It’s Black Pearl, brand new from Rémy Martin. Frightfully expensive, but definitely better than Rémy’s Louis XIII.”
“Goddamnit, Bob, you’re not listening to me,” Whittaker shouted. “This has the potential to ruin everything we’ve worked for.”
“Don’t raise your voice, David,” Foster warned. “Nothing will be ruined. We had Mexico City and Pyongyang, despite Mr. McGarvey’s interference. And our last step, the Taiwan initiative, will go as planned. China will take the fall. The United States will not be brought down by a nation of rice-eating peasants who are merely clever at flooding the market with cheap products.”
Whittaker had heard all of this many times before; it had been Foster’s mantra from the very beginning eight years ago when the Friday Club first came into prominence. The United States had only two enemies: the old Soviet Union, which lost the economic race because of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, and now China, which seemed to be winning. Something had to be done before being American became synonymous with being a second-class citizen. Spain, Portugal, Great Britain all had their empires, and now it was America’s rightful time in history.
We had the nuclear weapons, the missiles, the submarines, the aircraft carriers—more aircraft carriers in our fleet than every other nation combined. But even more than that, Foster argued, the U.S. had the industrial might, the resources, the facilities, and the most highly skilled workers in the world. It was something the Japanese hadn’t fully understood in 1941 when they attacked Pearl Harbor. The sleeping giant had indeed been awakened.
And it would happen again. Given the right conditions, the right push in the right direction, China would fall by the wayside as the last real enemy of the United States.
But after eight years, Whittaker wasn’t so sure that he believed in the message as strongly as he had at the beginning. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to help with the business of empire building. That tack had nearly embroiled the country in a global thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union, in part because of Kennedy’s stand over the Cuban missile business.
And now China had an even more potent weapon to use against us: money. Beijing didn’t need bombs and rockets because it practically owned us. Besides the growing trade deficit, we were nearly one trillion dollars in debt to China. That was more than four times the money we owed all the oil exporters in the world.
What China held were mostly Treasury securities, which they could call due or simply dump. Either way the U.S. economy would take the biggest hit it had ever taken—much bigger than the Great Depression—and it would literally bring us to our knees. Factory closings; bankruptcies, for which there would be no money available for help; unemployment lines, for which there were no jobs and no unemployment checks.
“Worst-case scenario,” Foster had pounded home his point. “Social Security and Medicare would fail. That cannot be allowed to happen. At all costs.”
All true, Whittaker agreed. Especially now when the U.S. was in the midst of the biggest bailout in history. Something had to be done.
“McGarvey could stop us,” he said, but Foster shook his head.
“One man, David.”
“Look what he’s done to us already.”
Sergeant Schilling came to the door. “Admin’s man has shown up, sir,” he said.
“Where is he at this moment?”
“Just within the woods about ten meters west of the driveway.”
“What is he doing?”
“Surveillance, I would imagine, sir. Waiting. I have his cell phone number, shall I make contact?”
“Yes, tell him we know he’s here,” Foster said. “It’s possible that Mr. McGarvey may show up tonight. Mr. Boberg can watch from outside, and you can monitor the situation from inside. Shouldn’t be too difficult to catch him in a cross fire.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I prepare your safe room?”
“Not necessary,” Foster said, and the sergeant left.
“A safe room wouldn’t do you any good, because if McGarvey somehow gets his hands on the proof of what we’ve been doing, even a shred of proof, all of us will take the fall.”
“But there’s no proof to be had, David. It simply doesn’t exist. We don’t have a manifesto, nothing has been written. All we have is an agreement among gentlemen that something needs to be done to save America. What fault can be found with that?”
“No manifesto, I agree,” Whittaker said. “But what if he actually manages to get to you, and holds a pistol to your head, will you take a bullet to defend your idealism?”
“It won’t come to that.”
“It’s why I flew