Third World War (21 page)

'Chris,' said West, before anyone had settled. 'What's your take on Pakistan and India?'

'You won't want to hear it, Mr President,' said Pierce, heading for the warm pot on the coffee table.

'One for me, too, Chris,' said Peter Brock, perching himself on the arm of a sofa. 'Before you answer that,' he said, 'I have an update on Pakistan. Yes, Zafar has been overthrown. Surprise, surprise. The man who has taken over is Air Vice-Marshal Tassudaq Qureshi.' Brock flipped open a folder he had with him and laid it on his knees. 'He's fifty-six years old, five children aged between nineteen and eleven. A career air force pilot. He pioneered the testing of Pakistani aircraft for the toss bomb technique of delivering a tactical nuclear weapon. Never been used yet, thank God,' he added, peering over his glasses. 'After Qureshi stopped flying, he became involved in negotiations with China and North Korea on upgrading Pakistan's missile arsenal. He is a practising Muslim. He prays five times a day and doesn't drink, but he is also - how should I put it - a man of the world. He is good company, intelligent and versatile in conversation. There are no political writings or speeches that we can pin on him. His views have been gathered mainly from human intelligence reports compiled by those who have met him. He is not a fundamentalist in the terms we understand it. But he believes Islam should be the bedrock of Pakistani society. I offer you this quote from the International Institute of Strategic Studies conference in Singapore in 2002. "We have muddled along for too long. There needs to be a showdown so that we can start again. Only after that can we move forward."

'My assessment of the man,' continued Brock, 'is that he is pragmatic rather than ideological or emotional. If he is set on creating an Islamic state in the fashion of Iran, then he might be a very difficult man to deal with.' Brock snapped shut the folder, slid himself into the sofa and took the cup of coffee which had been poured for him by Pierce.

'Is there anything that links him to the assassination of President Khan or the attack on the Indian Parliament?' asked Tom Patton, interested to know if any of those actions were likely to be transferred to American soil.

'Not specifically,' said Brock. 'But he is a part of the machine which must in some way have been responsible for both.'

'And he's the beneficiary,' mumbled Pierce.

'All right then,' said West. 'Since you kicked off, Pete, tell us your assessment of the overall situation.'

'A couple of other difficulties have been discovered,' said Brock, looking directly across to West. 'Zafar was deposed while Qureshi was out of the country. And where was he? According to the Indians, the new leader of Pakistan was in North Korea and then China, from where he was flown to Islamabad on an Air China Boeing 747-400 with a complement of Chinese special forces soldiers.'

'Shit,' said West.

'Exactly,' said Brock. 'We might ask what the hell is going on.' He pulled out another sheet of paper from the file. 'Except - again from the Indians - Jamie Song apparently read him the riot act. Deliver those responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament to Beijing or China severs its military relationship with Pakistan.'

'And what would that mean?' asked West.

'In the short term, Pakistan couldn't wage a war. No supplies. No spare parts. Its new fighter plane is made in Xian, central China, for example. No new fighter planes.'

'And the long term?'

'It'll have to look around for a new army supplier, particularly of nuclear components. Vasant Mehta told Jamie Song he wanted Chinese scientists and technicians out of there within seven days. Song gave Qureshi three days.'

West shook his head and chuckled. 'Jamie Song is a son of a bitch, but I like his style.' He pulled up a hardback chair and sat on it the wrong way round, leaning forward against its back. 'So we have a near-simultaneous military takeover in Pakistan and North Korea and evidence of direct contact between the two. Both nations have rogue missiles. Both have a nuclear capability. And we have circumstantial evidence that North Korea is developing smallpox.' He looked across at the Defense Secretary. 'Chris. Your turn.'

'In a nutshell. We should do with Pakistan what we've done with Afghanistan and Iraq. We use China as an ally in it and leave North Korea alone.'

'Mary?'

'I'd reverse that, Mr President. Go for North Korea and leave South Asia alone.'

'Tom?' said West, working round the sofa, tapping his fingers on the chair.

Patton shifted his huge frame so that he faced West. 'I go with Mary. If we hit Pakistan, there would be a backlash here.' Patton's experience of international affairs was limited. His expertise lay in banging together the heads of America's rival security agencies. 'We have a registered and monitored threat from the Islamic cause. Nothing from the Koreans.'

'Peter?' said West.

'If Jamie Song can handle Qureshi, I suspect he can handle Park Ho. Why should we do anything?' He shrugged. 'Let's wait and see.'

John Kozerski had not yet been consulted and usually the President kept it like that. Kozerski's job was to stay silent, listen, take notes, identify shifts of loyalty, and make sure the White House and the presidency came through unscathed. Kozerski had been West's second choice for the job. The first offer had gone to Brock, who had turned it down, saying his friendship with West was too valuable and his knowledge of day-to-day Washington politics too limited. But Brock found Kozerski for him, a Texan, whom West had never met and knew little about. He was a lawyer, an administrator and a political animal with antennae as sharp as anything produced by Pentagon technicians. 'You don't want a friend,' Brock had said. 'You need someone to tell you when you're being dumb and someone who'll stay with you through the storms.'

Kozerski had turned out to be straight-talking and unflappable. He kept his family and his private life to himself. The public barely knew who he was and he made it clear that Jim West was his boss, the US President, but not a friend or confidant.

'John,' said West. 'You got a view on this?'

'Fifty-eight Americans are dead because of North Korea, Mr President,' he said slowly. 'You go to war there, you'll get a second term and rid us of a threat to world peace. You pick a fight with Pakistan, no one'll know why you're doing it. If you wait to see what happens next, it takes a gloss off the leadership element of your charisma.'

West tilted forward on the chair. 'I like Jamie Song, but he runs a nation which one day will be at odds with our own. Like you said, Pete, what the hell is going on with Qureshi in North Korea one day, China the next, then coming back to overthrow a civilian government, but melting back into the shadows and not even declaring himself President? He needs more than a damn riot act read to him. Vasant Mehta of India is a friend and an ally. India is a democracy. If he needs my help, I have to give it to him. We should get a treaty going with India, just like we have with Japan. If there is evidence that this new bunch of generals in Pakistan had anything to do with the attack on their parliament, they should be hit and hit hard. So, Mary, tell me why we shouldn't?'

Newman's face clouded with reservation. Of all those in the room, she came across as the thinker, someone who would question her own beliefs at every stage of the way. It was what she had been doing in every telephone call to a foreign leader, in reading every editorial of a foreign newspaper. She took off her spectacles. Sometimes her face was unreadable. Sometimes it expressed a haunting vulnerability, as was happening now, which was part of her attraction for West. She picked up a bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, poured a glass and sat back with it on her lap.

'The terror attack was on India, not on the United States. India is a powerful democracy. If it decides to punish Pakistan, then it must be allowed to do so without our interference. There is no threat from Pakistan to the United States. They do not have the military capability to hit us. The neat assassination of their leader might have thrown the nation into the hands of the politically irresponsible. But we should - as Pete said - delegate any action to India.

'North Korea, on the other hand, has a proven capability of being able to attack United States' facilities. It may even have developed a missile that can reach Hawaii or our western coastline. If we do not rid North Korea of Park Ho, Japan will carry out its threat to militarize. China will react and you have the scenario for a regional conflict.'

'As if you don't have a regional conflict in South Asia?' interjected Pierce.

'It has been going on for sixty years, Chris,' Newman shot back. 'Everyone knows the ground rules. On the Korean peninsula, we don't even want to get to the stage of setting ground rules.'

'What Mary's forgotten, though,' pressed Pierce, addressing the room as if Newman wasn't there, 'is that Pakistan is do-able. North Korea is not - without high casualties.'

'I don't think the President is asking for what's possible,' retorted Newman. 'He wants to know what should be done.'

'What should be done is the neutralizing of Pakistan,' answered Pierce brusquely. 'They have a nuclear weapon which is coveted by the fundamentalist Islamic world. On each change of government, those weapons get closer to the hands of terrorists. And now we have to factor in the probability that North Korea is transferring the long-range Taepodong-2 missile to Pakistan as well. That could give them a strike range to Europe.'

'You mean we should go into Pakistan?' asked West.

'We should neutralize their nuclear and long-range capability, Mr President. I can give you half a dozen options how to do it, starting with Kahuta.'

'Kahuta?' queried West, looking across at his Defense Secretary.

'Their nuclear research and reprocessing plant. Take out Kahuta and you cripple their nuclear capability.'

'Single strike?'

'Absolutely.'

'Then why don't we let India do it?' suggested West, half smiling. He motioned over to Brock. 'Delegation seems to be today's catchword.'

Newman's eyes flamed. 'No, Mr President. No. We have to let the wounds heal, and India is too inflamed to be allowed to act on its own. It needs help.'

The President slapped his hands on his knees and broke out into a chuckle, taking everyone aback. They didn't know that Lizzie was on her way to Washington, and West was surprised how much that one telephone call had lifted his spirits.

'What gets me is this,' he said. 'Mary believes we should intervene in North Korea. Chris believes it would be a catastrophe. Chris wants to go into Pakistan. Mary says "hold back". Yet each of you has written the summary plan on how to execute the other's point of view. You know, one day I'll make a speech on this, because it's your flexibility of intellect that has made this the greatest nation on earth.'

West paused for moment, reflecting. 'Now, I just want to finish up with Mary, because as Chris says North Korea is a high-risk venture. Take me deeper into your thoughts, Mary.'

For one harrowing instant, as she brushed her fringe out of her eyes, she wondered if she should go down the road Jim West had thrown open to her. The memories of her rebuke at an earlier session were still fresh. The President wore a weatherproof smile on his face. The others waited like statues.

'The sad truth is,' she began, unable to stop herself swallowing hard. 'We know what happens when tyrants, dangerous tyrants, are left to their own devices, and left unchallenged. We know what happens when democracies cannot make a decision to act. We know what happens when international institutions are defied and don't act. We have a history with that and it is never good; a lot of innocent people end up suffering.'

Peter Brock was looking down at the notes on his lap. Chris Pierce's lips were parted in an indecipherable yet ghostly smile. Tom Patton stared at some far-off place outside in the snow. John Kozerski's eyes flitted between her and the President, who himself had barely moved. She pressed on.

'Park Ho believes he can win because he doesn't think we will act. He believes the hype about the hatred around the world for the United States. He thinks that Afghanistan, Iraq, the War on Terror have left us with an exposed flank, that there is a flood tide of loathing which we should ignore at our peril. Park Ho, closeted in his madness in North Korea, thinks that those governments which are our closest allies will turn against us. He believes they are deeply suspicious of us - which they are, Mr President, except Park Ho believes that that suspicion could be turned into a strategic alliance against us. He is probably on the phone right now telling big hitters like Jamie Song and Andrei Kozlov that he can start the ball rolling to end the world of the lone superpower. To Song, Kozlov and anyone else from Cuba to Libya to Iran who'll listen to him. He's probably boasting that finally there's a guy out there with the balls to drop a missile on an American base. Not a terror bomb, but a missile from sovereign soil. And those leaders have problems with their own people. They are suspicious of us. They do loathe us. There is envy. And there is something deeper, too - a belief that the path of following the United States is a path to damnation. They simply do not want their own societies to go in that direction. We are no longer their role model - if we ever have been.'