"Tan had my approval," Xu told them calmly.

Fang looked over at Zhang Han San. That's where the idea must have originated. His old friend might have hated capitalists, but that didn't stop him from acting like the worst pirate when it suited his goals. And he had Xu's ear, and Tan as his strong right arm. Fang thought he knew all of these men, but now he saw that his a.s.sumption had been in error. In each was something hidden, and sinister. They were far more ruthless than he, Fang saw.

"That is an act of war," Fang objected.

"Our operational security was excellent. Our Russian agent, one Klementi Suvorov, is a former KGB officer we recruited ages ago when he was stationed here in Beijing. He's performed various functions for us for a long time and he has superb contacts within both their intelligence and military communities-that is, those segments of it that are now in the new Russian underworld. In fact he's a common criminal-a lot of the old KGB people have turned into that-but it works for us. He likes money, and for enough of it, he will do anything. Unfortunately in this case, a pure happenstance prevented the elimination of this Golovko person," Tan concluded.

"And now?" Fang asked. Then he cautioned himself. He was asking too many questions, taking too much of a personal position here. Even in this room, even with these old comrades, it didn't pay to stand out too far.

"And now, that is for the Politburo to decide," Tan replied blandly. It had to be affected, but was well acted in any case.

Fang nodded and leaned back, keeping his peace for the moment.

"Luo?" Xu asked. "Is this feasible?"

The Marshal had to guard his words as well, not to appear too confident. You could get in trouble around this table by promising more than you could deliver, though Luo was in the unique position-somewhat shared by Interior Minister Tong-of having guns behind him and his position.

"Comrades, we have long examined the strategic issue here. When Russia was the Soviet Union, this operation was not possible. Their military was much larger and better supported, and they had numerous intercontinental and theater ballistic missiles tipped with thermonuclear warheads. Now they have none, thanks to their bilateral agreement with America. Today, the Russian military is a shadow of what it was only ten or twelve years ago. Fully half of their draftees do not even report when called for service-if that happened here, we all know what would happen to the miscreants, do we not? They squandered much of their remaining combat power with their Chechen religious minority-and so, you might say that Russia is already splitting up along religious lines. In practical terms, the task is straightforward, if not entirely easy. The real difficulty facing us is distance and s.p.a.ce, not actual military opposition. It's many kilometers from our border to their new oil field on the Arctic Ocean-much fewer to the new goldfield. The best news of all is that the Russian army is itself building the roads we need to make the approach. It reduces our problems by two thirds right there. Their air force is a joke. We should be able to cope with it-they sell us their best aircraft, after all, and deny them to their own flyers. To make our task easier, we would do well to disrupt their command and control, their political stability and so forth. Tan, can you accomplish that?"

"That depends on what, exactly, is the task," Tan Deshi replied.

"To eliminate Grushavoy, perhaps," Zhang speculated. "He is the only person of strength in Russia at the moment. Remove him, and their country would collapse politically."

"Comrades," Fang had to say, taking the risk, "what we discuss here is bold and daring, but also fraught with danger. What if we fail?"

"Then, my friend, we are no worse off than we appear to be already," Zhang replied. "But if we succeed, as appears likely, we achieve the position for which we have striven since our youth. The People's Republic will become the foremost power in all the world." As is our right, he didn't have to add. "Chairman Mao never considered failing to destroy Chiang, did he?"

There was no arguing with that, and Fang didn't attempt it. The switchover from fear to adventurousness had been as abrupt as it was now becoming contagious. Where was the caution these men exercised so often? They were men on a floundering ship, and they saw a means of saving themselves, and having accepted the former proposition, they were catapulted into the latter. All he could do was lean back and watch the talk evolve, waiting-hoping-that reason would break out and prevail.

But from whom would it come?

CHAPTER 41.

Plots of State Yes, Minister?" Ming said, looking up from her almost-completed notes.

"You are careful with these notes, aren't you?"

"Certainly, Comrade Minister," she replied at once. "I never even print these doc.u.ments up, as you well know. Is there a concern?"

Fang shrugged. The stresses of today's meeting were gradually bleeding off. He was a practical man of the world, and he was an elderly man. If there was a way to deal with the current problem, he would find it. If there wasn't, then he would endure. He always had. He was not the one taking the lead here, and his notes would show that he was one of the few cautious skeptics at the meeting. One of the others, of course, was Qian Kun, who'd walked out of the room shaking his head and muttering to his senior aide. Fang then wondered if Qian was keeping notes. It would have been a good move. If things went badly, those could be his only defense. At this level of risk, the hazard wasn't relegation to a menial job, but rather having one's ashes scattered in the river.

"Ming?"

"Yes, Minister?"

"What did you think of the students in the square all those years ago?"

"I was only in school then myself, Minister, as you know."

"Yes, but what did you think?"

"I thought they were reckless. The tallest tree is always the first to be cut down." It was an ancient Chinese adage, and therefore a safe thing to say. Theirs was a culture that discouraged taking such action-but perversely, their culture also lionized those who'd had the courage to do so. As with every human tribe, the criterion was simple. If you succeeded, then you were a hero, to be remembered and admired. If you failed, n.o.body would remember you anyway, except, perhaps, as a negative example. And so safety lay always in the middle course, and in safety was life.

The students had been too young to know all that. Too young to accept the idea of death. The bravest soldiers were always the young ones, those spirits of great pa.s.sions and beliefs, those who had not lived long enough to reflect on what shape the world took when it turned against you, those too foolish to know fear. For children, the unknown was something you spent almost all your time exploring and finding out. Somewhere along the line, you discovered that you'd learned all that was safe to learn, and that's where most men stopped, except for the very few upon whom progress depended, the brave ones and the bold ones who walked with open eyes into the unknown, and humanity remembered those few who came back alive . . .

. . . and soon enough forgot those who did not.

But it was the substance of history to remember those who did, and the substance of Fang's society to remind them of those who didn't. Such a strange dichotomy. What societies, he wondered, encourage people to seek out the unknown? How did they do? Did they thrive, or did they blunder about in the darkness and lose their substance in aimless, undirected wanderings? In China, everyone followed the words and thoughts of Marx, as modified by Mao, because he had boldly walked into the darkness and returned with revolution, and changed the path of his nation. But there things had stopped, because no one was willing to proceed beyond the regions Mao had explored and illuminated-and proclaimed to be all that China and the world in general needed to know about. Mao was like some sort of religious prophet, wasn't he? Fang reflected.

. . . Hadn't China just killed a couple of those?

"Thank you, Ming," he told her, waiting there for his next order. He didn't see her close the door as she went to her desk to transcribe the notes of this Politburo meeting.

Dear G.o.d," Dr. Sears whispered at his desk. As usual, the SORGE doc.u.ment had been printed up on the DDO's laser jet and handed over to him, and he'd walked back to his office to do the translation. Sometimes the doc.u.ments were short enough to translate standing in front of her desk, but this one was pretty long. It was, in fact, going to take eight line-and-a-half-s.p.a.ced pages off his laser printer. He took his time on this because of its content. He rechecked his translation. Suddenly he had doubts about his understanding of the Chinese language. He couldn't afford to mistranslate or misrepresent this sort of thing. It was just too hot. All in all, he took two and a half hours, more than double what Mrs. Foley probably expected, before he walked back.

"What took so long?" MP asked when he returned.

"Mrs. Foley, this is hot."

"How hot?"

"Magma," Sears said, as he handed the folder across.

"Oh?" She took the pages and leaned back in her comfortable chair to read it over. SORGE, source SONGBIRD. Her eyes cataloged the heading, yesterday's meeting of the Chinese Politburo. Then Sears saw it. Saw her eyes narrow as her hand reached for a b.u.t.terscotch. Then her eyes shifted to him. "You weren't kidding. Evaluation?"

"Ma'am, I can't evaluate the accuracy of the source, but if this is for real, well, then we're looking in on a process I've never seen before outside history books, and hearing words that n.o.body has ever heard in this building-not that I've ever heard about, anyway. I mean, every minister in their government is quoted there, and most of them are saying the same thing-"

"And it's not something we want them to say," Mary Patricia Foley concluded his statement. "a.s.suming this is all accurately reported, does it feel real?"

Sears nodded. "Yes, ma'am. It sounds to me like real conversation by real people, and the content tracks with the personalities as I know them. Could it be fabricated? Yes, it could. If so, the source has been compromised in some way or other. However, I don't see that this could be faked without their wanting to produce a specific effect, and that would be an effect which would not be overly attractive to them."

"Any recommendations?"

"It might be a good idea to get George Weaver down from Providence," Sears replied. "He's good at reading their minds. He's met a lot of them face-to-face, and he'll be a good backup for my evaluation."

"Which is?" Mary Pat asked, not turning to the last page, where it would be printed up.

"They're considering war."

The Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency stood and walked out her door, with Dr. Joshua Sears right behind her. She took the short walk to her husband's office and went through the door without even looking at Ed's private secretary.

Ed Foley was having a meeting with the Deputy Director (Science and Technology) and two of his senior people when MP walked in. He looked up in surprise, then saw the blue folder in her hand. "Yeah, honey?"

"Excuse me, but this can't wait even one minute." Her tone of voice told as much as her words did.

"Frank, can we get together after lunch?"

"Sure, Ed." DDS&T gathered his doc.u.ments and his people and headed out.

When they were gone and the door closed, the DCI asked, "SORGE?"

Mary Pat just nodded and handed the folder across, taking a seat on the couch. Sears remained standing. It was only then that he realized his hands were a little moist. That hadn't happened to him before. Sears, as head of the DI's Office of China a.s.sessments, worked mainly on political evaluations: who was who in the PRC's political hierarchy, what economic policies were being pursued-the Society Page for the People's Republic, as he and his people thought of it, and joked about it over lunch in the cafeteria. He'd never seen anything like this, nothing hotter than handling internal dissent, and while their methods for handling such things tended to be a little on the rough side, as he often put it-mainly it meant summary execution, which was more than a little on the rough side for those affected-the distances involved helped him to take a more detached perspective. But not on this.

"Is this for real?" the DC asked.

"Dr. Sears thinks so. He also thinks we need to get Weaver down from Brown University."

Ed Foley looked over at Sears. "Call him. Right now."

"Yes, sir." Sears left the room to make the call.

"Jack has to see this. What's he doing now?"

"He's leaving for Warsaw in eight hours, remember? The NATO meeting, the photo opportunity at Auschwitz, stopping off at London on the way home for dinner at Buckingham Palace. Shopping on Bond Street," Ed added. There were already a dozen Secret Service people in London working with the Metropolitan Police and MI-5, properly known as the Security Service. Twenty more were in Warsaw, where security concerns were not all that much of an issue. The Poles were very happy with America right now, and the leftover police agencies from the communist era still kept files on everyone who might be a problem. Each would have a personal baby-sitter for the entire time Ryan was in the country. The NATO meeting was supposed to be almost entirely ceremonial, a basic feel-good exercise to make a lot of European politicians look pretty for their polyglot const.i.tuents.

"Jesus, they're talking about making a move on Grushavoy!" Ed Foley gasped, getting to page three. "Are they totally off their f.u.c.kin' rockers?"

"Looks like they found themselves in a corner unexpectedly," his wife observed. "We may have overestimated their political stability."

Foley nodded and looked up at his wife. "Right now?"

"Right now," she agreed.

Her husband lifted his phone and punched speed-dial #1.

"Yeah, Ed, what is it?" Jack Ryan asked.

"Mary and I are coming over."

"When?"

"Now."

"That important?" the President asked.

"This is CRITIC stuff, Jack. You'll want Scott, Ben, and Arnie there, too. Maybe George Winston. The foundation of the issue is his area of expertise."

"China?"

"yet."

"Okay, come on over." Ryan switched phones. "Ellen, I need SecState, SecTreas, Ben, and Arnie in my office, thirty minutes from right now."

"Yes, Mr. President," his secretary acknowledged. This sounded hot, but Robby Jackson was on his way out of town again, to give a speech in Seattle, at the Boeing plant of all places, where the workers and the management wanted to know about the 777 order to China. Robby didn't have much to say on that point, and so he'd talk about the importance of human rights and America's core beliefs and principles, and all that wave-the-flag stuff. The Boeing people would be polite about it, and it was hard to be impolite to a black man, especially one with Navy Wings of Gold on his lapel, and learning to handle this political bulls.h.i.t was Robby's main task. Besides, it took pressure off Ryan, and that was Jackson's primary mission in life, and oddly enough, one which he accepted with relative equanimity. So, his VC-20B would be over Ohio right about now, Jack thought. Maybe Indiana. Just then Andrea came in.

"Company coming?" Special Agent Price-O'Day asked. She looked a little pale, Jack thought.

"The usual suspects. You feeling okay?" the President asked.

"Stomach is a little upset. Too much coffee with breakfast."

Morning sickness? Ryan wondered. If so, too bad. Andrea tried so hard to be one of the boys. Admitting this female failing would scar her soul as though from a flamethrower. He couldn't say anything about it. Maybe Cathy could. It was a girl thing.

"Well, the DCI's coming over with something he says is important. Maybe they've changed the toilet paper in the Kremlin, as we used to say at Langley back when I worked there."

"Yes, sir." She smiled. Like most Secret Service agents, she'd seen the people and the secrets come and go, and if there were important things for her to know, she'd find out in due course.

General-Lieutenant Kirillin liked to drink as much as most Russians, and that was quite a lot by American standards. The difference between Russians and Brits, Chavez had learned, was that the Brits drank just as much, but they did it with beer, while the Russians made do with vodka. Ding was neither a Mormon nor a Baptist, but he was over his capacity here. After two nights of keeping up with the local Joneses, he'd nearly died on the morning run with his team, and only avoided falling out for fear of losing face before the Russian Spetsnaz people they were teaching to come up to Rainbow standards. Somehow he'd managed not to puke, though he had allowed Eddie Price to take charge of the first two cla.s.ses that day while he'd wandered off to drink a gallon of water to chase down three aspirins. Tonight, he'd decided, he'd cut off the vodkas at two . . . maybe three.

"How are our men doing?" the general asked.

"Just fine, sir," Chavez answered. "They like their new weapons, and they're picking up on the doctrine. They're smart. They know how to think before they act."

"Does this surprise you?"

"Yes, General, it does. It was the same for me once, back when I was a squad sergeant in the Ninjas. Young soldiers tend to think with their d.i.c.ks rather than their brains. I learned better, but I had to learn it the hard way in the field. It's sometimes a lot easier to get yourself into trouble than it is to think yourself out of it. Your Spetsnaz boys started off that way, but if you show them the right way, they listen pretty good. Today's exercise, for example. We set it up with a trap, but your captain stopped short on the way in and thought it through before he committed, and he pa.s.sed the test. He's a good team leader, by the way. I'd say b.u.mp him to major." Chavez hoped he hadn't just put the curse of h.e.l.l on the kid, realizing that praise from a CIA officer wasn't calculated to be career-enhancing for a Russian officer.

"He's my nephew. His father married my sister. He's an academician, a professor at Moscow State University."

"His English is superb. I'd take him for a native of Chicago." And so Captain Leskov had probably been talent-scouted by KGB or its successor agency. Language skills of that magnitude didn't just happen.

"He was a parachutist before they sent him to Spetsnaz," Kirillin went on, "a good light-infantryman."

"That's what Ding was, once upon a time," Clark told the Russian.

"Seventh Light Infantry. They de-established the division after I left. Seems like a long time now."

"How did you go from the American army into CIA?"

"His fault," Chavez answered. "John spotted me and foolishly thought I had potential."

"We had to clean him up and send him to school, but he's worked out pretty well-even married my daughter."

"He's still getting used to having a Latino in the family, but I made him a grandfather. Our wives are back in Wales."

"So, how did you emerge from CIA into Rainbow?"

"My fault, again," Clark admitted. "I did a memo, and it perked to the top, and the President liked it, and he knows me, and so when they set the outfit up, they put me in charge of it. I wanted Domingo here to be part of it, too. He's got young legs, and he shoots okay."

"Your operations in Europe were impressive, especially at the park in Spain."

"Not our favorite. We lost a kid there."