The Mandarin Club (17 page)

“So,” she began anew, kicking the covers off her toes, “what exactly is it you’ve done to me?”

“I haven’t done anything to you,” Alexander replied. “Just doing my job.”

“Out with it, Bonner. What exactly have you written? Must I treat you, too, as the enemy now?”

“Rachel, c’mon. Of course not.”

“Is this the long-awaited lobbying piece? Some nasty story on all our alleged conflicts of interest? Thanks, ‘best friend.’”

“No. No, this is a China piece. A piece about their trading practices. Import-export stuff. Dual use items.”

“Satellites?”

“Satellites. Missiles. Computers. Your basic modern shopping list.”

“You hitting my favorite client, Telstar?”

“Rachel, Telstar’s
always
at the center of this kind of story.”

“Just what I needed. Welcome back, girl.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Welcome back.”

“M
r. President! Mr. President!” The raspy voice of Georgia’s senior senator, Harold G. Parker, startled Booth. “Staff members out of the well!”

“You’re busted again,” said a grinning Senator Kip Cavanaugh, needling Booth as the aide slunk away from the legislators, who were crowded before the presiding officers’ desk like anxious travelers at an airline counter.

The small Senate chamber, at mid-morning roll call, was stuffy already. The TV lights felt unusually warm, as if they were drawing oxygen out of the room. Knots of tardy senators were still popping through the east doors from the banks of elevators just outside, fragments of jocular conversation carried with them from the world beyond.

“I see you’ve roused our good Senator Parker again,” Smithson said. “Looks as if we’re in for a long day.”

“How,” asked Booth, “am I supposed to count votes without working the well?” He was smoldering, perched now on the small armless staff chair at Smithson’s elbow. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Down, boy. Parker will be on our ass all day.” Booth could sense the flinty eyes of the proud Atlanta scold, burning into his back from the row of desks behind him. “Don’t take everything so damn personal.”

The chairman sat beside his aide at the old mahogany desk of the majority leader, reserved for the floor manager of the measure of the day: the State Department funding bill. On a small table before them, mounds of paper were growing. Booth was responsible for juggling it all; the draft amendments, the special provisos for senators’ pet projects, and the mischievous proposals designed to gut a provision with a simple verb change, the raw power of language being what it was in the legislative chamber. This was Booth’s burden. He could play the role of a minor god, deciding fates, but it was a daunting task. A minor misstep could become a major screw up under the media’s watchful eyes. A few words here or there might mean little at first glance, but mean everything in Peoria or Pakistan.

Smithson’s teasing was interrupted as Senator Widener, the Colorado maverick, lumbered up the carpeted steps leading from the Senate well. “Mis-ter Chairman, what exactly are your intentions in having us vote at dawn?”

“Wasn’t my request for a roll call,” said Smithson. “Looks like Oliver’s checking attendance. Making sure enough of his troops are here to table my China amendment.”

“We got the votes on this China thing?”

“Maybe. You with us?”

“Well, Jake, it’s kinda hard to say. I’d planned to be. . .”

“But?”

“It’s just that. . . I’m getting some heavy static from back home. Industry’s all riled up. Do we really have to raise this whole issue of export controls again?”

“Come on, Sam. You know we’ve got to do something. Big business pressures are making us too damn permissive with export licenses. Even the anti-terrorist crowd in the administration lets dangerous stuff out. Satellite launch equipment. Super high-performance computers. Sophisticated machine tools. Laser guided munitions. We can’t be letting every rogue nation on the planet buy cutting-edge hardware. My amendment will help ensure we don’t.”

“But you know the European industry folks will sell it if we don’t.”

“Hey, I’ve got the biggest high tech constituency down here. We’ve got to learn to say ‘no’ sometimes.”

“Mr. Booth,” said Widener, “your boss here has a goddamn death wish.” The Coloradan shook his head in bewildered admiration as he strolled away.

“How’d we score him?” Smithson demanded, pulling out an elongated tally sheet. His dog-eared vote count looked like a cash register tape, covered in +’s and -’s.

“He was an L-plus: ‘leaning for.’”

“
Leaning against
sounds more accurate. I’ve got to be conservative on these vote counts. Guards against inevitable disappointment in my fellow man.”

“What’s with this
planned to be
crap?” Booth asked. “That like arguing over the definition of what
is
is?”

“Hey! A blow job is a blow job,” Smithson snickered, trying to rattle his sober aide. He pursued the point as they waited for the interminable conclusion of the day’s first vote. “You know what our last president said to me once? Their guys in the House had been ragging him all week in the press about ‘word games.’ So he says to me with that Arkansas twang, ‘You know, Jake, language is like snow. It’s only pure and virginal in the countryside. Come to the big city, and it gets obscured with smoke and foot traffic.’ Turns out he stole the line from some Commie poet.”

“Yevtuschenko,” Booth offered quietly, then pressed the business at hand. “You still think we can get to fifty-one votes on export curbs?”

“Oliver’s move for a bed-check roll call is a good sign. Probably thinks he needs every single body here to have a chance at winning.”

“Aren’t we close to being over the top?” Booth asked. “I mean, we had forty-six senators by my last count.”

“Yeah. But the undecideds. . .”

“I know.”

“The undecideds are going to break with the White House and industry. They always do. Even Cavanaugh’s getting slippery with the double team he’s getting from United Technology and the insurance folks. Your pals like Rachel Paulson over at TPB are going into overdrive on this one.”

“
My
pals?” said Booth, squirming. “Aren’t they on your host committee for tonight’s fundraiser?”

“Sure. Old man Talbott will have half the firm there. But it’s his gal Rachel who’s killing us on this one. I understand from one of the senators in the cloakroom she came back on the job just for this vote. By the way, she really OK now?”

“I guess. Amy and I saw her at the hospital. She still sounds a little spaced out, though I know she’s out there working the lobby.”

“Such an energetic, talented lady. A lovely lady.” Senator Smithson sighed wistfully. “I can’t believe some bastards were trying to harm such a gorgeous creature.”

“Hey, you still sure they weren’t after you, Senator?”

“Hell, Martin,” Smithson bristled, “I’ve been all over that with the authorities.”

“Right. And by the way, I think you’ll be able to congratulate Ms. Paulson on her labors against us when you see her at this evening’s event,” Booth said, “but don’t take it
personal
.”

“Of course not! Nothing here is personal, right? Even with a sweetheart like the”—Smithson caught himself. Senator Landle was standing before them, smoothing the sleeves of a finely tailored suit, the unctious bearing of a British butler confident in his own cleverness.

“Mr. Chairman, may I steal a moment for a word with you? Something’s just come up in an Intelligence Committee briefing I want to make sure you’re aware of.”

“Certainly, Tom.”

Landle gazed dismissively at Booth, waiting for the staff man to leave. But Smithson grasped Booth’s arm. “Martin’s security clearances are in order, of course.”

Landle paused, clearly uncomfortable, before launching ahead. “Jake, I am concerned by the anti-China tone the upcoming debate is likely to take. You know, I and others are deeply sympathetic to many of your motives.”

“Of course you are.”

“But your timing here is really atrocious. We’re trying to mop up in Iraq. Afghanistan still needs work. We need Chinese cooperation on the North Korea nuclear talks. We need ’em at the UN on Iran—hell, we need ’em on a bunch of issues. You’re going to undermine the moderates in Beijing who want to work with us.”

“Tom, with all due respect, the White House
always
complains Congress’ timing is bad. Same old tune I been hearing since I came here. Folks up there still think we ought to have a king and keep Congress out of these war and peace matters—and these guys say they’re strict constructionists!”

“But Mr. Chairman, the upcoming summit makes the timing critical. The Chinese are at a crossroads. The moderates in Beijing have taken a lot of heat for joining the World Trade Organization and opening up the economy—even making such a big deal out of hosting the Olympics. China is changing as quickly as any society ever has. They’ve doubled their GDP in just ten years!”

“Yeah, by dumping goods on the U.S. market, Tom. A bunch of their guys may have gone to Wharton, but they’re still a Communist dictatorship that wants to—”

“Jake! I’m surprised at you. You know as well as I do that our intel shows there’s a factional rift running right through the Chinese government. If you punish the moderates right before the summit, if you cut off their access to U.S. technology, the hard-liners will have every reason to turn up the anti-American volume.”

“And how the hell would we notice the difference?”

“They’re holding hundreds of billions in U.S. bonds right now. Imagine the dislocation in our markets if they sat out the next few Treasury auctions.”

“Exactly my point, Tom. We let Beijing get away with stuff because Uncle Sam is borrowing billions of dollars a week from the Chinese. You don’t want to pick a fight with the banker who’s holding your mortgage. So now the White House is going squishy soft on some basic security standards for exports. Well, it’s long past time for the Senate to take a stand.”

“You’re going to take a hit back home, Jake. I don’t have to remind you of that. You’d be closing markets for your own guys in California. You’re going to regret it.”

“C’mon, Tom. The Chinese are shoving more and more ballistic missiles in Taiwan’s face every year.” Smithson barreled ahead, the commotion all about them masking their rising voices. “They’re locking up Chinese-Americans on trumped up spying charges. Torturing priests. Arresting foreign journalists. Censoring the Internet. Having PLA soldiers gun down unarmed fishermen and environmentalists. This is your definition of moderation?”

“It could get a whole lot worse if you—”

“They’ve had something like a twenty percent annual increase in their defense spending over the last five years—so they can buy every new-fangled weapon the French and Germans and Russians sell them. And they’re selling everything the Iranians and the Syrians can buy.”

“We need to see the big picture,” Landle said.

“Tom, I
am
seeing the big picture. The big picture is what my little amendment is about. Someday, if we don’t draw a line now, we’re going to stumble into a goddamn war with China—a shooting war. Hell, they’re working joint maneuvers with Russia on a routine basis now. If it comes to war, I just don’t want Telstar’s precision-guided munitions raining back on us.”

“Jake, I’m warning you, you’re going too far with this thing. You know, there are some really troublesome things coming over the transom about Taiwan. Signs of escalation there, too.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning a change in Taiwan’s strategic posture. New missile imports of their own. Some in the U.S. intelligence community even think the Taiwan folks may be flirting with nuclear ideas again. So it’s a lousy time for you to press the China issue, just to gain some political advantage.”

“Nuclear?
”

“You really ought to get off the administration’s back for once. Stop playing politics. Let the pros work the problem. You polarize things with a floor vote, and a whole lot of stuff may fall on your head. That’s all I’m saying.” Landle was off into another chattering group across the aisle.