airplanes, but so does Airbus in Europe, and the Europeans have been more ... accommodating to us politically. America rants on about opening our markets to their goods, and we do this—slowly, of course. We need to keep the surplus they so kindly give us, and spend it on items of importance to us. Next, we will expand our automobile production and enter their auto market, as the Japanese once did. In five years, Fang, we will be taking another ten billion dollars from America annually—and that, my friend, is a very conservative estimate.”
“You think so?”
An emphatic nod. “Yes! We will not make the mistake the Japanese made early on, selling ugly little cars. We are already looking for American styling engineers who will help us design automobiles which are aesthetically pleasing to the white devils.”
“If you say so.”
“When we have the money we need to build up our military, we will be the world’s leading power in every respect. Industrially, we will lead the world. Militarily, we are at the center of the world.”
“I fear these plans are too ambitious,” Fang said cautiously. “They will take more years than we have to implement in any case, but what legacy will we leave to our country if we point her on a erroneous path?”
“What error is this, Fang?” Zhang asked. “Do you doubt our ideas?”
Always that question, Fang thought with an inward sigh. “I remember when Deng said, ‘It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.’ To which Mao responded with a livid snarl: ‘What emperor said that?’ ”
“But it does matter, my old friend, and well you know it.”
“That is true,” Fang agreed with a submissive nod, not wanting a confrontation this late in the day, not when he had a headache. Age had made Zhang even more ideologically pure than he’d been in his youth, and it hadn’t tempered his imperial ambition. Fang sighed once more. He was of a mind to set the issue aside. It wasn’t worth the trouble. Though he’d mention it just once more, to cover his political backside.
“What if they don’t?” Fang asked finally.
“What?”
“What if they don’t go along? What if the Americans are troublesome on the trade issue?”
“They will not be,” Zhang assured his old friend.
“But if they are, Comrade, what then will we do? What are our options?”
“Oh, I suppose we could punish with one hand and encourage with the other, cancel some purchases from America and then inquire about making some other ones. It’s worked before many times,” Zhang assured his guest. “This President Ryan is predictable. We need merely control the news. We will give him nothing to use against us.”
Fang and Zhang continued their discussion into other issues, until the latter returned to his office, where, again, he dictated his notes of the discussion to Ming, who then typed them into her computer. The minister considered inviting her to his apartment, but decided against it. Though she’d become somewhat more attractive in the preceding weeks, catching his eye with her gentle smiles in the outer office, it had been a long day for him, and he was too tired for it, enjoyable though it often was with Ming. Minister Fang had no idea that his dictation would be in Washington, D.C., in less than three hours.
What do you think, George?”
“Jack,” TRADER began, “what the hell is this, and how the hell did we get it?”
“George, this is an internal memorandum—well, of sorts—from the government of the People’s Republic of China. How we got it, you do not, repeat, not need to know.”
The document had been laundered—scrubbed—better than Mafia income. All the surnames had been changed, as had the syntax and adjectives, to disguise patterns of speech. It was thought—hoped would be a better term—that even those whose discourse was being reported would not have recognized their own words. But the content had been protected—even improved, in fact, since the nuances of Mandarin had been fully translated into American English idiom. That had been the hardest part. Languages do not really translate into one another easily or well. The denotations of words were one thing. The connotations were another, and these never really paralleled from one tongue to another. The linguists employed by the intelligence services were among the best in the country, people who regularly read poetry, and sometimes published journal pieces, under their own names, so that they could communicate their expertise in—and indeed, love of—their chosen foreign language