“Not playing much, Jack, it’s slipped to six, maybe seven.”
“He’s going to turn pro—Senior Tour,” Jack advised.
“Anyway, Jack, this is my father. His plane was late and he missed the receiving line,” Robby explained.
“Reverend Jackson, we finally meet.” Jack took the hand of the elderly black minister. For the inauguration he’d been in the hospital with kidney stones, which probably had been even less fun than the inauguration.
“Robby’s told me a lot of good things about you.”
“Your son is a fighter pilot, sir, and they exaggerate a lot.”
The minister had a good laugh at that. “Oh, that I know, Mr. President. That I know.”
“How was the food?” Ryan asked. Hosiah Jackson was a man on the far side of seventy, short like his son, and rotund with increasing years, but he was a man possessed of the immense dignity that somehow attached to black men of the cloth.
“Much too rich for an old man, Mr. President, but I ate it anyway.”
“Don’t worry, Jack. Pap doesn’t drink’ TOMCAT advised. On the lapel of his tuxedo jacket was a miniature of his Navy Wings of Gold. Robby would never stop being a fighter pilot.
“And you shouldn’t either, boy! That Navy taught you lots of bad habits, like braggin’ on yourself too much.”
Jack had to jump to his friend’s defense. “Sir, a fighter pilot who doesn’t brag isn’t allowed to fly. And besides, Dizzy Dean said it best—if you can do it, it isn’t bragging. Robby can do it… or so he claims.”
“They started talking over in Beijing yet?” Robby asked, checking his watch.
“Another half hour or so,” Adler replied. “It’s going to be interesting,” he added, referring to the SORGE material.
“I believe it,” Vice President Jackson agreed, catching the message. “You know, it’s hard to love those people.”
“Robby, you are not allowed to say such things,” his father retorted. “I have a friend in Beijing.”
“Oh?” His son didn’t know about that. The answer came rather as a papal pronouncement.
“Yes, Reverend Yu Fa An, a fine Baptist preacher, educated at Oral Roberts University. My friend Gerry Patterson went to school with him.”
“Tough place to be a priest—or minister, I guess,” Ryan observed.
It was as though Jack had turned the key in the minister’s dignity switch. “Mr. President, I envy him. To preach the Gospel of the Lord anywhere is a privilege, but to preach it in the land of the heathen is a rare blessing.”
“Coffee?” a passing usher asked. Hosiah took a cup and added cream and sugar.
“This is fine,” he observed at once.
“One of the fringe bennies here, Pap,” Jackson told his dad with considerable affection. “This is even better than Navy coffee—well, we have navy stewards serving it. Jamaica Blue Mountain, costs like forty bucks a pound,” he explained.
“Jesus, Robby, don’t say that too loud. The media hasn’t figured that one out yet!” POTUS warned. “Besides, I asked. We get it wholesale, thirty-two bucks a pound if you buy it by the barrel.”
“Gee, that’s a real bargain,” the VP agreed with a chuckle.
With the welcoming ceremony done, the plenary session began without much in the way of fanfare. Assistant Secretary Rutledge took his seat, greeted the Chinese diplomats across the table, and began. His statement started off with the usual pleasantries that were about as predictable as the lead credits for a feature film.
“The United States,” he went on, getting to the meat of the issue, “has concerns about several disturbing aspects of our mutual trading relationship. The first is the seeming inability of the People’s Republic to abide by previous agreements to recognize international treaties and conventions on trademarks, copyrights, and patents. All of these items have been discussed and negotiated at length in previous meetings like this one, and we had thought that the areas of disagreement were successfully resolved. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case.” He went on to cite several specific items, which he described as being illustrative but in no way a comprehensive listing of his areas of “concern.”
“Similarly,” Rutledge continued, “commitments to open the Chinese market to American goods have not been honored. This has resulted in an imbalance in the mercantile exchange which ill serves our overall relationship. The current imbalance is approaching seventy billion U.S. dollars, and that is something the United States of America is not prepared to accept.
“To summarize, the People’s Republic’s commitment to honor international treaty obligations and private agreements with the United States has not been carried out. It is a fact of American law that our country has the right to adopt the trade practices of other nations in its own law. This is the well-known Trade Reform Act, enacted by the American government several years ago. It is my unpleasant obligation, therefore, to inform the government of the People’s Republic that America will enforce this law with respect to trade with the People’s Republic forthwith, unless these previously agreed-upon commitments are met immediately,” Rutledge concluded. Immediately is a word not often used in international discourse. “That concludes my opening statement.”
For his part, Mark Gant halfway wondered if the other side might leap across the polished oak table with swords and daggers at the end of Rutledge’s opening speech. The gauntlet had been cast down in forceful terms not calculated to make the Chinese happy. But the diplomat handling the other side of the table—it was Foreign Minister Shen Tang—reacted no more than he might on getting the check in a restaurant and finding that he’d been overcharged about five bucks’ worth. Not even a look up. Instead the Chinese minister continued to look down at his own notes, before finally lifting his eyes as he felt the end of Rutledge’s opening imminent, with no more feeling or emotion than that of a man in an art gallery looking over some painting or other that his wife wanted him to purchase to cover a crack in the dining room wall.
“Secretary Rutledge, thank you for your statement,” he began in his turn.
“The People’s Republic first of all welcomes you to our country and wishes to state for the record its desire for a continued friendly relationship with America and the American people.
“We cannot, however, reconcile America’s stated desire for friendly relations with her action to recognize the breakaway province on the island of Taiwan as the independent nation it is not. Such action was calculated to inflame our relationship—to fan the flames instead of helping to extinguish them. The people of our country will not accept this unconscionable interference with Chinese internal affairs and—” The diplomat looked up in surprise to see Rutledge’s hand raised in interruption. He was sufficiently shocked by this early breach of protocol that he actually stopped talking.
“Minister,” Rutledge intoned, “the purpose of this meeting is to discuss trade. The issue of America’s diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China is one best left to another venue. The American delegation has no desire to detour into that area today.” Which was diplo-speak for “Take that issue and shove it.”
“Mr. Rutledge, you cannot dictate to the People’s Republic what our concerns and issues are,” Minister Shen observed, in a voice as even as one discussing the price of lettuce in the street market. The rules of a meeting like this were simple: The first side to show anger lost.
“Do go on, then, if you must,” Rutledge responded tiredly. You’re wasting my time, but I get paid whether I work or not, his demeanor proclaimed.
Gant saw that the dynamic for the opening was that both countries had their agendas, and each was trying to ignore that of the other in order to take control of the session. This was so unlike a proper business meeting as to be unrecognizable as a form of verbal intercourse—and in terms of other intercourse, it was like two naked people in bed, purportedly for the purpose of sex, starting off their foreplay by fighting over the TV remote. Gant had seen all manner of negotiations before, or so he thought. This was something entirely new and, to him, utterly bizarre.
“The renegade bandits on Taiwan are part of China in their history and heritage, and the People’s Republic cannot ignore this deliberate insult to our nationhood by the Ryan Regime.”
“Minister Shen, the government of the United States of America has a long history of supporting democratically elected governments throughout the world. That has been part of our nation’s ethos for over two hundred years. I would remind the People’s Republic that the United States of America has the longest-lived government in the world.
We have lived under our constitutional form of government for well over two hundred years. That is a small number in terms of Chinese history, but I would remind you further that when America elected her first President and first Congress, China was ruled by a hereditary monarch. The government of your country has changed many times since then, but the government of the United States of America has not. Thus it is well within our power both as an independent nation under recognized international law, and also as a moral right as a long-lived and therefore legitimate form of government, both to act as we choose and to foster governments like our own. The government of the Republic of China is democratically elected, and therefore it commands the respect of similarly chosen governments of the people, like our own. In any case, Minister, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss trade. Shall we do that, or shall we fritter away our time discussing irrelevancies?”