Chapter 26
Glass Houses and Rocks
Fang Gan had worked late that day because of the incident that had Washington working early. As a result, Ming hadn’t transcribed his discussion notes and her computer hadn’t gotten them out on the ’Net as early as usual, but Mary Pat got her e-mail about 9:45. This she read over, copied to her husband, Ed, and then shot via secure fax line to the White House, where Ben Goodley walked it to the Oval Office. The cover letter didn’t contain Mary Pat’s initial comment on reading the transmission: “Oh, shit...”
“Those cocksuckers!” Ryan snarled, to the surprise of Andrea Price, who happened to be in the room just then.
“Anything I need to know about, sir?” she asked, his voice had been so furious.
“No, Andrea, just that thing on CNN this morning.” Ryan paused, blushing that she’d heard his temper let go again—and in that way. “By the way, how’s your husband doing?”
“Well, he bagged those three bank robbers up in Philadelphia, and they did it without firing a shot. I was a little worried about that.”
Ryan allowed himself a smile. “That’s one guy I wouldn’t want to have a shoot-out with. Tell me, you saw CNN this morning, right?”
“Yes, sir, and we replayed it at the command post.”
“Opinion?”
“If I’d’ve been there, my weapon would have come out. That was cold-blooded murder. Looks bad on TV when you do dumb stuff like that, sir.”
“Sure as hell does,” the President agreed. He nearly asked her opinion on what he ought to do about it. Ryan respected Mrs. O’Day’s (she still went by Price on the job) judgment, but it wouldn’t have been fair to ask her to delve into foreign affairs, and, besides, he already had his mind pretty well made up. But then he speed-dialed Adler’s direct line on his phone.
“Yes, Jack?” Only one person had that direct line.
“What do you make of the SORGE stuff?”
“It’s not surprising, unfortunately. You have to expect them to circle wagons.”
“What do we do about it?” SWORDSMAN demanded.
“We say what we think, but we try not to make it worse than it already is,” SecState replied, cautious as ever.
“Right,” Ryan growled, even though it was exactly the good advice he’d expected from his SecState. Then he hung up. He reminded himself that Arnie had told him a long time ago that a president wasn’t allowed to have a temper, but that was asking a hell of a lot, and at what point was he allowed to react the way a man needed to react? When was he supposed to stop acting like a goddamned robot?
“You want Callie to work up something for you in a hurry?” Arnie asked over the phone.
“No,” Ryan replied, with a shake of the head. “I’ll just wing it.”
“That’s a mistake,” the Chief of Staff warned.
“Arnie, just let me be me once in a while, okay?”
“Okay, Jack,” van Damm replied, and it was just as well the President didn’t see his expression.
Don’t make things worse than they already are, Ryan told himself at his desk. Yeah, sure, like that’s possible ...
Hi, Pap,” Robby Jackson was saying in his office at the northwest comer of the West Wing.
“Robert, have you seen—”
“Yes, we’ve all seen it,” the Vice President assured his father.
“And what are y’all going to do about it?”
“Pap, we haven’t figured that out yet. Remember that we have to do business with these people. The jobs of a lot of Americans depend on trade with China and—”
“Robert”—the Reverend Hosiah Jackson used Robby’s proper name mainly when he was feeling rather stern—“those people murdered a man of God—no, excuse me, they murdered two men of God, doing their duty, trying to save the life of an innocent child, and one does not do business with murderers.”
“I know that, and I don’t like it any more than you do, and, trust me, Jack Ryan doesn’t like it any more than you do, either. But when we make foreign policy for our country, we have to think things through, because if we screw it up, people can lose their lives.”
“Lives have already been lost, Robert,” Reverend Jackson pointed out.
“I know that. Look, Pap, I know more about this than you do, okay? I mean, we have ways of finding out stuff that doesn’t make it on CNN,” the Vice President told his father, with the latest SORGE report right in his hand. Part of him wished that he could show it to his father, because his father was easily smart enough to grasp the importance of the secret things that he and Ryan knew. But there was no way he could even approach discussing that sort of thing with anyone without a TS/SAR clearance, and that included his wife, just as it included Cathy Ryan. Hmm, Jackson thought—maybe that was something he should discuss with Jack. You had to be able to talk this stuff over with someone you trusted, just as a reality check on what was right and wrong. Their wives weren’t security risks, were they?
“Like what?” his father asked, only halfway expecting an answer.
“Like I can’t discuss some things with you, Pap, and you know that. I’m sorry. The rules apply to me just like they do to everybody else.”
“So, what are we going to do about this?”
“We’re going to let the Chinese know that we are pretty damned angry, and we expect them to clean their act up, and apologize, and—”
“Apologize!” Reverend Jackson shot back. “Robert, they murdered two people!”
“I know that, Pap, but we can’t send the FBI over to arrest their government for this, can we? We’re very powerful here, but we are not God, and as much as I’d like to hurl a thunderbolt at them, I can’t.”
“So, we’re going to do what?”
“We haven’t decided yet. I’ll let you know when we figure it out,” TOMCAT promised his father.
“Do that,” Hosiah said, hanging up far more abruptly than usual.
“Christ, Pap,” Robby breathed into the phone. Then he wondered how representative of the religious community his father was. The hardest thing to figure was public reaction. People reacted on a subintellectual level to what they saw on TV. If you showed some chief of state tossing a puppy dog out the window of his car, the ASPCA might demand a break in diplomatic relations, and enough people might agree to send a million telegrams or e-mails to the White House. Jackson remembered a case in California where the killing of a dog had caused more public outrage than the kidnap-murder of a little girl. But at least the bastard who’d killed the girl had been caught, tried, and sentenced to death, whereas the a*shole who’d tossed the little dog into traffic had never been identified, despite the ton of reward money that had been raised. Well, it had all happened in the San Francisco area. Maybe that explained it. America wasn’t supposed to make policy on the basis of emotion, but America was a democracy, and therefore her elected officials had to pay attention to what the people thought—and it wasn’t easy, especially for rational folk, to predict the emotions of the public at large. Could the television image they’d just seen, theoretically upset international trade? Without a doubt, and that was a very big deal.
Jackson got up from his desk and walked to Arnie’s office. “Got a question,” he said, going in.
“Shoot,” the President’s Chief of Staff replied.
“How’s the public going to react to this mess in Beijing?”
“Not sure yet,” van Damm answered.
“How do we find out?”
“Usually you just wait and see. I’m not into this focus-group stuff. I prefer to gauge public opinion the regular way: newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, and the mail we get here. You’re worried about this?”
“Yep.” Robby nodded.
“Yeah, so am I. The Right-to-Lifers are going to be on this like a lion on a crippled gazelle, and so are the people who don’t like the PRC. Lots of them in Congress. If the Chinese think they’re going to get MFN this year, they’re on drugs. It’s a public relations nightmare for the PRC, but I don’t think they’re capable of understanding what they started. And I don’t see them apologizing to anybody.”
“Yeah, well, my father just tore me a new a*shole over this one,” Vice President Jackson said. “If the rest of the clergy picks this one up, there’s going to be a firestorm. The Chinese have to apologize loud and fast if they want to cut their losses.”
Van Damm nodded agreement. “Yeah, but they won’t. They’re too damned proud.”
“Pride goeth before the fall,” TOMCAT observed.
“Only after you feel the pain from the broken assbone, Admiral,” van Damm corrected the Vice President.
Ryan entered the White House press room feeling tense. The usual cameras were there. CNN and Fox would probably be running this news conference live, and maybe C-SPAN as well. The other networks would just tape it, probably, for use in their news feeds to the local stations and their own flagship evening news shows. He came to the lectern and took a sip of water before staring into the faces of the assembled thirty or so reporters.
“Good morning,” Jack began, grasping the lectern tightly, as he tended to do when angry. He didn’t know that reporters knew about it, too, and could see it from where they sat.
“We all saw those horrible pictures on the television this morning, the deaths of Renato Cardinal DiMilo, the Papal Nuncio to the People’s Republic of China, and the Reverend Yu Fa An, who, we believe, was a native of the Republic of China and educated at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma. First of all, the United States of America extends our condolences to the families of both men. Second, we call upon the government of the People’s Republic to launch an immediate and full investigation of this horrible tragedy, to determine who, if anyone, was at fault, and if someone was at fault, for such person or persons to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
“The death of a diplomat at the hands of an agent of a government is a gross violation of international treaty and convention. It is a quintessentially uncivilized act that must be set right as quickly and definitively as possible. Peaceful relations between nations cannot exist without diplomacy, and diplomacy cannot be carried out except through men and women whose personal safety is sacrosanct. That has been the case for literally thousands of years. Even in time of war, the lives of diplomats have always been protected by all sides for this very reason. We require that the government of the PRC explain this tragic event and take proper action to see to it that nothing of this sort will ever happen again. That concludes my statement. Questions?” Ryan looked up, trying not to brace too obviously for the storm that was about to break.
“Mr. President,” the Associated Press said, “the two clergymen who died were there to prevent an abortion. Does that affect your reaction to this incident?”
Ryan allowed himself to show surprise at the stupid question: “My views on abortion are on the public record, but I think everyone, even the pro-choice community, would respond negatively to what happened here. The woman in question did not choose to have an abortion, but the Chinese government tried to impose its will on her by killing a full-term fetus about to be born. If anyone did that in the United States, that person would be guilty of a felony—probably more than one—yet that is government policy in the People’s Republic. As you know, I personally object to abortion on moral grounds, but what we saw attempted on TV this morning is worse even than that. It’s an act of incomprehensible barbarism. Those two courageous men tried to stop it, and they were killed for their efforts, but, thank God, the baby appears to have survived. Next question?” Ryan pointed next to a known troublemaker.
“Mr. President,” the Boston Globe said, “the government’s action grew out of the People’s Republic’s population-control policy. Is it our place to criticize a country’s internal policy?”
Christ, Ryan thought, another one? “You know, once upon a time, a fellow named Hitler tried to manage the population of his country—in fact, of a lot of Europe—by killing the mentally infirm, the socially undesirable, and those whose religions he didn’t like. Now, yes, Germany was a nation-state, and we even had diplomatic relations with Hitler until December 1941. But are you saying that America does not have the right to object to a policy we consider barbaric just because it is the official policy of a nation-state? Hermann Goring tried that defense at the Nürnberg Trials. Do you want the United States of America to recognize it?” Jack demanded.
The reporter wasn’t as used to answering questions as to asking them. Then she saw that the cameras were pointed her way, and she was having a bad-hair day. Her response, therefore, could have been a little better: “Mr. President, is it possible that your views of abortion have affected your reaction to this event?”
“No, ma’am. I’ve disapproved of murder even longer than I’ve objected to abortion,” Ryan replied coldly.
“But you’ve just compared the People’s Republic of China to Hitler’s Germany,” the Globe reporter pointed out. You can’t say that about them!
“Both countries shared a view of population control that is antithetical to American traditions. Or do you approve of imposing late-term abortions on women who choose not to have one?”
“Sir, I’m not the President,” the Globe replied, as she sat down, avoiding the question, but not the embarrassed blush.
“Mr. President,” began the San Francisco Examiner, “whether we like it or not, China has decided for itself what sort of laws it wants to have, and the two men who died this morning were interfering with those laws, weren’t they?”
“The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King interfered with the laws of Mississippi and Alabama back when I was in high school. Did the Examiner object to his actions then?”
“Well, no, but—”
“But we regard the personal human conscience as a sovereign force, don’t we?” Jack shot back. “The principle goes back to St. Augustine, when he said that an unjust law is no law. Now, you guys in the media agree with that principle. Is it only when you happen to agree with the person operating on that principle? Isn’t that intellectually dishonest? I do not personally approve of abortion. You all know that. I’ve taken a considerable amount of heat for that personal belief, some of which has been laid on me by you good people. Fine. The Constitution allows us all to feel the way we choose. But the Constitution does not allow me not to enforce the law against people who blow up abortion clinics. I can sympathize with their overall point of view, but I cannot agree or sympathize with the use of violence to pursue a political position. We call that terrorism, and it’s against the law, and I have sworn an oath to enforce the law fully and fairly in all cases, regardless of how I may or may not feel on a particular issue.
“Therefore, if you do not apply it evenhandedly, ladies and gentlemen, it is not a principle at all, but ideology, and it is not very helpful to the way we govern our lives and our country.
“Now, on the broader question, you said that China has chosen its laws. Has it? Has it really? The People’s Republic is not, unfortunately, a democratic country. It is a place where the laws are imposed by an elite few. Two courageous men died yesterday objecting to those laws, and in the successful attempt to save the life of an unborn child. Throughout history, men have given up their lives for worse causes than that. Those men are heroes by any definition, but I do not think anyone in this room, or for that matter anyone in our country, believes that they deserved to die, heroically or not. The penalty for civil disobedience is not supposed to be death. Even in the darkest days of the 1960s, when black Americans were working to secure their civil rights, the police in the southern states did not commit wholesale murder. And those local cops and members of the Ku Klux Klan who did step over that line were arrested and convicted by the FBI and the Justice Department.
“In short, there are fundamental differences between the People’s Republic of China and America, and of the two systems, I much prefer ours.”
Ryan escaped the press room ten minutes later, to find Arnie standing at the top of the ramp.
“Very good, Jack.”
“Oh?” The President had learned to fear that tone of voice.
“Yeah, you just compared the People’s Republic of China to Nazi Germany and the Ku Klux Klan.”
“Arnie, why is it that the media feel such great solicitude for communist countries?”
“They don’t, and—”
“The hell they don’t! I just compared the PRC to Nazi Germany and they damned near wet their pants. Well, guess what? Mao murdered more people than Hitler did. That’s public knowledge—I remember when CIA released the study that documented it—but they ignore it. Is some Chinese citizen killed by Mao less dead than some poor Polish bastard killed by Hitler?”
“Jack, they have their sensibilities,” van Damm told his President.
“Yeah? Well, just once in a while, I wish they’d display something I can recognize as a principle.” With that, Ryan strode back to his office, practically trailing smoke from his ears.
“Temper, Jack, temper,” Arnie said to no one in particular. The President still had to learn the first principle of political life, the ability to treat a son of a bitch like your best friend, because the needs of your nation depended on it. The world would be a better place if it were as simple as Ryan wished, the Chief of Staff thought. But it wasn’t, and it showed no prospect of becoming so.
A few blocks away at Foggy Bottom, Scott Adler had finished cringing and was making notes on how to mend the fences that his President had just kicked over. He’d have to sit down with Jack and go over a few things, like the principles he held so dear.
What did you think of that, Gerry?”
“Hosiah, I think we have a real President here. What does your son think of him?”
“Gerry, they’ve been friends for twenty years, back to when they both taught at the Naval Academy. I’ve met the man. He’s a Catholic, but I think we can overlook that.”
“We have to.” Patterson almost laughed. “So was one of the guys who got shot yesterday, remember?”
“Italian, too, probably drank a lot of wine.”
“Well, Skip was known to have the occasional drink,” Patterson told his black colleague.
“I didn’t know,” Reverend Jackson replied, disturbed at the thought.
“Hosiah, it is an imperfect world we live in.”
“Just so he wasn’t a dancer.” That was almost a joke, but not quite.
“Skip? No, I’ve never known him to dance,” Reverend Patterson assured his friend. “By the way, I have an idea.”
“What’s that, Gerry?”
“How about this Sunday you preach at my church, and I preach at yours? I’m sure we’re both going to speak on the life and martyrdom of a Chinese man.”
“And what passage will you base your sermon on?” Hosiah asked, surprised and interested by the suggestion.
“Acts,” Patterson replied at once.
Reverend Jackson considered that. It wasn’t hard to guess the exact passage. Gerry was a fine biblical scholar. “I admire your choice, sir.”
“Thank you, Pastor Jackson. What do you think of my other suggestion?”
Reverend Jackson hesitated only a few seconds. “Reverend Patterson, I would be honored to preach at your church, and I gladly extend to you the invitation to preach at my own.”
Forty years earlier, when Gerry Patterson had been playing baseball in the church-sponsored Little League, Hosiah Jackson had been a young Baptist preacher, and the mere idea of preaching in Patterson’s church could have incited a lynching. But, by the Good Lord, they were men of God, and they were mourning the death—the martyrdom—of another man of God of yet another color. Before God, all men were equal, and that was the whole point of the Faith they shared. Both men were thinking quickly of how they might have to alter their styles, because though both were Baptists, and though both preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Baptist congregations, their communities were a little bit different and required slightly different approaches. But it was an accommodation both men could easily make.
“Thank you, Hosiah. You know, sometimes we have to acknowledge that our faith is bigger than we are.”
For his part, Reverend Jackson was impressed. He never doubted the sincerity of his white colleague, and they’d chatted often on matters of religion and scripture. Hosiah would even admit, quietly, to himself, that Patterson was his superior as a scholar of the Holy Word, due to his somewhat lengthier formal education, but of the two, Hosiah Jackson was marginally the better speaker, and so their relative talents played well off each other.
“How about we get together for lunch to work out the details?” Jackson asked.
“Today? I’m free.”
“Sure. Where?”
“The country club? You’re not a golfer, are you?” Patterson asked hopefully. He felt like a round, and his afternoon was free today for a change.
“Never touched a golf club in my life, Gerry.” Hosiah had a good laugh at that. “Robert is, learned at Annapolis and been playing ever since. Says he kicks the President’s backside every time they go out.” He’d never been to the Willow Glen Country Club either, and wondered if the club had any black members. Probably not. Mississippi hadn’t changed quite that much yet, though Tiger Woods had played at a PGA tournament there, and so that color line had been breached, at least.
“Well, he’d probably whip me, too. Next time he comes down, maybe we can play a round.” Patterson’s membership at Willow Glen was complimentary, another advantage to being pastor of a well-to-do congregation.
And the truth of the matter was that, white or not, Gerry Patterson was not the least bit bigoted, Reverend Jackson knew. He preached the Gospel with a pure heart. Hosiah was old enough to remember when that had not been so, but that, too, had changed once and for all. Praise God.
For Admiral Mancuso, the issues were the same, and a little different. An early riser, he’d caught CNN the same as everyone else. So had Brigadier General Mike Lahr.
“Okay, Mike, what the hell is this all about?” CINCPAC asked when his J-2 arrived for his morning intel brief.
“Admiral, it looks like a monumental cluster-f*ck. Those clergy stuck their noses in a tight crack and paid the price for it. More to the point, NCA is seriously pissed.” NCA was the code-acronym for National Command Authority, President Jack Ryan.
“What do I need to know about this?”
“Well, things are likely to heat up between America and China, for starters. The trade delegation we have in Beijing is probably going to catch some heat. If they catch too much, well . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Give me worst case,” CINCPAC ordered.
“Worst case, the PRC gets its collective back up, and we recall the trade delegation and the ambassador, and things get real chilly for a while.”
“Then what?”
“Then—that’s more of a political question, but it wouldn’t hurt for us to take it a little seriously, sir,” Lahr told his boss, who took just about everything seriously.
Mancuso looked at his wall map of the Pacific. Enterprise was back at sea doing exercises between Marcus Island and the Marianas. John Stennis was alongside in Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman was en route to Pearl Harbor after taking the long way around Cape Horn—modern aircraft carriers are far too beamy for the Panama Canal. Lincoln was finishing up a bobtail refit in San Diego and about to go back to sea. Kitty Hawk and Independence, his two old, oil-fired carriers, were both in the Indian Ocean. At that, he was lucky. First and Seventh Fleets had six carriers fully operational for the first time in years. So, if he needed to project power, he had the assets to give people something to think about. He also had a lot of Air Force aircraft at his disposal. The 3rd Marine Division and the Army’s 25th Light based right there in Hawaii wouldn’t play in this picture. The Navy might bump heads with the ChiComms, and the Air Force, but he lacked the amphibious assets to invade China, and besides, he wasn’t insane enough to think that was a rational course of action under any circumstances.
“What do we have in Taiwan right now?”
“Mobile Bay, Milius, Chandler, and Fletcher are showing the flag. Frigates Curtis and Reid are doing operations with the ROC navy. The submarines La Jolla, Helena, and Tennessee are trolling in the Formosa Strait or along the Chinese coast looking at their fleet units.”
Mancuso nodded. He usually kept some high-end SAM ships close to Taiwan. Milius was a Burke-class destroyer, and Mobile Bay was a cruiser, both of them with the Aegis system aboard to make the ROC feel a little better about the putative missile threat to their island. Mancuso didn’t think the Chinese were foolish enough to launch an attack against a city with some U.S. Navy ships tied alongside, and the Aegis ships had a fair chance of stopping anything that flew their way. But you never knew, and if this Beijing incident blew up any more . . . He lifted the phone for SURFPAC, the three-star who administratively owned Pacific Fleet’s surface ships.
“Yeah,” answered Vice Admiral Ed Goldsmith.
“Ed, Bart. What material shape are those ships we have in Taipei harbor in?”
“You’re calling about the thing on CNN, right?”
“Correct,” CINCPAC confirmed.
“Pretty good. No material deficiencies I know about. They’re doing the usual port-visit routine, letting people aboard and all. Crews are spending a lot of time on the beach.”
Mancuso didn’t have to ask what they were doing on the beach. He’d been a young sailor once, though never on Taiwan.
“Might not hurt for them to keep their ears perked up some.”
“Noted,” SURFPAC acknowledged. Mancuso didn’t have to say more. The ships would now stand alternating Condition-Three on their combat systems. The SPY radars would be turned on aboard one of the Aegis ships at all times. One nice thing about Aegis ships was that they could go from half-asleep to fully operational in about sixty seconds; it was just a matter of turning some keys. They’d have to be a little careful. The SPY radar put out enough power to fry electronic components for miles around, but it was just a matter of how you steered the electronic beams, and that was computer-controlled. “Okay, sir, I’ll get the word out right now.”
“Thanks, Ed. I’ll get you fully briefed in later today.”
“Aye, aye,” SURFPAC replied. He’d put a call to his squadron commanders immediately.
“What else?” Mancuso wondered.
“We haven’t heard anything directly from Washington, Admiral,” BG Lahr told his boss.
“Nice thing about being a CINC, Mike. You’re allowed to think on your own a little.”
What a f*cking mess,” General-Colonel Bondarenko observed to his drink. He wasn’t talking about the news of the day, but about his command, even though the officers’ club in Chabarsovil was comfortable. Russian general officers have always liked their comforts, and the building dated back to the czars. It had been built during the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the previous century and expanded several times. You could see the border between pre-revolution and post-revolution workmanship. Evidently, German POWs hadn’t been trained this far east—they’d built most of the dachas for the party elite of the old days. But the vodka was fine, and the fellowship wasn’t too bad, either.
“Things could be better, Comrade General,” Bondarenko’s operations officer agreed. “But there is much that can be done the right way, and little bad to undo.”
That was a gentle way of saying that the Far East Military District was less of a military command than it was a theoretical exercise. Of the five motor-rifle divisions nominally under his command, only one, the 265th, was at eighty-percent strength. The rest were at best regimental-size formations, or mere cadres. He also had theoretical command of a tank division—about a regiment and a half—plus thirteen reserve divisions that existed not so much on paper as in some staff officer’s dreams. The one thing he did have was huge equipment stores, but a lot of that equipment dated back to the 1960s, or even earlier. The best troops in his area of command responsibility were not actually his to command. These were the Border Guards, battalion-sized formations once part of the KGB, now a semi-independent armed service under the command of the Russian president.
There was also a defense line of sorts, which dated back to the 1930s and showed it. For this line, numerous tanks—some of them actually German in origin—were buried as bunkers. In fact, more than anything else the line was reminiscent of the French Maginot Line, also a thing of the 1930s. It had been built to protect the Soviet Union against an attack by the Japanese, and then upgraded halfheartedly over the years to protect against the People’s Republic of China—a defense never forgotten, but never fully remembered either. Bondarenko had toured parts of it the previous day. As far back as the czars, the engineering officers of the Russian Army had never been fools. Some of the bunkers were sited with shrewd, even brilliant appreciation for the land, but the problem with bunkers was explained by a recent American aphorism: If you can see it, you can hit it, and if you can hit it, you can kill it. The line had been conceived and built when artillery fire had been a chancy thing, and an aircraft bomb was fortunate to hit the right county. Now you could use a fifteen-centimeter gun as accurately as a sniper rifle, and an aircraft could select which window-pane to put the bomb through on a specific building.
“Andrey Petrovich, I am pleased to hear your optimism. What is your first recommendation?”
“It will be simple to improve the camouflage on the border bunkers. That’s been badly neglected over the years,” Colonel Aliyev told his commander-in-chief. “That will reduce their vulnerability considerably.”
“Allowing them to survive a serious attack for ... sixty minutes, Andrushka?”
“Maybe even ninety, Comrade General. It’s better than five minutes, is it not?” He paused for a sip of vodka. Both had been drinking for half an hour. “For the 265th, we must begin a serious training program at once. Honestly, the division commander did not impress me greatly, but I suppose we must give him a chance.”
Bondarenko: “He’s been out here so long, maybe he likes the idea of Chinese food.”
“General, I was out here as a lieutenant,” Aliyev said. “I remember the political officers telling us that the Chinese had increased the length of the bayonets on their AK-47s to get through the extra fat layer we’d grown after discarding true Marxism-Leninism and eating too much.”
“Really?” Bondarenko asked.
“That is the truth, Gennady Iosifovich.”
“So, what do we know of the PLA?”
“There are a lot of them, and they’ve been training seriously for about four years now, much harder than we’ve been doing.”
“They can afford to,” Bondarenko observed sourly. The other thing he’d learned on arriving was how thin the cupboard was for funds and training equipment. But it wasn’t totally bleak. He had stores of consumable supplies that had been stocked and piled for three generations. There was a virtual mountain of shells for the 100-mm guns on his many—and long-since obsolete—T-5?5 tanks, for example, and a sea of diesel fuel hidden away in underground tanks too numerous to count. The one thing he had in the Far East Military District was infrastructure, built up by the Soviet Union over generations of institutional paranoia. But that wasn’t the same as an army to command.
“What about aviation?”
“Mainly grounded,” Aliyev answered glumly. “Parts problems. We used up so much in Chechnya that there isn’t enough to go around, and the Western District still has first call.”
“Oh? Our political leadership expects the Poles to invade us?”
“That’s the direction Germany is in,” the G-3 pointed out.
“I’ve been fighting that out with the High Command for three years,” Bondarenko growled, thinking of his time as chief of operations for the entire Russian army. “People would rather listen to themselves than to others with the voice of reason.” He looked up at Aliyev. “And if the Chinese come?”
The theater operations officer shrugged. “Then we have a problem.”
Bondarenko remembered the maps. It wasn’t all that far to the new gold strike . . . and the ever-industrious army engineers were building the damned roads to it . . .
“Tomorrow, Andrey Petrovich. Tomorrow we start drawing up a training regimen for the whole command,” CINC—FAR EAST told his own G-3.