The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [204]
About the only thing to complain about was the fact that the limousines here, like those everywhere, were hard to get in and out of, unless you were six years old. But as soon as they alighted from their official transport, they could see that something was wrong. Ambassador Hitch was right there, and he hadn't bothered with that before. Ambassadors have high diplomatic rank and importance. They do not usually act as doormen for their own countrymen.
"What's the matter, Carl?" Rutledge asked.
"A major bump in the road," Hitch answered.
"Somebody die?" the Deputy Secretary of State asked lightly.
"Yeah," was the unexpected answer. Then the ambassador waved them inside. "Come on."
The senior delegation members followed Rutledge into the ambassador's conference room. Already there, they saw, were the DCM—the Deputy Chief of Mission, the ambassador's XO, who in many embassies was the real boss—and the rest of the senior staff, including the guy Gant had figured was the CIA station chief. What the hell? TELESCOPE thought. They all took their seats, and then Hitch broke the news.
"Oh, shit," Rutledge said for them all. "Why did this happen?"
"We're not sure. We have our press attaché trying to track this Wise guy down, but until we get more information, we really don't know the cause of the incident." Hitch shrugged.
"Does the PRC know?" Rutledge asked next.
"Probably they're just finding out," the putative CIA officer opined. "You have to assume the news took a while to percolate through their bureaucracy."
"How do we expect them to react?" one of Rutledge's underlings asked, sparing his boss the necessity of asking the obvious and fairly dumb question.
The answer was just as dumb: "Your guess is as good as mine," Hitch said.
"So, this could be a minor embarrassment or a major whoopsie," Rutledge observed. "Whoopsie" is a term of art in the United States Department of State, usually meaning a massive fuckup.
"I'd lean more toward the latter," Ambassador Hitch thought. He couldn't come up with a rational explanation for why this was so, but his instincts were flashing a lot of bright red lights, and Carl Hitch was a man who trusted his instincts.
"Any guidance from Washington?" Cliff asked.
"They haven't woken up yet, have they?" And as one, every member of the delegation checked his watch. The embassy people already had, of course. The sun had not yet risen on their national capital. What decisions would be made would happen in the next four hours. Nobody here would be getting much sleep for a while, because once the decisions were made, then they'd have to decide how to implement them, how to present the position of their country to the People's Republic.
"Ideas?" Rutledge asked.
"The President won't like this very much," Gant observed, figuring he knew about as much as anyone else in the room. "His initial reaction will be one of disgust. Question is, will that spill over into what we're here for? I think it might, depending on how our Chinese friends react to the news."
"How will the Chinese react?" Rutledge asked Hitch.
"Not sure, Cliff, but I doubt we'll like it. They will regard the entire incident as an intrusion—an interference with their internal affairs—and their reaction will be somewhat crass, I think. Essentially they're going to say, 'Too damned bad.' If they do, there's going to be a visceral reaction in America and in Washington. They don't understand us as well as they'd like to think they do. They misread our public opinion at every turn, and they haven't showed me much sign of learning. I'm worried," Hitch concluded.
"Well, then it's our job to walk them through this. You know," Rutledge thought aloud, "this could work in favor of our