the case, why did they ask me to fly here directly?”
“Some manner of subterfuge, obviously,” the Foreign Minister answered, before Defense could say anything.
“But if so, what for?” Adler wanted to know. Hell, they were Chinese. Maybe they could figure it out.
“We are secure here. We know that, even if foreign investors do not. Even so, the situation is not an entirely happy one. It is rather like living in a castle with a moat. Across the moat is a lion. The lion would kill and eat us if he had the chance. He cannot leap the moat, and he knows that, but he keeps trying to do so, even with that knowledge. I hope you can understand our concern.”
“I do, sir,” SecState assured him. “If the PRC reduces the level of its activity, will you do the same?” Even if they
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couldn’t figure out what the PRC was up to, perhaps they could de-stress the situation anyway.
“In principle, yes. Exactly how, is a technical question for my colleague here. You will not find us unreasonable.”
And the entire trip had been staged for that simple statement. Now Adler had to fly back to Beijing to deliver it. Matchmaker, matchmaker . . .
HOPKINS HAD ITS own day-care center, staffed by permanent people and always some students from the university doing lab work for their child-care major. Sally walked in, looked around and was pleased by the multicolored environment. Behind her were four agents, all male, because there weren’t any unassigned women. One carried a FAG bag. Nearby was a trio of plainclothes officers of the Baltimore City Police, who exchanged credentials with the USSS to confirm identity, and so another day started for SURGEON and SANDBOX. Katie had enjoyed the helicopter ride. Today she’d make some new friends, but tonight, her mother knew, she’d ask where Miss Marlene was. How did one explain death to a not-yet-three-year-old?
THE CROWD APPLAUDED with something more than the usual warmth. Ryan could feel it. Here he was, not yet three days after an attempt on the life of his youngest daughter, doing his job for them, showing strength and courage and all that other bullshit, POTUS thought. He’d led off with a prayer for the fallen agents, and Nashville was the Bible Belt, where such things were taken seriously. The rest of the speech had actually been pretty good, the President thought, covered things he really believed in. Common sense. Honesty. Duty. It was just that hearing his own voice speaking words written by somebody else made it seem hollow, and it was hard to keep his mind from wandering so early in the morning.