The Land of the Free

by TJ Tucker

  Kurdi had not heard the outcome of the Zheng meeting, but started by briefing the group about Torres’ interest in China’s gestures towards Japan. He covered Torres’ questions about the importance of Taiwan. Torres took his seat at the center of the table, with Kurdi at the end. “I’d like to supplement my knowledge with your collective wisdom ahead of a full cabinet meeting tomorrow. I want your thoughts on China’s objectives, and your informed guesses on tactics they could use. Kurdi, please lead us from here.”

  Kurdi’s customary formal expression became even more so. He called on several advisers to explain relevant arguments for and against a particular theory. The first analyst was Sue Henderson, a 30-something red haired woman with a quick smile and sharp wit. Sue exuded elegance in a cold way that did not rely on strategically timed smiles or flirtation. “The Chinese don’t want war, Sir. They want the United States to accommodate their interests, to force us to treat them as sovereigns in their sphere of influence, the Western Pacific. Our obligation to Japan is the weakness they’re playing upon. We have troops committed in too many places to effectively defend Japan. By reminding us of the cost it presents us to oppose them, they want to show us the limits of our power. The drawback for them is if we choose to simply ignore their gestures. They’d have to choose escalation, which would hurt trade with Japan, or revert to a less aggressive stance, where they’d risk a loss of face with their neighbors.”

  “Why would they pick Japan over Taiwan?” asked Torres, relaxed in his role.

  Sue looked at him with a decisive expression. “Japan is too big a target for them to actually attack. There’s no real risk it will come to the brink of war. If they were doing this to Taiwan, we would have to send some heavy reinforcements there, increasing the risk of armed conflict. Basically, because we know they want Taiwan, they won’t risk going after it.”

  “Mr. President, I should say right here that there is another theory in contrast to this one,” said Kurdi. “Reggie, please describe your theory.”

  Reginald White was a black American from Harlem with a record of military service and a college education on the GI Bill. He spent many years in military intelligence, and was more interested in foreign rivals’ needs and capabilities than their motives, which he knew could change over time. “Sir, the Chinese are threatened most by their lack of control over vital shipping lanes. Their imports of oil and other resources, their exports of everything else would be in jeopardy if we closed those lanes. Taiwan is in the middle of all their shipping traffic. It has to be more important than any national pride they feel over the issue. Their second objective would be a base in the Malacca Strait. I view everything with this in mind. When I see measures taken against Japan, I see the target as Taiwan. If Sue is right and they want to impose costs on us, then they want control over Taiwan in return for lowering our costs. If we do nothing about their incursions, they’ll eventually move against Taiwan in any case.”

  Kurdi cut in and turned to Sue Henderson: “What’s your take on their objective? If they force us to negotiate, what will they want?”

  Sue was quick to agree with Reggie’s analysis of China’s objectives.

  After four hours deliberating other possibilities, they settled on the models advanced by Sue and Reggie, concluding that Japan was a tactic while Taiwan was an objective.

  Torres stood up, which had the effect of stopping further conversation. He paced the length of the table and raised a scenario. “If their objective is Taiwan, we could fortify her. We would send the message that any trouble they make will result in us strengthening our position in the place that matters most. From what I hear, responding in Japan would be a waste of resources. Does everyone agree?”

  Kurdi gave everyone a chance to comment on Torres’ conclusion, and the responses were uniformly positive. Torres then thanked the group, and retired to his study. He was confident that these discussions with the NS advisory group would prove useful in the full cabinet meeting. His hope was that by being well prepared, he could keep control of the agenda.

  Chapter 10: A Close Call

  “While I enjoy our golf games, Jackson, I have to tell you that I don’t approve of you using me to avoid Morgensen. You’re going to have to learn to deal with her as an equal, and that can only happen when you get over your fear of her.” Carson Stahl was never one to hold back an opinion from Torres, confident that Torres knew he was looking out for his best interests.

  As they came to the fifth hole, they parked the golf cart and walked over to the tees. There was a very large, old oak tree adjacent to the tees, and Torres leaned up against the trunk to enjoy the shade. Stahl put his ball on the tee and selected a driver. “I’m just trying to avoid her until the cabinet meeting this afternoon. She’s going to try to steer things anyway. I’d like to think it’s harder for her if she has to do it without having browbeaten me first.”

  “That’s a mistake, Jackson,” said Stahl as he lined up his shot. “This way, you don’t know her game going into the meeting. You won’t be able to formulate a counter-proposal in advance, if you have problems with hers.”

  Thud. Stahl had not yet taken his shot. Torres looked around to see where the sound came from. He did not have to look far. Just to his left, a man had dropped out of the tree, holding a sword. He was wearing a black bandana and something resembling a ninja suit. He immediately swung his sword at Torres, who deflected the blow with his golf club shaft. The shaft buckled and would be useless against a second blow. The blow came quickly enough, and Torres backed out of the way of it as best he could. It sliced across his chest, and cut a gash about eight inches long, diagonally from his sternum to the right side of his belly. Torres fell back to the ground, clutching his wound, while the attacker moved forward, now holding his sword in both hands for a final thrust. Torres was completely defenseless, and one well placed thrust would surely finish him. Thud. Instead, the ninja collapsed to the ground, his sword still in both hands ready to thrust. Behind him stood Stahl, holding a broken golf club.

  Stahl had realized immediately that the Secret Service would be too late to reach them and stop the attack. They couldn’t shoot at this distance, for fear of hitting Torres. So he stepped up behind the ninja and took a golf swing at the head of the attacker. The Secret Service arrived within 30 seconds, and jumped on the ninja, who was in any event motionless. They rolled him over on his stomach and handcuffed him. Other Secret Service Agents tended to Torres, ripping open his shirt and examining the wound he had sustained. It was not a very deep gash, and the bleeding was not profuse. “Sir, we’ll let the in-house medic take care of this one.”

  The Marine One helicopter arrived within 5 minutes and landed on the fairway next to the tees. Torres had no problem walking under his own power and was whisked away from the golf course. The media was kept away from the White House for his arrival, and Torres was hustled off the helicopter and into the infirmary. “I can stitch you up quick enough. This is a clean cut,” said Doctor Robinson. “You should be out of here in time for lunch.”

  …

  “He was a Chinese national,” said Hanna Morgensen, visiting Torres in the infirmary just after he was stitched up. “He died a little while ago, of the head injury. He had a history of mental instability. That pretty much made him the perfect choice to pull off something like this. Even if we’d been able to interrogate him, we’d never know what to believe. Half of what he said would have been fantasy.”

  “How did he get to us? I thought the course was secure.”

  “He had a platform up in the tree. Almost a tree fort. The branches were so thick, the Secret Service didn’t see anything. He must have slept up there, waiting for his chance.”

  Torres stood and moved his upper body in multiple ways, to discover which movements caused him pain. He found that he could avoid the worst postures easily enough. “I’m not sure we should even let the public know what happened.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Morgensen. “It would taint every
thing if there was reason to believe you had an ax to grind with the Chinese. And I can speak for your other cabinet members when I say that we don’t want to subject the financial markets to the news that the President was almost killed.”

  Torres left the infirmary at about 1 pm, and dressed in his work clothes. The cabinet meeting was still on, and it was up to him to gather his thoughts and not be distracted by what was going to be treated as a non-event. What was going to happen shortly would decide his course of action with China. His stomach was tight, and he had difficulty eating any lunch. He was rattled by what had happened, but the seriousness of the upcoming meeting seemed to him even worse.

  Chapter 11: Formulating a Response

  Torres walked into the cabinet room at 2:45, and immediately regretted his decision to be early. He was alone in the room with Morgensen. “By the sounds of it, Zheng took you to the cleaners,” she opened without any segue from her previous meeting in the infirmary. “He delivered his demands, and you played defense, right?”

  “More or less, yeah,” conceded Torres with disarming candor, as he walked to the coffee urn and helped himself. “Zheng came with a new agenda. I had to understand what he was getting at, and picking a fight seemed impractical. He was an envoy, not a negotiator.” Torres then walked to his seat and settled in, turning his attention away from the Cobra.

  Morgensen in turn helped herself to another cup of coffee, breaking off the discussion that was no longer trending in her favor. To Torres’ relief, others started arriving, greeting each other and creating a small amount of chaos.

  At about five of three, Torres stood and asked everyone to sit down. Few members of cabinet even knew of his earlier close call, and he was determined not to discuss it. He motioned for the technician to come in and bring up the audio recording of his conversation with Zheng. With a perfunctory, “This was recorded yesterday,” he hit the “play” icon with his cursor and everyone listened intently. Even the Cobra’s customary eye rolls were subdued.

  When the audio concluded, Torres spoke. “Last night I met with the National Security Advisory Group, which was not briefed on the meeting with Zheng. We discussed China’s recent confrontations with Japan and what they might mean. I’ve asked Sue Henderson here to summarize the consensus that emerged. Sue, go ahead.”

  Henderson was an instant hit with the mostly male cabinet members, but received suspicious scowls from the Cobra. Henderson quickly and efficiently summarized the possibilities and tied them together to point to Taiwan as China’s target regardless of its stance towards Japan.

  “Does anyone have a different take on the scenario?” asked Torres. “Our plans will incorporate the assumptions presented by Ms. Henderson unless there are objections.”

  Morgensen spoke first. “Ms. Henderson, is it your opinion that China would, if it felt sufficiently provoked, try to take Taiwan by military action?”

  “The facts as they stand are that China has worked relentlessly to develop that capability, Madam Secretary. In spite of that, my own belief is that China’s civilian government would do anything to avoid it. For it to happen, the Chinese military would have to acquire political power. They’re very ideological, and anti-American.”

  Torres posed the next question, but not to Henderson. “Bill, what would your people say about the stability of the Chinese government as currently constituted?”

  Bill Connolly was the director of the CIA, himself a former spook who had done the dirty work that nobody wanted to know about, but everybody seemed to want done. He had also outsourced the intelligence operations in Afghanistan to Morningstar Security Services. The internal rationale was to take controversial actions outside the US government. But as reports leaked of their brutal tactics, the blowback had become so burdensome that Torres had indefinitely suspended Morningstar’s status with the government, pending further investigation.

  Connolly folded his hands, and rested his elbows on the table. “Sir, the Chinese government is superficially stable, though there are rifts that could show if conditions were right. They’re extremely cautious and loathe any radical action. For war to come about, the military would have to be the driver, and that implies overt military rule. I’m not losing any sleep over it right now, but I take it you’re worried about where things could go down the road.”

  Torres got up and paced the room. As he got to the end of the table he was met by a glare from the Cobra so intense he instinctively turned around and returned to his seat. It was all he could do to keep speaking without losing his train of thought. “Tom, what’s China’s economic condition?”

  Treasury Secretary Tom Gallant was tall and slightly overweight. He came from the New York financial circles, and was well connected. Morgensen considered him insufferably stupid. While Torres was inclined to agree, he felt it important to accommodate the banking interests.

  “Uh, good,” answered Gallant. “I mean, they buy our bonds, so we can borrow more to buy their stuff. Their growth is very strong.”

  Morgensen rolled her eyes in exasperation. Bill Connolly saw this and stepped in. “China’s under a lot of pressure.”

  “What pressure, specifically?” asked Torres.

  “Their economy is rife with malinvestment. They overbuilt for their export markets. So they’re facing the inevitable bursting of that bubble, while also facing some serious inflation. They have enough problems without adding war to the mix.”

  “So you’re saying that there’s no danger of it being a military conflict? That we can disregard any such implications from Zheng’s message?”

  “Not quite,” said Connolly. “I agree with the case Sue made. If the civilian government were sufficiently humiliated, it would invite the military to step in and restore Chinese honor. In that event, the civilian government would probably be forced to submit to military dictates. Maybe we could appease them with a base in the Malacca Strait, if we can make it acceptable to Singapore.”

  “Singapore is too important to the world’s financial system,” declared Morgensen flatly, as she stood up and took her turn to pace the room. “The Malacca Strait is off the table.” She looked at everyone in the room in turn to verify their submissiveness, then took her seat once again. The discussion would now stay clear of anything pertaining to Singapore. A few glances were exchanged across the table, but nobody dared speak up when the éminence grise showed her hand.

  “The issue is what we give up with respect to Taiwan, now that we know what they want” offered Torres.

  “And whether Taiwan amounts to Czechoslovakia, 1938!” The Cobra’s rebuke to his stance was so aggressive it shocked Torres, who thought he was used to it.

  She was now ready to take over the meeting. “A clash with China on the world stage may be inevitable. If we buckle now, they will conclude they are the world’s leading power, and the 21st century will be one of American retreat.”

  “Madam Secretary, that’s not consistent with Chinese history,” said Kurdi with some trepidation. “China considers itself a regional power, but they’re not interested in exerting that kind of influence on the world stage.”

  Morgensen remained perfectly calm when everyone expected rage. She leaned forward in her chair and lowered her gaze to meet Kurdi’s eyes. She was silent for a moment, then with the meekest, most restrained tone of voice anyone had heard from her said, “History looks backwards, Mr. Kurdistani.”

  After another silent moment, her voice picked up to its regularly aggressive tone. “I look forward. Meeting China’s future resource demands will require a substantial portion of the world’s output. China’s leaders of today are well-traveled. Many are even educated abroad.”

  She leaned forward in her chair even further, and the volume and intensity of her voice rose yet higher. “You can’t compare them to the ancient emperors who never left the Forbidden City! The United States allowed and even facilitated China’s rise. And unless we confront them, they will overtake us.”

  Apparently finished de
molishing Kurdi’s objection, Morgensen turned her head in the other direction. “Mr. Connolly, if China were simultaneously confronted with economic recession and international humiliation, would it not be at least even money that they’d fragment politically, and regress economically?”

  “Possibly. But it’s risky. It could destabilize them.”

  “Not if we offer an alternative,” countered Morgensen. “How do you think we won the Cold War? Your people could organize a yellow revolution. I could arrange for certain interests to buy off military leaders. We would promise the Generals a pension and a penthouse apartment in Hong Kong. We would offer their citizens democracy and social programs. They’re an aging population with no retirement benefits. So we’d put those in place. They’d have stability, but they would also have higher costs, and their economy would shrink in an orderly manner. At the end of the day, what you’d see in China is a larger version of Japan.”

  “But one slip and you’d have a military conflict over Taiwan. And that’s a World War III scenario,” said Torres.

  “They have more to lose than we do,” said Morgensen, showing restrained displeasure showing at having to answer Torres’ objection. “We could destroy their whole civilization with a few clicks of a mouse. We could survive any counterstrike they could attempt, and the outcome would be asymmetric. They know this, and that’s why they won’t fight. But we have to take our stand now.”

  “Does that mean we just tell them to take a flyin’ leap on their demands?” asked Tom Gallant.

  “Yes, Mr. Gallant. That’s what it means,” replied the Cobra with mocking gentleness. “We’ll respond after one week as they asked. We’ll send a letter to their embassy with a short message. ‘There’s nothing wrong with American finance, and we see no reason to change the existing relationship between our two nations.’ We will also send a large part of our fleet to Taiwan. Ground forces, too. We won’t make any attempts to keep it secret. We don’t want to dignify their implicit threat with the notion that we’re trying to do it unnoticed.”