The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [113]
"Mrs. Foley?" A head appeared at her door. "Im Josh Sears." He was fifty, tall, losing his hair, most of it gray. Brown eyes. He hit the cafeteria line downstairs a little too hard, the DDO thought.
"Please come in, Dr. Sears. I need you to translate some things for me."
"Sure," he replied, picking a seat and relaxing into it. He watched the DDO take some pages off her laser printer and hand them across.
"Okay, it says the date is last March twenty-first, and the place is Beijing—humph, the Council of Ministers Building, eh? Minister Fang is talking to Minister Zhang." Sears ran his eyes down the page. "Mrs. Foley, this is hot stuff. Theyre talking about the possibilities of Iran—no, the old UIR—taking over the entire Persian Gulf oil fields, and what effect it would have on China. Zhang appears to be optimistic, but guarded. Fang is skeptical.., oh, this is an aide-memo isnt it? Its Fangs notes from a private conversation with Zhang."
"The names mean anything to you?"
"Both are Ministers Without Portfolio. Theyre both full Politburo members without direct ministerial duties. That means theyre both trusted by the chairman, the PRC premier, Xu Kun Piao. They go back thirty years plus, well into the time of Mao and Chou. As you know, the Chinese are really into lengthy relationships. They develop—well, not friendships as we understand them, but associations. Its a comfort-level thing, really. Like at a card table. You know what the other guys mannerisms and capabilities are, and that makes for a long, comfortable game. Maybe you wont win big, but you wont lose your shirt either."
"No, they dont gamble, do they?"
"This document demonstrates that. As we suspected, the PRC backed the Ayatollah Daryaei in his play, but they never allowed their support to be public. From skimming this, it appears that this Zhang guy is the one who ramrodded this—and the play the Japanese made. Weve been trying to build a book on this Zhang guy—and Fang as well—without a whole lot of success. What do I need to know about this?" he asked, holding the page up.
"Its code word," MP replied. By federal statute, "top secret" was as high as it went, but in reality there were more secret things than that, called "special-access programs," which were designated by their controlling code words. "This ones called SORGE." She didnt have to say that he could not discuss this information with anyone, and that even dreaming in bed about it was forbidden. Nor did she have to say that in SORGE was Searss path to a raise and much greater personal importance within the CIAs pantheon of bureaucrats.
"Okay." Sears nodded. "What can you tell me?"
"What we have here is a digest of conversations between Fang and Zhang, and probably other ministers as well. Weve found a way to crash into their documents storage. We believe the documents are genuine," MP concluded. Sears would know that he was being misled on sources and methods, but that was to be expected. As a senior member of the DI—the Directorate of Intelligence—it was his job to evaluate information provided to him by various sources, in this case the DO. If he got bad information, his evaluation would be bad as well, but what Mrs. Foley had just told him was that he would not be held at fault for bad information. But hed also question the authenticity of the documents in an internal memo or two, just to cover his own ass, of course.
"Okay, maam. In that case, what we have here is pure nitroglycerine. Weve suspected this, but heres confirmation. It means that President Ryan did the right thing when he granted diplomatic recognition to Taiwan. The PRC had it coming. They