Ultimatum (43 page)

After the meal, a Norwegian official took them into a room where there was a table and a sideboard with refreshments, and then withdrew, closing the door behind him. Lisle glanced at Wu, who excused himself and went up to his room to get the dossiers that had been prepared for them. When he came back, Pete Lisle was in the middle of a story, and Lin was listening with a smile of expectation on his face. Gao was stony-faced. Lisle got to the punch line and Lin rocked with laughter.

Wu put the dossiers on the table.

“Okay,” said Lisle, and he pushed the two dossiers across the table. “Here’s what we’ve got. Everything’s there. All the key data.”

Lin opened the file and began to leaf through the pages. Gao didn’t touch his copy.

“We’re putting everything on the table,” said Lisle. “No point beating around the bush. This is stuff that affects us, it’s stuff that affects you, so you may as well know it. I don’t know how much of this your people have seen already, but I want you to understand that we don’t have anything else. You read that, you know as much as we do. As much as President Benton does. I want to be very clear on that point.”

Lin looked up and nodded seriously. Oliver Wu could see that this move had an immediate effect on him. He had probably expected to receive nothing but a general description of the problem at the first session, and then to have to drag out the data piecemeal over the next few days.

Wu looked around and found Gao gazing at him.

Lin closed the folder. “We will have to look at this,” he said.

“Naturally,” replied Lisle.

“We should meet again tomorrow. Let’s say tomorrow evening. Then we can at least have made an initial study of the document.”

And have talked to Beijing, thought Wu.

“Of course,” said Lisle. He stood up. “After you.”

He waited for Lin and Gao to gather up their dossiers and leave the table. Then he waited for Wu to get up. As they left the room, Lisle surreptitiously pulled a map of the Taiwan Strait out of his pocket and left it on the sideboard for their Norwegian hosts to find.

~ * ~

Saturday, May 28

Eidsvoll, outside Oslo, Norway

Lisle and Wu were on a secure connection. Larry Olsen took the call at home.

“They say they need to go back to Beijing to consult,” said Lisle. “They pushed hard yesterday for more. I told them that was it, that’s all we had. I think they’ve finally accepted that.”

“Let’s park that for a minute,” said Olsen. “Tell me what your general feeling is. How do you think it went, giving them everything up front?”

“Definitely not what they expected. I think we short-circuited a month of demand-and-answer just by putting it all out there.”

“I agree,” said Wu. “They weren’t expecting it.”

That was good. Olsen was determined to force the pace. “The president thinks he’s won some kind of victory just by getting these guys to sit down and talk with us. He thinks Wen’s serious because it only took a week to get going. I think that doesn’t mean squat. It’s once you start talking you discover whether there’s going to be any progress. And look what we’ve got. Two days in, they’re already stalling.”

“Mr. Secretary,” said Lisle, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re stalling. If they believe they’ve now got the full set of numbers they genuinely are going to have to go back and consult.”

“Granted. But if this whole thing is a ploy by Wen to drag everything out—which I suspect it is—we need to expose that quickly and show the president so we can go in a different direction.”

“Mr. Secretary, it’s too early to say from what we’ve seen here what Wen’s intention is.”

“Okay, but my sense from what you’re saying is that we’re pushing a little more than they’re comfortable with. That’s what we need to do. Now, tell me, what do you make of them?”

Pete Lisle glanced at Wu before he answered. “Pretty much like we expected. Lin’s sharp, but he likes to be friends. That may be something we can use. But he’s smart, so it maybe something he’s consciously doing. We’ll have to see.”

“And Gao?”

Lisle laughed. “You remember those
Addams Family
films when you were a kid? They had a servant, right? A tall, silent guy like Frankenstein.”

“Lurch,” said Olsen.

“That’s him! I couldn’t remember the name. Gao’s like Lurch. Big guy, kind of spooky.”

Olsen laughed. “I loved those films.”

“He doesn’t say a damn thing.”

“He’s there to keep an eye on Lin?”

“Looks like it.”

“Oliver, what do you think?”

“I never saw those movies. What did you say they were called?”

“Doesn’t matter. What do you think?”

“I agree with Pete. Looks like he’s just watching.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate him,” said Lisle. “When it comes down to it, he may be the one Wen’s going to listen to more.”

“What would he be saying about you?” asked Olsen.

“What would he be saying about us, Oliver?”

“He doesn’t like me. Overseas Chinese. I’m betraying the motherland.” “You think we shouldn’t have you there?”

“If it creates an obstacle. If it gets personal, I guess we shouldn’t.”

“You think they’re irritated because you’re there?”

“It’s possible.”

“Pete? What’s your take?”

“I think there is a certain...hostility’s too strong a word. But there is some resentment. Especially from Lurch. But maybe that’s okay. Shows them this is a genuinely shared issue. Cuts across nationality, religion, whatever.”

“Forget that,” said Olsen. “I kind of like it if they’re irritated. We’re not kowtowing, right? That’s what this shows. We pull Oliver, next thing they’ll ask to nominate the people we send. Oliver, ramp it up a little more. Talk up. Make them engage with you.”

Wu glanced at Lisle questioningly. Lisle shook his head. He wasn’t going to let someone who had never even sat down with these guys dictate the way they should be handled. “We’ll play that by ear, Mr. Secretary. Let’s see how that goes.”

“Well, don’t let them intimidate you. Oliver, you hear what I said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. So what’s the next step? They take our numbers and go home and discuss it? Is that what you said?”

“That’s right,” said Lisle. “I can’t see how we can object.”

“Okay, but the truth is, there’s nothing there they don’t know already, unless Chen didn’t tell them. So we haven’t actually got anywhere.”

Lisle disagreed with that. “Mr. Secretary, we had to get this done. This gives us a firm base of shared data. Wen knows he has everything we have, and he knows we know it. Whether they’ve seen that stuff before or not, that doesn’t matter. What matters is now there’s no more room for excuses.”

“Okay,” said Olsen. “Fair enough. We had to do this. What next?”

“Next round of meetings, we talk solutions,” said Lisle.

“Have they agreed to that?”

“No. We haven’t discussed that yet. That’s what I want to check with you, sir. My instinct is to say at this point, after they look at the numbers, we both come back with proposals.”

Olsen thought about it.

“I don’t think there’s anything else now, Mr. Secretary. They have the numbers, same numbers that we have. Now it’s time to talk about what we do.”

“Go on,” said Olsen.

“If they don’t actually put something down, and we do, then we end up giving them stuff and negotiating against nothing. That’s always a mistake. They’ll pocket what we offer and come back for more. So what I want to say to them is, next time, each of us comes back with a proposal. Neither proposal is binding on the party that makes it. They can put in whatever they want, and so can we, and there’s no commitment. Then we work through the differences. Only when we both agree on something, does that thing become a commitment on either side.”

“You think that’s the way to do it?”

“In my experience, Mr. Secretary, given what I’ve been told about what’s already happened, that’s the only way we’re going to get something out of them. They have to come back with something. It also protects our position. It means we can present something and they can’t pocket it. That’s critical. The same rules have to apply to both sides.”

Olsen liked the approach. That was the level of pressure he wanted to apply. “Sounds good.”

“Before I do that, Mr. Secretary, I need to make sure it’s okay. I want to be able to say to them that if they don’t have a proposal next time we meet, we don’t sit down.”

“That’s okay. Say it.”

“Mr. Secretary, they might come back with nothing.” Lisle paused. “Before I do this, I need to know the president would agree to me laying it out as an ultimatum in this way. Would he be comfortable with that?”

“The president’s not running this negotiation,” said Larry Olsen.

Lisle glanced at Wu. “Mr. Secretary, they
really
might come back with nothing. Mr. Secretary? If I say this, and they do come back with nothing, I need to know the president is going to back me a hundred percent when I walk away. Because if he doesn’t, if he makes me sit down with them, you’ll have to find yourself a new negotiator. My credibility will be shot.”

Lisle and Wu stared at the phone, listening for Olsen’s response. There was silence.

“Mr. Secretary, if you need to talk to the president, I can wait. I can wait until tomorrow. I don’t need to tell them tonight. But I need to know he’s going to back me.”

Still there was silence.

“Mr. Secretary?”

“Tell them tonight.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” There was another moment’s silence on the line. “How long do you think you should give them to come back? If we can get there, the president’s talking about announcing the deal on the Fourth of July.”

“The Fourth of July?”

“You don’t think it can be done?”

Pete Lisle frowned, calculating. “I guess it’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t bet on it. If we’re shooting for that, we can’t give them more than two weeks to come back. I’ll give them a week, and if they push, I’ll give a little and make it two. I guess we’ll see how they respond.”

“Let’s get it started,” said Olsen. “Tell them tonight. They can take the data, but when they come back they come with a proposal, or they don’t come back at all.”

~ * ~

Friday, June 10

Oval Office, The White House

The discussion was getting heated. Jackie Rubin had just summarized a set of scenario outputs for the Marion group. While the negotiations in Oslo had been getting under way, she had pulled a group together to work intensively modeling the economic impact of different emissions reduction options, among which were the ones Pete Lisle and Oliver Wu might be taking back to Oslo. Joe Benton listened to the discussion in the group and made notes on a pad. When about twenty minutes had gone by, he called the discussion to a halt.

“Let’s get back to what we’re trying to do here,” he said. “We have four objectives.” He read from the notes he had made. “One, to determine the level of global cut we need to get. Two, to figure out how we apportion shares between us and China, in the first instance, on the understanding that other major emitters will follow suit. Three, to put that into a formula we can sell to the Chinese. Four, to figure out the negotiating strategy so we end up with that formula.” He looked around. “Have I missed anything? Okay, let’s start at the top. What level of cut are we looking for? From what I understand, Jackie, at a minimum we need twelve percent over the next five years, and another twelve percent in the five years after that. Do we agree that’s right? Is it enough? Is it more than we need?”