Chapter 61
Revolution
As usual, the news didn’t get back quickly to the place where it had actually started. Having given the launch order, Defense Minister Luo had little clue what to do next. Clearly, he couldn’t go back to sleep. America might well answer his action with a nuclear strike of its own, and therefore his first rational thought was that it might be a good idea for him to get the hell out of Beijing. He rose, made normal use of his bathroom, and splashed water on his face, but then again his mind hit a brick wall. What to do? The one name he knew to call was Zhang Han Sen. Once connected, he spoke very quickly indeed.
“You did—what happened, Luo?” the senior Minister Without Portfolio asked with genuine alarm.
“Someone—Russians or Americans, I’m not sure which—struck at our missile base at Xuanhua, attempting to destroy our nuclear deterrent. I ordered the base commander to fire them off, of course,” Luo told his associate minister, in a voice that was both defiant and defensive. “We agreed on this in our last meeting, did we not?”
“Luo, yes, we discussed the possibility. But you fired them without consulting with us?” Zhang demanded. Such decisions were always collegial, never unilateral.
“What choice did I have, Zhang?” Marshal Luo asked in reply. “Had I hesitated a moment, there would have been none left to fire.”
“I see,” the voice on the phone said. “What is happening now?”
“The missiles are flying. The first should hit their first targets, Moscow and Leningrad, in about ten minutes. I had no choice, Zhang. I could not allow them to disarm us completely.”
Zhang could have sworn and screamed at the man, but there was no point in that. What had happened had happened, and there was no sense expending intellectual or emotional energy on something he could not alter. “Very well. We need to meet. I will assemble the Politburo. Come to the Council of Ministers Building at once. Will the Americans or Russians retaliate?”
“They cannot strike back in kind. They have no nuclear missiles. An attack by bombers would take some hours,” Luo advised, trying to make it sound like good news.
At his end of the connection, Zhang felt a chill in his stomach that rivaled liquid helium. As with many things in life, this one—contemplated theoretically in a comfortable conference room—was something very different now that it had turned into a most uncomfortable reality. And yet—was it? It was a thing too difficult to believe. It was too unreal. There were no outward signs—you’d at least expect thunder and lightning outside the windows to accompany news like this, even a major earthquake, but it was merely early morning, not yet seven o’clock. Could this be real?
Zhang padded across his bedroom, switched on his television, and turned it to CNN—it had been turned off for most of the country, but not here, of course. His English skills were insufficient to translate the rapid-fire words coming over the screen now. They were showing Washington, D.C., with a camera evidently atop the CNN building there—wherever that was, he had not the faintest idea. It was a black American speaking. The camera showed him standing atop a building, microphone in hand like black plastic ice cream, speaking very, very rapidly—so much so that Zhang was catching only one word in three, and looking off to the camera’s left with wide, frightened eyes.
So, he knows what is coming there, doesn’t he? Zhang thought, then wondered if he would see the destruction of the American capital via American news television. That, he thought, would have some entertainment value.
“Look!” the reporter said, and the camera twisted to see a smoke trail race across the sky—
—What the hell is that? Zhang wondered. Then there was another... and more besides... and the reporter was showing real fear now...
... it was good for his heart to see such feelings on the face of an American, especially a black American reporter. Another one of those monkeys had caused his country such great harm, after all ...
So, now he’d get to see one incinerated... or maybe not. The camera and the transmitter would go, too, wouldn’t they? So, just a flash of light, maybe, and a blank screen that would be replaced by CNN headquarters in Atlanta...
... more smoke trails. Ah, yes, they were surface-to-air missiles... could such things intercept a nuclear missile? Probably not, Zhang judged. He checked his watch. The sweep hand seemed determined to let the snail win this race, it jumped so slowly from one second to the next, and Zhang felt himself watching the display on the TV screen with anticipation he knew to be perverse. But America had been his country’s principal enemy for so many years, had thwarted two of his best and most skillfully laid plans—and now he’d see its destruction by means of one of its very own agencies, this cursed medium of television news, and though Tan Deshi claimed that it was not an organ of the American government, surely that could not be the case. The Ryan regime in Washington must have a very cordial relationship with those minstrels, they followed the party line of the Western governments so fawningly...
... two more smoke trails... the camera followed them and... what was that? Like a meteor, or the landing light of a commercial aircraft, a bright light, seemingly still in the sky—no, it was moving, unless that was the fear of the cameraman showing—oh, yes, that was it, because the smoke trails seemed to seek it out... but not quite closely enough, it would seem... and so, farewell, Washington, Zhang Han Sen thought. Perhaps there’d be adverse consequences for the People’s Republic, but he’d have the satisfaction of seeing the death of—
—what was that? Like a bursting firework in the sky, a shower of sparks, mainly heading down... what did that mean...?
It was clear sixty seconds later. Washington had not been blotted from the map. Such a pity, Zhang thought ... especially since there would be consequences ... With that, he washed and dressed and left for the Council of Ministers Building.
Dear God,” Ryan breathed. The initial emotions of denial and elation were passing now. The feelings were not unlike those following an auto accident. First was disbelief, then remedial action that was more automatic than considered, then when the danger was past came the whiplash after-fear, when the psyche started to examine what had passed, and what had almost been, and fear after survival, fear after the danger was past, brought on the real shakes. Ryan remembered that Winston Churchill had remarked that there was nothing more elating than rifle fire that had missed—”to be shot at without result” was the exact quote the President remembered. If so, Winston Spencer Churchill must have had ice water in his cardiovascular system, or he enjoyed braggadocio more than this American President did.
“Well, I hope that was the only one,” Captain Blandy observed.
“Better be, Cap’n. We be out of missiles,” Chief Leek said, lighting up another smoke in accordance with the Presidential amnesty.
“Captain,” Jack said when he was able to, “every man on this ship gets promoted one step by Presidential Order, and USS Gettysburg gets a Presidential Unit Citation. That’s just for starters, of course. Where’s a radio? I need to talk to KNEECAP.”
“Here, sir.” A sailor handed him a phone receiver. “The line’s open, sir.”
“Robby?”
“Jack?”
“You’re still Vice President,” SWORDSMAN told TOMCAT.
“For now, I suppose. Christ, Jack, what the hell were you trying to do?”
“I’m not sure. It seemed like the right idea at the time.” Jack was seated now, both holding the phone in his hand and cradling it between cheek and shoulder, lest he drop it on the deck. “Is there anything else coming in?”
“NORAD says the sky is clear—only one bird got off. Targeted on us. Shit, the Russians still have dedicated ABM batteries all around Moscow. They probably could have handled it better than us.” Jackson paused. “We’re calling in the Nuclear Emergency Search Team from Rocky Mountain Arsenal to look for hot spots. DOD has people coordinating with the D.C. police... Jesus, Jack, that was just a little intense, y’know?”
“Yeah, it was that way here, too. Now what?” the President asked.
“You mean with China? Part of me says, load up the B-2 bombers on Guam with the B-61 gravity bombs and send them to Beijing, but I suppose that’s a little bit of an overreaction.”
“I think some kind of public statement—not sure what kind yet. What are you gonna be doing?”
“I asked. The drill is for us to stay up for four hours before we come back to Andrews. Same for Cathy and the kids. You might want to call them, too.”
“Roger. Okay, Robby, sit tight. See you in a few hours. I think I’m going to have a stiff one or two.”
“I hear that, buddy.”
“Okay, POTUS out.” Ryan handed the phone back. “Captain?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Your entire ship’s crew is invited to the White House, right now, for some drinks on the house. I think we all need it.”
“Sir, I will not disagree with that.”
“And those who stay aboard, if they feel the need to bend an elbow, as Commander in Chief, I waive Navy Regulations on that subject for twenty-four hours.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Chief?” Jack said next.
“Here, sir.” He handed his pack and lighter over. “I got more in my locker, sir.”
Just then two men in civilian clothes entered CIC. It was Hilton and Malone from the night crew.
“How’d you guys get here so fast?” Ryan asked.
“Andrea called us, sir—did what we think happened just happen?”
“Yep, and your President needs a bottle and a soft chair, gentlemen.”
“We have a car on the pier, sir. You want to come with us?”
“Okay—Captain, you get buses or something, and come to the White House right away. If it means locking the ship up and leaving her without anyone aboard, that’s just fine with me. Call the Marine Barracks at Eighth and I for security if you need to.”
“Aye, aye, Mr. President. We’ll be along shortly.”
I might be drunk before you get there, the President thought.
The car Hilton and Malone had brought down was one of the black armored Chevy Suburbans that followed the President everywhere he went. This one just drove back to the White House. The streets were suddenly filled with people simply standing and looking up—it struck Ryan as odd. The thing was no longer in the sky, and whatever pieces were on the ground were too dangerous to touch. In any case, the drive back to the White House was uneventful, and Ryan ended up in the Situation Room, strangely alone. The uniformed people from the White House Military Office—called Wham-O by the staff, which seemed particularly inappropriate at the moment—were all in a state somewhere between bemused and stunned. And the immediate consequence of the great effort to whisk senior government officials out of town—the scheme was officially called the Continuation of Government—had had the reverse effect. The government was at the moment still fragmented in twenty or so helicopters and one E-4B, and quite unable to coordinate itself. Ryan figured that the emergency was better designed to withstand a nuclear attack than to avoid one, and that, at the moment, seemed very strange.
Indeed, the big question for the moment was What the hell do we do now? And Ryan didn’t have much of a clue. But then a phone rang to help him.
“This is President Ryan.”
“Sir, this is General Dan Liggett at Strike Command in Omaha. Mr. President, I gather we just dodged a major bullet.”
“Yeah, I think you can say that, General.”
“Sir, do you have any orders for us?”
“Like what?”
“Well, sir, one option would be retaliation, and—”
“Oh, you mean because they blew a chance to nuke us, we should take the opportunity to nuke them for real?”
“Sir, it’s my job to present options, not to advocate any,” Liggett told his Commander-in-Chief.
“General, do you know where I was during the attack?”
“Yes, sir. Gutsy call, Mr. President.”
“Well, I am now trying to deal with my own restored life, and I don’t have a clue what I ought to do about the big picture, whatever the hell that is. In another two hours or so, maybe we can think of something, but at the moment I have no idea at all. And you know, I’m not sure I want to have any such idea. So, for the moment, General, we do nothing at all. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Nothing at all happens with Strike Command.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“Jack?” a familiar voice called from the door.
“Arnie, I hate drinking alone—except when there’s nobody else around. How about you and me drain a bottle of something? Tell the usher to bring down a bottle of Midleton, and, you know, have him bring a glass for himself.”
“Is it true you rode it out on the ship down at the Navy Yard?”
“Yep.” Ryan bobbed his head.
“Why?”
“I couldn’t run away, Arnie. I couldn’t run off to safety and leave a couple of million people to fry. Call it brave. Call it stupid. I just couldn’t bug out that way.”
Van Damm leaned into the corridor and made the drink order to someone Jack couldn’t see, and then he came back in. “I was just starting dinner at my place in Georgetown when CNN ran the flash. Figured I might as well come here—didn’t really believe it like I should have, I suppose.”
“It was somewhat difficult to swallow. I suppose I ought to ask myself if it was our fault, sending the special-operations people in. Why is it that people second-guess everything we do here?”
“Jack, the world is full of people who can only feel big by making other people look small, and the bigger the target, the better they feel about it. And reporters love to get their opinions, because it makes a good story to say you’re wrong about anything. The media prefers a good story to a good truth most of the time. It’s just the nature of the business they’re in.”
“That’s not fair, you know,” Ryan observed, when the head usher arrived with a silver tray, a bottle of Irish whiskey, and some glasses with ice already in them. “Charlie, you pour yourself one, too,” the President told him.
“Mr. President, I’m not supposed—”
“Today the rules changed, Mr. Pemberton. If you get too swacked to drive home, I’ll have the Secret Service take you. Have I ever told you what a good guy you are, Charlie? My kids just plain love you.”
Charles Pemberton, son and grandson of ushers at the White House, poured three drinks, just a light one for himself, and handed the glasses over with the grace of a neurosurgeon.
“Sit down and relax, Charlie. I have a question for you.”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Where did you ride it out? Where did you stay when that H-bomb was coming down on Washington?”
“I didn’t go to the shelter in the East Wing, figured that was best for the womenfolk. I—well, sir, I took the elevator up to the roof and figured I’d just watch.”
“Arnie, there sits a brave man,” Jack said, saluting with his glass.
“Where were you, Mr. President?” Pemberton asked, breaking the etiquette rules because of pure curiosity.
“I was on the ship that shot the damned thing down, watching our boys do their job. That reminds me, this Gregory guy, the scientist that Tony Bretano got involved. We look after him, Arnie. He’s one of the people who saved the day.”
“Duly noted, Mr. President.” Van Damm took a big pull on his glass. “What else?”
“I don’t have a what-else right now,” SWORDSMAN admitted.
Neither did anyone in Beijing, where it was now eight in the morning, and the ministers were filing into their conference room like sleepwalkers, and the question on everyone’s lips was “What happened?”
Premier Xu called the meeting to order and ordered the Defense Minister to make his report, which he did in the monotone voice of a phone recording.
“You ordered the launch?” Foreign Minister Shen asked, aghast.
“What else was I to do? General Xun told me his base was under attack. They were trying to take our assets away—we spoke of this possibility, did we not?”
“We spoke of it, yes,” Qian agreed. “But to do such a thing without our approval? That was a political action without reflection, Luo. What new dangers have you brought on us?”
“And what resulted from it?” Fang asked next.
“Evidently, the warhead either malfunctioned or was somehow intercepted and destroyed by the Americans. The only missile that launched successfully was targeted on Washington. The city was not, I regret to say, destroyed.”
“You regret to say—you regret to say?” Fang’s voice spoke more loudly than anyone at the table could ever remember. “You fool! If you had succeeded, we would be facing national death now! You regret?”
At about that time in Washington, a mid-level CIA bureaucrat had an idea. They were feeding live and taped coverage from the Siberian battlefield over the Internet, because independent news coverage wasn’t getting into the People’s Republic. “Why not,” he asked his supervisor, “send them CNN as well?” That decision was made instantaneously, though it was possibly illegal, maybe a violation of copyright laws. But on this occasion, common sense took precedence over bureaucratic caution. CNN, they decided quickly, could bill them later.
And so, an hour and twenty minutes after the event, http://www.darkstarfeed.cia.gov/siberiabattle/realtime.rambegan to cover the coverage of the near-destruction of Washington, D.C. The news that a nuclear war had been begun but aborted stunned the students in Tiananmen Square. The collective realization that they themselves might be the targets of a retaliatory strike did not put fear so much as rage into their young hearts. There were about ten thousand of them now, many with their portable laptop computers, and many of those hooked into cell phones for Internet access. From overhead you could tell their positions just by the tiny knots of pressed-together bodies. Then the leaders of the demonstration got together and started talking fast among themselves. They knew they had to do something, they just didn’t know exactly what. For all they knew, they might well all be facing death.
The ardor was increased by the commentators CNN had hurriedly rushed into their studios in Atlanta and New York, many of whom opined that the only likely action for America was to reply in kind to the Chinese attack, and when the reporter acting as moderator asked what “in kind” meant, the reply was predictable.
For the students, the question now was not so much life and death as saving their nation—the thirteen hundred million citizens whose lives had been made forfeit by the mad-men of the Politburo. The Council of Ministers Building was not all that far away, and the crowd started heading that way.
By this time, there was a police presence in the Square of Heavenly Peace. The morning watch replaced the night team and saw the mass of young people—to their considerable surprise, since this had not been a part of their morning briefing. The men going off duty explained that nothing had happened at all that was contrary to the law, and for all they knew, it was a spontaneous demonstration of solidarity and support for the brave PLA soldiers in Siberia. So, there were few of them about, and fewer still of the People’s Armed Police. It would probably not have mattered in any case. The body of students coalesced, and marched with remarkable discipline to the seat of their country’s government. When they got close, there were armed men there. These police officers were not prepared to see so many people coming toward them. The senior of their number, a captain, walked out alone and demanded to know who was in charge of this group, only to be brushed aside by a twenty-two-year-old engineering student.
Again, it was a case of a police officer totally unaccustomed to having his words disregarded, and totally nonplussed when it took place. Suddenly, he was looking at the back of a young man who was supposed to have stopped dead in his tracks when he was challenged. The security policeman had actually expected the students to stop as a body at his command, for such was the power of law in the People’s Republic, but strong as the force of law was, it was also brittle, and when broken, there was nothing behind it. There were also only forty armed men in the building, and all of them were on the first floor in the rear, kept out of the way because the ministers wanted the armed peasants out of sight, except in ones and twos. The four officers on duty at the main entrance were just swept aside as the crowd thundered in through the double doors. All drew their pistols, but only one fired, wounding three students before being knocked down and kicked into senselessness. The other three just ran to the main post to find the reserve force. By the time they got there, the students were running up the wide, ceremonial stairs to the second floor.
The meeting room was well soundproofed, a security measure to prevent eavesdropping. But soundproofing worked in both directions, and so the men sitting around the table did not hear anything until the corridor was filled with students only fifty meters away, and even then the ministers just turned about in nothing more than annoyance—
—the armed guard force deployed in two groups, one running to the front of the building on the first floor, the other coming up the back on the second, led by a major who thought to evacuate the ministers. The entire thing had developed much too quickly, with virtually no warning, because the city police had dropped the ball rather badly, and there was no time to call in armed reinforcements. As it played out, the first-floor team ran into a wall of students, and while the captain in command had twenty men armed with automatic rifles, he hesitated to order opening fire because there were more students in view than he had cartridges in his rifles, and in hesitating, he lost the initiative. A number of students approached the armed men, their hands raised, and began to engage them in reasonable tones that belied the wild-eyed throng behind them.
It was different on the second floor. The major there didn’t hesitate at all. He had his men level their rifles and fire one volley high, just to scare them off. But these students didn’t scare. Many of them crashed through doors off the main corridor, and one of these was the room in which the Politburo was sitting.
The sudden entrance of fifteen young people got every minister’s attention.
“What is this!” Zhang Han Sen thundered. “Who are you?”
“And who are you?” the engineering student sneered back. “Are you the maniac who started a nuclear war?”
“There is no such war—who told you such nonsense?” Marshal Luo demanded. His uniform told them who he was.
“And you are the one who sent our soldiers to their death in Russia!”
“What is this?” the Minister Without Portfolio asked.
“I think these are the people, Zhang,” Qian Kun observed. “Our people, Comrade,” he added coldly.
Into the vacuum of power and direction, more of the students forced their way into the room, and now the guard force couldn’t risk shooting—too many of their country’s leadership was right there, right in the field of fire.
“Grab them, grab them! They will not shoot these men!” one student shouted. Pairs and trios of students raced around the table, each to a separate seat.
“Tell me, boy,” Fang said gently to the one closest to him, “how did you learn all this?”
“Over our computers, of course,” the youngster replied, a little impolitely, but not grossly so.
“Well, one finds truth where one can,” the grandfatherly minister observed.
“So, Grandfather, is it true?”
“Yes, I regret to say it is,” Fang told him, not quite knowing what he was agreeing to.
Just then, the troops appeared, their officer in the lead with a pistol in his hand, forging their way into the conference room, wide-eyed at what they saw. The students were not armed, but to start a gunfight in this room would kill the very people he was trying to safeguard, and now it was his turn to hesitate.
“Now, everyone be at ease,” Fang said, pushing his seat gently back from the table. “You, Comrade Major, do you know who I am?”
“Yes, Minister—but—”
“Good, Comrade Major. First, you will have your men stand down. We need no killing here. There has been enough of that.”
The officer looked around the room. No one else seemed to be speaking just yet, and into that vacuum had come words which, if not exactly what he wanted to hear, at least had some weight in them. He turned and without words—waving his hands—had his men relax a little.
“Very good. Now, comrades,” Fang said, turning back to his colleagues. “I propose that some changes are needed here. First of all, we need Foreign Minister Shen to contact America and tell them that a horrible accident has occurred, and that we rejoice that no lives were lost as a result, and that those responsible for that mistake will be handled by us. To that end, I demand the immediate arrest of Premier Xu, Defense Minister Luo, and Minister Zhang. It is they who caused us to embark on the foolish adventure in Russia that threatens to bring ruin to us all. You three have endangered our country, and for this crime against the people, you must pay.
“Comrades, what is your vote?” Fang demanded.
There were no dissents; even Tan and Interior Minister Tong nodded their assent.
“Next, Shen, you will immediately propose an end to hostilities with Russia and America, telling them also that those responsible for this ruinous adventure will be punished. Are we agreed on that, Comrades?”
They were.
“For myself, I think we ought all to give thanks to Heaven that we may be able to put an end to this madness. Let us make this happen quickly. For now, I will meet with these young people to see what other things are of interest to them. You, Comrade Major, will conduct the three prisoners to a place of confinement. Qian, will you remain with me and speak to the students as well?”
“Yes, Fang,” the Finance Minister said. “I will be pleased to.”
“So, young man,” Fang said to the one who’d seemed to act like a leader. “What is it you wish to discuss?”
The Blackhawks were long on their return flight. The refueling went off without a hitch, but it was soon apparent that almost thirty men, all Russians, had been lost in the attack on Xuanhua. It wasn’t the first time Clark had seen good men lost, and as before, the determining factor was nothing more than luck, but that was a lousy explanation to have to give to a new widow. The other thing eating at him was the missile that had gotten away. He’d seen it lean to the east. It hadn’t gone to Moscow, and that was all he knew right now. The flight back was bleakly silent the whole way, and he couldn’t fix it by calling in on his satellite phone because he’d taken a fall at some point and broken the antenna off the top of the damned thing. He’d failed. That was all he knew, and the consequences of this kind of failure surpassed his imagination. The only good news he could come up with was that no one in his family lived close to any likely target, but lots of other people did. Finally the chopper touched down, and the doors were opened for the troopers to get out. Clark saw General Diggs there and went over to him.
“How bad?”
“The Navy shot it down over Washington.”
“What?”
“General Moore told me. Some cruiser—Gettysburg, I think he said—shot the bastard down right over the middle of D.C. We got lucky, Mr. Clark.”
John’s legs almost buckled at that news. For the past five hours, he’d been imagining a mushroom cloud with his name on it over some American city, but God, luck, or the Great Pumpkin had intervened, and he’d settle for that.
“What gives, Mr. C?” Chavez asked, with considerable worry in his voice. Diggs gave him the word, too.
“The Navy? The f*ckin’ Navy? Well, I’ll be damned. They are good for something, eh?”
Jack Ryan was about half in the bag by this time, and if the media found out about it, the hell with them. The cabinet was back in town, but he’d put off the meeting until the following morning. It would take time to consider what had to be done. The most obvious response, the one talking heads were proclaiming on the various TV stations, was one he could not even contemplate, much less order. They’d have to find something better than wholesale slaughter. He wouldn’t order that, though some special operation to take out the Chinese Politburo certainly appealed to his current state of mind. A lot of blood had been spilled, and there would be some more, too. To think it had all begun with an Italian cardinal and a Baptist preacher, killed by some trigger-happy cop. Did the world really turn on so perverse an axis as that?
That, Ryan thought, calls for another drink.
But some good had to come from this. You had to learn lessons from this sort of thing. But what was there to learn? It was too confusing for the American President. Things had happened too fast. He’d gone to the brink of something so deep and so dreadful that the vast maw of it still filled his eyes, and it was just too much for one man to handle. He’d bounced back from facing imminent death himself, but not the deaths of millions, not as directly as this. The truth of the matter was that his mind was blanked out by it all, unable to analyze, unable to correlate the information in a way that would help him take a step forward, and all he really wanted and needed to do was to embrace his family, to be certain that the world still had the shape he wanted it to have.
People somehow expected him to be a superman, to be some godlike being who handled things that others could not handle—well, yeah, Jack admitted to himself. Maybe he had shown courage by remaining in Washington, but after courage came deflation, and he needed something outside himself to restore his manhood. The well he’d tapped wasn’t bottomless at all, and this time the bucket was clunking down on rocks...
The phone rang. Arnie got it. “Jack? It’s Scott Adler.”
Ryan reached for it. “Yeah, Scott, what is it?”
“Just got a call from Bill Kilmer, the DCM in Beijing. Seems that Foreign Minister Shen was just over to the embassy. They have apologized for launching the missile. They say it was a horrible accident and they’re glad the thing didn’t go off—”
“That’s f*cking nice of them,” Ryan observed.
“Well, whoever gave the order to launch is under arrest. They request our assistance in bringing an end to hostilities. Shen said they’d take any reasonable action to bring that about. He said they’re willing to declare a unilateral cease-fire and withdraw all their forces back to their own borders, and to consider reparations to Russia. They’re surrendering, Jack.”
“Really? Why?”
“There appears to have been some sort of riot in Beijing. Reports are very sketchy, but it seems that their government has fallen. Minister Fang Gan seems to be the interim leader. That’s all I know, Jack, but it looks like a decent beginning. With your permission, and with the concurrence of the Russians, I think we ought to agree to this.”
“Approved,” the President said, without much in the way of consideration. Hell, he told himself, you don’t have to dwell too much on ending a war, do you? “Now what?”
“Well, I want to talk to the Russians to make sure they’ll go along. I think they will. Then we can negotiate the details. As a practical matter, we hold all the cards, Jack. The other side is folding.”
“Just like that? We end it all just like that?” Ryan asked.
“It doesn’t have to be Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, Jack. It just has to work.”
“Will it work?”
“Yes, Jack, it ought to.”
“Okay, get hold of the Russians,” Ryan said, setting his glass down.
Maybe this was the end of the last war, Jack thought. If so, no, it didn’t have to be pretty.
It was a good dawn for General Bondarenko, and was about to get better. Colonel Tolkunov came running into his command center holding a sheet of paper.
“We just copied this off the Chinese radio, military and civilian. They are ordering their forces to cease fire in place and to prepare to withdraw from our territory.”
“Oh? What makes them think we will let them go?” the Russian commander asked.
“It’s a beginning, Comrade General. If this is accompanied by a diplomatic approach to Moscow, then the war will soon be over. You have won,” the colonel added.
“Have I?” Gennady Iosifovich asked. He stretched. It felt good this morning, looking at his maps, seeing the deployments, and knowing that he held the upper hand. If this was the end of the war, and he was the winner, then that was sufficient to the moment, wasn’t it? “Very well. Confirm this with Moscow.”
It wasn’t that easy, of course. Units in contact continued to trade shots for some hours, until the orders reached them, but then the firing died down, and the invading troops withdrew away from their enemies, and the Russians, with orders of their own, didn’t follow. By sunset, the shooting and the killing had stopped, pending final disposition. Church bells rang all over Russia.
Golovko took note of the bells and the people in the streets, swigging their vodka and celebrating their country’s victory. Russia felt like a great power again, and that was good for the morale of the people. Better yet, in another few years they’d start reaping the harvest of their resources—and before that would come bridge loans of enormous size... and maybe, just maybe, Russia would turn the corner, finally, and begin a new century well, after wasting most of the previous one.
It was nightfall before the word got out from Beijing to the rest of China. The end of the war so recently started came as a shock to those who’d never really understood the reasons or the facts in the first place. Then came word that the government had changed, and that was also a puzzling development for which explanations would have to wait. The interim Premier was Fang Gan, a name known from pictures rather than words or deeds, but he looked old and wise, and China was a country of great momentum rather than great thoughts, and though the course of the country would change, it would change slowly so far as its people were concerned. People shrugged, and discussed the puzzling new developments in quiet and measured words.
For one particular person in Beijing, the changes meant that her job would change somewhat in importance if not in actual duties. Ming went out to dinner—the restaurants hadn’t closed—with her foreign lover, gushing over drinks and noodles with the extraordinary events of the day, then walked off to his apartment for a dessert of Japanese sausage.