by David Poyer
“Two opposing viewpoints on where we’re going,” the admiral muttered. “And both possibly equally valid. Okay, let’s look at the external power balance. Tony, what’s the CIA got for us?”
Provanzano grimaced. He hitched his chair forward, though it barely moved, and tapped a pencil on the table. “Taking the ten-thousand-foot view? China and the US have nearly destroyed each other as first-rate powers. Unfortunately, that leaves a vacuum. Our former allies are already fighting over who’ll fill it. The Vietnamese and Indonesians are squaring off over the islands we took in the South China Sea. Moscow’s thinking of occupying Manchuria, on the basis of their last-minute declaration of war. And possibly a foothold on the Chinese coast as well.” He glanced at Blair. “But there’s something Moscow wants even more than land. Repayment of over two trillion dollars’ worth of China’s war debt. Which they want the US to guarantee.”
“Dream on. Not gonna happen,” Ammermann snapped. “In this universe or any other.”
Yangerhans said, “I agree, but having it on the table for now might strengthen our hand later.”
A discreet tap at the door; one of the DSS women leaned in. “The vehicles are waiting, everyone.”
“Be finished in a minute,” Yangerhans said. “What else, Tony?”
“Moscow’s moving again on Ukraine, using hybrid warfare to occupy the rest of the Black Sea coast. Threatening Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland. They restructured the Russian Federation while we were at war; central Asian states, Georgia, Belarus, no longer have independent legislatures. Germany’s got a new president, populist sliding toward fascist. He’s mustering Hungary, Bulgaria, and the rest of Eastern Europe against Russian adventurism. But they’re playing catch-up. If the Russians move west, they’ll roll over them.”
Blair lifted a finger. “Can I make a point?”
“Blair, sure, go ahead,” Yangerhans said.
“Most of what we’re discussing here is outside our control. But let’s not forget, we’re also facing what could be the biggest humanitarian emergency in history. Taiwan’s in ruins. Korea’s devastated. And China’s starving. The famine killed millions, the Central Flower virus millions more, and our nuclear strikes—”
Ammermann cut her off angrily, punching the arm of his chair so hard dust rose. “To hell with them! They started this goddamned war—”
Yangerhans held up a hand. “All right. Enough! I see everybody’s points. Yours too, Blair—I agree, we have to find some way to feed these people. But first, let’s secure peace. Then, outline a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action we can present to the heads of state meeting in Singapore.
“In fifteen minutes we’ll be headed over to meet this state council. For now, let’s concentrate on whoever thinks he speaks for the military. General Pei, maybe. He and I met before the war. He may be reasonable.
“If it seems like they have a handle on the security forces, our first priority has to be to work through them to stand the army down and secure the remaining nuclear sites. At least until we can pull in the International Atomic Energy Agency for a freeze in place, and reach some agreement on dismantlement, or some minimal remaining deterrent.”
Bankey Talmadge stirred slowly, like an ancient tortoise. Blair didn’t like the way his cheeks were purpling. He grunted, “Congress isn’t going to approve leaving them with nuclear weapons.”
Ammermann twisted in his chair to face him. “That’s not up to Congress, Senator. Sorry. The executive will make those decisions.”
“And the Hill will fund them. Or not,” Talmadge rumbled, and the look in his eye did not bode well for that.
Yangerhans slammed a hand down on the table. Everyone flinched. “United front, people! If we have disagreements, we’ll settle them behind closed doors. I do not want them to see a divided American mission.
“We’ve just heard two clear policy options. Door A leads to trying to rebuild a central state along democratic lines while we hold off predators from the carcass. Which leads to decades of China being dependent on us, and, yeah, it’ll cost money.
“Door B, we let the country come apart at the seams. Russia and our allies tear off pieces to gorge on. Leading to a new war in twenty years, when China recovers and seeks revenge.”
Several people around the table waved their hands, trying to interrupt, but the admiral plowed on. “There’re arguments for both sides. But as I see it, the worst course of all is to try to drive down the middle of the road.”
Ammermann broke in again. “I say, let ’em fight each other. To the death. Our own country’s broke. Millions dead. Why should we pay a nickel more?”
Blair put her hand over Shira’s rising one. “I don’t agree, Adam. We made a huge mistake, letting Russia revert to authoritarianism when she had a chance to become a normal country. When we win, we have this history of not following through. Let’s not miss our chance this time.”
Yangerhans raised his palms as shouts broke out again. “Quiet. Quiet! I’ll present both options to the president. And to the Armed Services Committee, Senator. But the final decision’ll be up to the heads of state. They’ll provide guidance. But for right now, united front. Adam? Senator? Tony? Shira? Blair?”
They all nodded reluctantly. Yangerhans glared around once more, then snapped his attention back to Salyers. “Shira. Any last-minute diplomatic advice?”
“I can address that, sir,” the little man in black said, stepping forward from along the wall. “I have been at many meetings with these same men, during the trade negotiations before the war.”
“Fire away, Mr. Ayala,” Yangerhans said, looking bemused.
“Sir, it is essential to not humiliate the Chinese. They must save face. Second, resign yourself to a long negotiation. Identify the decision maker. Talk only to him, not underlings. Drink baiju with them if they ask. They are like Russians in that way. It establishes a bond.
“Above all, do not look eager to reach a deal. They will see it as weakness, as desperation, and ask for more.”
“Good advice, sounds like,” the admiral said after a moment. He nodded. “Are we ready?” No one spoke. “Then”—and he smiled grimly at the special agent at the door—“tell them we’re on our way.”
Blair took a deep breath, clawed herself out of the too-soft chair, and followed the others out.
* * *
SHE gazed up in wonder at the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The wide timeworn steps, the petal-scarlet tiles of the elegantly pagoda’d roofs, the solemn and absolute emptiness of the far-stretching plazas … all were familiar, from one of her favorite films. The forbidding, crabbed Empress Dowager Cixi, who’d doomed China to revolution and chaos. The child emperor Puyi hiding a pet cricket behind his throne. Then, after Mao came to power, becoming a humble gardener at this same walled enclave …
She shook off the awe and climbed the steps, catching up with Talmadge, who was toiling upward, leaning heavily on his cane. On impulse, she took the old senator’s arm. “We’re back together, Bankey.”
He squeezed her hand with his free one. “Like old times, Missy.”
His pet nickname for her, way back when. Her old employer was one of the few survivors of the age of the titans. He’d served with Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole, Robert Byrd, the other Talmadge, a distant cousin … With the passage of decades his offices had grown bigger, his perks greater, his clout colossal. Especially with defense contractors, whose purse strings the Armed Services Committee controlled. The war had only magnified his influence. Others might be bigger names, but in the ways that truly counted, he was the most powerful member of her party.
She said, in the chiding tone that had always made him smile, “I wasn’t gone, Bankey. Just moved to the executive.”
“The other side of the fence,” he grumbled.
“Oh, come on, Senator. You’re dinging me for joining a wartime coalition government?”
“For fronting for them. Breaking ranks with the party. That’s what don’t set so good with some
of our supporters.”
“The White House wanted a hard-line strategy, Bankey. Without me standing on the brakes, this war could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Well,” muttered the old man, laboring upward with a huffing groan, “I’m on your side, Missy. Always will be. You know that. But there are other folks out there, they’re never gonna forget.”
* * *
THEY straggled through the palace, then descended another set of broad marble steps. A hundred yards on Bankey halted, panting, cheeks flushed that deep purple she didn’t like to see. “Ah can’t walk any farther. They’re makin’ us sweat, Missy. Put up with this crap, we’re the ones losin’ face here.”
She signaled one of the soldiers who walked along with them, and sign-languaged that the old man was done. The trooper murmured into a radio. Within seconds an official came trotting up, pushing a wheelchair.
They caught up with the others in the side courtyard of a smaller, but if possible even more opulent, palace than the first. Its scarlet-and-gold columns stretched up to a roof so lofty it was lost in shadow. The carpet smoothed a floor of hand-set stone flags. In its center, before a divanlike throne, a long table had been set up, with a buffet to one side. Uniformed officers ushered them to more overstuffed seats. Across the table a group of stressed-looking Chinese, all in dark blue suits and bright red ties, stood by their chairs, waiting.
Ammermann took the center seat on the Allied side. Blair hesitated, then grabbed Talmadge’s wheelchair and shoved it in between Ammermann and Yangerhans, forcing the staffer to push his own chair over as the wheel slammed into it. Which moved him from the center, off to the side. Where he belonged … She headed for a seat at the far end, but was intercepted by two of the Chinese, who’d circled the table to intercept her. After a second glance she recognized them, and inclined her head. “Minister Chen. Good to see you again.”
“Good to see you again as well, Dr. Titus.” The chubby senior official returned her nod with a partial bow. Deputy Minister Chen Jialuo was older than she, and to judge by the way his hands trembled as he adjusted his spectacles, extremely nervous. The sopping palm she shook confirmed it.
And no wonder. It was Chen who’d called her “corrupt, untrustworthy, pliable, depraved, and malignant” at their first meeting, under UN auspices, in Dublin. But it was also Chen who’d secretly backchanneled the lower leadership’s openness to negotiation. First at Dublin, then again in Zurich.
Beside him stood the young man who’d carried the can on those dangerous covert meetings: the opaque-faced apparatchik Xie Yunlong. “Yun,” she murmured, shaking his hand too. His grip was firmer, but only a little less sweaty.
Or maybe the perspiration was actually her own?
Chen beckoned more Chinese over. “Dr. Titus, I would like to introduce you to three of our most distinguished military men. Marshal Chagatai. Admiral Lin. Lieutenant General Pei.”
She greeted them formally, trying to ignore the feeling each hand she took had been marinated in blood. Pei had shot hundreds of civilians in Taiwan. The barrel-chested, scowling Dewei Chagatai had crushed a revolt in Hong Kong and gassed whole villages in Xinjiang. And Admiral Lin’s fingerprints were on the thermonuclear obliteration of the USS Roosevelt strike group at the beginning of the war, killing ten thousand US sailors and fliers.
She murmured through numb lips, “I hope we can make progress together.”
“I hope so too. I will trust you to proceed on the basis you agreed to in Zurich.” A bead of sweat rolled down Chen’s quivering cheek. “The Party must continue to govern. Senior military leaders must be allowed honorable retirement. There can be no prosecutions, no trials. Otherwise we will continue the fight.”
She remembered a café near the Place Lenin, deep in the cobblestoned warrens of medieval Zurich. A tense, hostile face-off, with a shadowy Russian sitting in. Trying to profit from ending the war, just as they’d made money from the conflict itself.
Where was that Russian now? Probably not far away.
She retrieved her hand. Gently. Gently. “With all due respect, Minister, those were your positions, which you advanced as starting points. As I informed you then, I had no power to negotiate. I made that clear, I believe. But you can certainly present them as your conditions for peace, here, at this table, for our mission to transmit to the Allied heads of state.”
Yangerhans coughed into a fist again. He stood waiting, looking bored. Above all, do not look eager to reach a deal. Yeah, bored was probably the right tack to start out on. “Uh, Blair? Gentlemen, ladies, we have an armistice. Let’s see if we can make a peace.”
The Chinese stared at her, then at him. They bowed slightly once more, all together, expressions carefully neutral. Then took their seats, to face their enemies across six feet of lacquered tabletop.
2
California
THERE wasn’t much in the way of flights from San Diego north. And nothing, of course, to the Seattle area. The tall officer with the graying hair had deplaned at the Navy terminal in Coronado and inquired at the passenger information desk.
“You’re not really headed to Seattle,” the Air Force enlisted there said. “You do know it’s not there anymore.… That it was hit?”
“My daughter worked at Archipelago,” he told her.
“Oh.” She blinked rapidly, and looked away. “I’m sorry, sir. The news from there … it isn’t good.”
Dan Lenson was still an admiral. At least so far. The recall message, pulling him from his command after the invasion of Hainan, hadn’t taken away the wartime promotion. Not yet.
But he’d have traded it all, promotion, pension, career, hell, his own life—for just one call from Nan.
He had six more days of leave. Eaten one up crossing the Pacific, then gotten a day added back crossing the date line. At the end of the week, he was due in Washington. For what, exactly, the chief of naval operations hadn’t specified. But he could guess.
Reversion to his prewar rank of captain, and a desk job entombed so deep in the Pentagon’s eighteen miles of corridors he’d never see daylight again. Until the Navy could process him out.
He stood motionless in the empty terminal, stalled like an engine without spark. His brain echoing empty. His soul blank. Daughter gone. Bereft.
And then what?
Home to Arlington, to Blair. He’d have her, at least. But she was a busy woman these days. She’d warned, in the one email exchange they’d managed since his relief, that she might not even be in the country when he got back. Sure, her job.
Their careers had always taken priority. You could call it duty, to put the best spin on it. Especially in wartime. But the word had a bitter sting. He’d given up too much. Spent so little time with the only daughter he’d ever have. But he and her mother had split up, and he’d been so busy since …
Water over the dam, Lenson. And it’s too late now.
If only you could revise your life. Rewind it. Reformat it. Erase the bad parts, and amp up the good, so that it played the way you should have done it all along …
A blue screen near the overhead flickered. Lines of text shifted. He stared blankly up at it. Then jogged over to the window overlooking the airstrip.
A quarter mile away across the concrete, a wheeled train of pallets was being snaked up into a potbellied transport.
He went back to the service desk. “That C-17. Where’s it headed?”
The airman looked anxious. “Relief supplies, Admiral. Four flights a day, up to McChord.”
“That’s near Seattle, right? Where the nukes hit?”
“McChord’s south of Tacoma, sir. That’s where they’re running the relief effort out of. I wouldn’t say ‘near.’ But it’s probably as close as you can go without getting lit up.”
“Lit up” apparently meant “irradiated” these days. He snapped his ID down on the counter. “I’d be grateful if you’d find me a seat.”
She hesitated, then cocked her head and began keystroking. “I
… guess we might could manifest you, Admiral. Space A. Bucket seat. Hope you don’t mind noise. But are you … really sure you want to head up there? I mean, I wouldn’t advise it. I really wouldn’t, sir. Not many people headed that way. Unless they got a damn good reason. Which … well, I guess you might.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful.” Dan picked up his bag and followed her pointing finger toward the exit.
Then turned back, remembering: The CNO had wanted him to call once he got to CONUS. “Is there a DSN line here?” The defense switched network should still work, if anything did.
The airman opened her mouth as if to object, then glanced at the stars on Dan’s collars again. “Certainly, Admiral. The CO’s office is right down that hall to the left.”
* * *
BARRY “Nick” Niles had been Dan’s commanding officer years before, at the Cruise Missile Project Office in Crystal City. Afterward he’d become, not exactly an enemy, but definitely not an admirer. After 9/11, though, Niles had turned into a reluctant rabbi. Now the first African American chief of naval operations, he’d fought the war from that position.
The base’s commanding officer put Dan through to Niles’s main office number. After that, though, Dan got passed up the line. Niles’s deputy didn’t know what he was calling about, and asked him to hold.
Fully a quarter hour passed before the foghorn tones Dan knew so well tolled in his ear. “Lenson. You back in town?”
“Uh, not exactly, Admiral. Just landed in San Diego.”
“Uh-huh. Good job in Operation Rupture Plus.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me, I didn’t think you could do it. How soon can you be here?”
Be there? In DC? He frowned. “There must be some misunderstanding, sir. I was authorized leave en route.”
“Leave?” Niles sounded as if this were the first time he’d encountered the concept. Then added, “Oh—yeah, I forgot. Nancy, right?”
