by Tom Clancy
“And?” Ryan asked.
“And they’ve spent their entire trade surplus this way,” Gant reported. “All of it, mainly on short-term purchase items, but some long-term as well, and for the long-term stuff they had to pay cash up front because of the nature of the transactions. The producers need the cash to run the production, and they don’t want to get stuck holding the bag. Not too many people need five thousand tank guns,” Gant explained. “The market is kinda exclusive.”
“So?”
“So, China is essentially out of cash. And they have real short-term cash needs. Like oil,” TELESCOPE went on. “China’s a net importer of oil. Production in their domestic fields falls well short, even though their needs are not really that great. Not too many Chinese citizens own cars. They have enough cash for three months’ worth of oil, and then they come up short. The international oil market demands prompt payment. They can skate for a month, maybe six weeks, but after that, the tankers will turn around in mid-ocean and go somewhere else-they can do that, you know-and then the PRC runs out. It’ll be like running into a wall, sir. Smack. No more oil, and then their country starts coming to a stop, including their military, which is their largest oil consumer. They’ve been running unusually high for some years because of increased activity in their maneuvers and training and stuff. They probably have strategic reserves, but we don’t know exactly how much. And that can run out, too. We’ve been expecting them to make a move on the Spratly Islands. There’s oil there, and they’ve been making noises about it off and on for about ten years, but the Philippines and other countries in the area have made claims, too, and they probably expect us to side with the Philippines for historical reasons. Not to mention, Seventh Fleet is still the biggest kid on the block in that part of the world.”
“Yeah.” Ryan nodded. “If it came to a showdown, the Philippines appear to have the best claim on the islands, and we would back them up. We’ve shed blood together in the past, and that counts. Go on.”
“So, John Chinaman is short of oil, and he may not have the cash to pay for it, especially if our trade with them goes down the toilet. They need our dollars. The yuan isn’t very strong anyway. International trading is also done in dollars, and as I just told you, sir, they’ve spent most of them.”
“What are you telling me?”
“Sir, the PRC is just about bankrupt. In a month or so, they’re going to find that out, and it’s going to be a bit of a shock for them.”
“When did we find this out?”
“That’s my doing, Jack,” the Secretary of the Treasury said. “I called up these documents earlier today, and then I had Mark go over them. He’s our best man for economic modeling, even whacked out with jet lag.”
“So, we can squeeze them on this?”
“That’s one option.”
“What if these demonstrations take hold?”
Gant and Winston shrugged simultaneously. “That’s where psychology enters into the equation,” said Winston. “We can predict it to some extent on Wall Street-that’s how I made most of my money-but psychoanalyzing a country is beyond my ken. That’s your job, pal. I just run your accounting office across the street.”
“I need more than that, George.”
Another shrug. “If the average citizen boycotts Chinese goods, and/or if American companies who do business over there start trimming their sails-”
“That’s damned likely,” Gant interjected. “This has got to have a lot of CEOs shitting their pants.”
“Well, if that happens, the Chinese get one in the guts, and it’s going to hurt, big time,” TRADER concluded.
And how will they react to that? Ryan wondered. He punched his phone button. “Ellen, I need one.” His secretary appeared in a flash and handed him a cigarette. Ryan lit it and thanked her with a smile and a nod.
“Have you talked this one over with State yet?”
A shake of the head. “No, wanted to show it to you first.”
“Hmm. Mark, what did you make of the negotiations?”
“They’re the most arrogant sons of bitches I’ve ever seen. I mean, I’ve met all sorts of big shots in my time, movers and shakers, but even the worst of them know when they need my money to do business, and when they know that, their manners get better. When you shoot a gun, you try to make sure you don’t have it aimed at your own dick.”
That made Ryan laugh, while Arnie cringed. You weren’t supposed to talk that way to the President of the United States, but some of these people knew that you could talk that way to John Patrick Ryan, the man.
“By the way, along those lines, I liked what you told that Chinese diplomat.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Their dicks aren’t big enough to get in a pissing contest with us. Nice turn of phrase, if not exactly diplomatic.”
“How did you know that?” Gant asked, the surprise showing on his face. “I never repeated that to anybody, not even to that jerk Rutledge.”
“Oh, we have ways,” Jack answered, suddenly realizing that he’d revealed something from a compartment named SORGE. Oops.
“Sounds like something you say at the New York Athletic Club,” SecTreas observed. “But only if you’re four feet or so away from the guy.”
“But it appears it’s true. At least in monetary terms. So, we have a gun we can point at their heads?”
“Yes, sir, we sure do,” Gant answered. “It might take them a month to figure it out, but they won’t be able to run away from it for very long.”
“Okay, make sure State and the Agency find this out. And, oh, tell CIA that they’re supposed to get this stuff to me first. Intelligence estimates are their job.”
“They have an economics unit, but they’re not all that good,” Gant told the others. “No surprise. The smart people in this area work The Street, or maybe academia. You can make more money at Harvard Business School than you can in government service.”
“And talent goes where the money is,” Jack agreed. Junior partners at medium-sized law firms made more than the President, which sometimes explained the sort of people who ended up here. Public service was supposed to be a sacrifice. It was for him-Ryan had proven his ability to make money in the trading business, but for him service to his country had been learned from his father, and at Quantico, long before he’d been seduced into the Central Intelligence Agency and then later tricked into the Oval Office. And once here, you couldn’t run away from it. At least, not and keep your manhood. That was always the trap. Robert Edward Lee had called duty the most sublime of words. And he would have known, Ryan thought. Lee had felt himself trapped into fighting for what was at best a soiled cause because of his perceived duty to his place of birth, and therefore many would curse his name for all eternity, despite his qualities as a man and a soldier. So, Jack, he asked himself, in your case, where do talent and duty and right and wrong and all that other stuff lie? What the hell are you supposed to do now? He was supposed to know. All those people outside the White House’s campus-like grounds expected him to know all the time where the right thing was, right for the country, right for the world, right for every working man, woman, and innocent little kid playing T-ball. Yeah, the President thought, sure. You’re anointed by the wisdom fairy when you walk in here every day, or kissed on the ear by the muse, or maybe Washington and Lincoln whisper to you in your dreams at night. He sometimes had trouble picking his tie in the morning, especially if Cathy wasn’t around to be his fashion adviser. But he was supposed to know what to do with taxes, defense, and Social Security-why? Because it was his job to know. Because he happened to live in government housing at One Thousand Six Hundred Pennsylvania Avenue and had the Secret goddamned Service protect him everywhere he went. At the Basic School at Quantico, the officers instructing newly commissioned Marine second lieutenants had told them about the loneliness of command. The difference between that and what he had here was like the difference between a fucking firecracker and a nuclear weapon. This ki
nd of situation had started wars in the past. That wouldn’t happen now, of course, but it had once. It was a sobering thought. Ryan took a last puff on his fifth smoke of the day and killed it in the brown glass ashtray he kept hidden in a desk drawer.
“Thanks for bringing me this. Talk it over with State and CIA,” he told them again. “I want a SNIE on this, and I want it soon.”
“Right,” George Winston said, standing for the underground walk back to his building across the street.
“Mr. Gant,” Jack added. “Get some sleep. You look like hell.”
“I’m allowed to sleep in this job?” TELESCOPE asked.
“Sure you are, just like I am,” POTUS told him with a lop-sided smile. When they left, he looked at Arnie: “Talk to me.”
“Speak to Adler, and have him talk to Hitch and Rutledge, which you ought to do, too,” Arnie advised.
Ryan nodded. “Okay, tell Scott what I need, and that I need it fast.”
Good news,” Professor North told her, as she came back into the room.
Andrea Price-O’Day was in Baltimore, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, seeing Dr. Madge North, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
“Really?”
“Really,” Dr. North assured her with a smile. “You’re pregnant.”
Before anything else could happen, Inspector Patrick O’Day leapt to his feet and lifted his wife in his arms for a powerful kiss and a rib-cracking hug.
“Oh,” Andrea said almost to herself. “I thought I was too old.”
“The record is well into the fifties, and you’re well short of that,” Dr. North said, smiling. It was the first time in her professional career that she’d given this news to two people carrying guns.
“Any problems?” Pat asked.
“Well, Andrea, you are prime-ep. You’re over forty and this is your first pregnancy, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She knew what was coming, but she didn’t invite it by speaking the word.
“That means that there is an increased likelihood of Down’s syndrome. We can establish that with an amniocentesis. I’d recommend we do that soon.”
“How soon?”
“I can do it today if you wish.”
“And if the test is …?”
“Positive? Well, then you two have to decide if you want to bring a Down’s child into the world. Some people do, but others don’t. It’s your decision to make, not mine,” Madge North told them. She’d done abortions in her career, but like most obstetricians, she much preferred to deliver babies.
“Down’s-how and … I mean …” Andrea said, squeezing her husband’s hand.
“Look, the odds are very much in your favor, like a hundred to one or so, and those are betting odds. Before you worry about it, the smart thing is to find out if there’s anything to worry about at all, okay?”
“Right now?” Pat asked for his wife.
Dr. North stood. “Yes, I have the time right now.”
“Why don’t you take a little walk, Pat?” Special Agent Price-O’Day suggested to her husband. She managed to keep her dignity intact, which didn’t surprise her husband.
“Okay, honey.” A kiss, and he watched her leave. It was not a good moment for the career FBI agent. His wife was pregnant, but now he had to wonder if the pregnancy was a good one or not. If not-then what? He was an Irish Catholic, and his church forbade abortion as murder, and murders were things he’d investigated-and even witnessed once. Ten minutes later, he’d killed the two terrorists responsible for it. That day still came back to him in perverse dreams, despite the heroism he’d displayed and the kudos he’d received for all of it.
But now, he was afraid. Andrea had been a fine step-mother for his little Megan, and both he and she wanted nothing in all the world more than this news-if it was, really, good news. It would probably take an hour, and he knew he couldn’t spend it sitting down in a doctor’s outer office full of pregnant women reading old copies of People and US Weekly. But where to go? Whom to see?
Okay. He stood and walked out, and decided to head over to the Maumenee Building. It ought not be too hard to find. And it wasn’t.
Roy Altman was the telltale. The big former paratrooper who headed the SURGEON detail didn’t stand in one place like a potted plant, but rather circulated around, not unlike a lion in a medium-sized cage, always checking, looking with highly trained and experienced eyes for something that wasn’t quite right. He spotted O’Day in the elevator lobby and waved.
“Hey, Pat! What’s happening?” All the rivalry between the FBI and the USSS stopped well short of this point. O‘Day had saved the life of SANDBOX and avenged the deaths of three of Altman’s fellow agents, including Roy’s old friend, Don Russell, who’d died like a man, gun in hand and three dead assassins in front of him. O’Day had finished Don’s work.
“My wife’s over being checked out,” the FBI inspector answered.
“Nothing serious?” Altman asked.
“Routine,” Pat responded, and Altman caught the scent of a lie, but not an important one.
“Is she around? While I’m here, I thought I’d stop over and say hi.”
“In her office.” Altman waved. “Straight down, second on the right.”
“Thanks.”
“Bureau guy coming back to see SURGEON,” he said into his lapel mike.
“Roger,” another agent responded.
O’Day found the office door and knocked.
“Come in,” the female voice inside said. Then she looked up. “Oh, Pat, how are you?”
“No complaints, just happened to be in the neighborhood, and-”
“Did Andrea see Madge?” Cathy Ryan asked. FLOTUS had helped make the appointment, of course.
“Yeah, and the little box doodad has a plus sign in it,” Pat reported.
“Great!” Then Professor Ryan paused. “Oh, you’re worried about something.” In addition to being an eye doctor, she knew trouble when she saw it.
“Dr. North is doing an amniocentesis. Any idea how long it takes?”
“When did it start?”
“Right about now, I think.”
Cathy knew the problem. “Give it an hour. Madge is very good, and very careful in her procedures. They tap into the uterus and withdraw some of the amniotic fluid. That will give them some of the tissue from the embryo, and then they examine the chromosomes. She’ll have the lab people standing by. Madge is senior staff, and when she talks, people listen.”
“She seems pretty competent.”
“She’s a wonderful doc. She’s my OB. You’re worried about Down’s, right?”
A nod. “Yep.”
“Nothing you can do but wait.”
“Dr. Ryan, I’m-”
“My name’s Cathy, Pat. We’re friends, remember?” There was nothing like saving the life of a woman’s child to get on her permanent good side.
“Okay, Cathy. Yeah, I’m scared. It’s not-I mean, Andrea’s a cop, too, but-”
“But being good with a gun or just being tough doesn’t help much right now, does it?”
“Not worth a damn,” Inspector O’Day confirmed quietly. He was about as used to being frightened as he was of flying the Space Shuttle, but potential danger to his wife and/or kid-kids now, maybe-the kind of danger in which he was utterly helpless-well, that was one of the buttons a capricious Fate could push while she laughed.
“The odds are way in your favor,” Cathy told him.
“Yeah, Dr. North said so … but …”
“Yeah. And Andrea’s younger than I am.”
O’Day looked down at the floor, feeling like a total fucking wimp. More than once in his life, he’d faced down armed men-criminals with violent pasts-and intimidated them into surrender. Once in his life he’d had to use his Smith amp; Wesson 1076 automatic in anger, and both times he’d double-tapped the heads of the terrorists, sending them off to Allah-so they’d probably believed-to answer for the murder of the innocent woman. It hadn’t been easy, exactly, bu
t neither had it been all that hard. The endless hours of practice had made it nearly as routine as the working of his service automatic. But this wasn’t danger to himself. He could deal with that. The worst danger, he was just learning, was to those you loved.
“Pat, it’s okay to be scared. John Wayne was just an actor, remember?”
But that was it. The code of manhood to which most Americans subscribed was that of the Duke, and that code did not allow fear. In truth it was about as realistic as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but foolish or not, there it was.
“I’m not used to it.”
Cathy Ryan understood. Most doctors did. When she’d been a straight ophthalmic surgeon, before specializing in lasers, she’d seen the patients and the patients’ families, the former in pain, but trying to be brave, the latter just scared. You tried to repair the problems of one and assuage the fears of the other. Neither task was easy. The one was just skill and professionalism; the other involved showing them that, although this was a horrid emergency which they’d never experienced before, for Cathy Ryan, M.D., FACS, it was just another day at the office. She was the Pro from Dover. She could handle it. SURGEON was blessed with the demeanor that inspired confidence in all she met.
But even that didn’t apply here. Though Madge North was a gifted physician, she was testing for a predetermined condition. Maybe someday it could be fixed-genetic therapy offered that hope, ten years or so down the line-but not today. Madge could merely determine what already was. Madge had great hands, and a good eye, but the rest of it was in God’s hands, and God had already decided one way or the other. It was just a matter of finding out what His decision had been.
“This is when a smoke comes in handy,” the inspector observed, with a grimacing smirk.
“You smoke?”
He shook his head. “Gave it up a long time ago.”
“You should tell Jack.”
The FBI agent looked up. “I didn’t know he smokes.”
“He bums them off his secretary every so often, the wimp,” Cathy told the FBI agent, with almost a laugh. “I’m not supposed to know.”
“That’s very tolerant for a doc.”
