CHAPTER 23.

Down to Business Bacon and eggs, toast and hash-brown potatoes, plus some Colombian-bean coffee. Gant was Jewish but not observant, and he loved his bacon. Everyone was up and looking pretty good, he thought. The governmentissued black capsule (they all called it that, evidently some sort of tradition that he didn't know about) had worked for all of them, and the cookie-pushers were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Most of the talk, he noted, was about the NBA. The Lakers were looking tough again. Rutledge, Gant saw, was at the head of the table chatting amiably with Amba.s.sador Hitch, who seemed a solid citizen. Then a more ruffled employee of the emba.s.sy came in with a manila folder whose borders were lined with striped redand-white tape. This he handed to Amba.s.sador Hitch, who opened it at once.

Gant realized at once that it was cla.s.sified material. There wasn't much of that to be seen at Treasury, but there was some, and he'd been screened for a Top Secret/Special Access clearance as part of his employment on Secretary Winston's personal staff. So, there was intel coming in from Washington for the negotiations. Exactly what it was about, he couldn't see, and didn't know if he would see it. He wondered if he could flex his inst.i.tutional muscles on this one, but Rutledge would be the one who decided if he got to see it or not, and he didn't want to give the State Department puke the excuse to show who was the he-bull in this herd. Patience was a virtue he'd long had, and this was just one more chance to exercise it. He returned to his breakfast, then decided to stand and get more off the buffet. Lunch in Beijing probably wouldn't be very appealing, even at their Foreign Ministry Building, where they would feel constrained to show off their most exotic national dishes, and Fried Panda p.e.n.i.s with candied bamboo roots wasn't exactly to his taste. At least the tea they served was acceptable, but even at its best, tea wasn't coffee.

"Mark?" Rutledge looked up from his seat and waved the Treasury guy over. Gant walked over with his refilled plate of eggs and bacon.

"Yeah, Cliff?"

Amba.s.sador Hitch made room for Gant to sit down, and a steward arrived with fresh silverware. The government could make one comfortable when it wanted. He asked the guy for more hash browns and toast. Fresh coffee arrived seemingly of its own volition.

"Mark, this just came in from Washington. This is codeword material-"

"Yeah, I know. I can't even see it now, and I am not allowed to have any memory of it. So, can I see it now?"

Rutledge nodded and slipped the papers across. "What do you make of these foreign-exchange figures?"

Gant took a bite of bacon and stopped chewing almost at once. "d.a.m.n, they're that low? What have they been p.i.s.sing their money away on?"

"What does this mean?"

"Cliff, once upon a time, Dr. Samuel Johnson put it this way: 'Whatever you have, spend less.' Well, the Chinese didn't listen to that advice." Gant flipped the pages. "It doesn't say what they've been spending it on."

"Mainly military stuff, so I am told," Amba.s.sador Hitch replied. "Or things that can be applied to military applications, especially electronics. Both finished goods and the machinery with which to make electronic stuff. I gather it's expensive to invest in such things."

"It can be," Gant agreed. He turned the pages back to start from the beginning. He saw it was transmitted with the TAPDANCE encryption system. That made it hot. TAPDANCE was only used for the most sensitive material because of some technical inconveniences in its use . . . so this was some really hot intelligence, TELESCOPE thought. Then he saw why. Somebody must have bugged the offices of some very senior Chinese officials to get this stuff . . . "Jesus."

"What does this mean, Mark?"

"It means they've been spending money faster than it's coming in, and investing it in noncommercial areas for the most part. h.e.l.l, it means they're acting like some of the idiots we have in our government. They think money is just something that appears when you snap your fingers, and then you can spend it as fast as you want and just snap your fingers to get some more . . . These people don't live in the real world, Cliff. They have no idea how and why the money appears." He paused. He'd gone too far. A Wall Street person would understand his language, but this Rutledge guy probably didn't. "Let me rephrase. They know that the money comes from their trade imbalance with the United States, and it appears that they believe the imbalance to be a natural phenomenon, something they can essentially dictate because of who they are. They think the rest of the world owes it to them. In other words, if they believe that, negotiating with them is going to be hard."

"Why?" Rutledge asked. Amba.s.sador Hitch, he saw, was already nodding. He must have understood these Chinese barbarians better.

"People who think this way do not understand that negotiations mean give and take. Whoever's talking here thinks that he just gets whatever the h.e.l.l he wants because everybody owes it to him. It's like what Hitler must have thought at Munich. I want, you give, and then I am happy. We're not going to cave for these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, are we?"

"Those are not my instructions," Rutledge replied.

"Well, guess what? Those are the instructions your Chinese counterpart has. Moreover, their economic position is evidently a lot more precarious than what we've been given to expect. Tell CIA they need better people in their financial-intelligence department," Gant observed. Then Hitch shifted his glance across the table to the guy who must have run the local CIA office.

"Do they appreciate how serious their position is?" Rutledge asked.

"Yes and no. Yes, they know they need the hard currency to do the business they want to do. No, they think they can continue this way indefinitely, that an imbalance is natural in their case because-because why? Because they think they're the f.u.c.king master race?" Gant asked.

Again it was Amba.s.sador Hitch who nodded. "It's called the Middle Kingdom Complex. Yes, Mr. Gant, they really do think of themselves in those terms, and they expect people to come to them and give, not for themselves to go to other people as supplicants. Someday that will be their downfall. There's an inst.i.tutional . . . maybe a racial arrogance here that's hard to describe and harder to quantify." Then Hitch looked over to Rutledge. "Cliff, you're going to have an interesting day."

Gant realized at once that this was not a blessing for the a.s.sistant Secretary of State for Policy.

They should be eating breakfast right about now," Secretary Adler said over his Hennessey in the East Room.

The reception had gone well-actually Jack and Cathy Ryan found these things about as boring as reruns of Gilligan's Island, but they were as much a part of the Presidency as the State of the Union speech. At least the dinner had been good-one thing you could depend on at the White House was the quality of the food-but the people had been Washington people. Even that, Ryan did not appreciate, had been greatly improved from previous years. Once Congress had largely been populated with people whose life's ambition was "public service," a phrase whose n.o.ble intent had been usurped by those who viewed $130,000 per year as a princely salary (it was far less than a college dropout could earn doing software for a computergame company, and a h.e.l.l of a lot less than one could make working on Wall Street), and whose real ambition was to apply their will to the laws of their nation. Many of them now, mainly because of speeches the President had made all over the country, were people who actually had served the public by doing useful work until, fed up with the machinations of government, they had decided to take a few years off to repair the train wreck Washington had become, before escaping back to the real world of productive work. The First Lady had spent much of the evening talking with the junior senator from Indiana, who in real life was a pediatric surgeon of good reputation and whose current efforts were centered on straightening out government health-care programs before they killed too many of the citizens they supposedly wanted to a.s.sist. His greatest task was to persuade the media that a physician might know as much about making sick people well as Washington lobbyists did, something he'd been bending SURGEON'S ear about most of the night.

"That stuff we got from Mary Pat ought to help Rutledge."

"I'm glad that Gant guy is there to translate it for him. Cliff is going to have a lively day while we sleep off the food and the booze, Jack."

"Is he good enough for the job? I know he was tight with Ed Kealty. That does not speak well for the guy's character."

"Cliff's a fine technician," Adler said, after another sip of brandy. "And he has clear instructions to carry out, and some awfully good intelligence to help him along. This is like the stuff Jonathan Yardley gave our guys during the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations. We're not exactly reading their cards, but we are seeing how they think, and that's d.a.m.ned near as good. So, yes, I think he's good enough for this job, or I wouldn't have sent him out."

"How's the amba.s.sador we have there?" POTUS asked.

"Carl Hitch? Super guy. Career pro, Jack, ready to retire soon, but he's like a good cabinetmaker. Maybe he can't design the house for you, but the kitchen will be just fine when he's done-and you know, I'll settle for that in a diplomat. Besides, designing the house is your job, Mr. President."

"Yeah," Ryan observed. He waved to an usher, who brought over some ice water. He'd pushed the booze enough for one night, and Cathy was starting to razz him about it again. d.a.m.n, being married to a doctor, Jack thought. "Yeah, Scott, but who the h.e.l.l do I go to for advice when I don't know what the h.e.l.l I'm doing?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't know," EAGLE replied. Maybe some humor, he thought: "Try doing a seance and call up Tom Jefferson and George Washington." He turned with a chuckle and finished his Hennessey. "Jack, just take it easy on yourself and do the f.u.c.kin' job. You're doing just fine. Trust me."

"I hate this job," SWORDSMAN observed with a friendly smile at his Secretary of State.

"I know. That's probably why you're doing it pretty well. G.o.d protect us all from somebody who wants to hold high public office. h.e.l.l, look at me. Think I ever wanted to be SecState? It was a lot more fun to eat lunch in the cafeteria with my pals and b.i.t.c.h about the dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h who was. But now-s.h.i.t, they're down there saying that about me! It ain't fair, Jack. I'm a working guy."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, look at it this way: When you do your memoirs, you'll get a great advance from your publisher. The Accidental President?" Adler speculated for the t.i.tle.

"Scott, you get funny when you're drunk. I'll settle for working on my golf game."

"Who spoke the magic word?" Vice President Jackson asked as he joined the conversation.

"This guy whips my a.s.s so bad out there," Ryan complained to Secretary Adler, "that sometimes I wish I had a sword to fall on. What's your handicap now?"

"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 p.r.o.nouncement.

"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 pa.s.sing 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 bargoon," the VP agreed with a chuckle.

With the welcoming ceremony done, the plenary session began without much in the way of fanfare. a.s.sistant 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 s.e.x, 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 const.i.tutional 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?"

"Nothing could be more relevant to this discussion than the fundamental lack of respect shown by your government-by the Ryan Regime, shall I say?-for the government of our country. The Taiwan issue is one of fundamental importance to . . ." He droned on for another four minutes.

"Minister Shen, the United States of America is not a 'regime' of any sort. It is an independent nation with a freely elected government chosen by its people. That experiment in government which we undertook when your country was ruled by the Manchu Dynasty is one which you might consider imitating at some future date, for the benefit of your own people. Now, shall we return to the issue at hand, or do you wish to continue wasting your own time and mine by discussing a topic for which I have neither instructions nor much in the way of interest?"

"We will not be brushed aside so cavalierly as that," Shen responded, earning Rutledge's brief and irrelevant respect for his unexpected command of the English language.

The American chief diplomat settled back in his chair and looked politely across the table while he thought over his wife's plans for redecorating the kitchen of their Georgetown town house. Was green and blue the right color scheme? He preferred earth tones, but he was far more likely to win this argument in Beijing than that one in Georgetown. A lifetime spent in diplomacy didn't enable him to win arguments with Mrs. Rutledge over items like decorating . . .

So it went for the first ninety minutes, when there came time for the first break. Tea and finger food was served and people wandered out the French doors-a strange place to find those, Gant thought-into the garden. It was Gant's first adventure in diplomacy, and he was about to learn how these things really worked. People paired off, American and Chinese. You could tell who was who from a distance. Every single one of the Chinese smoked, a vice shared by only two of the American delegation, both of whom looked grateful for the chance to enjoy their habit indoors in this country. They might be trade n.a.z.is, the Treasury Department official reflected, but they weren't health n.a.z.is.

"What do you think?" a voice asked. Gant turned to see the same little guy who'd bugged him at the reception. His name was Xue Ma, Gant remembered, all of five-footnothing, with poker-player's eyes and some acting ability. Smarter than he appeared to be, the American reminded himself. So, how was he supposed to handle this? When in doubt, Gant decided, fall back on the truth.

"It's my first time observing diplomatic negotiations. It's intensely boring," Gant replied, sipping his (dreadful) coffee.

"Well, this is normal," Xue answered.

"Really? It's not that way in business. How do you get anything done?"

"Every endeavor has its process," the Chinese man told him.

"I suppose. Can you tell me something?" TELESCOPE asked.

"I can try."

"What's the big deal about Taiwan?"

"What was the big deal when your Civil War began?" Xue replied, with a clever question of his own.

"Well, okay, but after fifty years, why not call it even and start over?"

"We do not think in such short terms," Xue answered with a superior smile.

"Okay, but in America we call that living in the past." Take that, you little c.h.i.n.k!

"They are our countrymen," Xue persisted.

"But they have chosen not to be. If you want them back, then make it advantageous for them. You know, by achieving the same prosperity here that they've achieved there." You backward commie.