"Minister Qian says the country may soon be out of money. The other ministers say that is nonsense. Qian says we must accommodate the Western countries. Zhang and the others like him say we cannot show weakness after all they-especially the Americans-have done to us lately."

"Don't they see that killing that Italian priest was a bad thing?"

"They see it as an unfortunate accident, and besides, he was breaking our laws."

Jesus, Nomuri thought, they really do think they're G.o.dkings, don't they? "Bao bei, that is a mistake on their part."

"You think so?"

"I have been to America, remember? I lived there for a time. Americans are very solicitous to their clergy, and they place a high value on religion. Spitting on it angers them greatly."

"You think Qian is right, then?" she asked. "You think America will deny us money for this foolish action?"

"I think it is possible, yes. Very possible, Ming."

"Minister Fang thinks we should take a more moderate course, to accommodate the Americans somewhat, but he did not say so at the meeting."

"Oh? Why?"

"He does not wish to depart too greatly from the path of the other ministers. You say that in j.a.pan people fear not being elected. Here, well, the Politburo elects its own, and it can expel those who no longer fit in. Fang does not wish to lose his own status, obviously, and to make sure that doesn't happen, he takes a cautious line."

"This is hard for me to understand, Ming. How do they select their members? How do the 'princes' choose the new 'prince'?"

"Oh, there are party members who have distinguished themselves ideologically, or sometimes from work in the field. Minister Qian, for example, used to be chief of railroad construction, and was promoted for that reason, but mainly they are picked for political reasons."

"And Fang?"

"My minister is an old comrade. His father was one of Mao's faithful lieutenants, and Fang has always been politically reliable, but in recent years he has taken note of the new industries and seen how well they function, and he admires some of the people who operate them. He even has some into his office from time to time for tea and talk."

So, the old pervert is a progressive here? Nomuri wondered. Well, the bar for that was pretty low in China. You didn't have to jump real high, but that put him in advance of the ones who dug a trench under it, didn't it?

"Ah, so the people have no voice at all, do they?"

Ming laughed at that. "Only at party meetings, and there you guard your voice."

"Are you a member?"

"Oh, yes. I go to meetings once a month. I sit in the back. I nod when others nod, and applaud when they applaud, and I pretend to listen. Others probably listen better. It is not a small thing to be a party member, but my membership is because of my job at the ministry. I am here because they needed my language and computer skills-and besides, the ministers like to have young women under them," she added.

"You're never on top of him, eh?"

"He prefers the ordinary position, but it is hard on his arms." Ming giggled.

Ryan was glad to see that he was brushing enough. The dentist told him to floss, as he always did, and Ryan nodded, as he always did, and he'd never bought floss in his life and wasn't going to start now. But at least he'd undergone nothing more invasive than a couple of X rays, for which, of course, he'd gotten the lead ap.r.o.n. On the whole, it had been ninety minutes torn off the front of his day. Back in the Oval Office, he had the latest SORGE, which was good enough for a whispered "d.a.m.n." He lifted the phone for Mary Pat at Langley.

"They're dense," Ryan observed.

"Well, they sure as h.e.l.l don't know high finance. Even I know better than this."

"TRADER has to see this. Put him on the SORGE list," POTUS ordered.

"With your day-to-day approval only," the DDO hedged. "Maybe he has a need-to-know on economics, but nothing else, okay?"

"Okay, for now," Jack agreed. But George was coming along nicely on strategic matters, and might turn into a good policy adviser. He understood high-stress psychology better than most, and that was the name of the game. Jack broke the connection and had Ellen Sumter call the SecTreas over from across the street.

So, what else do they worry about?" Chester asked."They're concerned that some of the workers and peasants are not as happy as they should be. You know about the riots they had in the coal region."

"Oh?"

"Yes, the miners rioted last year. The PLA went in to settle things down. Several hundred people were shot, and three thousand arrested." She shrugged while putting her bra back on. "There is unrest, but that is nothing especially new. The army keeps control of things in the outlying regions. That's why they spend so much money, to keep the army reliable. The generals run the PLA's economic empire-all the factories and things-and they're good at keeping a lid on things. The ordinary soldiers are just workers and peasants, but the officers are all party members, and they are reliable, or so the Politburo thinks. It's probably true," Ming concluded. She hadn't seen her minister worry all that much about it. Power in the People's Republic decidedly grew from the barrel of a gun, and the Politburo owned all the guns. That made things simple, didn't it?

For his part, Nomuri had just learned things he'd never thought about before. He might want to make his own report on this stuff. Ming probably knew a lot of things that didn't go out as SONGBIRD material, and he'd be remiss not to send that to Langley, too.

It's like a five-year-old in a gun store," Secretary Winston observe. "These people have no business making economic decisions for a city government, much less a major country. I mean, h.e.l.l, as stupid as the j.a.panese were a few years ago, at least they know to listen to the coaches."

"And?"

"And when they run into the brick wall, their eyes'll still be closed. That can smart some, Jack. They're going to get bit on the a.s.s, and they don't see it coming." Winston could mix metaphors with the best of 'em, Ryan saw.

"When?" SWORDSMAN asked.

"Depends on how many companies do what b.u.t.terfly did. We'll know more in a few days. The fashion business will be the lead indicator, of all things."

"Really?"

"Surprised me, too, but this is the time for them to commit to the next season, and there's a ton of money in that business going on over there, man. Toss in all the toys for next Christmas. There's seventeen billion-plus just in that, Mark Gant tells me."

"d.a.m.n."

"Yeah, I didn't know Santa's reindeer had slanted eyes either, Jack. At least not to that extent."

"What about Taiwan?" Ryan wondered.

"You're not kidding. They're jumping into the growing gap with both feet. Figure they pick up a quarter, maybe a third, of what the PRC is going to lose. Singapore's going to be next. And the Thais. This little b.u.mp in the road will go a long way to restore the damage done to their economy a few years back. In fact, the PRC's troubles might rebuild the whole South Asian economy. It could be a swing of fifty billion dollars out of China, and it has to go somewhere. We're starting to take bids, Jack. It won't be a bad deal for our consumers, and I'll bet those countries learn from Beijing's example, and kick their doors open a notch or so. So, our workers will profit from it, too-somewhat, anyway."

"Downside?"

"Boeing's squealing some. They wanted that triple-seven order, but you wait an' see. Somebody's going to take up that slack, too. One other thing."

"Yeah?" Ryan asked.

"It's not just American companies bailing out on them. Two big Italian places, and Siemens in Germany, they've announced termination of some business with their Chinese partners," TRADER said.

"Will it turn into a general movement . . . ?"

"Too soon to say, but if I were these guys"-Winston shook the fax from CIA-"I'd be thinking about fence-mending real soon."

"They won't do it, George."

"Then they're going to learn a nasty lesson."

CHAPTER 39.

The Other Question No action with our friend?" Reilly asked.

"Well, he continues his s.e.xual adventures," Provalov answered.

"Talk to any of the girls yet?"

"Earlier today, two of them. He pays them well, in euros or d-marks, and doesn't request any, uh, 'exotic' services from them."

"Nice to know he's normal in his tastes," the FBI agent observed, with a grunt.

"We have numerous photos of him now. We've put an electronic tracker on his cars, and we've also planted a bug on his computer keyboard. That'll allow us to determine his encryption pa.s.sword, next time he makes use of it."

"But he hasn't done anything incriminating yet," Reilly said. He didn't even make it a question.

"Not under our observation," Oleg confirmed.

"d.a.m.n, so, he was really trying to whack Sergey Golovko. Hard to believe, man."

"That is so, but we cannot deny it. And on Chinese orders."

"That's like an act of war, buddy. It's a big f.u.c.king deal." Reilly took a sip of his vodka.

"So it is, Mishka. Rather more complex than any case I've handled this year." It was, Provalov thought, an artful understatement. He'd gladly go back to a normal homicide, a husband killing his wife for f.u.c.king a neighbor, or the other way around. Such things, nasty as they were, were far less nasty than this one was.

"How's he pick the girls up, Oleg?" Reilly asked.

"He doesn't call for them on the phone. He seems to go to a good restaurant with a good bar and wait until a likely prospect appears at his elbow."

"Hmm, plant a girl on him?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean get yourself a pretty girl who does this sort of thing for a living, brief her on what she ought to say, and set her in front of him like a nice fly on your fishhook. If he picks her up, maybe she can get him to talk."

"Have you ever done such a thing?"

"We got a wiseguy that way in Jersey City three years ago. Liked to brag in front of women how tough he was, and the guys he whacked, that sort of thing. He's in Rahway State Prison now on a murder rap. Oleg, a lot more people have talked their way into prison than you'll ever catch on your own. Trust me. That's how it is for us, even."

"I wonder if the Sparrow School has any graduates working . . . ?" Provalov mused.

It wasn't fair to do it at night, but n.o.body had ever said war was marked by fairness in its execution. Colonel Boyle was in his command post monitoring the operation of 1st Armored's Aviation Brigade. It was mainly his Apaches, though some Kiowa Warriors were up, too, as scouts for the heavy shooters. The target was a German heavy battalion, simulating a night's laagering after a day on the offense. In fact, they were pretending to be Russians-it was a NATO scenario that went back thirty years to the introduction of the first Huey Cobras, back in the 1970s, when the value of a helicopter gunship had first been noticed in Vietnam. And a revelation it had been. Armed for the first time in 1972 with TOW missiles, they'd proven to the tanks of the North Vietnamese just how fearsome a foe a missile-armed chopper could be, and that had been before night-vision systems had come fully on line. Now the Apache turned combat operations into sport shooting, and the Germans were still trying to figure a counter for it. Even their own night-vision gear didn't compensate for the huge advantage held by the airborne hunters. One idea that had almost worked was to lay a thermal-insulating blanket over the tanks so as to deny the helicopters the heat signature by which they hunted their motionless prey, but the problem there was the tank's main gun tube, which had proved impractical to conceal, and the blankets had never really worked properly, any more than a twin-bed coverlet could be stretched over a king-size bed. And so, now, the Apaches' laser-illumination systems were "painting" the Leos for enough seconds to guarantee hits from the h.e.l.lfire missiles, and while the German tanks tried to shoot back, they couldn't seem to make it work. And now the yellow "I'm dead" lights were blinking, and yet another tank battalion had fallen victim to yet another administrative attack.

"They should have tried putting SAM teams outside their perimeter," Colonel Boyle observed, watching the computer screen. Instead, the German colonel had tried IR lures, which the Apache gunners had learned to distinguish from the real thing. Under the rules of the scenario, proper tank decoys had not been allowed. They were a little harder to discriminate-the American-made ones almost exactly replicated the visual signature of an M1 tank, and had an internal heat source for fooling infrared gear at night-and fired off a Hoffman pyrotechnic charge to simulate a return shot when they took a hit. But they were made so well for their mission that they could not be mistaken for anything other than what they were, either a real M1 main battle tank, and hence friendly, or a decoy, and thus not really useful in a training exercise, all in all a case of battlefield technology being too good for a training exercise.

"Pegasus Lead to Archangel, over," the digital radio called. With the new radios, it was no longer a static-marred crackle.

"Archangel to Pegasus," Colonel Boyle answered.

"Sir, we are Winchester and just about out of targets. No friendly casualties. Pegasus is RTB, over."

"Roger, Pegasus. Looks good from here. Out."

And with that, the Apache battalion of attack choppers and their Kiowa bird-dogs turned back for their airfield for the mission debrief and post-game beers.

Boyle looked over at General Diggs. "Sir, I don't know how to do it much better than that."

"Our hosts are going to be p.i.s.sed."

"The Bundeswehr isn't what it used to be. Their political leadership thinks peace has broken out all the way, and their troopers know it. They could have put some of their own choppers up to run interference, but my boys are pretty good at air-to-air-we train for it, and my pilots really like the idea of making ace on their own-but their chopper drivers aren't getting all the gas they need for operational training. Their best chopper drivers are down in the Balkans doing traffic observation."

Diggs nodded thoughtfully. The problems of the Bundeswehr were not, strictly speaking, his problems. "Colonel, that was well done. Please convey my pleasure to your people. What's next for you?"

"General, we have a maintenance stand-down tomorrow, and two days later we're going to run a major search-and-rescue exercise with my Blackhawks. You're welcome to come over and watch."

"I just might, Colonel Boyle. You done good. Be seeing you."

"Yes, sir." The colonel saluted, and General Diggs walked out to his HMMWV, with Colonel Masterman in attendance.

"Well, Duke?"

"Like I told you, sir, Boyle's been feeding his boys and girls a steady diet of nails and human babies."

"Well, his next fitness report's going to get him a star, I think."

"His Apache commander's not bad either."

"That's a fact," the divisional G-3 agreed. "Pegasus" was his call sign, and he'd kicked some serious a.s.s this night.

"What's next?"

"Sir, in three days we have a big SimNet exercise against the Big Red One at Fort Riley. Our boys are pretty hot for it."

"Divisional readiness?" Diggs asked.

"We're pushing ninety-five percent, General. Not much slack left to take up. I mean, sir, to go any farther, we gotta take the troops out to Fort Irwin or maybe the Negev Training Area. Are we as good as the Tenth Cav or the Eleventh? No, we don't get to play in the field as much as they do." And, he didn't have to add, no division in any army in the world got the money to train that hard. "But given the limitations we have to live with, there's not a whole lot more we can do. I figure we play hard on SimNet to keep the kids interested, but we're just about as far as we can go, sir."

"I think you're right, Duke. You know, sometimes I kinda wish the Cold War could come back-for training purposes, anyway. The Germans won't let us play the way we used to back then, and that's what we need to take the next step."

"Unless somebody springs for the tickets to fly a brigade out to California." Masterman nodded.