Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“Okay, but in America we call that living in the past.” Take that, you little Chink!

“They are our countrymen,” Xue persisted.

“But they have chosen not to be. If you want them back, then make it advantageous for them. You know, by achieving the same prosperity here that they’ve achieved there.” You backward commie.

“If one of your children ran away from home, would you not work for his return?”

“Probably, but I would entice him, not threaten him, especially if I didn’t have the ability to threaten him effectively.” And your military is for shit, too. So the briefings had told them before flying over.

“But when others encourage our child to abscond and defy their father, are we not to object?”

“Look, pal,” Gant responded, not quite showing the inward heat he felt-or so he thought. “If you want to do business, then do business. If you want to chat, we can chat. But my time is valuable, and so is the time of our country, and we can save the chat for another time.” And then Gant realized that, no, he wasn’t a diplomat, and this was not a game he could play and win. “As you see, I am not gifted at this sort of exchange. We have people who are, but I am not one of them. I am the kind of American who does real work and earns real money. If you enjoy this game, that’s fine, but it’s not my game. Patience is a good thing, I suppose, but not when it impedes the objective, and I think your minister is missing something.”

“What is that, Mr. Gant?”

“It is we who will have what we wish to have out of these meetings,” Gant told the little Chinese man, and realized instantly that he’d stuck his own foot into his mouth about to the knee. He finished his coffee and excused himself, then headed unnecessarily for the bathroom, where he washed his hands before heading back outside. He found Rutledge standing alone, examining some spring flowers.

“Cliff, I think I fucked something up,” Gant confessed quietly.

“What’s that?” the Assistant Secretary asked, then listened to the confession. “Don’t sweat it. You didn’t tell them anything I haven’t already told them. You just don’t understand the language.”

“But they’ll think we’re impatient, and that makes us vulnerable, doesn’t it?”

“Not with me doing the talking inside,” Rutledge answered, with a gentle smile. “Here I am Jimmy Connors at the U.S. Open, Mark. This is what I do.”

“The other side thinks so, too.”

“True, but we have the advantage. They need us more than we need them.”

“I thought you didn’t like taking this sort of line with people,” Gant observed, puzzled by Rutledge’s attitude.

“I don’t have to like it. I just have to do it, and winning is always fun.” He didn’t add that he’d never met Minister Shen before, and therefore had no personal baggage to trip over, as often happened with diplomats who had been known to put personal friendship before the interest of their countries. They usually justified it by telling themselves that the bastard would owe them one next time, which would serve their country’s interest. Diplomacy had always been a personal business, a fact often lost on observers, who thought of these verbose technicians as robots.

Gant found all of this puzzling, but he would play along with Rutledge because he had to, and because the guy at least acted as though he knew what the hell he was doing. Whether he did or not … Gant wondered how he’d be able to tell. Then it was time to go back indoors.

The ashtrays had been cleaned and the water bottles replenished by the domestic help, who were probably all politically reliable functionaries of one sort or another, or more likely professional intelligence officers, who were here because their government took no chances with anything, or at least tried not to. It was, in fact, a waste of trained personnel, but communists had never been overly concerned with utilizing manpower in an efficient way.

Minister Shen lit a smoke and motioned for Rutledge to lead off. For his part, the American remembered that Bismarck had counseled the use of a cigar in negotiations, because some found the thick tobacco smoke irritating and that gave the smoker the advantage.

“Minister, the trade policies of the People’s Republic are set in place by a small number of people, and those policies are set in place for political reasons. We in America understand that. What you fail to understand is that ours truly is a government of the people, and our people demand that we address the trade imbalance. The People’s Republic’s inability to open markets to American goods costs the jobs of American citizens. Now, in our country it is the business of the government to serve the people, not to rule them, and for that reason, we must address the trade imbalance in an effective way.”

“I fully agree that it is the business of government to serve the interests of the people, and for that reason, we must consider also the agony that the Taiwan issue imposes on the citizens of my country. Those who should be our countrymen have been separated from us, and the United States has assisted in the estrangement of our kinsmen …” The remarkable thing, Rutledge thought, was that this droning old fart hadn’t died from smoking those damned things. They looked and smelled like the Lucky Strikes his grandfather had died of, at age eighty. It had not been a death to please a physician, however. Grandpa Owens had been driving his great-grandson to South Station in Boston when, lighting one, he’d dropped it into his lap and, in retrieving it, strayed onto the wrong side of the road. Grandpa hadn’t believed in seat belts, either … the bastard actually chain-smoked, lighting a new one with the butt of the previous one, like Bogie in a ’30s movie. Well, maybe it was a way for the Chinese to pursue their population-control policy … but in rather an ugly way …

“Mr. Foreign Minister,” Rutledge started off, when it was next his turn, “the government of the Republic of China is one elected in free and fair elections by the people who live in that country. In America’s eyes, that makes the government of the Republic of China legitimate”-he didn’t say that the government of the People’s Republic was, therefore, illegitimate, but the thought hung in the room like a dark cloud-“and that makes the government in question worthy of international recognition, as you may have noticed has been the case in the last year.

“It is the policy of our government to recognize such governments. We will not change policies based upon firm principles to suit the wishes of other countries which do not share those principles. We can talk until you run out of cigarettes, but my government’s position in this case is set in stone. So, you can recognize this fact and allow the meeting to move on to productive areas, or you can beat this dead horse until nothing is left of it. The choice is yours, of course, but is it not better to be productive than not?”

“America cannot dictate to the People’s Republic that which concerns us. You claim to have your principles, and surely we have our own, and one of ours is the importance of our country’s territorial integrity.”

For Mark Gant, the hard part was keeping an impassive face. He had to pretend that this all made sense and was important, when he’d much prefer to set up his computer to review stock prices, or for that matter read a paperback book under the rim of the table. But he couldn’t do that. He had to pretend that this was all interesting, which, if successfully done, could get him nominated for the next Academy Award ceremonies for Best Actor in a Supporting Role: “For keeping awake during the most boring contest since the Iowa grass-growing championships, the winner is …” He concentrated on not shifting in his seat, but that just made his ass tired, and these seats hadn’t been designed to fit his ass. Maybe one of those skinny Chinese ones, but not that of a Chicago-raised professional who liked having a beer and a corned-beef sandwich for lunch at least once a week and didn’t work out enough. His ass required a broader and softer seat for comfort, but he didn’t have one. He tried to find something interesting. He decided that Foreign Minister Shen had terrible skin, as though his face had once been on fire and a friend had tried to extinguish the flames with an ice pick. Gant tried to conjure up the image of that supposed event without smiling. Then came the fact that Shen was smoking so much, lighting his smokes from cheap paper matches instead of a proper lighter. Perhaps he was one of those people who set things down and forgot where they were, which would also explain why he used cheap throwaway pens instead of something in keeping with his rank and status. So, this important son of a bitch had suffered from terminal acne as a kid and was a butterfingers…? It was something worthy of an inward smile as the minister droned on in passable English. That engendered a new thought. He had access to an earphone for simultaneous translation … could he get one tuned to a local station? They had to have a radio station in Beijing that played music of some sort or other, didn’t they?