Red Cell (23 page)

“This attack is not in the best interests of your people, Mr. President.” Stuart was not given to fits of temper, but he was a man who did not enjoy surprises. No president did. Those who sat in the Oval Office all prayed for an orderly world, even the ones who were not religious despite their public image, and they rarely got it. Surprise was one of the few constants of the job and the PLA attack on Kinmen had set the new standard for it. That particular patch of soil in the South China Sea was so small that it wasn’t labeled on most maps, but it now had the undivided attention of the United States’ commander in chief.

“Mr. President, is it not the policy of the United States that Taiwan and all her territories are part of China?” Tian’s voice was smooth over the speakerphone. Cooke knew that Tian Kai had been a government functionary his entire adult life, but the man was debating like a
trained lawyer. He certainly was smart enough never to ask a question for which he didn’t already know the answer.

“It is our policy that we oppose any unilateral change in the relations between China and Taiwan.” Stuart was on the defensive. “Your attack on Kinmen is just such a change. Your attack on the
Ma Kong
is just such a change—”

“And what evidence do you have that we sank the
Ma Kong
?” Tian interrupted.

Stuart stopped short, surprised that Tian would ask such a question under the circumstances. He looked over to Cooke, who shook her head. It was a request—she couldn’t give orders to this man—not to reveal classified information to his Chinese counterpart. “Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t sink it?” Stuart asked.

Good,
Cooke thought.
Deflect a question with a question.

“I question the separatists’ ability to maintain the military equipment that you have been selling them,” Tian said. A nonanswer.

“Yes, Mr. President, we built those
Kidd
-class destroyers, so I can promise you that they don’t just spontaneously explode anchored at the dock, good maintenance or not.” Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Mississippi, did fine work, he was sure.

Tian didn’t respond and Stuart let that silence hang pregnant in the air for a few moments before continuing. “Your government made certain decisions without any prior consultation, no bilateral or multilateral negotiations of any kind, or any effort to resolve your dispute through the UN Security Council. We object to that.” It was a hard thrust back at the Chinese president to regain the initiative.

“Mr. President, the UN has no role here,” Tian answered in a blunt parry. “We are suppressing a potential rebellion, as your President Lincoln did when your southern states tried to secede. I ask you to respect our sovereign right to maintain the ‘domestic tranquility,’ as you call it, of our union.” Tian’s English was perfect, if accented, his grammar and diction exact, and Cooke found it unnerving to hear the shades of a British accent coming from the mouth of a Beijing-born oligarch.

“Mr. President, it seems to me that it’s the PLA who’s disturbing your domestic tranquility at the moment, not the Taiwanese,” Stuart said, his frustration starting to show.

“Not so,” Tian answered. “Liang is trying to save his political career by fomenting insurrection in the province. We cannot allow him to succeed.
China’s long-standing position is that Taiwan will not be allowed to declare independence.”

“The United States respectfully disagrees with your assessment of President Liang’s intentions.” It was a weak rebuttal and Stuart knew it.

“You are entitled to your own interpretation of events,” Tian said. “However, as this is an internal security matter, it is our interpretation that matters here, sir. Liang would not have set himself on this present course if he did not believe the United States would intervene. And so the People’s Republic of China formally asks the United States not to interfere in our domestic affairs. There are no American interests at stake and our military action has been quite restrained.”

Restrained?
Cooke thought.
Hardly.

“Mr. President,
restrained
is not the word I would choose,” Stuart said, echoing the CIA director’s thought. He leaned in toward the telephone mic. “Your attacks were unprovoked. The senior military officer on Kinmen and his wife were shot in their home. Yes, we know about that, and don’t bother asking me how because I won’t tell you. The power grid is wrecked. The airport is a smoking ruin. The
Ma Kong
was cut in half, sitting at the bottom of her dock, and a number of her crew went down with her. None of that, by definition, is restrained. But in case there was any question, peace and stability along the Pacific Rim have always been and continue to be American interests, even if they are no longer yours.”

All done being diplomatic,
Cooke thought. She decided that she preferred Stuart that way.

“Of course they remain ours,” Tian said, refusing to take Stuart’s bait. “We have chosen to demonstrate our resolve and our capabilities on a limited scale. Kinmen is hardly worth our notice or yours. It is our sincere hope that by our seizing this minor spit of land, President Liang will have to face the reality of his situation and choose to back down. But our strategy of restraint can only work if the United States does not offer Liang false hope by intervening. Any show of support from you, Mr. President, could only prolong the conflict and cause unnecessary suffering.”

It was a neat trap.
Do nothing and China wins. Act aggressively and get painted as a scapegoat,
Cooke thought. She guessed that Stuart wanted more time to think, and he wasn’t going to get it sparring with a Chinese president who’d had days to practice this conversation. Doubtless, there was nothing Stuart could say for which Tian didn’t already have an answer . . . nothing diplomatic, anyway.

Stuart proved her right. “President Tian, thank you for taking my call,” he said abruptly. “I do hope that this can be resolved swiftly and without unnecessary loss of life, or any interruption in trade between our two countries.”

“Of course. We are committed to stability and the preservation of our trade relationship with the United States. Your economic well-being is in our interest, as you know, as ours is in yours. We have invested in so many of your government securities and we do not wish to see them devalued,” Tian replied. “Your servant, sir.”

And the line went dead.

Stuart fell back into his chair and clutched the armrests with a frustrated grip. “We just got caught with our pants down and our laundry still hanging on the line.”

“You didn’t exactly strip the paint off the walls,” the secretary of defense observed. General Lance Showalter (USMC, retired) stood a head taller than Cooke, half again as wide at the shoulders. The observation was kinder than the one running through Cooke’s mind, but generals had to be diplomats as much as State department officers.

“Tian was right,” Stuart said. “We don’t have any evidence that the PLA took out the
Ma Kong
. We know they did it, but we can’t prove it, and without that my hands are tied.” He looked at his CIA director. “Any information on that?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Cooke replied. “Nothing on radar and this definitely wasn’t a Chinese sapper team. Security at the Tso Ying Naval Base is too good to let that happen. Navy Intelligence thinks that a Chinese submarine must’ve slipped through the Taiwanese sonar nets and put a torpedo into her.”

“That would be one quiet submarine,” Showalter said.

“Agreed,” Cooke said. “Not to mention it begs the question why they would only take out the
Ma Kong.
There were a half-dozen other vessels in port, including the
Kee Lung,
which is another
Kidd
-class destroyer. The
Kidd
s are a cornerstone in Taiwan’s air defense network, so if this attack was the precursor to an invasion, the Chinese would take both ships out if they could. If the PLA Navy could get a submarine that close, they could’ve turned this into Taiwan’s Pearl Harbor. So why take out one ship and not the others?”

“So is this the prelude to invasion or not?” Stuart asked.

“We don’t know,” Cooke admitted. It hurt to say it.

“Figure it out,” Stuart ordered. “Until we do and can prove it, I don’t have room to move. Kinmen really is a piddling little spit of land.” He slapped the couch arm with his open hand and stared out the windows in thought. “A lot of the public wouldn’t be happy about going to war with China over Taiwan itself, much less over an island you can’t see on most of the world’s maps.” The president exhaled and turned back toward his guests.

“We’re not done yet, Harry,” Showalter consoled him. The SecDef was one of the few who could show such familiarity with Stuart in this office.

“No, but I think we’re going to be playing for a draw on this one. At least the Taiwanese legislature is screaming impeachment. Liang’s probably hiding under his desk,” Stuart said. “We can’t afford any more mistakes. The talk shows are already going to have a field day with this and I’m sure the
Post
headline tomorrow morning is going to be all kinds of calm and restrained. And I’m about to order my secretary to tell anyone calling from the Hill that I’m in an undisclosed location. I might have to send you out to do the rounds,” he told Showalter.

“I’d rather be shot.”

“I’d rather shoot you than go on television myself to talk about this.”

“And you call yourself a politician,” Showalter scoffed.

“I am a
tired
politician. Seven years in this office feels like seventy outside. There’s a reason all presidents go gray in here,” Stuart said, and followed the admission with a sigh. “What’s the next move?”

Showalter reached over the side of the couch to retrieve a map case and unrolled it onto the coffee table. As a soldier, he’d carried the case through two wars. As a civilian, he only pulled it out when he was ready to recommend that death and destruction become the official policies of the United States Government. Underneath the flimsy plastic cover was a large satellite photograph of the Taiwan Strait with map markings overlaid. Showalter pulled out a grease pencil and circled a small island. “Here’s Kinmen. Six townships, population of seventy-five thousand. It’s so close to the coast that for the PLA, putting troops on it was more like a river crossing than an amphibious attack. The Potomac is wider in places. The Taiwanese excavated some serious bunker and tunnel complexes in response to all the shelling during the Cold War, so the PLA would take high casualties clearing them out. Now that most of the shooting is over, they don’t have to. They just have to keep
the troops penned inside, and there won’t be reinforcements coming from Taipei. Liang has to hold them back to defend against a larger possible incursion into the Strait.”

“Can we liberate the island?” Stuart asked.

Showalter shook his head. “Horatio Nelson said ‘a ship’s a fool to fight a fort’ and he was right. We’d have a tough time protecting battle groups in China’s littoral waters, and sustaining air superiority that close to the mainland would be tougher. PLA supply lines would only be a few miles long, while ours would stretch more than a few thousand. Any planes we sent over Kinmen would be within range of SAMs on the mainland, so we’d have to use the B-2s to attack sites on Chinese soil. You order that and we’ll have more to worry about than just liberating Kinmen.”

“So Kinmen is a done deal,” Stuart said.

“The PRC owns it now,” Showalter said, nodding his head. “Taiwan will only get it back if Tian is feeling generous.”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t going to go further,” Stuart said. “We’re going to make sure of that.”

“‘This will not stand?’” Showalter offered.

“I may not be able to run the PLA off of Kinmen, but it’s the last island I’m going to let them take without a fight,” Stuart told him. He turned back to Cooke. “So what’s Tian’s next move? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

She reached into a lockbag and pulled out a three-page paper stapled at the corner. “One of our Red Cell analysts drafted this a few years ago. It’s a model plan for how the PLA could take Taiwan with limited resources. Most analysts believe that China would want the invasion to go quickly to limit our ability to respond or for anyone to intervene diplomatically. This,” she said, passing the Red Cell paper to the president and a second copy to Showalter, “posits a strategy where they hit fast, stop fast, and supposedly give Liang time to think things over. But what they’re really doing is giving the PLA time to regroup and prepare for the next stage while confusing the diplomats as to China’s real intention.”

Stuart ground his teeth together. “That sounds familiar.”

“Yes, it does,” Cooke agreed. “And if Taiwan surrenders at any point, so much the better. Stage One calls for an assault on Kinmen. Stage Two is a push on the Penghu.” The CIA director took Showalter’s grease pencil and tapped another landmass in the Strait, this one more
than halfway to Taiwan. “The Pescadores are a natural staging point for a full-on invasion of the main island. Sixty-four islands, but the largest one, Penghu, has air- and seaport facilities that would let the PLA resupply its biggest transports, and it’s less than fifty miles off Taiwan.”

“Why not increase the pressure by taking the Matsus or some of the other smaller islands closer to the mainland?” Stuart asked. “Easier to grab, fewer casualties.”

“They’re not in the direct path of an invasion like Kinmen. And if the PLA seizes control of Taiwan, Tian will get them all anyway,” Showalter answered.

“And your people don’t think Liang will back down?” Stuart asked Cooke.

“Nobody is optimistic,” Cooke said. “He’s too corrupt to care about the soldiers on Kinmen, and he’s no strategic genius. If his party loses the election, he loses all protection from prosecution on corruption charges. He needs friends in power, so he was desperate enough to light this tinderbox in the first place. He wanted the Taiwan public focused on an external threat. They’re focused now, but if Liang shows weakness and backs down, he loses everything. And Tian’s right. Liang is almost certainly banking on you to stop the PLA and get Kinmen back for him.”