Two Peasants and a President (45 page)

What the senator had proposed was bold, there was no doubt, but those with their feet firmly planted knew that it was a very long shot.  The gulf between what had been and what was needed was wide and strewn with o
b
stacles.  The way forward involved honesty and a willingness to sacrifice, qualities always in limited supply.  But the senator had yet to squander the people’s trust and for this reason they were willing to follow him, at least for now.  Once again, it was China’s move, but from Beijing came only silence.

Military satellites were the first to notice that China’s ships and planes no longer sallied forth from their bases; for that all were grateful.  Old China hands postulated that a major shift in the power players was in progress, possibly even a coup. But it was clear that the world would only learn the details when China wanted it to.  And the details would shock everyone. 

******

Ping was lonely.  She had only seen one of her friends since they had
arrived and she spoke of them often.  Virgil and Molly could tell that though her gratitude was abundant, her memories were increasingly melancholy.  Molly proposed a gathering of all of them plus the captain’s family.  There would be a backyard feast with everything from satay and spring rolls to good ole fashioned Texas barbecue.   When they mentioned it to Ping, it was like the sun peeking through a storm.  Her footsteps around the house lightened perceptibly and once again she hummed the melodies of her youth as she cooked and knit. 

It was decided that on a Saturday evening three weeks hence, both a reunion and a celebration of all that had been gained since their journey out of hell would be held and that if it wasn’t the best party anyone could remember, it wouldn’t be for the lack of trying.  Molly and Ping began the party pla
n
ning while Virgil worked to find three individuals who could be comfortable in the role of everything from ambassador to accountant and had the stature and trust of the people.  The State Department reported only that a wall of silence existed between the US and China.  It was as if the bamboo curtain had again descended. 

The boycott was, for the most part, continuing to hold.  People e
n
couraged each other to stick with it because there was nothing to replace it and because Senator Baines inspired trust, unlike some in Congress.
But trust and especially patience are perishable and Baines knew that without China’s participation in a remedy, an economy that was still teetering was likely to collapse entirely. 

That China had undergone tumultuous leadership changes in the past was unquestioned; that even the more typical evolutions of power were shrouded in secrecy was well known, but something was amiss in what the State Department was telling him.  He did not believe that China’s silence could be complete; it didn’t make sense.  Considering his recent experience with the State Department and their collusion with the White House in the cover up, trust was non-existent. 

Baines once again relied on someone whom he trusted completely: Thomas Benedict, Director of Central Intelligence.  Benedict had put ev
e
rything on the line when he learned from Commander Moore of the horrific saga of the American newlyweds.  He had intervened personally when it became obvious the White House would not.  He had burned an important asset in Tianjin to ensure that he could follow the progress of the escape across the Yellow Sea, and he had saved the lives of three Americans and a courageous group of Chinese dissidents when the Chinese frigate was upon them.  He had also compromised the Secretary of Defense with his request that a United States submarine be employed on a mission that was unsan
c
tioned and unknown by the president. 

For this he expected to be dismissed or even imprisoned.  But he would not go quietly, not as long as there were traitors afoot.  He would not be silenced as long as the dream of the founding fathers was put at risk by men and women who were not patriots, whose aim was to undermine the Const
i
tution and everything for which it stood.  The president and the secretary of state now realized that the DCI and secretary of defense had made an end run around them.  

Had there been a strong president in the White House, Benedict would no longer be in Langley, he would be consulting with his attorney in prep
a
ration for his trial and likely conviction.  But at no time in
t
his presidency had the man in the oval office been more weak.  He could no longer feel conf
i
dent that in a showdown with his DCI and secretary of defense, he would prevail.  He could dismiss them, of course, but in so doing might in the end hasten his own impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors.  So the president closed ranks with those he trusted and shut out those he did not.

The irony that White House intrigue now resembled the court of a Chinese emperor was not lost on Senator Baines.  Like Benedict, he was a patriot who would gladly sacrifice his life to contain the greatest internal threat to freedom that had existed in his lifetime.  That there were those who would gladly see him sacrifice his life or even help him down the path was not lost on the senator.  Patriots had been sacrificed before and patriots would give their lives over and over to preserve the republic.  That the
real
enemy was not only in Beijing saddened him, but it did not deter him in the least from what he had to do. 

Benedict confirmed what he already knew: there was indeed a power struggle in Beijing.  The presumed heir to the Chinese presidency, whose grace and kindly disposition had so endeared him to his hosts in Washington, was locked in a struggle with a faction that believed that the loosening of the central government’s tight rein on the people was inevitable.  Unrest could not be stifled indefinitely, and in spite of efforts to contain and conceal it from both the Chinese public and foreign governments, it was spreading.  Li
Guo
Peng
believed that a crackdown like that in Tiananmen Square, though on a broader scale, would continue to ensure the Party’s tight grip on power. 

As in struggles in other totalitarian states, the critica
l question was: on whose side i
s the army?  Benedict believed that at this point they had not yet committed to a crackdown, preferring to let Li stick his neck out and see who rose to the surface, but he stressed that in the past, the military had always ended up siding with the hard-liners.  It was not a promising prospect for the senator and a nation in severe economic turmoil.  The uncertainty continued
to push up oil prices and the strain on the tenuous spirit of cooperation on the part of the American public. 

Baines resolved to focus for now on those things he believed he could impact.  The price of oil, hence gasoline was crushing families and bus
i
nesses.  World supply was adequate but fear and uncertainty were keeping prices artificially high.  Speculators had long been a favorite target during times of high prices, but it was not quite so simple as most people believed.  Those who had skin in the game needed to hedge future needs.  Without the ability to hedge, thus plan ahead, transport companies, railroads, airlines etc. would be crippled by wildly fluctuating prices. 

However, a sound argument could be made that those who would never take delivery of a drop of oil and only speculated for profit were unfairly harming the economy.  Under current regulations, a speculator who never actually uses more
oil than that
in the crankcase of his car, could buy an oil futures contract worth $100 with as little as $6 of his own money by using what is known as margin.  That was manifestly unfair.  A similar situation with sky rocketing silver prices had been brought under control by raising the margin rate on silver futures contracts to 50 percent.  Silver prices had i
m
mediately plummeted.

Therefore, the senator introduced legislation that would curb the ability of those with no skin in the game to speculate with little or no money of their own.  The measure to raise the margin rate on oil futures contracts to 50 percent quickly passed the House and after a few recalcitrant senators saw the light, passed in the Senate.  The president signed the bill and less than a week later claimed credit for it.  No one cared.  The price of oil had immediately begun to fall and with it the growing pessimism that was threatening the spirit of cooperation and the boycott. 

Then the senator made his next move.  China’s continued refusal to come to the table or even acknowledge the efforts being made to remedy the situation was unacceptable.  So the senator upped the ante with legislation that would further hike tariffs on a broad range of goods.  To offset the i
m
pact on those whose livelihoods and businesses depended on the China trade, he offered tax credits and deductions.  And to those who were filling the void by manufacturing needed items here at home and creating jobs, he offered other tax incentives. 

The effect of these moves on morale was instantaneous.  Americans
,
for the first time they could remember
,
felt that their government was actually working for them, and they redoubled their efforts to pitch in and help.  The falling prices they saw each day at the gas stations they passed served as a meter of sorts of the success of their cooperation.  Spirits that had been
flagging were given a boost and the importance of that boost could not be overestimated.  The senator once again had breathed life into the boycott and into the determination of the American people. 

The moves had a dramatic effect in China.  Factories were forced to lay off thousands of workers as the tariffs made their products uncompetitive.  Unrest and dissent smoldered as hard-liners pressed for a crackdown.  Li pushed through a regulation that codified what had long been practiced: secret incarceration.
It was now entirely legal for authorities to arrest any citizen and hold him or her for six months without telling anyone, not even the fa
m
ily.  The person detained could be spirited off to a distant jail and the worried family would be left to wonder what had become of their loved one.

In a further indication of how far Li was prepared to go, several western businessmen were arrested and charged with crimes relating to their comp
a
nies’ operations in China.  Since the charges in each case involved infractions that appeared to be both nebulous and opaquely technical in nature, most observers assumed it was pure retaliation.  The many other ways in which China appeared to be interfering in the operations of western companies only reinforced that assumption. 

Perhaps most troubling was the fact that China seemed in no way i
n
clined to work toward a remedy and, in fact, was only growing more bellicose.  Had Congress been more attuned to global realities and not just partisan politics, it would have been obvious to them that China was simply playing hardball as they always did.  But few realized that
the
United States’ long history of knuckling under to China, North Korea and others only reinforced and prolonged this behavior.  Given the American state of mind, it did not seem likely it would dawn on anyone soon that playing cream puff when the other side plays hardball is always a losing strategy. 

The CIA had been receiving indications that one of the most important members of the Politburo Standing Committee was gravely ill.  Ma
Wen’s
gradual transformation from hardliner to moderate had provided hope that China might become more flexible and ultimately helpful in breaking the impasse.  With
Sheng
apparently out of the picture and Ma
Wen
in poor health, the likelihood of a rapprochement seemed dim.  But even the analysts in the CIA did not foresee what was about to happen. 

******

Had the two hulking, rectangular shapes not been familiar sights, they might easily have been confused with multi-story apartment buildings, except for the fact that they were moving.   In the dim twilight, the twin gray ghosts
passed almost unnoticed by the Filipino fishermen motoring out to the place where they would cast their nets.  At almost thirteen hundred feet in length, the two behemoths moved slowly across the horizon, shadowed by the
Dinh
Tien
Hoang, Vietnam’s most modern frigate. 

The frigate’s combat information center was quiet, the sailors on duty there staring almost blankly at their displays.  This was the third rotation since the standoff with China had ended peacefully, and given the inactivity in recent days of China’s navy and air force, it was expected to be uneventful.  The surface radar scanned an unbroken sea, devoid of any but commercial shipping and fishing boats.

The two Panamanian registered container ships each held the equiv
a
lent of fifteen World War II freighters, much of which was merchandise de
s
tined to replace the Chinese goods now affected by the boycott.  Vietnam, as well as several other countries, had been quick to fill the void and were handsomely profiting from the disagreement between the two larger nations.  They were also enjoying immensely tweaking the nose of their ancient enemy.