Ultimatum (71 page)

“We will. It’s an ultimatum. He does what he has to do, he signs up to the Carbon Plan, or we hit him. I’ve done it once, I can do it again. His choice.”

Olsen nodded.

“And in the meantime,” said Enderlich, “we sit here waiting for them to throw whatever they’ve got at us.”

“Don’t worry, Admiral,” said Benton. “If they do blow us all to hell, our response will do the same to them, won’t it? That ought to make you happy.”

The admiral gazed resentfully at the president. Benton thought of putting the handcuffs back on him.

“I just think of those people,” said jay MacMahon. “The people the Chinese government is going to repress. And the people of Taiwan. We’re betraying them all. We could bring this regime down, but instead we’re betraying them all.” MacMahon paused, gazing directly at the president. “It makes me sick.”

“Mr. MacMahon,” said Benton, “you are relieved of your duties.” He looked around the table. “With immediate effect I am assuming the duties of secretary of defense.”

MacMahon stood up and walked out.

“Anyone else?” Benton waited a moment. “All right. Admiral Enderlich, you remain under arrest. General Anderson, I appoint you acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You have your orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go and execute them.”

~ * ~

Thursday, November 3

The White House

Armored vehicles were on the White House lawns. The White House itself was full of soldiers. Anti-blast nets were draped across the windows. A further Chinese strike was possible, and whoever had stayed in Washington knew they were the likely target. Troops patrolled the streets to prevent looting in the evacuated city. There were scares. Reports of possible incoming missiles that failed to materialize. Whenever there was a loud noise, someone would jump.

By two in the morning, Taipei had fallen. Chinese news agencies had announced the reunification of the province of Taiwan with the motherland.

But by now Joe Benton had started getting calls. They began a few hours after his statement on the White House lawn. Maybe it was the sight of him literally putting his own life on the line that did it, maybe it was the realization of the sheer, unimaginable horror of what had actually happened. First Ogilvie, then Nakamura called. When Ingelbock of Germany rang to announce his support, Benton knew the balance was really shifting. Sometime after the Chinese announced the fall of Taipei, Prime Minister Kumar of India came on the line. He apologized for the lateness of the call but said he thought the president would still be awake. Benton listened to him promise that India would sign up to the plan.

At seven in the morning he heard Alexei Gorodin’s voice. “Please make certain that President Wen knows,” he said after Gorodin had told him Russia would join.

Still no word had come from anyone in authority in Beijing.

Shortly after eight a.m. Larry Olsen called to request that the president come down to the situation room. The military chiefs were waiting when he got there.

“I have a verbal message from Minister Ding,” said Olsen.

The president looked at him expectantly.

“He said the government of the People’s Republic understands that the United States requires retaliation for the nuclear strike on Kansas, and that his government will therefore accept a strike on a tertiary target in China. He’s given me four alternatives.”

“What did he say about the Carbon Plan?”

“Nothing. That was his message, Mr. President. We are free to launch a retaliatory strike on one of these targets and there will be no response.”

The president stared at him.

“When do they want us to hit them?” asked General Anderson.

“Today.”

“Have you got the list of targets?”

Olsen pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Anderson. The general studied it.

“Bob,” said Steiffel, “I’m not so sure this is a good idea. We hit them, it makes them look like the victim again.”

“How can they be the victim?” said Anderson. “They attacked us. This is a retaliation.”

“But if we don’t retaliate the second time, we keep the moral high ground. Strategically, that’s more significant than a strike on some godforsaken town.”

“Dan’s right,” said another of the generals. “That’s what they want. They want to be able to say, the United States launched the last attack, and
we
were the ones who held back.”

Anderson shook his head. “You have to understand the way they think. They’d demand retaliation, so they think we will. They think if we don’t have a retaliation, we’ll always be wanting it. It’s important we do this for their sake. They need it to feel safe.”

“Sir,” said a colonel who was one of Steiffel’s senior aides, “I would also say, unless we do retaliate, it’ll look like we backed down and were too scared to stop them taking Taiwan. That sends a bad message to other states that might be tempted to attack us.”

“Exactly,” said Anderson.

Steiffel frowned. “I don’t know. That might be right, but. . . they asked us for this. That means we’re giving them what they want. It doesn’t smell right. We should think about it.”

“We’re doing it!” said Anderson.   

“No, we’re not.” Joe Benton had listened in disbelief. “I am not going to kill another million, or two million, or whatever-it-is million people just because someone tells me I can.” He looked at the Joint Chiefs in revulsion. “Listen to what you’re saying!”    

They were silent.    

The president turned to Olsen. “Thank Ding for his kind offer. Tell him our deadline stands. They have until midnight eastern time to sign up to the Carbon Plan. If they don’t do it, we will launch retaliation, and we’ll be the ones to choose what it is. And it’s Wen himself who has to say they sign up. In public, in Chinese, and on a website that’s unrestricted in China.”    

Olsen nodded.

“And in the meantime, get on the phone to every foreign minister in every country that’s signed up and get them calling whoever they can find in Beijing to tell them they’ll join us in sanctions if China doesn’t come on board.”

“And if they don’t, Mr. President?” said Anderson. “You’ve told them we’ll retaliate. We’ll have to do it. What do you have in mind?”    

Benton gazed at him. “I’ll cross that bridge when I have to.”

He found Heather in the middle of the day. Her eyes were empty, grief-stricken. No uncertainty remained, not the slightest shred of hope to cling to. Joe knew he was lucky right now to have so many demands to occupy his time.    

The hours seemed to fly by, filled with meetings and briefings and decisions he had to make to drive the emergency relief effort. The midnight deadline loomed closer. Benton was acutely aware that Ding’s message hadn’t mentioned the Carbon Plan. What if Wen didn’t sign up? What if he just said, effectively, come on, hit me? China would suffer deeply if it tried to go it alone for any length of time with the whole world applying sanctions, but maybe Wen thought, when it came to it, the sanctions would never be applied. And maybe he thought Benton wouldn’t launch any retaliation. Or maybe he didn’t care. China survives. Whatever happens, China survives. Maybe Wen thought that somehow all of this would actually be good for the party’s hold on power. So maybe that’s what he was going to do, like he had done all along, at every step, call anything that looked even remotely like an American bluff. Benton couldn’t bear to think about it. It was too horrible to imagine.

At nine p.m. he was in the Oval Office. Ball, Hoffman, Eales and another half dozen people were with him. Olsen arrived. They discussed the outlook. All afternoon, the Joint Chiefs had been pressuring Benton to authorize specific action in the event that Wen didn’t sign up. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at their plans, as if just considering them might make the nightmare come true.

Now he had to.

At ten o’clock Jodie Ames interrupted them. There had been an announcement across the Chinese media that President Wen would be speaking from Taipei at ten thirty in the morning local time, ten thirty p.m. in Washington.

At ten thirty, the Oval Office was crowded. The screen showed Wen at a lectern in front of an enormous crowd of civilians. He was waiting for applause to stop. Benton wondered how many people they must have shipped to Taipei to get that response.

Then Wen began speaking.

The web stream carried an official translation. In the Oval Office they listened to Wen’s words in Mandarin and Oliver Wu translated.

Wen began by formally announcing the reintegration of the province of Taiwan into the People’s Republic. There was prolonged applause, and Wen stood there, beaming, and clapping in response as it went on. When the applause died down, he eulogized the Chinese military that had carried out the conquest. He could hardly get through a couple of sentences without more applause breaking out. He launched into a history of the loss of Taiwan and came back to the theme of its glorious recovery. The motherland was reunited. The great imperialist wound on the body of the Chinese people was healed.

Wen kept going on that theme. He kept stopping for applause. In the Oval Office, the group listened in somber silence. Only Wen’s triumphant voice, and Oliver Wu’s following it a moment behind, were audible.

“This is like watching Hitler dance his jig in Paris,” murmured Olsen, and he shook his head in disgust.

Still Wen talked. Applause kept stopping him. He was eulogizing the party now, its determination, its iron will to recover every last piece of alienated Chinese territory. On and on he went about it. The speech seemed to be going on forever.

Benton looked at a clock. The Chinese president had been talking for almost an hour.

He had demanded a public statement. It had to come soon. If it was going to come, it had to come soon.

Wen kept going. Only the party could have harnessed the will of the Chinese people in this way. Only the party could have led the people to the dawn of this glorious day.

“Now the party will show that it can lead the whole world. China will show what must be done to reduce the emissions of carbon gases. As we know, President Benton of the United States has put forward a plan which, in reality, is a plan that came from the government of the People’s Republic of China. Now I think President Benton has learned that China is not told what it should do, but chooses what it will do. We choose to launch the plan that President Benton announced, and we call on him to join us and ensure that the United States of America fulfills the responsibilities that the plan entails.”

Wen stopped. More applause broke out. It was almost hysterical.

In the Oval Office, there was stunned silence.

“What the hell was that?” said Larry Olsen.

Joe Benton shook his head in disbelief. “I think that was President Wen saying yes.”

~ * ~

Monday, November 7

Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

There was no handshaking, no smiles, as Joe Benton made his way onto the Senate floor. The faces that watched him were grave. He walked quickly and silently to the rostrum.

He had struggled long and hard with what he would say. Whether the words were right, or not, he didn’t yet know. First the joint session of Congress, then the world, then history would judge.

All of Congress waited for the president to speak.

“A little more than a year ago today,” he began, “the people of this great nation paid me the highest honor it is in their gift to pay. They asked me to be their president and lead our nation for the coming four years. I knew then what we all know, that leadership involves hard choices, hard times. A week ago today began the hardest time that I, and any of us, can imagine.