Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (530 page)

That’s when the phone rang. It was Ryan’s private line, the one that usually bypassed the secretaries. Jack lifted it. “Yeah?”

“Jack, it’s George across the street. Got a minute? I want to show you something, buddy.”

“Sure. Come on over.” Jack hung up and turned to Arnie. “SecTreas,” he explained. “Says it’s important.” The President paused. “Arnie?”

“Yeah?”

“How much maneuvering room do I have with this?”

“The Chinese?” Arnie asked, getting a nod. “Not a hell of a lot, Jack. Sometimes the people themselves decide what our policy is. And the people will be making policy now by voting with their pocketbooks. Next we’ll see some companies announce that they’re suspending their commercial contracts with the PRC. The Chinese already fucked Boeing over, and in the full light of day, which wasn’t real smart. Now the people out there will want to fuck them back. You know, there are times when the average Joe Citizen stands up on his hind feet and gives the world the finger. When that happens, it’s your job mainly to follow them, not to lead them,” the Chief of Staff concluded. His Secret Service code name was CARPENTER, and he’d just constructed a box for his President to stay inside.

Jack nodded and stubbed out the smoke. He might be the Most Powerful Man in the World, but his power came from the people, and as it was theirs to give, it was also sometimes theirs to exercise.

Few people could simply open the door to the Oval Office and walk in, but George Winston was one of them, mainly because the Secret Service belonged to him. Mark Gant was with him, looking as though he’d just run a marathon chased by a dozen armed and angry Marines in jeeps.

“Hey, Jack.”

“George. Mark, you look like hell,” Ryan said. “Oh, you just flew in, didn’t you?”

“Is this Washington or Shanghai?” Gant offered, as rather a wan joke.

“We took the tunnel. Jesus, have you seen the demonstrators outside? I think they want you to nuke Beijing,” SecTreas observed. The President just pointed at his bank of television sets by way of an answer.

“Hell, why are they demonstrating here? I’m on their side—at least I think I am. Anyway, what brings you over?”

“Check this out.” Winston nodded to Gant.

“Mr. President, these are the PRC’s current currency accounts. We keep tabs on currency trading worldwide to make sure we know where the dollar is—which means we pretty much know where all the hard currency is in the world.”

“Okay.” Ryan knew about that—sort of. He didn’t worry much about it, since the dollar was in pretty good shape, and the nonsqueaky wheel didn’t need any grease. “So?”

“So, the PRC’s liquidity situation is in the shitter,” Gant reported. “Maybe that’s why they were so pushy in the trade talks. If so, they picked the wrong way to approach us. They demanded instead of asked.”

Ryan looked down the columns of numbers. “Damn, where have they been dumping all their money?”

“Buying military hardware. France and Russia, mostly, but a lot went to Israel, too.” It was not widely known that the PRC had spent a considerable sum of money in Israel, mainly paid to IDI—Israel Defense Industries—to buy American-designed hardware manufactured under license in Israel. It was stuff the Chinese could not purchase directly from America, including guns for their tanks and air-to-air missiles for their fighter aircraft. America had winked at the transactions for years. In conducting this business, Israel had turned its back on Taiwan, despite the fact that both countries had produced their nuclear weapons as a joint venture, back when they’d stuck together—along with South Africa—as international pariahs with no other friends in that particular area. In polite company, it was called
realpolitik.
In other areas of human activity, it was called
fuck your buddy.

“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 kind 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.”

G
ood 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 ... ?”