he was being misled on sources and methods, but that was to be expected. As a senior member of the DI—the Directorate of Intelligence—it was his job to evaluate information provided to him by various sources, in this case the DO. If he got bad information, his evaluation would be bad as well, but what Mrs. Foley had just told him was that he would not be held at fault for bad information. But he’d also question the authenticity of the documents in an internal memo or two, just to cover his own ass, of course.
“Okay, ma’am. In that case, what we have here is pure nitroglycerine. We’ve suspected this, but here’s confirmation. It means that President Ryan did the right thing when he granted diplomatic recognition to Taiwan. The PRC had it coming. They conspired to wage aggressive war, and since we got involved, you can say that they conspired against us. Twice, I bet. We’ll see if another of these documents refers to the Japanese adventure. You’ll recall that the Japanese industrialists implicated this Zhang guy by name. That’s not a hundred percent, but if it’s confirmed by this, then it’s almost something you could take before a judge. Mrs. Foley, this is some source we have here.”
“Evaluation?”
“It feels right,” the analyst said, reading over the page again. “It sounds like conversation. I mean, it’s unguarded, not official diplomatic-speak or even inside-minister-speak. So, it sounds like what it purports to be, the notes of a private, informal policy discussion between two senior colleagues.”
“Any way to cross-check it?” MP asked next.
An immediate shake of the head. “No. We don’t know much about either one of these guys. Zhang, well, we have the evaluation from Secretary Adier—you know, from the shuttle diplomacy after the Airbus shoot-down, which pretty well confirms what that Yamata guy told the Japanese police and our FBI guys about how the Chinese nudged them into the conflict with us, and what for. The PRC looks on eastern Siberia with covetous eyes,” Sears reminded her, showing his knowledge of the PRC policies and objectives. “For Fang Gan, we have photos of him sipping mao-tai at receptions in his Mao jacket and smiling benignly, like they all do. We know he’s tight with Xu, there are stories that he likes to play with the office help—but a lot of them do that—and that’s about it.”
It was good of Sears not to remind her that playing with the office help wasn’t a character defect limited to China.
“So, what do we think about them?”
“Fang and Zhang? Well, both are Ministers Without Portfolio. So, they’re utility infielders, maybe even assistant coaches. Premier Xu trusts their judgment. They get to sit in at the Politburo as full voting members. They get to hear everything and cast votes on everything. They influence policy not so much by making it as shaping it. Every minister knows them. These two know all the others. They’ve both been around a long time. Both are well into their sixties or seventies, but people over there don’t mellow with age like they do in America. Both will be ideologically sound, meaning they’re both probably solid communists. That implies a certain ruthlessness, and you can add to that their age. At seventy-five, death starts being a very real thing. You don’t know how much time you have left, and these guys don’t believe in an afterlife. So, whatever goals they have, they have to address pretty quick at that age, don’t they?”
“Marxism doesn’t mix well with humanity, does it?”
Sears shook his head. “Not hardly, and toss in a culture that places a much lower value on human life than ours does.”
“Okay. Good brief. Here,” she said, handing over ten printed pages. “I want a written evaluation after lunch. Whatever you might be working on now, SORGE is more important.”
That meant a “seventh-floor tasking” to Dr. Sears. He’d be working directly for the Directors. Well, he had a private office already, and a computer that wasn’t hooked into any telephone lines, even a local area network, as many of the CIA’s ’puters were. Sears tucked the papers into a coat pocket and departed, leaving Mary Pat to look out her floor-to-ceiling windows and contemplate her next move. Really it was Ed’s call, but things like this were decided collegially, especially when the DCI was your husband. This time she’d wander over to see him.
The DCI’s office is long and relatively narrow, with the director’s office near the door, well away