“Jack, will you let us in on this development?”
“Insofar as I can. I may give Basil a little more on the side, but, yeah, Tony, this is for real, and we’re damned worried about it.”
“The gold and the oil?” the PM asked.
“They seem to think they’re in an economic box. They’re just about out of hard currency, and they’re hurting for oil and wheat.”
“You can’t make an arrangement for that?”
“After what they did? Congress would hang me from the nearest lamppost.”
“Quite,” the Brit had to agree. BBC had run its own news miniseries on human rights in the PRC, and the Chinese hadn’t come off very well. Indeed, despising China was the new European sport, which hadn’t helped their foreign-currency holdings at all. As China had trapped themselves, so the Western nations had been perversely co-opted into building the wall. The citizens of these democracies wouldn’t stand for economic or trade concessions any more than the Chinese Politburo could see its way to making the political sort. “Rather like Greek tragedy, isn’t it, Jack?”
“Yeah, Tony, and our tragic flaw is adherence to human rights. Hell of a situation, isn’t it?”
“And you’re hoping that bringing Russia into NATO will give them pause?”
“If there’s a better card to play, I haven’t seen it in my deck, man.”
“How set are they on the path?”
“Unknown. Our intelligence on this is very good, but we have to be careful making use of it. It could get people killed, and deny us the information we need.”
“Like our chap Penkovskiy in the 1960s.” One thing about Sir Basil, he knew how to educate his bosses on how the business of intelligence worked.
Ryan nodded, then proceeded with a little of his own disinformation. It was business, and Basil would understand: “Exactly. I can’t have that man’s life on my conscience, Tony, and so I have to treat this information very carefully.”
“Quite so, Jack. I understand fully.”
“Will you support us on this?”
The PM nodded at once. “Yes, old boy, we must, mustn’t we?”
“Thanks, pal.” Ryan patted him on the shoulder.
CHAPTER 44
The Shape of a New World Order
It took all day, lengthening what was supposed to have been a pro forma meeting of the NATO chiefs into a minor marathon. It took all of Scott Adler’s powers of persuasion to smooth things over with the various foreign ministers, but with the assistance of Britain, whose diplomacy had always been of the Rolls-Royce class, after four hours there was a head-nod-and-handshake agreement, and the diplomatic technicians were sent off to prepare the documents. All this was accomplished behind closed doors, with no opportunity for a press leak, and so when the various government leaders made it outside, the media learned of it like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. What they did not learn was the real reason for the action. They were told it had to do with the new economic promise in the Russian Federation, which seemed reasonable enough, and when you came down to it, was the root cause in any case.
In fact most of the NATO partners didn’t know the whole story, either. The new American intelligence was directly shared only with Britain, though France and Germany were given some indications of America’s cause for concern. For the rest, the simple logic of the situation was enough to offer appeal. It would look good in the press, and for most politicians all over the world, that was sufficient to make them doff their clothes and run about a public square naked. Secretary Adler cautioned his President about the dangers of drawing sovereign nations into treaty obligations without telling them all the reasons behind them, but even he agreed that there was little other choice in the matter. Besides, there was a built-in escape clause that the media wouldn’t see at first, and hopefully, neither would the Chinese.
The media got the story out in time for the evening news broadcasts in America and the late-night ones in Europe, and the TV cameras showed the arrival of the various VIPs at the official dinner in Warsaw.
“I owe you one, Tony,” Ryan told the British Prime Minister with a salute of his wineglass. The white wine was French, from the Loire Valley, and excellent. The hard liquor of the night had been an equally fine Polish vodka.
“Well, one can hope that it gives our Chinese friends pause. When will Grushavoy arrive?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, followed by more drinking. Vodka again, I suppose.” The documents were being printed up at this very moment, and then would be bound in fine leather, as such important documents invariably were, after which they’d be tucked away in various dusty basement archives, rarely to be seen by the eyes of men again.
“Basil tells me that your intelligence information is unusually good, and rather frightening,” the PM observed, with a sip of his own.
“It is all of that, my friend. You know, we’re supposed to think that this war business is a thing of the past.”
“So they thought a hundred years ago, Jack. It didn’t quite work out that way, did it?”
“True, but that was then, and this is now. And the world really has changed in the past hundred years.”
“I hope that is a matter of some comfort to Franz Ferdinand, and the ten million or so chaps who died as an indirect result of his demise, not to mention Act Two of the Great European Civil War,” the Prime Minister observed.
“Yeah, day after tomorrow, I’m going down to Auschwitz. That ought to be fun.” Ryan didn’t really want to go, but he figured it was something of an obligation under the circumstances, and besides, Arnie thought it would look good on TV, which was why he did a lot of the things he did.
“Do watch out for the ghosts, old boy. I should think there are a number of them there.”
“I’ll let you know,” Ryan promised. Would it be like Dickens’s A Christmas Carol? he wondered. The ghost of horrors past, accompanied by the ghost of horrors present, and finally the ghost of horrors yet to be? But he was in the business of preventing such things. That’s what the people of his country paid him for. Maybe $250,000 a year wasn’t much for a guy who’d twice made a good living in the trading business, but it was a damned sight more than most of the taxpayers made, and they gave it to him in return for his work. That made the obligation as sacred as a vow sworn to God’s own face. Auschwitz had happened because other men hadn’t recognized their obligation to the people whom they had been supposed to serve. Or something like that. Ryan had never quite made the leap of imagination necessary to understand the thought processes of dictators. Maybe Caligula had really figured that the lives of the Roman people were his possessions to use and discard like peanut shells. Maybe Hitler had thought that the German people existed only to serve his ambition to enter the history books—and if so, sure enough it had happened, just not quite the way he’d hoped it would. Jack Ryan knew objectively that he’d be in various history books, but he tried to avoid thinking about what future generations would make of him. Just surviving in his job from day to day was difficult enough. The problem with history was that you couldn’t transport yourself into the future so that you could look back with detachment and see what the hell you were supposed to do. No, making history was a damned sight harder than studying it, and so he’d decided to avoid thinking about it altogether. He wouldn’t be around to know what the future thought anyway, so there was no sense in worrying about it, was there? He had his own conscience to keep him awake at night, and that was hard enough.
Looking around the room, he could see the chiefs of government of more than fifteen countries, from little Iceland to the Netherlands to Turkey. He was President of the United States of America, by far the largest and most powerful country of the NATO alliance—until tomorrow, anyway, he corrected himself—and he wanted to take them all aside and ask each one how the hell he (they were all men at the moment) reconciled his self and his duties. How did you do the job honorably? How did you look after the needs of every citizen? Ryan knew that he couldn’t reasona
bly expect to be universally loved. Arnie had told him that—that he only needed to be liked, not loved, by half-plus-one of the voters in America—but there had to be more to the job than that, didn’t there? He knew all of his fellow chief executives by name and sight, and he’d been briefed in on each man’s character. That one there, he had a mistress only nineteen years old. That one drank like a fish. That one had a little confusion about his sexual preference. And that one was a crook who’d enriched himself hugely on the government payroll. But they were all allies of his country, and therefore they were officially his friends. And so Jack had to ignore what he knew of them and treat them like what they appeared to be rather than what they really were, and the really funny part of that was that they felt themselves to be his superiors because they were better politicians than he was. And the funniest part of all was that they were right. They were better politicians than he was, Ryan thought, sipping his wine. The British Prime Minister walked off to see his Norwegian counterpart, as Cathy Ryan rejoined her husband.
“Well, honey, how did it go?”
“The usual. Politics. Don’t any of these women have a real job?” she asked the air.
“Some do,” Jack remembered from his briefings. “Some even have kids.”
“Mainly grandkids. I’m not old enough for that yet, thank God.”
“Sorry, babe. But there are advantages to being young and beautiful,” POTUS told FLOTUS.
“And you’re the best-looking guy here,” Cathy replied with a smile.
“But I’m too tired. Long day at the bargaining table.”
“Why are you bringing Russia into NATO?”
“To stop a war with China,” Jack replied honestly. It was time she knew. The answer to her question got her attention.
“What?”
“I’ll fill you in later, babe, but that’s the short version.”
“A war?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story, and we hope that what we agreed to do today will prevent it.”
“You say so,” Cathy Ryan observed dubiously.
“Meet anybody you like?”
“The French President is very charming.”
“Oh, yeah? He was a son of a bitch in the negotiating session today. Maybe he’s just trying to get in your knickers,” Jack told his wife. He’d been briefed in on the French President, and he was reputed to be a man of “commendable vigor,” as the State Department report delicately put it. Well, the French had a reputation as great lovers, didn’t they?
“I’m spoke for, Sir John,” she reminded him.
“And so am I, my lady.” He could have Roy Altman shoot the Frenchman for making a move on his wife, Ryan thought with amusement, but that would cause a diplomatic incident, and Scott Adler always got upset about those.... Jack checked his watch. It was about time to call this one a day. Soon some diplomat would make a discreet announcement that would end the evening. Jack hadn’t danced with his wife. The sad truth was that Jack couldn’t dance a lick, which was a source of minor contention with his wife, and a shortcoming he planned to correct someday ... maybe.
The party broke up on time. The embassy had comfortable quarters, and Ryan found his way to the king-sized bed brought in for his and Cathy’s use.
Bondarenko’s official residence at Chabarsovil was a very comfortable one, befitting a four-star resident and his family. But his wife didn’t like it. Eastern Siberia lacked the social life of Moscow, and besides, one of their daughters was nine months pregnant, and his wife was in St. Petersburg to be there when the baby arrived. The front of the house overlooked a large parade ground. The back, where his bedroom was, looked into the pine forests that made up most of this province. He had a large personal staff to look after his needs. That included a particularly skilled cook, and communications people. It was one of the latter who knocked on his bedroom door at three in the local morning.
“Yes, what is it?”
“An urgent communication for you, Comrade General,” the voice answered.
“Very well, wait a minute.” Gennady Iosifovich rose and donned a cloth robe, punching on a light as he went to open the door. He grumbled as any man would at the loss of sleep, but generals had to expect this sort of thing. He opened the door without a snarl at the NCO who handed over the telex.
“Urgent, from Moscow,” the sergeant emphasized.
“Da, spasiba,” the general replied, taking it and walking back toward his bed. He sat in the comfortable chair that he usually dumped his tunic on and picked up the reading glasses that he didn’t actually need, but which made reading easier in the semidarkness. It was something urgent—well, urgent enough to wake him up in the middle of the fucking—
“My God,” CINC-FAR EAST breathed to himself, halfway down the cover sheet. Then he flipped it over to read the substance of the report.
In America it would be called a Special National Intelligence Estimate. Bondarenko had seen them before, even helped draft some, but never one like this.
It is believed that there is an imminent danger of war between Russia and the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese objective in offensive operations will be to seize the newly discovered gold and oil deposits in eastern Siberia by rapid mechanized assault north from their border west of Khabarovsk. The leading elements will include the 34th Shock Army, a Type A Group Army ...
This intelligence estimate is based upon national intelligence assets with access to the political leaders of the PRC, and the quality of the intelligence is graded “1A,” the report went on, meaning that the SVR regarded it as Holy Writ. Bondarenko hadn’t seen that happen very much.
Far East Command is directed to make all preparations to meet and repel such an attack ...
“With what?” the general asked the papers in his hand. “With what, comrades?” With that he lifted the bedside phone. “I want my staff together in forty minutes,” he told the sergeant who answered. He would not take the theatrical step of calling a full alert just yet. That would follow his staff meeting. Already his mind was examining the problem. It would continue to do so as he urinated, then shaved, his mind running in small circles, a fact which he recognized but couldn’t change, and the fact that he couldn’t change it didn’t slow the process one small bit. The problem he faced as he scraped the whiskers from his face was not an easy one, perhaps an impossible one, but his four-star rank made it his problem, and he didn’t want to be remembered by future Russian military students as the general who’d not been up to the task of defending his country against a foreign invasion. He was here, Bondarenko told himself, because he was the best operational thinker his country had. He’d faced battle before, and comported himself well enough not only to live but to wear his nation’s highest decorations for bravery. He’d studied military history his whole life. He’d even spent time with the Americans at their battle laboratory in California, something he lusted to copy and re-create in Russia as the best possible way to prepare soldiers for battle, but which his country couldn’t begin to afford for years. He had the knowledge. He had the nerve. What he lacked were the assets. But history was not made by soldiers who had what they needed, but by those who did not. When the soldiers had enough, the political leaders went into the books. Gennady Iosifovich was a soldier, and a Russian soldier. His country was always taken by surprise, because for whatever reason her political leaders didn’t ever see war coming, and because of that soldiers had to pay the price. A distant voice told him that at least he wouldn’t be shot for failure. Stalin was long dead, and with him the ethos of punishing those whom he had failed to warn or prepare. But Bondarenko didn’t listen to that voice. Failure was too bitter an alternative for him to consider while he lived.
The Special National Intelligence Estimate made its way to American forces in Europe and the Pacific even more quickly than to Chabarsovil. For Admiral Bartolomeo Vito Mancuso, it came before a scheduled dinner with the governor of Hawaii. His Public Affairs Officer had to knock that one back a few hours while
CINCPAC called his staff together.
“Talk to me, Mike,” Mancuso commanded his J-2, BG Michael Lahr.
“Well, it hasn’t come totally out of left field, sir,” the theater intelligence coordinator replied. “I don’t know anything about the source of the intelligence, but it looks like high-level human intelligence, probably with a political point of origin. CIA says it’s highly reliable, and Director Foley is pretty good. So, we have to take this one very seriously.” Lahr paused for a sip of water.
“Okay, what we know is that the PRC is looking with envious eyes at the Russian mineral discoveries in the central and northern parts of eastern Siberia. That plays into the economic problems they got faced with after the killings in Beijing caused the break in trade talks, and it also appears that their other trading partners are backing away from them as well. So, the Chinese now find themselves in a really tight economic corner, and that’s been a casus belli as far back as we have written history.”
“What can we do to scare them off?” asked the general commanding Pacific Fleet Marine Force.
“What we’re doing tomorrow is to make the Russian federation part of NATO. Russian President Grushavoy will be flying to Warsaw in a few hours to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. That makes Russia an ally of the United States of America, and of all the NATO members. So, the thinking is that if China moves, they’re not just taking on Russia, but all the rest of the North Atlantic Council as well, and that ought to give them pause.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Mancuso asked. As a theater commander-in-chief, he was paid to consider diplomatic failure rather than success.
“Then, sir, if the Chinese strike north, we have a shooting war on the Asian mainland between the People’s Republic of China and an American ally. That means we’re going to war.”
“Do we have any guidance from Washington along those lines?” CINCPAC asked.
Lahr shook his head. “Not yet, Admiral. It’s developing a little fast for that, and Secretary Bretano is looking to us for ideas.”