The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [353]
"Sergey, from you those words are flattering. It's simple, really. It's your land, and a nation like ours cannot just stand by and watch a robbery of this scale taking place. It corrupts the foundations of international peace. It's our job to remake the world into a peaceful place. There's been enough war."
"I fear there will be another," Golovko said, with characteristic honesty.
"Then together your country and mine will make it the very last."
"Plato said, 'Only the dead have seen the end of war.' "
"So, are we to be bound by the words of a Greek who lived twenty-five centuries ago? I prefer the words of a Jew who lived five centuries later. It's time, Sergey. It's fucking time," Ryan said forcefully.
"I hope you are right. You Americans, always so madly optimistic … "
"There's a reason for that."
"Oh? What would that be?" the Russian asked.
Jack fixed his eyes on his Russian colleague. "In my country, all things are possible. They will be in your country, too, if you just allow it. Embrace democracy, Sergey. Embrace freedom. Americans are not genetically different from the rest of the world. We're mongrels. We have the blood of every country on earth in our veins. The only thing different between us and the rest of the world is our Constitution. Just a set of rules. That's all, Sergey, but it has served us well. You've been studying us for how long?"
"Since I joined KGB? Over thirty-five years."
"And what have you learned of America and how it works?" Ryan asked.
"Obviously not enough," Golovko answered honestly. "The spirit of your country has always puzzled me."
"Because it's too simple. You were looking for complexity. We allow people to pursue their dreams, and when the dreams succeed, we reward them. Others see that happen and chase after their own dreams."
"But the class issues?"
"What class issues? Sergey, not everybody goes to Harvard. I didn't, remember? My father was a cop. I was the first guy in my family to finish college. Look how I turned out. Sergey, we do not have class distinctions in America. You can be what you choose to be, if you are willing to work at it. You can succeed or you can fail. Luck helps," Ryan admitted, "but it comes down to work."
"All Americans have stars in their eyes," the Chairman of the SVR observed tersely.
"The better to see the heavens," Ryan responded.
"Perhaps. Just so they don't come crashing down on us."
"So, what does this mean for us?" Xu Kun Piao asked, in an entirely neutral voice.
Zhang Han San and his premiere had been watching the CNN feed in the latter's private office, complete with simultaneous translation through headphones now discarded. The senior Minister Without Portfolio made a dismissive wave of the hand.
"I've read the North Atlantic Treaty," he said. "It does not apply to us at all. Articles Five and six limit its military application to events in Europe and North America only—all right, it includes Turkey, and, as originally written, Algeria, which was part of France in 1949. For incidents at sea, it applies only to the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and then only north of the Tropic of Cancer. Otherwise, the NATO countries would have been compelled to join in the Korean War and Vietnam on the American side. Those things did not happen because the treaty did not apply outside its defined area. Nor does it apply to us. Treaty documents have discrete language and discrete application," he reminded his party chief. "They are not open-ended."
"I am concerned even so," Xu responded.
"Hostilities are not activities to be undertaken lightly," Zhang admitted. "But the real danger to us is economic collapse and the resulting social chaos. That, comrade, could bring down our entire social order, and that is something we cannot risk. But, when we succeed in seizing the oil and gold, we need not worry about such things. With our own abundant oil supply, we will not face an energy crisis, and with gold