Third World War (12 page)

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Washington, DC, USA*

'I would have expected you to be visiting Pakistan now,' said the Defense Secretary, speaking on the phone while being driven across the Potomac River from the Pentagon. 'Pakistan is after all a friendly Islamic nation and needs all the support it can get at this difficult time.'

Mary Newman drew a deep breath. She was in the back of her car on the shorter journey from the drab 'M' Street office, which housed the American Secretary of State. 'No more than our service personnel would expect their Defense Secretary to be with them at Yokata,' she countered.

'Juvenile,' Pierce muttered. 'I told Jim you were too young for the job. I can only think it's your close friendship which makes him stick by you.'

Utter bastard, thought Newman, yet so typical that a man so intellectually challenged as Chris Pierce would have to use sexual innuendo. If he was jealous of her access to the President, so be it. ''I back the British Prime Minister,' she said, ignoring the slight. 'And that's what I will be telling the President. In Park Ho, we're dealing with a very dangerous man indeed. I believe we should go in now and stop him, while we can. In fact, I believe North Korea may be turning itself into the world's first suicide state.'

'A little colourful, Mary,' interjected the Defense Secretary dryly. 'The Taliban in 2001. Iraq in 2003. They knew full well they were signing their own death warrants. But, of course, you were still getting your feet wet in international affairs then.'

'The Taliban was an imported regime set up by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,' said Newman. 'Saddam Hussein was a hollow shell. But North Korea is different. However crazy its leaders might seem to us, what they have been trying to achieve does make a kind of perverse sense to them.'

'If you had ever been anywhere close to a war, Mary,' said Pierce, 'you wouldn't even begin to be saying the things you are.'

'We're both needed in Washington and you know it,' said Newman, delivering her parting shot. 'You and I represent the defining and opposing views within the administration. That is what debate and democracy are about, and our President deserves to hear our views before he makes his decision.'*

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Newman eyed Pierce with caution across the room as he finished his analysis of North Korea. He returned her look with a confident smile.

'You're making sense, Chris,' said Jim West, shaking his head. 'I don't see why he should do anything rash. He has half a country, a starving population, no grass-roots support anywhere else in the world.' He slapped his hand hard on the table. 'Even if he did order the Yokata launch, even if he is psychotic, even if he is trying to develop a new strain of smallpox, he has no power in the real sense of the word. We'll have no problem getting an international coalition to destroy him.'

'Does that mean that right now we do nothing?' said Mary Newman, knowing immediately that she had injected a fraction too much of an edge. The President looked sharply at her. She did not enjoy taking on Jim West, particularly in front of an audience.

She understood that West was elected and had a constituency whose cries for retribution might not be in the national interest. She understood, too, that she was appointed and had risen to her position without having to give a damn about public opinion. To complicate things, she was fond of Jim West. The way he conducted himself in office, the way he had borne the sudden death of his wife, all told her the measure of the man.

But she was also convinced that Chris Pierce was wrong.

'You got something to say, Mary, say it,' said West brusquely. 'But never accuse me of doing nothing.'

There were six of them in the White House basement, sitting at a table that could seat thirty. West was at the top with a laptop computer into which he typed notes as he talked and listened. 'I hope to hell you're wrong, Mary,' he said. 'I wasn't elected to get us into a war, particularly one with missiles and 37,000 American troops right on the front line.'

He turned to his Secretary for Homeland Security. 'Tom, what's the current threat assessment here?'

'Here on US soil, we still have no evidence of hostile Korean activity,' said Tom Patton, pulling two separate sheets of paper out of his file. 'No upsurge of Islamic activity, either. Just the usual string of tip-offs and unsubstantiated threats.'

'Thank you.' West appreciated Patton's forthright answers. In the United States he had a single and linear picture. In the jungle of foreign affairs, however, the world was foggy and confused.

West changed programs on the laptop and brought up a map stretching from Hawaii to the Middle East which was displayed on a screen at the end of the room.

'Let's get this straight, then,' he said, pointing his finger so that it threw an unintended shadow across the image. Brock slid a laser pointer across the table towards him. West turned it on, found Pyongyang and moved the narrow red beam between North Korea and Japan. 'Worst-case scenario one. North Korea deliberately struck Japan. Here.' He moved the laser to Pakistan. 'Worst case scenario two: the assassination of President Khan of Pakistan was the call sign for Islamic uprisings in South-East Asia.' He tapped the keyboard. 'Now let's ring-fence these two areas.'

Almost immediately, South-East Asia and North Korea became outlined in red. West expanded the screen into a map of the whole world, making the red appear much smaller.

'Is there any other area,' he asked, addressing the room, but looking at Pierce, 'in which we have detected activity that could be hostile to the United States, either shortly before or coinciding with the North Korean attack or the assassination?'

Pierce shook his head. 'Activities in Iran, Mr President. Uncertainty in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Conflict in Israel. These are all ongoing.'

'OK, now I'm going to highlight every Islamic area in the world.'

The map flickered again then re-formed itself with swathes of green stretching from right across northern Africa, up into the Middle East to Pakistan. The President picked up the laser and pointed to South-East Asia. 'Is there any link that we know of between what is happening here and these other areas?'

It was Peter Brock who replied this time. 'Nothing unusual, Mr President. Our SIGINT and IMINT intelligence hasn't found anything either. The only uncertainty is the power vacuum in Pakistan.'

'All right,' said West slowly. 'Let's treat it as a neutral power vacuum for the moment.'

'Mr President,' interjected Newman. 'Can we not factor in that the power vacuum was created by a political killing which was followed by well-organized, anti-US regional riots and a coup in Brunei?'

'Which has been successfully put down by the British,' said Pierce.

'As far as our public policy goes, Mary, we will treat it as a coincidence. There is no point in inflaming public fear.' He shot a look at Newman, but she couldn't read whether the glint in his eyes was one of fun or of irritation. He pointed back at the map. 'There's one more thing I want to do to put our situation in perspective,' he said, using the mouse arrow to reconfigure.

A pattern of black spread across the screen from Japan through to India, then through Europe from Scandinavia to southern France and on into northern Africa. Against the wave of black, the red appeared as mere specks.

West linked his fingers at the back of his head and laughed. 'Son of a bitch,' he said softly. 'The black shows the territory controlled by hostile forces when we joined the Second World War in 1941. The red shows the territory hostile to us now. Don't you all agree it's minuscule?' He leant across and touched Newman on the arm. 'What's your take, Mary? Have we got a Hitler on our hands? Or just a handful of terror runts?'

The President was being mischievous and impossible. Newman swallowed hard. 'We believe Park Ho is now in control of North Korea, Mr President,' she said firmly. 'We know he's working on a missile that can reach US territory. We believe he is close to getting a strain of smallpox for which we have no vaccination. Whether or not a Hitler is created depends on how we handle him.'

'All right,' West said thoughtfully. 'So who are North Korea's friends? Because Hitler had plenty.'

'China and Russia - if you don't count the rogue states,' said Newman. 'They'll back us, but it may have a cost. The longer we take to act, the more it might cost. On the surface, neither will sacrifice their relationship with us in order to save North Korea. But go a bit beneath that, and they will try to exact unacceptable concessions.'

'Explain,' said West.

'Well, firstly, each has an interest in driving a wedge between us and Japan,' said Newman and, feeling on stronger ground, her voice hardened. 'Each needs North Korea as a buffer state. Therefore they will insist that the status quo remains. And,' she concluded, looking West straight in the eye, 'each has an interest in seeing our power in the Pacific diminish. That, Mr President, is also the aim of Park Ho in North Korea itself.'

'For Christ's sake, Mary, are you trying to tell me that all this is a conspiracy--'

Newman interrupted. 'No. Absolutely not. But governments exploit situations and if you allow Park Ho to capitalize on what he has done, then the leaders of Russia and China will have no choice but to weigh up their options.'

'Do you have a suggestion?'

To answer, Newman addressed Pierce, determined to cut off any objection he planned to make. 'Don't consult. Strike. Let him know you're serious. Let him know he's not going to get away with it. And let Russia, China and everyone else know that this is your fight and they shouldn't mess with you.'

'It'd be a goddamn disaster,' said Pierce.

'Are you serious?' said West softly.

Newman looked straight at the President. She led a busy life, constantly travelling, constantly in an anonymous hotel room. When in Washington, she turned down fifty more invitations for every one she could accept. Her day was divided into fifteen-minute slots, even when flying from country to country. Her stamina and her ability to catnap - also factored into a fifteen-minute slot - had become legendary among her staff. But sometimes, when she was by herself, loneliness hit her like a cold sea. She harboured a fear about her personal life that she had never been able to lay to rest, passed down to her from her parents, specifically her mother who, as a young girl, had survived the Nazi concentration camps. When she spoke, she looked at the table, her knuckles clenched to keep her anger under control.

'If we had struck Hitler when he broke the Treaty of Versailles, there would have been no Second World War, Mr President. No Holocaust. If we had stopped him after Crystal Night. After he went into Czechoslovakia,' said Newman passionately. 'When exactly do you strike, Mr President, to prevent mass slaughter? When the next missile hits Japan? When it hits Guam? Hawaii? When it hits Los Angeles? When it arrives with a nuclear or biological warhead? Against which slice of the salami knife will we eventually take action?'

'If we strike North Korea,' said Pierce, quietly, 'we risk 37,000 American lives.'

West stood up, a familiar signal that the debate was over and squabbling had to stop.

'Mary, I appreciate your frankness,' he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. 'I really do. But I'm going with the Secretary of Defense on this one.'

He turned to John Kozerski. 'John, I need to talk to Jamie Song in China, Andrei Kozlov in Russia--' He paused for a moment, his chin in his hand. 'Get me Mehta in India as well. Sato in Tokyo.'

Newman broke protocol by referring to the President by his first name. 'Jim,' she insisted, 'lives are going to be lost. The question is, how many?'

'We're not going to do it, Mary,' West retorted immediately. 'Now, if you'll excuse us.'

He stepped away from her and spoke to Pierce. 'Chris, can you handle Cho in Seoul?'

'He'll want to talk to you,' said Kozerski.

'Until he stops swearing, I'm not going to contemplate it. The guy think's he's Al Capone or something.'

'I'll try and square him,' said Pierce.

'Reassure him that our troops are staying. Make sure he stays calm.'

Newman lingered, hoping for another word with West. While Kozerski was already at the door, Brock and Pierce did not look as if they were leaving. She manoeuvred herself around to his end of the table and was about to speak when West held up his hand to stop her.

'No, Mary,' he said firmly. 'This meeting is over. Now, if you'll excuse us?'

Without another word, she turned and walked out of the room.

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