Two Peasants and a President (20 page)

“I’ll get to work on it, Mr. President.”

33

It was quite late when Jim and Sally got back home.  Just the same, they tried Brett and Maggie’s number.  Probably still on their way back, they thought, but they nevertheless left a message.  Then they called Richard.  It was of course the middle of the day in Hong Kong.  His hotel said he was out and asked if they would like to leave a message.  They did.

“Hi, Dad,” said Sally.  “Missing you already.  We’re back at the house.  We rang over to you know who’s.  Left a message there.  Please be safe and let us know if you hear anything.  Love you.”

At first they’d all been hopeful that because Sally and Jim had returned home safe, Brett and Maggie would soon follow.  The next day they started to worry.

That evening they received a call from Richard.  He was calling from the Consulate, reluctant to call from his hotel.  Perhaps because he has a different name or possibly because the Chinese preferred to leave him u
n
molested to learn anything they might, he had neither been contacted nor a
r
rested by the police. 

Richard had the news they’d all hoped not to hear.  While not me
n
tioning their names directly over the phone, he managed to convey that the American Citizens Services had Brett and Maggie on a list - of Americans who had been arrested.  The charge, armed robbery.  While it could be a
r
gued that Brett was armed, even with his bare hands, robbery was absurd.  But then, the Chinese were acting with increasing absurdity every day.  They had evidently decided that they had arrived at position of sufficient strength from which they could afford to confront America on any level.  They had drawn a line in the sand, feeling confident that America would not dare cross it.  And so far they had been right. 

Richard was obviously speaking guardedly, no doubt wary of eave
s
dropping.  China had demonstrated the abi
lity to hack everyone from the
Pentagon to a long list of critical infrastructure
and defense
companies.  They even routinely grab
wi-fi
data from phones and other devices that Americans carry with them in Hong Kong and on the mainland.  It was just one of many areas in which the United States had apparently ceded the leading edge to China.  America was at a historic inflection point, and China was poised to overtake what had been the most powerful nation on the planet.  There would
likely be no return.  

“Listen, Dad,” Sally said.  How do you want us to pursue things on this end?” 

“Sally,” Richard replied, “there are larger forces at play here.  It’s pretty obvious that the president isn’t holding many face cards.  China has laid down the gauntlet and the President will cave.  The welfare of Amer
i
cans abroad isn’t very high on anybody in Washington’s list right now either.  I think our only chance is the media, excluding the ones that carry
the Pres
i
dent’s water
, of course.  You know who I mean.”

“Sally, your brother-in-law didn’t have much choice.  If he’d just gone in there with a few questions, we’d still be in the dark.  He busted it open and now we know what happened, at least the first half of the story.  I could be wrong, but it doesn’t look like the police have made the connection to me.  As long as they don’t, I’m gonna do what I can on this end to learn the rest of the story.” 

“I don’t have to tell you,” he continued, “that China could decide that getting rid of the witnesses would be the easiest way to deal with the problem.  It’s not what any of us want to hear, but we have to understand it’s one of the things we‘re up against.  I’ve lain awake worrying that somehow we could make things worse.  But I came to the conclusion that we’re the only ones who care, and we just don’t have a choice; we have to do whatever we can.”

“I understand
,
Dad.  I love you.”

34

“I’d like your assessment of the crisis we find ourselves in as a result of Senator Baines reckless conduct,” said the president, looking in turn at each person in the situation room.  “Valerie, why don’t you start,” he said, refe
r
ring to Valerie Waters, Secretary of State.

“Mr. President,” she began, “I have two thoughts on the matter.  First, we should all remember that when China feels threatened, they typically r
e
spond with hyperbole.  I don’t think anyone seriously believes that they are going to start sinking international shipping.”

“I seem to recollect tha
t several days ago they did precisely
that,” r
e
plied James Langley, National Security Advisor. 

“That was before their declaration and
it
obviously was intended to remain secret,” responded the Secretary of State.  “Allow me to continue, please.  Beijing is looking for a way out of this, as are we.  It is not in their nature to back down, unless forced to, and we are in no position to force them to do anything.  I believe that they are asking us, in their own way, to provide them with a way to save face.”

“Frankly,” interrupted the President, “at this point, I’m more concerned with
our
face.  It’s badly bruised and getting redder by the day.  Baines is making us out to look like a bunch of cowards and liars.”

That would be fairly accurate
, thought Benedict, the DCI.

The President continued, “Nobody in his right mind thinks a trade war would be helpful, but Baines knows he can use it to push buttons with the kind of people who can’t even balance their checkbooks much less fathom inte
r
national trade.” 

“Sometimes the best thing to do with a wood stove that’s too hot is to just allow it time to cool,” said Langley.  “If you open the door, you give the fire more oxygen.  Right now we’re giving this whole thing an awful lot of oxygen.”

“Most of the oxygen is being provided by Baines,” responded the President angrily.  “Besides, we don’t have time to wait for the stove to cool down.  I’ve already had to put my request for another increase in the debt ceiling on hold and we’re scrambling to plug the fiscal gaps.  Our expansion needs continued infusions of cash.  Without it the whole thing comes
grinding to a halt, and with it this administration.”

“I think we need to keep the focus on China,” the Secretary of State said   “We can’t force Baines to back off, so let’s set him aside for the moment.  Cash is critical and the place it comes from, at least for now, is China.  We’ve got to focus on what it will take to persuade them to continue investing.  I believe that what they are trying to tell us is that they want us not to raise any substantive objections to what they’re doing in the South China Sea.  The issue of the sinking will blow over, so let’s not get bogged down with that.   If we were to provide China with assurances that we will not interfere with what are basically claims to oil and gas drilling rights, I believe they would become more amenable.”

“Seems incredibly short-sighted to me,” interjected Langley, “They’ve already bought up half the oil and mineral rights on the planet, and now we’re going to just look the other way while they gobble up the rest, not to mention stomping all over the legitimate claims of six other nations.  This continual bowing to China will come home to roost, and when it does we won’t be worrie
d about expanding, we’
ll be worried about surviving.”

“I think we’re forgetting one important detail,” said Larimer, the Se
c
retary of Defense.  “What’s being proposed sounds to me like a capitulation, when it comes to our fundamental right of access to the seas.  If you allow China to get away with asserting that it has the right to exclude our Navy and anyone else it wants from access to a million and a half square miles of i
n
ternational waters, not to mention half of the worlds maritime shipping, you’ll be setting a precedent which they will interpret as an opportunity to take Taiwan by force and also enforce militarily their outrageous assertions r
e
garding the other nations in the area.  This thing will be worse than sta
nding aside while Hitler was handed
the Sudetenland, and we all know where that led.”

“Melvin, I think you may be overreacting,” said the President. 

“Like hell I am,” he shot back, surprising the President as well as the others in the room with the outburst.

“I’d like everybody to calm down,” said the President, sensing he had the makings of a mutiny on his hands.  “Perhaps the analogy of the wood stove
is
apt.  What I’m proposing is not a long term acquiescence to China’s assertions, but a temporary cooling off of a volatile situation.  Once the election is behind us, we‘ll be in a much stronger position to make demands.  Meanwhile I’m going to propose speaking with the Chinese directly, here in Washington.  I suspect that we can come to an accommodation.”

Ah, another insight into what this is really about
,
eh Mr. President?
thought Benedict to himself. 
You were planning all along to give the Chinese
carte blanche in order to get re-elected.  You just needed to go through the motions of consensus.

It was easy to see on the faces of those gathered around the table who the party loyalists and sycophants were.  They all had a sense of relief on their faces, as if a reasonable way out had been
found.  The looks worn by the
others reflected their concern that a grave mistake was being made today, one whose ramifications would be felt for generations.

35

The houses here were very basic, typical of a style that h
ad all but vanished.  I
n the shadow of sprawling
,
modern apartment buildings, two rows of rudimentary one room brick structures with crumbling tile roofs stood like a
museum
dis
play
, depicting what ancient life had looked like. 

Ping had always passed here on her way home from work, reminding herself of a happier time, a time when she had a family and neighbors, neighbors who could remember her grandfather and great grandfather.  For her, these tiny houses held a certain comfort, like landmarks from her past.  They were empty now, but she tried to imagine them as they had been when she and her family had been part of a thriving neighborhood here.  But as the day when they would be demolished grew nearer, she felt more and more saddened by their hollow emptiness.
Like gaping mouths, their open doors seemed to call out to her, admonishing her for abandoning all they had pr
o
vided, pleading with her to save them from the wreckers.

She, like thousands of others, had been promised a better life, modern, with conveniences the tiny brick homes could never boast.  The minds of the city planners had danced with grandiose visions of a transformed society.  But like the ‘great leap forward’ of the sixties and seventies, their dreams had been truncated by the continued realities of over-crowding and corruption.  Even the grand edifices they had envisioned for themselves had become rather unpretentious concrete buildings, crowded and dreary, like the so called ‘com-bloc’ apartment blocks in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and els
e
where. 

There was, however, a
n
unexpected blessing that had sprung from the sheer magnitude of the endeavor of relocating thousands upon thousands of people: the thread that bound them to the bureaucracy had in some cases been severed.  Like the family memories buried by the bulldozers, many official personal histories had failed to survive the transformation intact.  The b
u
reaucracy had simply bee
n overwhelmed by the size of a
task compounded by wildly unrealistic time estimates. 

Those entrusted with the continuity of the census, with maintaining the long tentacles of government, realized that it had become a futile endeavor.  Unwilling to risk the penalties associated with failing to complete their work, they had simply adapted
as best they could, fudging,
even inventing when
they had to. 
And, occasionally, deleting. 
So the official past of the petite lady who walked by the old brick houses each day, along with many others, had simply vanished. 

She soon learned that there were certain advantages to this.

She had arrived home just after dark.  After a simple meal of rice and vegetables in the stark enclosure that was her kitchen, she set out to visit a friend.  While her past thread link
ed
to the bureaucracy had terminated, the bureaucracy itself had certainly not.  Whereas before there had been a person on each block whose job it was to keep an eye on the others, now on every floor of every apartment building in this great forest of almost identical buildings, one person, usually an older wo
man, had been selected to ‘help
.
’