The doctor figured this was the cue for him to complete his distasteful duty, so that he could go home for the day. He set the stool back up and slid it to where he needed to be.

"You will not do this!" This time it was Yu, speaking with all the moral authority his education and status could provide.

"Will you get him out of here?" the doctor growled at the cops, as he slid the stool back in place.

Quon was ill-positioned to do anything, standing as he was by his wife's head. To his horror, he saw the doctor lift the syringe and adjust his gla.s.ses. Just then his wife, who might as well have been in another city for the past two minutes, took a deep breath and pushed.

"Ah," the doctor said. The fetus was fully crowned now, and all he had to do was- Reverend Yu had seen as much evil in his life as most clergymen, and they see as much as any seasoned police officer, but to see a human baby murdered before his eyes was just too much. He roughly shoved the junior of the two policemen aside and struck the doctor's head from behind, flinging him to the right and jumping on top of him.

"Getting this?" Barry Wise asked in the corridor.

"Yep," Nichols confirmed.

What offended the junior policeman was not the attack on the doctor, but rather the fact that this-this citizen had laid hands on a uniformed member of the Armed People's Police. Outraged, he drew his pistol from its holster, and what had been a confused situation became a deadly one.

"No!" shouted Cardinal DiMilo, moving toward the young cop. He turned to see the source of the noise and saw an elderly gwai, or foreigner in very strange clothes, moving toward him with a hostile expression. The cop's first response was a blow to the foreigner's face, delivered with his empty left hand.

Renato Cardinal DiMilo hadn't been physically struck since his childhood, and the affront to his personhood was all the more offensive for his religious and diplomatic status, and to be struck by this child! He turned back from the force of the blow and pushed the man aside, wanting to go to Yu's aid, and to help him keep this murderous doctor away from the baby about to be born. The doctor was wavering on one foot, holding the syringe up in the air. This the Cardinal seized in his hand and hurled against the wall, where it didn't break, because it was plastic, but the metal needle bent.

Had the police better understood what was happening, or had they merely been better trained, it would have stopped there. But they hadn't, and it didn't. Now the senior cop had his Type 77 pistol out. This he used to club the Italian on the back of the head, but his blow was poorly delivered, and all it managed to do was knock him off balance and split his skin.

Now it was Monsignor Schepke's turn. His Cardinal, the man whom it was his duty to serve and protect, had been attacked. He was a priest. He couldn't use deadly force. He couldn't attack. But he could defend. That he did, grasping the older officer's gun hand and twisting it up, in a safe direction, away from the others in the room. But there it went off, and though the bullet merely flattened out in the concrete ceiling, the noise inside the small room was deafening.

The younger policeman suddenly thought that his comrade was under attack. He wheeled and fired, but missed Schepke, and struck Cardinal DiMilo in the back. The .30 caliber bullet transited the body back to front, damaging the churchman's spleen. The pain surprised DiMilo, but his eyes were focused on the emerging baby.

The crash of the shot had startled Lien-Hua, and the push that followed was pure reflex. The baby emerged, and would have fallen headfirst to the hard floor but for the extended hands of Reverend Yu, who stopped the fall and probably saved the newborn's life. He was lying on his side, and then he saw that the second shot had gravely wounded his Catholic friend. Holding the baby, he struggled to his feet and looked vengefully at the youthful policeman.

"Huai dan!" he shouted: Villain! Oblivious of the infant in his arms, he lurched forward toward the confused and frightened policeman.

As automatically as a robot, the younger cop merely extended his arm and shot the Baptist preacher right in the forehead.

Yu twisted and fell, b.u.mping into Cardinal DiMilo's supine form and landing on his back, so that his chest cushioned the newborn's fall.

"Put that away!" the older cop screamed at his young partner. But the damage had been done. The Chinese Reverend Yu was dead, the back of his head leaking brain matter and venting blood at an explosive rate onto the dirty tile floor.

The doctor was the first to take any intelligent action. The baby was out now, and he couldn't kill it. He took it from Yu's dead arms, and held it up by the feet, planning to smack it on the rump, but it cried out on its own. So, the doctor thought as automatically as the second policeman's shot, this lunacy has one good result. That he'd been willing to kill it sixty seconds before was another issue entirely. Then, it had been unauthorized tissue. Now, it was a breathing citizen of the People's Republic, and his duty as a physician was to protect it. The dichotomy did not trouble him because it never even occurred to him.

There followed a few seconds in which people tried to come to terms with what had happened. Monsignor Schepke saw that Yu was dead. He couldn't be alive with that head wound. His remaining duty was to his Cardinal.

"Eminence," he said, kneeling down to lift him off the b.l.o.o.d.y floor.

Renato Cardinal DiMilo thought it strange that there was so little pain, for he knew that his death was imminent. Inside, his spleen was lacerated, and he was bleeding out internally at a lethal rate. He had not the time to reflect on his life or what lay in his immediate future, but despite that, his life of service and faith rea.s.serted itself one more time.

"The child, Franz, the child?" he asked in a gasping voice.

"The baby lives," Monsignor Schepke told the dying man.

A gentle smile: "Bene," Renato said, before closing his eyes for the last time.

The last shot taken by the CNN crew was of the baby lying on her mother's chest. They didn't know her name, and the woman's face was one of utter confusion, but then she felt her daughter, and the face was transformed as womanly instincts took over completely.

"We better get the f.u.c.k out of here, Barry," the cameraman advised, with a hiss.

"I think you're right, Pete." Wise stepped back and started to his left to get down the corridor to the stairs. He had a potential Emmy-cla.s.s story in his hands now. He'd seen a human drama with few equals, and it had to go out, and it had to go out fast.

Inside the delivery room, the senior cop was shaking his head, his ears still ringing, trying to figure out what the h.e.l.l had happened here, when he realized that the light level was lower-the TV camera was gone! He had to do something. Standing erect, he darted from the room and looked right, and saw the last American disappear into the stairwell. He left his junior in the delivery room and ran that way, turned into the fire stairs and ran downstairs as fast as gravity could propel him.

Wise led his people into the main lobby and right toward the main door, where their satellite van was. They'd almost made it, when a shout made them turn. It was the cop, the older one, about forty, they thought, and his pistol was out again, to the surprise and alarm of the civilians in the lobby.

"Keep going," Wise told his crew, and they pushed through the doors into the open air. The van was in view, with the mini-satellite dish lying flat on the roof, and that was the key to getting this story out.

"Stop!" the cop called. He knew some English, so it would seem.

"Okay, guys, let's play it real cool," Wise told the other three.

"Under control," Pete the cameraman advised. The camera was off his shoulder now, and his hands were out of casual view.

The cop bolstered his pistol and came close, with his right hand up and out flat. "Give me tape," he said. "Give me tape." His accent was crummy, but his English was understandable enough.

"That tape is my property!" Wise protested. "It belongs to me and my company."

The cop's English wasn't that good. He just repeated his demand: "Give me tape!"

"Okay, Barry," Pete said. "I got it."

The cameraman-his name was Peter Nichols-lifted the camera up and hit the EJECT b.u.t.ton, punching the Betaformat tape out of the Sony camera. This he gave to the police officer with a downcast and angry expression. The cop took it with his own expression of satisfaction and turned on his heel to go back into the hospital.

There was no way he could have known that, like any news cameraman, Pete Nichols could deal seconds as skillfully as any Las Vegas poker dealer. He winked at Barry Wise, and the four headed off to the van.

"Send it up now?" the producer asked.

"Let's not be too obvious about it," Wise thought. "Let's move a few blocks."

This they did, heading west toward Tiananmen Square, where a news van doing a satellite transmission wasn't out of the ordinary. Wise was already on his satellite phone to Atlanta.

"This is Wise Mobile in Beijing with an upload," the correspondent said into the phone.

"Hey, Barry," a familiar voice said in reply. "This is Ben Golden. What you got for us?"

"It's hot," Wise told his controller half a world away. "A double murder and a childbirth. One guy who got whacked is a Catholic cardinal, the Vatican amba.s.sador to Beijing. The other one's a Chinese Baptist minister. They were both shot on camera. You might want to call Legal about it."

"f.u.c.k!" Atlanta observed.

"We're uploading the rough-cut now, just so you get it. I'll stand by to do the talking. But let's get the video uploaded first."

"Roger that. We're standing by on Channel Zero Six."

"Zero Six, Pete," Wise told his cameraman, who also ran the uplink.

Nichols was kneeling by the control panels. "Standing by . . . tape's in . . . setting up for Six . . . transmitting . . . now!" And with that, the Ku-band signal went racing upward through the atmosphere to the satellite hovering 22,800 miles directly over the Admiralty Islands in the Bismarck Sea.

CNN doesn't bother encrypting its video signals. To do so is technically inconvenient, and few people bother pirating signals they could just as easily get off their cable systems for free in a few minutes, or even get live just four seconds later.

But this one was coming in at an awkward hour, which was, however, good for CNN Atlanta, because some headquarters people would want to go over it. A shooting death was not what the average American wanted with his Rice Krispies in the morning.

It was also downloaded by the American intelligence community, which holds CNN in very high regard, and doesn't distribute its news coverage very far in any case. But this one did go to the White House Office of Signals, a largely military operation located in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the West Wing. There a watch officer had to decide how important it was. If it ranked as a CRITIC priority, the President had to know about it in fifteen minutes, which meant waking him up right now, which was not something to be done casually to the Commander-in-Chief. A mere FLASH could wait a little longer, like-the watch officer checked the wall clock-yeah, like until breakfast. So, instead, they called the President's National Security Adviser, Dr. Benjamin Goodley. They'd let him make the call. He was a carded National Intelligence Officer.

"Yeah?" Goodley snarled into the phone while he checked the clock radio next to his bed.

"Dr. Goodley, this is Signals. We just copied something off CNN from Beijing that the Boss is going to be interested in."

"What is it?" CARDSHARP asked. Then he heard the reply. "How certain are you of this?"

"The Italian guy looks like he might possibly have survived, from the video-I mean if there was a good surgeon close-but the Chinese minister had his brains blowed right out. No chance for him at all, sir."

"What was it all about?"

"We're not sure of that. NSA might have the phone conversation between this Wise guy and Atlanta, but we haven't seen anything about it yet."

"Okay, tell me what you got again," Goodley ordered, now that he was approximately awake.

"Sir, we have a visual of two guys getting shot and a baby being born in Beijing. The video comes from Barry Wise of CNN. The video shows three gunshots. One is upwards into the ceiling of what appears to be a hospital delivery room. The second shot catches a guy in the back. That guy is identified as the Papal Nuncio to Beijing. The third shot goes right into the head of a guy identified as a Baptist minister in Beijing. That one appears to be a Chinese national. In between, we have a baby being born. Now we-stand by a minute, Dr. Goodley, okay, I have FLASH traffic from Fort Meade. Okay, they got it, too, and they got a voice transmission via their ECHELON system, reading it now. Okay, the Catholic cardinal is dead, according to this, says Cardinal Renato DiMilo-can't check the spelling, maybe State Department for that-and the Chinese minister is a guy named Yu Fa An, again no spelling check. They were there to, oh, okay, they were there to prevent a late-term abortion, and looks like they succeeded, but these two clergy got their a.s.ses killed doing it. Third one, a monsignor named Franz Schepke-that sounds pretty German to me-was there, too, and looks like he survived-oh, okay, he must be the tall one you see on the tape. You gotta see the tape. It's a h.e.l.l of a confused mess, sir, and when this Yu guy gets it, well, it's like that video from Saigon during the Tet Offensive. You know, where the South Vietnamese police colonel shot the North Vietnamese spy in the side of the head with a Smith Chief's Special, you know, like a fountain of blood coming out the head. Ain't something to watch with your Egg Mcm.u.f.fin, y'know?" the watch officer observed. The reference came across clearly enough. The news media had celebrated the incident as an example of the South Vietnamese government's bloodthirstiness. They had never explained-probably never even knew-that the man shot had been an officer of the North Vietnamese army captured in a battle zone wearing civilian clothing, therefore, under the Geneva Protocols was a spy liable to summary execution, which was exactly what he'd received.

"Okay, what else?"

"Do we wake the Boss up for this? I mean, we got a diplomatic team over there, and this has some serious implications."

Goodley thought about that for a second or two. "No. I'll brief him in in a few hours."

"Sir, it's sure as h.e.l.l going to be on CNN's seven o'clock morning report," the watch officer warned.

"Well, let me brief him when he has more than just pictures."

"Your call, Dr. Goodley."

"Thanks. Now, I think I'll try to get one more hour before I drive over to Langley." The phone went down before Goodley heard a reaction. His job carried a lot of prestige, but it denied him sleep and much of a social or s.e.x life, and at moments like this he wondered what the h.e.l.l was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned prestigious about it.

CHAPTER 25.

Fence Rending The speed of modern communications makes for curious disconnects. In this case, the American government knew what had happened in Beijing long before the government of the People's Republic did. What appeared in the White House Office of Signals appeared also in the State Department's Operations Center, and there the senior officer present had decided, naturally enough, to get the information immediately to the U.S. Emba.s.sy in Beijing. There Amba.s.sador Carl Hitch took the call at his desk on the encrypted line. He forced the caller from Foggy Bottom to confirm the news twice before making his first reaction, a whistle. It wasn't often that an accredited amba.s.sador of any sort got killed in a host country, much less by a host country. What the h.e.l.l, he wondered, was Washington going to do about this?

"d.a.m.n," Hitch whispered. He hadn't even met Cardinal DiMilo yet. The official reception had been planned for two weeks from now in a future that would never come. What was he supposed to do? First, he figured, get off a message of condolence to the Vatican mission. (Foggy Bottom would so notify the Vatican through the Nuncio in Washington, probably. Maybe even Secretary Adler would drive over himself to offer official condolences. h.e.l.l, President Ryan was Catholic, and maybe he would go himself, Hitch speculated.) Okay, Hitch told himself, things to do here. He had his secretary call the Nuncio's residence, but all he got there was a Chinese national answering the phone, and that wasn't worth a d.a.m.n. That would have to go on the back burner . . . what about the Italian Emba.s.sy? he thought next. The Nuncio was an Italian citizen, wasn't he? Probably. Okay. He checked his card file and dialed up the Italian amba.s.sador's private line.

"Paulo? This is Carl Hitch. Thanks, and you? I have some bad news, I'm afraid . . . the Papal Nuncio, Cardinal DiMilo, he's been shot and killed in some Beijing hospital by a Chinese policeman . . . it's going to be on CNN soon, not sure how soon . . . we're pretty certain of it, I'm afraid . . . I'm not entirely sure, but what I've been told is that he was there trying to prevent the death of a child, or one of those late-term abortions they do here . . . yeah . . . say, doesn't he come from a prominent family?" Then Hitch started taking notes. "Vincenzo, you said? I see . . . Minister of Justice two years ago? I tried to call over there, but all I got was some local answering the phone. German? Schepke?" More notes. "I see. Thank you, Paulo. Hey, if there's anything we can help you with over here . . . right. Okay. Bye." He hung up. "d.a.m.n. Now what?" he asked the desk. He could spread the bad news to the German Emba.s.sy, but, no, he'd let someone else do that. For now . . . he checked his watch. It was still short of sunrise in Washington, and the people there would wake up to find a firestorm. His job, he figured, was to verify what had happened so that he could make sure Washington had good information. But how the h.e.l.l to do that? His best potential source of information was this Monsignor Schepke, but the only way to get him was to stake out the Vatican Emba.s.sy and wait for him to come home. Hmm, would the Chinese be holding him somewhere? No, probably not. Once their Foreign Ministry found out about this, they'd probably fall all over themselves trying to apologize. So, they'd put extra security on the Nuncio's place, and that would keep newsies away, but they're not going to mess with accredited diplomats, not after killing one. This was just so bizarre. Carl Hitch had been a foreign-service officer since his early twenties. He'd never come across anything like this before, at least not since Spike Dobbs had been held hostage in Afghanistan by guerrillas, and the Russians had screwed up the rescue mission and gotten him killed. Some said that had been deliberate, but even the Soviets weren't that dumb, Hitch thought. Similarly, this hadn't been a deliberate act either. The Chinese were communists, and communists didn't gamble that way. It just wasn't part of their nature or their training.

So, how had this happened? And what, exactly, had happened?

And when would he tell Cliff Rutledge about it? And what effect might this have on the trade talks? Carl Hitch figured he'd have a full evening.

The People's Republic will not be dictated to," Foreign Minister Shen Tang concluded.

"Minister," Rutledge replied, "it is not the intention of the United States to dictate to anyone. You make your national policy to suit your nation's needs. We understand and respect that. We require, however, that you understand and respect our right to make our national policy as well, to suit our country's needs. In this case, that means invoking the provisions of the Trade Reform Act."

That was a big, sharp sword to wave, and everyone in the room knew it, Mark Gant thought. The TRA enabled the Executive Branch to replicate any nation's trade laws as applied to American goods, and mirror-image them against that nation's own goods. It was international proof of the adage that the shoe could sure pinch if it was on the other foot. In this case, everything China did to exclude American manufactured goods from the Chinese marketplace would simply be invoked in order to do the same to Chinese goods, and with a trade surplus of seventy billion dollars per year, that could well mean seventy billion dollars-all of it hard currency. The money to buy the things the PRC government wanted from America or elsewhere wouldn't be there anymore. Trade would become trade, one of mine for one of yours, which was the theory that somehow never became reality.

"If America embargoes Chinese trade, China can and will do the same to America," Shen shot back.

"Which serves neither your purposes nor our own," Rutledge responded. And that dog ain't gonna hunt, he didn't have to say. The Chinese knew that well enough without being told.

"And what of most-favored-nation status for our country? What of entry into the World Trade Organization?" the Chinese foreign minister demanded.

"Mr. Minister, America cannot look favorably upon either so long as your country expects open export markets while closing your import markets. Trade, sir, means trade, the even exchange of your goods for ours," Rutledge pointed out again-about the twelfth time since lunch, he reckoned. Maybe the guy would get it this time. But that was unfair. He already got it. He just wasn't acknowledging the fact. It was just domestic Chinese politics projected into the international arena.

"And again you dictate to the People's Republic!" Shen replied, with enough anger, real or feigned, to suggest that Rutledge had usurped his parking place.

"No, Minister, we do no such thing. It is you, sir, who tried to dictate to the United States of America. You say that we must accept your trade terms. In that, sir, you are mistaken. We see no more need to buy your goods than you do to buy ours." Just that you need our hard cash a d.a.m.ned sight more than we need your chew toys for our f.u.c.king dogs!

"We can buy our airliners from Airbus just as easily as from Boeing."

This really was getting tiresome. Rutledge wanted to respond: But without our dollars, what will you pay for them with, Charlie? But Airbus had excellent credit terms for its customers, one more way in which a European government-subsidized enterprise played "fair" in the marketplace with a private American corporation. So, instead he said: "Yes, Mr. Minister, you can do that, and we can buy trade goods from Taiwan, or Korea, or Thailand, or Singapore, just as easily as we can buy them here." And they'll f.u.c.king well buy their airplanes from Boeing! "But that does not serve the needs of your people, or of ours," he concluded reasonably.

"We are a sovereign nation and a sovereign people," Shen retorted, continuing on as he had before, and Rutledge figured that the rhetoric was all about taking command of the verbiage. It was a strategy that had worked many times before, but Rutledge had instructions to disregard all the diplomatic theatrics, and the Chinese just hadn't caught on yet. Maybe in a few more days, he thought.

"As are we, Minister," Rutledge said, when Shen concluded. Then he ostentatiously checked his watch, and here Shen took the cue.

"I suggest we adjourn until tomorrow," the PRC foreign minister said.

"Good. I look forward to seeing you in the morning, Minister," Rutledge responded, rising and leaning across the table to shake hands. The rest of the party did the same, though Mark Gant didn't have a counterpart to be nice to at the moment. The American party shuffled out, downstairs toward their waiting cars.

"Well, that was lively," Gant observed, as soon as they were outside.

Rutledge actually had himself a nice grin. "Yeah, it was kind of diverting, wasn't it?" A pause. "I think they're exploring how far bl.u.s.ter can take them. Shen is actually rather a sedate kind of guy. He likes it nice and gentle most of the time."

"So, he has his instructions, too?" Gant wondered.

"Of course, but he reports to a committee, their Politburo, whereas we report to Scott Adler, and he reports to President Ryan. You know, I was a little mad about the instructions I had coming over here, but this is actually turning into fun. We don't get to snarl back at people very often. We're the U.S. of A., and we're supposed to be nice and calm and accommodating to everybody. That's what I'm used to doing. But this-this feels good." That didn't mean that he approved of President Ryan, of course, but switching over from canasta to poker made an interesting change. Scott Adler liked poker, didn't he? Maybe that explained why he got along so well with that yahoo in the White House.

It was a short drive back to the emba.s.sy. The Americans in the delegation rode mainly in silence, blessing the few minutes of quiet. The hours of precise diplomatic exchange had had to be attended to in the same way a lawyer read a contract, word by G.o.dd.a.m.ned word, seeking meaning and nuance, like searching for a lost diamond in a cesspool. Now they sat back in their seats and closed their eyes or looked mutely at the pa.s.sing drab scenery with no more than an unstifled yawn, until they pulled through the emba.s.sy gate.

About the only thing to complain about was the fact that the limousines here, like those everywhere, were hard to get in and out of, unless you were six years old. But as soon as they alighted from their official transport, they could see that something was wrong. Amba.s.sador Hitch was right there, and he hadn't bothered with that before. Amba.s.sadors have high diplomatic rank and importance. They do not usually act as doormen for their own countrymen.

"What's the matter, Carl?" Rutledge asked.