64
In a strange way,Zuocheng was enjoying himself.
Only those who had risen to such heights could understand the view that climb created. It formed a common language shared with no more than a few dozen people around the globe. He didn’t know how Zhang Ru had become connected to the American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but General Drake Nason was one of the few who spoke his own language.
Of course, the Americans honored their greatest soldiers by stripping them of all power when they achieved their membership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They became advisors only.
Foolishness!
The great generals of the CMC were active leaders. They commanded the greatest combined military in the world. They even had the Falcon Commando Unit, their own personal elite Special Operations Forces who reported only to the CMC. If the Americans had a similar unit, Zuocheng had never heard of it. It was a thought to engender nightmares, until each time he remembered how crass the Americans were and how public. They’d never be able to hide something like China’s Falcons for long.
Yes, these talks were like walking through a verbal minefield, even without having Ru to aim as a weapon. However, to talk man-to-man, though he might be the enemy, with such a fellow warrior of such an elevated rank was a pleasure of its own.
The woman Clarissa was curiously the one at the table who held the actual power. Her power lay in leading the most feared spy agency in the world.
Mossad and MI-6 were shadows in comparison. The Russian FSB was festering from the inside and would soon eat itself like the snake Ouroboros who bites his own tail. India’s Research and Analysis Wing certainly had the scale, but they cared about little beyond Pakistan’s borders.
Their own Ministry of State Security still couldn’t challenge the tentacled global reach of the CIA.
It was humbling, and it was run by a woman. Not an attractive one either. She was too oversized in a Western way, too blowsy, though there was no doubting Director Reese’s mind or inner drive. He preferred his wife’s delicate features and manners. Her elegant hands the first time she had poured tea for him—the memory was still perfectly clear five decades later.
Of course, Zuocheng had seen many powerful women this day. The knowledge of the crash investigator and the hair-trigger warrior hidden within the American-Chinese soldier. He even appreciated the woman with the dog. Though her role was undefined and her officer’s rank far below their own, she had several times proved herself as the voice of reason.
Now she returned carrying a phone she had not left the table with.
“If I may interrupt?”
Zuocheng nodded. They weren’t saying anything constructive anyway. As interesting as he’d found the personalities, the meeting had achieved nothing of substance. Unless he counted the humiliation of Zhang Ru.
Yet he counseled himself to patience with Sun Tzu’s words:If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.The day had beenveryeducational in experience if not in facts.
The commander sat and rested a hand on her little dog. He hadn’t dismissed the dog’s presence as the others had. His wife preferred the Pekingese, a proper Chinese breed. Personally, he favored the Chow Chow. One of the oldest dog breeds in the world, a great warlord had once fielded five thousand Chow Chow as hunters and guards. Zuocheng knew a dog’s abilities in the drawing room as well as in the field. The Shih Tzu might be Tibetan, but it was no less perceptive for that handicap and Zuocheng had kept a weather eye on the small animal.
“Ms. Reese made an interesting comment earlier with which you agreed, General Liú. I would like to return to that observation.”
She had a nicety of speech. While not as carefully circumspect as Chinese, it was a relief from Drake’s warrior mode and Clarissa’s open aggression. He nodded his head to invite her to continue.
“She noted that it would be very difficult to hide the records regarding the firing of a weapon like an orbital laser, after the fact.”
“It would indeed.” And when he found out who had prematurely revealed the abilities of the ZY-2B satellite, they would be sent to the Ladakh region to fight battles with India and live out the miserable remains of their short lives in the bitter Himalayan cold above five thousand meters.
“Then I would like to suggest that we look once more.”
“But I have already—”
She lifted a hand to stop him. “I would suggest that we have been looking with the right question…but in the wrong location.”