Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

That’s what Rutledge would have done in his place, and he knew Shen was no fool. In fact, he was a competent diplomatic technician, and pretty good at reading the situation quickly. He had to know-no, Rutledge corrected himself, he should know or ought to know -that the American position was being driven by public opinion at home, and that that public opinion was against the interests of the PRC, because the PRC had fucked up in public. So, if he’d been able to sell his position to the rest of the Politburo, he’d start off with a small concession, one which would show the course the day would take, allowing Rutledge to beat him back a few steps by the close of the afternoon session. Rutledge hoped for that, because it would get him what his country wanted with little further fuss, and would, by the way, make him look pretty good at Foggy Bottom. So he took a final sip of the welcoming tea and settled back in his chair, motioning for Shen to begin the morning’s talks.

“We find it difficult to understand America’s position in this and other matters-”

Uh-oh …

“America has chosen to affront our sovereignty in many ways. First, the Taiwan issue …”

Rutledge listened to the earphone which gave him the simultaneous translation. So, Shen hadn’t been able to persuade the Politburo to take a reasonable tack. That meant another unproductive day at these talks, and maybe-possible but not likely as yet-failed talks entirely. If America was unable to get concessions from China, and was therefore forced to impose sanctions, it would be ruinous to both sides, and not calculated to make the world a safer or better place. The tirade lasted twenty-seven minutes by his watch.

“Minister,” Rutledge began when it was his turn, “I find it difficult as well to understand your intransigence-” He went on along his own well-grooved path, varying only slightly when he said, “We put you on notice that unless the PRC allows its markets to be opened to American trade goods, the government of the United States will enact the provisions of the Trade Reform Act-”

Rutledge saw Shen’s face coloring up some. Why? He had to know the rules of the new game. Rutledge had said this half a hundred times in the previous few days. Okay, fine, he’d never said “put on notice,” which was diplo-speak for no shit, Charlie, we’re not fuckin’ kidding anymore, but the import of his earlier statements had been straightforward enough, and Shen was no fool … was he? Or had Cliff Rutledge misread this whole session?

Hello,” a female voice said.

Wise’s head turned sharply. “Hi. Have we met?”

“You met my husband briefly. I am Yu Chun,” the woman said, as Barry Wise came to his feet. Her English was pretty good, probably from watching a lot of TV, which was teaching English (the American version, anyway) to the entire world.

“Oh.” Wise blinked a few times. “Mrs. Yu, please accept our condolences for the loss of your husband. He was a very courageous man.”

Her head nodded at the good wishes, but they made her choke up a little, remembering what sort of man Fa An had been. “Thank you,” she managed to say, struggling not to show the emotions that welled up within her, held back, however, as though by a sturdy dam.

“Is there going to be a memorial service for your husband? If so, ma‘am, we would ask your permission to make a record of it.” Wise had never grown to like the oh-your-loved-one-is-dead, what’s-it-feel-like? school of journalism. He’d seen far more death as a reporter than as a Marine, and it was all the same all over the world. The guy on the pale horse came to visit, always taking away something precious to somebody, most of the time more than one somebody, and the vacuum of feelings it left behind could only be filled by tears, and that language was universal. The good news was that people all over the world understood. The bad news was that getting it out did further harm to the living victims, and Wise had trouble stomaching his occasional obligation to do that, however relevant it was to the all-important story.

“I do not know. We used to worship there in our house, but the police will not let me inside,” she told him.

“Can I help?” Wise offered, truly meaning it. “Sometimes the police will listen to people like us.” He gestured to them, all of twenty meters away. Quietly, to Pete Nichols: “Saddle up.”

How it looked to the cops was hard for the Americans to imagine, but the widow Yu walked toward them with this American black man in attendance and the white one with the camera close behind.

She started talking to the senior cop, with Wise’s microphone between the two of them, speaking calmly and politely, asking permission to enter her home.

The police sergeant shook his head in the universal No, you cannot gesture that needed no translation.

“Wait a minute. Mrs. Yu, could you please translate for me?” She nodded. “Sergeant, you know who I am and you know what I do, correct?” This generated a curt and none too friendly nod. “What is the reason for not allowing this lady to enter her own home?”

“ ‘I have my orders,’ ” Chun translated the reply.

“I see,” Wise responded. “Do you know that this will look bad for your country? People around the world will see this and feel it is improper.” Yu Chun duly translated this for the sergeant.

“ ‘I have my orders,’ ” he said again, through her, and it was plain that further discussion with a statue would have been equally productive.

“Perhaps if you called your superior,” Wise suggested, and to his surprise the Chinese cop leaped on it, lifting his portable radio and calling his station.

“ ‘My lieutenant come,’ ” Yu Chun translated. The sergeant was clearly relieved, now able to dump the situation on someone else, who answered directly to the captain at the station.

“Good, let’s go back to the truck and wait for him,” Wise suggested. Once there, Mrs. Yu lit up an unfiltered Chinese cigarette and tried to retain her composure. Nichols let the camera down, and everyone relaxed for a few minutes.

“How long were you married, ma’am?” Wise asked, with the camera shut off.

“Twenty-four years,” she answered.

“Children?”

“One son. He is away at school in America, University of Oklahoma. He study engineering,” Chun told the American crew.

“Pete,” Wise said quietly, “get the dish up and operating.”

“Right.” The cameraman ducked his head to go inside the van. There he switched on the uplink systems. Atop the van, the mini-dish turned fifty degrees in the horizontal and sixty degrees in the vertical, and saw the communications satellite they usually used in Beijing. When he had the signal on his indicator, he selected Channel Six again and used it to inform Atlanta that he was initiating a live feed from Beijing. With that, a home-office producer started monitoring the feed, and saw nothing. He might have succumbed to immediate boredom, but he knew Barry Wise was usually good for something, and didn’t go live unless there was a good reason for it. So, he leaned back in his comfortable swivel chair and sipped at his coffee, then notified the duty director in Master Control that there was a live signal inbound from Beijing, type and scope of story unknown. But the director, too, knew that Wise and his crew had sent in a possible Emmy-class story just two days earlier, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge, none of the majors was doing anything at all in Beijing at the moment-CNN tracked the communications-satellite traffic as assiduously as the National Security Agency, to see what the competition was doing.

More people started showing up at the Wen house/church. Some were startled to see the CNN truck, but when they saw Yu Chun there, they relaxed somewhat, trusting her to know what was happening. Showing up in ones and twos for the most part, there were soon thirty or so people, most of them holding what had to be Bibles, Wise thought, getting Nichols up and operating again, but this time with a live signal going up and down to Atlanta.