The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [170]
"People who think this way do not understand that negotiations mean give and take. Whoevers talking here thinks that he just gets whatever the hell he wants because everybody owes it to him. Its like what Hitler must have thought at Munich. I want, you give, and then I am happy. Were not going to cave for these bastards, are we?"
"Those are not my instructions," Rutledge replied.
"Well, guess what? Those are the instructions your Chinese counterpart has. Moreover, their economic position is evidently a lot more precarious than what weve been given to expect. Tell CIA they need better people in their financial-intelligence department," Gant observed. Then Hitch shifted his glance across the table to the guy who must have run the local CIA office.
"Do they appreciate how serious their position is?" Rutledge asked.
"Yes and no. Yes, they know they need the hard currency to do the business they want to do. No, they think they can continue this way indefinitely, that an imbalance is natural in their case because—because why? Because they think theyre the fucking master race?" Gant asked.
Again it was Ambassador Hitch who nodded. "Its called the Middle Kingdom Complex. Yes, Mr. Gant, they really do think of themselves in those terms, and they expect people to come to them and give, not for themselves to go to other people as supplicants. Someday that will be their downfall. Theres an institutional.., maybe a racial arrogance here thats hard to describe and harder to quantify." Then Hitch looked over to Rutledge. "Cliff, youre going to have an interesting day."
Gant realized at once that this was not a blessing for the Assistant Secretary of State for Policy.
"They should be eating breakfast right about now,"
Secretary Adler said over his Hennessey in the East Room.
The reception had gone well—actually Jack and Cathy Ryan found these things about as boring as reruns of Gilligans Island, but they were as much a part of the Presidency as the State of the Union speech. At least the dinner had been good—one thing you could depend on at the White House was the quality of the food—but the people had been Washington people. Even that, Ryan did not appreciate, had been greatly improved from previous years. Once Congress had largely been populated with people whose lifes ambition was "public service," a phrase whose noble intent had been usurped by those who viewed $130,000 per year as a princely salary (it was far less than a college dropout could earn doing software for a computer-game company, and a hell of a lot less than one could make working on Wall Street), and whose real ambition was to apply their will to the laws of their nation. Many of them now, mainly because of speeches the President had made all over the country, were people who actually had served the public by doing useful work until, fed up with the machinations of government, they had decided to take a few years off to repair the train wreck Washington had become, before escaping back to the real world of productive work. The First Lady had spent much of the evening talking with the junior senator from Indiana, who in real life was a pediatric surgeon of good reputation and whose current efforts were centered on straightening out government health-care programs before they killed too many of the citizens they supposedly wanted to assist. His greatest task was to persuade the media that a physician might know as much about making sick people well as Washington lobbyists did, something hed been bending SURGEONS ear about most of the night.
"That stuff we got from Mary Pat ought to help Rutledge."
"Im glad that Gant guy is there to translate it for him. Cliff is going to have a lively day while we sleep off the food and the booze, Jack."
"Is he good enough for the job? I know he was tight with Ed Kealty. That does not speak well for the guys character."
"Cliffs a fine technician," Adler said, after another sip of brandy. "And he has clear instructions to carry out, and some awfully good intelligence to help him along.