“If you say so.”
“When we have the money we need to build up our military, we will be the world’s leading power in every respect. Industrially, we will lead the world. Militarily, we are at the center of the world.”
“I fear these plans are too ambitious,” Fang said cautiously. “They will take more years than we have to implement in any case, but what legacy will we leave to our country if we point her on a erroneous path?”
“What error is this, Fang?” Zhang asked. “Do you doubt our ideas?”
Always that question, Fang thought with an inward sigh. “I remember when Deng said, ‘It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.’ To which Mao responded with a livid snarl: ‘What emperor said that?”’
“But it does matter, my old friend, and well you know it.”
“That is true,” Fang agreed with a submissive nod, not wanting a confrontation this late in the day, not when he had a headache. Age had made Zhang even more ideologically pure than he’d been in his youth, and it hadn’t tempered his imperial ambition. Fang sighed once more. He was of a mind to set the issue aside. It wasn’t worth the trouble. Though he’d mention it just once more, to cover his political backside.
“What if they don’t?” Fang asked finally.
“What?”
“What if they don’t go along? What if the Americans are troublesome on the trade issue?”
“They will not be,” Zhang assured his old friend.
“But if they are, Comrade, what then will we do? What are our options?”
“Oh, I suppose we could punish with one hand and encourage with the other, cancel some purchases from America and then inquire about making some other ones. It’s worked before many times,” Zhang assured his guest. “This President Ryan is predictable. We need merely control the news. We will give him nothing to use against us.”
Fang and Zhang continued their discussion into other issues, until the latter returned to his office, where, again, he dictated his notes of the discussion to Ming, who then typed them into her computer. The minister considered inviting her to his apartment, but decided against it. Though she’d become somewhat more attractive in the preceding weeks, catching his eye with her gentle smiles in the outer office, it had been a long day for him, and he was too tired for it, enjoyable though it often was with Ming. Minister Fang had no idea that his dictation would be in Washington, D.C., in less than three hours.
“What do you think, George?”
“Jack,” TRADER began, “what the hell is this, and how the hell did we get it?”
“George, this is an internal memorandum—well, of sorts—from the government of the People’s Republic of China. How we got it, you do not, repeat, not need to know.”
The document had been laundered—scrubbed—better than Mafia income. All the surnames had been changed, as had the syntax and adjectives, to disguise patterns of speech. It was thought—hoped would be a better term— that even those whose discourse was being reported would not have recognized their own words. But the content had been protected—even improved, in fact, since the nuances of Mandarin had been fully translated in to American English idiom. That had been the hardest part. Languages do not really translate into one another easily or well. The denotations of words were one thing. The connotations were another, and these never really paralleled from one tongue to another. The linguists employed by the intelligence services were among the best in the country, people who regularly read poetry, and sometimes published journal pieces, under their own names, so that they could communicate their expertise in—and indeed, love of—their chosen foreign language with others of a similar mind. What resulted were pretty good translations, Ryan thought, but he was always a little wary of them.
“These cocksuckers! They’re talking about how they plan to fuck us over.” For all his money, George Winston retained the patois of his working-class origins.
“George, it’s business, not personal,” the President tried as a tension-release gambit.
The Secretary of the Treasury looked up from the briefing document. “Jack, when I ran Columbus Group, I had to regard all of my investors as my family, okay? Their money had to be as important to me as my money. That was my professional obligation as an investment counselor.”
Jack nodded. “Okay, George. That’s why I asked you into the cabinet. You’re honest.”
“Okay, but now, I’m Sec-fucking-Treas, okay? That means that every citizen in our country is part of my family, and these Chink bastards are planning to fuck with my country—all those people out there”—Secretary Winston waved toward the thick windows of the Oval Office—”the ones who trust us to keep the economy leveled out. So, they want MFN, do they? They want into the WTO, do they? Well ,fuck them!”
President Ryan allowed himself an early-morning laugh, wondering if the Secret Service detail had heard George’s voice, and might now be looking through the spy holes in the door to see what the commotion was. “Coffee and croissants, George. The grape jelly is Smuckers, even.”
TRADER stood and walked around the couch, tossing his head forcefully like a stallion circling a mare in heat. “Okay, Jack, I’ll cool down, but you’re used to this shit, and I’m not.” He paused and sat back down. “Oh, okay, up on The Street we trade jokes and stories, and we even plot a little bit, but deliberately fucking people over—no! I’ve never done that! And you know what’s worst?”
“What’s that, George?”
“They’re stupid, Jack. They think they can mess with the marketplace according to their little political theories, and it’ll fall into line like a bunch of soldiers right out of boot camp. These little bastards couldn’t run a Kmart and show a profit, but they let them dick around with a whole national economy—and then they want to dick with ours, too.”
“Got it all out of your system?”
“Think this is funny?” Winston asked crossly.
“George, I’ve never seen you get this worked up. I’m surprised by your passion.
“Who do you think I am, Jay Gould?”
“No,” Ryan said judiciously. “I was thinking more of J. P. Morgan.” The remark had the desired effect. SecTreas laughed.
“Okay, you got me there. Morgan was the first actual Chairman of the Fed, and he did it as a private citizen, and did it pretty well, but that’s probably an institutional function, ‘cuz there ain’t that many J. P. Morgans waiting around on deck. Okay, Mr. President, sir, I am calmed down. Yes, this is business, not personal. And our reply to this miserable business attitude will be business, too. The PRC will not get MFN. They will not get into the WTO—as a practical matter, they don’t deserve it yet anyway, based on the size of their economy. And, I think we rattle the Trade Reform Act at them nice and hard. Oh, there’s one other thing, and I’m surprised it’s not in here,” Winston said, pointing down at the briefing sheet.
“What’s that?”
“We can get ‘em by the short hairs pretty easy, I think. CIA doesn’t agree, but Mark Gant thinks their foreign exchange account’s a little thin.”
“Oh?” the President asked, stirring his coffee.
Winston nodded emphatically. “Mark’s my tech-weenie, remember. He’s very good at modeling stuff on the computers. I’ve set him up with his own little section to keep an eye on various things. Pulled the professor of economics out of Boston University to work there, Morton Silber, another good man with the microchips. Anyway, Mark’s been looking at the PRC, and he thinks they’re driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon because they’ve been pissing away their money, mainly on military hardware and heavy-manufacturing equipment, like to make tanks and things. It’s a repeat of the old communist stuff, they have a fixation on heavy industry. They are really missing the boat on electronics. They have little companies manufacturing computer games and stuff, but they’re not applying it at home, except for that new computer factory they set up that’s ripping off Dell.”
“So you think we ought to shove that up their ass at the trade negotiations?”
“I’m going to recommend it to Scott Adler at lunch this afternoon, as a matter of fact,” SecTreas agreed. “They’ve been warned, but this time we’re going to press it hard.”
“Back to their foreign exchange account. How bad is it?”
“Mark thinks they’re down to negative reserves.”
“In the hole? For how much?” POTUS asked.
“He says at least fifteen billion, floated with paper out of German banks for the most part, but the Germans have kept it quiet—and we’re not sure why. It could be a normal transaction, but either the Germans or the PRC wants to keep it under wraps.”
“Wouldn’t be the Germans, would it?” Ryan asked next.