End Game (48 page)

The president listened silently.

‘As you can see, sir,’ said General Hale when he had covered the scenarios, ‘there are a large number of military implications here and we’re working to develop plans to deal with each of them, both in terms of pre-emption and retaliation. These will have implications for the disposition of our forces in various theaters and if I could I would like to discuss those with you this afternoon after we’ve had time to do a little more work.’

‘As far as your four options for the immediate situation are concerned, what’s your recommendation, General?’

‘Militarily, sir, I would opt to hit them early.’

‘That’s with the bombers out of Diego Garcia?’

‘No, sir. I wouldn’t use aerial power to interdict them because, as I’ve said, the risk of an escalation in that instance is extreme. We would hope we can get this done by knocking out one or two of their ships when they arrive in theater and making them think again. So we would launch early and aggressively when they come within range to take out a couple of ships in an exemplary fashion and stop them in their tracks. If we can bring it to an end by taking out just a couple of their ships, they may be less likely to widen the conflict.’

‘Admiral Tovey? Is that realistic, to expect to be able to knock out a couple of their ships in an early attack?’

‘If they arrive expecting us to watch and wait, yes. There will certainly be a psychological effect. If they arrive expecting to fight, then we’re in a fight.’

‘Psychology wins battles,’ said one of the military men in the room.

‘And if the psychological effect isn’t as powerful as we think?’

Tovey shrugged. ‘We’re in a battle, just like we would be anyway. But we have superior operational capability and should realistically expect to prevail.’

‘But not without taking some hits?’

‘No, sir. I don’t think we could guarantee that.’

‘Do we know anything about who’s commanding their strike groups?’ asked Gary Rose.

Tovey nodded. ‘We know something about the individuals. We’re trying to get better insight into the psychologies.’

‘Who’ll make the operational decisions? Will it be them or Beijing?’

‘Beijing,’ said General Hale, ‘to the extent that they can. They have a rigid control structure. If the fleet comes under immediate attack the commanders in theater will take action while involving a higher commander in Beijing who’ll be working with an operational staff. We believe that makes them vulnerable. If we go in hard and hit them, that exploits the rigidity. Any ambiguity or confusion in the orders coming back from Beijing will reduce their effectiveness.’

‘And who makes the overall decisions about their strategic objectives?’ asked the president. He had been briefed on this at some point, but he wanted to be sure he understood.

‘That would be the Central Military Commission,’ replied the head of defense intelligence. ‘It’s a combined army and party body consisting of thirteen members. In a situation like this they’ll be meeting daily. President Zhang chairs the commission. Defense Minister Xu sits on it as well. General Fan is the leading military figure. The rest just make up the numbers.’

‘ To what extent does Zhang control it?’

‘We can’t be sure. In principle he does. In reality …’

‘Whatever happens,’ said Tovey, ‘we’ve got to be prepared to find ourselves in a shoot-out. I know Pete Pressler. That happens, we’ve got a good guy out there.’

‘General Hale,’ said the president, ‘you said the plan you recommended was the right choice militarily. What did you mean by that?’

‘Sir, you want to win a battle here, this is the best way to do it. Go hard and achieve an immediate impact with a robust assault by the US navy. If we adopt a watchful attitude, which is one of the alternatives, that takes the initiative away from us. Chances are some incident will start the shooting when neither side is ready and once it goes from there it’ll be a free for all, and when a free for all starts, it’s almost impossible to shut it down before a whole lot of damage is done. I don’t want to have a hundred some ships milling around in a few square miles of water, I really don’t.’ The general paused. ‘Now, that’s militarily. For political reasons you may want to take the chance on a battle not breaking out and being able to resolve this thing without a shot being fired. So there’s a non-military judgment here, sir. And if you say to me, General, I want to hold the military option back while I see if I can settle this, that’s a judgment. If I thought we couldn’t win the confrontation in those circumstances then I’d be saying, militarily, as your military advisor, that’s not an option. But we will win it. The issue is it’ll cost more American lives and more American hardware. So the question, I guess politically, is how do you weigh those lives, and that hardware, against the chance that you can talk this thing down? Which is not a question for me to answer.’

‘Admiral Tovey, do you agree with that? As a naval officer? Do you agree we’d win the battle if it broke out in earnest?’

‘Yes, sir. I do. But it would be a fearsome battle. In naval terms, it would be an era-defining battle, sir. I’m a navy man, and I have my share of interest in naval history, but I don’t look forward to having Lamu Bay in that particular record.’

There was silence.

Rose spoke. ‘Can I ask what we do about the men in Sudan?’

‘We go in and get them,’ said John Oakley.

‘Once our ships start firing,’ said Hale, ‘their lives aren’t worth anything. I’d rather go in there with as much force as we can and see if we can get any of them out.’

‘When would we launch this attack?’ asked the president.

‘We want to be in there at the same moment we open fire on their ships. That’s our best chance to get anyone out of there alive. To be honest, I don’t think it’ll be many, but it’s our best chance.’

The president nodded.

‘I’d like to brief you later today, Mr President, on the plans for dealing with the escalations we envisage. We’ll need to make some decisions on force dispositions.’

The president nodded again.

There was silence.

Tom Knowles stood up. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and walked out.

KNOWLES SAT IN
the Oval Office, contemplating what he had heard.

Every one of the plans Mortlock Hale had presented to him led to more confrontation. Now the military men were working away at plans to deal with counter-plans for escalation. And this was against a nuclear-armed state.

They were military men. Ask them for a plan and they’d come back with a battle. But Knowles didn’t want to know how to fight this thing. He wanted to know how to shut it down.

He could ring Zhang again, but what would he say? What had changed in the past twelve hours? Nothing except that their ships had got closer. Maybe Zhang was bluffing. Maybe not. He was probably surrounded by people who were telling him that he, Knowles, was bluffing. If he rang him again, they’d just say that was extra proof that he was. If he and Zhang weren’t careful, they’d bluff each other so well they’d end up fighting a war that would rage across three continents.

But he couldn’t back down. He couldn’t leave seventy-five men in Sudan. If he didn’t get them back soon – and soon meant days, not weeks – he’d be Jimmy Carter. That was it. He’d be Carter.

Knowles gazed at the rug.

What did Zhang
want
?

His ships. That’s what he had said, about a dozen times. But his ships were in danger only because he was allowing seventy-five US servicemen to be held in Sudan. What possible good did that do him? He couldn’t use it as a bargaining chip over, say, South Africa. It was too crude, even for him. You couldn’t hold a bunch of guys to ransom like that and expect the US government to give you what you wanted.

But surely Zhang realized that. So that left the same question: what did he want?

Knowles mind went back to the conversation in the Jefferson City graveyard, to the words Marion Ellman had thrown at him in that cold, bone-chilling mist. She had asked that question. She had said a lot of other things besides.

He glanced at his watch. Then he picked up the phone to his chief of staff.

‘Roberta, did Hale say what time he wanted to talk to me about the other plans he has for this world war he’s about to start?’

‘I’ll find out,’ said Devlin.

Tom Knowles didn’t know if he was clutching at straws, if he was going to make a world-class fool of himself in the process. He hesitated a moment longer. ‘Roberta, before he does, there’s a couple of people I want to see.’

54

THE WHITE HOUSE
steward poured coffee. There were cookies on the table and a bowl of fruit.

‘Cream?’ said the president.

Joel Ehrenreich shook his head. It felt utterly surreal. Four hours earlier, he had been at home in Connecticut, looking forward to a Sunday afternoon with a book in his hand in front of the fire. Then came a phone call, a car from his house to a local heliport, a helicopter to La Guardia, a plane that was waiting to fly him and Marion Ellman to the National Airport in Washington, and a car to the White House. Now he found himself sitting in the Oval Office with Ellman, the national security advisor, the president’s chief of staff and his closest political advisor, being offered cream by the president.

The steward withdrew. Knowles had already thanked Ehrenreich for coming, but he thanked him again.

‘Pretty short notice,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it, Professor Ehrenreich.’

‘It’s an honor,’ said Ehrenreich for the second time, although it also felt a little imperious, being summoned like that. The rebel-for-its-own-sake in Joel Ehrenreich, never far from the surface, was already battling with the part of him that was flattered by the president’s call.

‘I guess you’re wondering what the big rush is.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything that couldn’t wait.’

The president smiled. He took a sip of his coffee. ‘You don’t want to eat anything?’

‘I’m fine, sir.’

‘You don’t want to wait. You never know if anything’ll be left once Ed here gets started.’

Ed Abrahams grinned. He had already put a couple of cookies on his plate.

‘I’m fine,’ said Ehrenreich again.

‘Okay. Don’t be shy.’ The president paused. ‘So Marion here tells me she thinks a hell of a lot of what you have to say.’

Ehrenreich glanced at Ellman. ‘That’s kind of her.’

‘She also tells me you probably voted for my opponent in 2016.’

‘Well … what can I say?’

‘Nothing wrong with that. Fine man.’ Knowles chuckled. ‘Almost would have voted for him myself but Ed thought it would be inadvisable, didn’t you, Ed?’

Abrahams nodded.

‘Anyway,’ said the president, turning back to Ehrenreich, ‘I’d like to hear a little more about what you have to say.’

‘What in particular, Mr President? I’ve got a lot to say about a lot of things.’

Knowles nodded, as if that was what he’d heard. ‘You published a book recently.
Switch
, right? I like the title.’

‘It was the best I could think of.’

‘I haven’t had a chance to see it but I understand it’s very insightful. I’d like to hear a little more.’

The president waited for Ehrenreich to speak. Roberta Devlin had had a staffer do a speed-read of Ehrenreich’s book and the president had been handed a summary fifteen minutes before Ehrenreich arrived, but he had no real idea of what to expect now that Ehrenreich was sitting in front of him. Getting an academic down here in the midst of a crisis with the only rival superpower to the US was an eccentric thing to do, as Ed Abrahams had put it when he heard who the president wanted to see. But Tom Knowles was desperate enough now to try just about anything, eccentric or otherwise, and Abrahams didn’t seem to have any better ideas. If it meant there was a chance he was going to waste an hour of his life with this professor, it was a chance he was prepared to take.

‘I’m guessing this relates to our current standoff with China,’ said Ehrenreich eventually.

‘The economic standoff, you mean?’ said the president.

‘Is there another one?’

For a moment Tom Knowles stared. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, it’s not an economic standoff, is it, Mr President? It’s a political standoff. The economic element is the instrument. It’s not the cause.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

‘That’s how I do look at it. It’s an example of what we’re going to face more and more often. At an international level today, we’re in a mismatch. We have a set of global problems – but we deal with them through national governments. Every government – including ours, if you’ll allow me to say so – is perfectly unashamed about saying it puts the interests of its people first. And it has to. Any government that didn’t wouldn’t last very long. But the global problems can only be solved by global, coordinated action. Yet national governments want different actions because their national interests are different. Some want vigorous action. Some don’t want any action. Some have an election and change their government and want the opposite of what they wanted two weeks before. What we end up getting is either nothing, or only the most diluted, uncontroversial elements that everyone supports. But those are never enough to deal with the problem. At best, they deal with the immediate effect and leave the root cause to fester.’

‘Sounds like you think we need some kind of world government,’ said Gary Rose.

‘Dr Rose, it’s easy to ridicule what I’m saying, but I’m not saying that. Although whether we will eventually see a world government – or world governance, I should say – at some time in the future, in a hundred or two hundred years, say, I wouldn’t be surprised. With the level of globalization and interconnectedness we have even today, who could possibly be so naïve to imagine that the governance of our planet is going to look the same in a couple of hundred years? And why should it? If you’d asked the Native American tribes the day before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock whether there’d ever be a pan-continental government in what is today the United States, they would have laughed in your face.’