The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [494]
"Very well. We adjourn until this afternoon." The meeting broke up in an unusually subdued manner, without the usual pairing off and pleasantries between old comrades. Outside the conference room, Qian buttonholed Fang again.
"Something is going badly wrong. I can feel it."
"How sure are you of that?"
"Fang, I don't know what the Americans have done to my railroad bridges, but I assure you that to destroy them as I was informed earlier this morning is no small thing. Moreover, the destruction inflicted was deliberately systematic. The Americans—it must have been the Americans—deliberately crippled our ability to supply our field armies. You only do such a thing in preparation to smashing them. And now the commanding general of our advancing armies is suddenly killed—stray bullet, my ass! That tset ha tset ha Luo leads us to disaster, Fang."
"We'll know more this afternoon," Fang suggested, leaving his colleague and going to his office. Arriving there, he dictated another segment for his daily journal. For the first time, he wondered if it might turn out to be his testament.
For her part, Ming was disturbed by her minister's demeanor. An elderly man, he'd always nonetheless been a calm and optimistic one for the most part. His mannerisms were those of a grandfatherly gentleman even when taking her or one of the other office girls to his bed. It was an endearing quality, one of the reasons the office staff didn't resist his advances more vigorously—and besides, he did take care of those who took care of his needs. This time she took her dictation quietly, while he leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed, and his voice a monotone. It took half an hour, and she went out to her desk to do the transcription. It was time for the midday meal by the time she was done, and she went out to lunch with her co-worker, Chai.
"What is the matter with him?" she asked Ming.
"The meeting this morning did not go well. Fang is concerned with the war."
"But isn't it going well? Isn't that what they say on TV?"
"It seems there have been some setbacks. This morning they argued about how serious they were. Qian was especially exercised about it, because the American attacked our rail bridges in Harbin and Bei'an."
"Ah." Chai shoveled some rice into her mouth with her chopsticks. "How is Fang taking it?"
"He seems very tense. Perhaps he will need some comfort this evening."
"Oh? Well, I can take care of him. I need a new office chair anyway," she added with a giggle.
Lunch dragged on longer than usual. Clearly their minister didn't need any of them for the moment, and Ming took the time to walk about on the street to gauge the mood of the people there. The feeling was strangely neutral. She was out just long enough to trigger her computer's downtime activation, and though the screen was blank, in the auto-sleep mode, the hard drive started turning, and silently activated the onboard modem.
Mary Pat Foley was in her office, though it was past midnight, and she was logging onto her mail account every fifteen minutes, hoping for something new from SORGE.
"You've got mail!" the mechanical voice told her.
"Yes!" she said back to it, downloading the document at once. Then she lifted the phone. "Get Sears up here."
With that done, Mrs. Foley looked at the time entry on the e-mail. It had gone out in the early afternoon in Beijing … what might that mean? she wondered, afraid that any irregularity could spell the death of SONGBIRD, and the loss of the SORGE documents.
"Working late?" Sears asked on entering.
"Who isn't?" MP responded. She held out the latest printout. "Read."
"Politburo meeting, in the morning for a change," Sears said, scanning the first page. "Looks a little raucous. This Qian guy is raising a little hell—oh, okay, he chatted with Fang after it and expressed serious concerns … agreed to meet later in the day and—oh, shit!"
"What's that?"
"They discussed increasing the readiness of their ICBM force … let's see … nothing