End Game (55 page)

And then what? Gunfire? Missiles? Perhaps before they’d even come down. Perhaps they were in flames.

Second thoughts swarmed through his mind, as they had in every spare moment of the day. What John Oakley had said that morning was true. If it failed, and if the story got out about how it happened – and it would get out – it would be the end of him. No one would care about the fact that he had averted a global war, all they would care about would be the men he sent in to die. He may as well hand over to Walt Stephenson right now because for the next two years he would be the greatest lame duck in history. Compared to him, Jimmy Carter with his Teheran rescue farce would be a tactical genius.

Suddenly he wished he hadn’t done it. He looked at his watch. Ten past one. It was too late. They were on the ground. They had to be.

‘Tom?’ said Ed Abrahams.

He looked up.

‘You okay?’

He frowned. ‘Yeah.’

Ellman and Rose were watching him.

‘It’s too early to have heard anything,’ said Rose.

‘I know.’ He took a deep breath. Too early to have heard anything, and too late to change it.

They waited.

‘Anyone hungry?’ said Abrahams.

There were shakes of heads.

‘Well, I am.’ He ordered up nachos and sodas.

One-thirty came and went.

One forty-five.

Two.

An hour there, an hour back. How long on the ground to load everyone up if things had gone smoothly?

Nothing happened. Marion was struggling to stay awake. Beside her, Roberta Devlin snored gently.

Two-thirty.

Two-forty.

The phone rang. They jumped.

The president picked up the receiver. He hesitated for a moment.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

The others looked at him expectantly. Hale had rung him to say there was no news yet.

Ten minutes later the phone rang again.

He picked it up. ‘Yeah?’ His face changed. Suddenly he was deep in concentration. ‘Yeah … Yeah … All of them … Yes …’ There was a long silence as the president listened. ‘Really? I didn’t expect that.’ Another pause. ‘Okay, thank you, General. And pass on my thanks to Admiral Pressler. I’ll speak with him shortly.’

He put down the phone.

The others were watching him.

‘Well?’ said Abrahams.

The president was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘Happy New Year.’

They burst into grins.

‘We got a bonus. Dewy and Montez were there as well.’

‘ Yes!’
said Rose, clenching a fist.

The president allowed himself a smile, savoring the moment. Then he looked at Marion Ellman. He nodded slightly.

She smiled.

‘I guess all we have to do now,’ said Knowles, ‘is figure out what we do next.’

61

A WEEK AFTER
Dewy and Montez were brought out of Sudan, the two airmen stood beside the president at the White House. Colonel Ron Dagovich, commander of the rescue force, stood with them as well. The East Room was filled with reporters and camera crews. The president introduced the servicemen and then each said a few words. Behind the president, John Oakley, Marion Ellman and Susan Opitz watched on.

Dewy and Montez had rested and received treatment for the injuries sustained during their capture and captivity. Each had superficial wounds. Montez also had a broken arm which had been splinted with a stick in the jungle and required operative correction. The arm was in a sling. They had been debriefed and helped by Defense Intelligence staff to articulate the words they would deliver to the world’s media. During their captivity they had seen Chinese soldiers operating alongside the Sudanese troops to whom they had been handed over. They and Dagovich were firmly instructed to avoid talking about that and other operational details.

In the White House, the week had been filled with intense discussions. If this confrontation wasn’t to happen again, its resolution needed to be the start of something new. What? The points of view clashed and clashed again. Marion Ellman found herself within the circle of the president’s closest advisors. Long meetings were held by the president with her, Oakley, Devlin, Perez, Opitz and Rose, with intelligence and State Department China experts participating as needed. Knowles had had two conversations with Zhang, to each of which Ellman listened. They detected hints of accommodation in his voice. Was he as shaken by the confrontation that had nearly taken place as Knowles was? Had he been strengthened by it within the regime, or weakened? Intelligence reported that General Fan had not been seen in public since the event and there were rumors that he was no longer in Beijing. It was unclear what, if anything, this meant. In the second conversation, when Knowles broached the subject of a meeting to resolve the economic conflict, Zhang gave what seemed to be a strong signal that he would welcome the idea. Knowles still didn’t like talking to him, and probably never would. But it seemed possible that the Chinese leader might be open to something more.

The draft of the remarks the president was now about to make in the East Room had gone around and around that tight circle of his advisors.

‘First,’ he said, after the servicemen had spoken, ‘I’d like to pay tribute to the bravery of these two men, Captain Pete Dewy and Captain Phil Montez.’ Knowles turned to face them. ‘We’ve heard in your words something of what you went through but, gentlemen, I’m sure it doesn’t approach the experiences you actually endured. I think that very few of us in this room today can truly understand what that involved. And I would also like to thank you, Colonel Dagovich, for bringing these men home. Your leadership and strength of purpose brought your men through a difficult time until success was achieved. And we should remember this. The cause in which you were fighting, all three of you and every other man with you, is a just one. Let us also pause to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in this cause. They were brave men and their families and their country are rightly proud of them. They fought to liberate people from a tyranny of evil. Their comrades continue this fight. It’s a cause that does justice to this great country. If the day ever comes when the United States doesn’t feel it can pick up its arms in such a cause, then I would fear for what we will have become. Gentlemen, your country thanks you.’

The president turned back to the reporters and paused. There was applause for the servicemen. Tom Knowles nodded.

‘Now, in case anyone is wondering, I would like to affirm that the United States is going to continue Operation Jungle Peace until we achieve what we set out to achieve. I’ve said before, Jungle Peace is a good cause, it’s a just cause and I am proud to lead that fight. If anyone thinks the United States is going to back away from it because of one episode like this, then they are wrong. If anyone in the Lord’s Resistance Army is seeing this message, then I have some words for you: give up now and face fair justice. Surrender now because the United States is coming and we
will
get you.’

The president paused. The three servicemen, under the impression that applause must be normal at presidential press conferences, clapped. A few of the journalists joined in, to the amusement of their colleagues.

‘Now, it seems to me that this is a good opportunity to make some other remarks. We’re at the start of a new year. I don’t think the last year ended too well.’ Knowles smiled self-deprecatingly, then the smile went. ‘This new year is not going to be like the last.’ He paused, gazing at the audience, to make sure they knew this was where the serious part of the message started. ‘I know we all say that every year, and by about the end of January things are looking very similar to the way they always were. Not this year.

‘The fact that Pete Dewy and Phil Montez are able to stand here with me today and aren’t imprisoned somewhere in Sudan is because of the way we worked with the government of China. Naturally there are details I can’t talk about in public. I’m not saying it was a completely smooth process. I’m not saying we didn’t have our moments. But we do have these two fine men and Colonel Dagovich here with us today and what I can say is that without the cooperation of the government of China they would not be here. That’s an important fact. I have already expressed my thanks privately to President Zhang, but I would like to repeat my appreciation publicly here today. President Zhang: Thank you.’

Knowles stopped to give the thank-you emphasis. Details had been released of the mission to rescue Dewy and Montez, of a firefight followed by a standoff with Sudanese troops that had taken place while the United States was enjoying its holiday week, and of the successful resolution of the siege. Word of the confrontation that had loomed with China at sea had not been released. Information pertaining to that was classified at the highest level and not even the commanders of the
John F Kennedy
and
George HW Bush
strike groups had been given the full details of the situation off the Kenyan coast as they headed towards it. How long the secrecy would hold, it was impossible to say. One way or the other, participants in the drama would start to talk, but few of them knew the whole story, and hopefully it would be historians in ten, or twenty, or thirty years who would piece together the full picture of what had almost taken place off Lamu Bay in the holiday week of 2018. Not now. If the reporters in front of him had been aware of that, Knowles knew, the demand for a confrontationist attitude to China would have been almost impossible to resist, not least from his own support base in the Republican Party. And that attitude was the opposite of what he was about to express in the words that came next.

These words were for President Zhang.

‘That cooperation is a good thing. It’s an important thing. The United States and the People’s Republic of China can no longer pretend they can do something that helps themselves if it hurts the other. This goes for each of us – it goes for both of us. We’re too close for that. Our global system is too entwined. The problems we face, we have to face together. That doesn’t mean telling each other what we’re going to do without any room for discussion – it means working out what we’re going to do together. Like we did for Captain Dewy and Montez. That worked. If it worked for one thing, I don’t see why it can’t work for another. If it worked for Captain Dewy and Montez, I can’t see why it can’t work for everything else.

‘So let me go back to what I was saying about the way last year ended. It ended badly because we were not cooperating. I’m not placing blame. It takes two not to cooperate. But I think the position in which we find ourselves today – the market measures and the trade barriers and the painful economic effects we’re all going to feel unless we can quickly find a way out of this – shows just how bad things get when cooperation isn’t there. I don’t want the American people to feel those effects. They’re not abstract. They’re not ideas in a book or numbers on a page. They’re people, they’re lives, they’re dreams and aspirations that have every right to be fulfilled. And it’s my responsibility to spend every minute of my time and every ounce of my energy to make sure that happens. And I believe that President Zhang feels the same about his responsibility to the Chinese people, and I respect that.

‘I’m not making any demands. I’m not calling today on President Zhang to revoke the sanctions his government announced, because I know he’ll do that when he feels there’s no reason for those sanctions to be applied. Those sanctions don’t help him and they don’t help us, and I know he doesn’t want to use them. And I’m not saying that I’m revoking the measures we announced to protect the integrity of our markets. I don’t like those measures. I don’t want to have them in place. They go against every instinct and belief I have in the power of fairly regulated, freely operating markets to help drive our economy and make our lives better. The sooner I can revoke them, the happier I’ll be. But I think the last few days have shown that they’ve brought back stability to our markets. I know President Zhang understands I can’t revoke them until I’m convinced that our markets are protected in other ways.

‘So we need to find a way to get these measures and sanctions removed, and we need to do it quickly. Here’s what I’m proposing. I’m proposing that President Zhang and I sit down together with our respective officials and talk about this. I’m not talking about next year, or next month. I’m talking about next week. I’m talking about tomorrow. My diary’s free. I ask President Zhang to join me. Let’s talk about how we can work together to make sure that everyone can be satisfied that sovereign investment funds act in the markets as truly commercial participants without a hidden political agenda. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be in the market. The market needs them. How do we make that happen? I don’t know. I don’t mean to speak for President Zhang, but I suspect he doesn’t know either. But we do have some very smart people in Washington and Beijing who can help us figure it out.

‘Let’s talk about that for a start. Then maybe we can talk about other things. Let’s talk about China’s role at the IMF. Let’s talk about carbon dioxide emissions. Let’s talk about what’s happening in South Africa. I’ll talk for as long as it takes. My diary’s free. Let’s talk about the things we need to solve, but can’t solve alone.

‘Now, I know this isn’t the way summits between leaders are done. I know we’re supposed to have the agreements in place before we even sit down. Well, I’ve got news for you. This time we don’t. But we still need to sit down. And yes, this is the start of something that goes on and on. I don’t know exactly what it looks like, I don’t know exactly where it leads, but I do know we need to make a start, because the alternative just won’t work. A wise man said to me a little while back that he couldn’t always necessarily see to the end of the road, but he could tell a dead end when he saw one. If I had to choose between the two, I’d rather be on a road that leads somewhere, even if it’s going to take us a little while to find out where it goes, even if there’s going to be a little uncertainty, than heading into the dead end we’re all familiar with. As president of the United States, I owe it to the American people to take us on a road that leads us somewhere. As president of the People’s Republic of China, I’m sure that President Zhang feels that he owes that same thing to the Chinese people. So I’m saying to you, President Zhang, let’s take that first step together.