The Bear and the Dragon - By Tom Clancy Page 0,142

the Chinese to his car, which had diplomatic plates. Notes were written down, and the cops all headed home after an overtime day, wondering what they’d turned up and how important it might be.

CHAPTER 20

Diplomacy

Well?" Rutledge took his notes back from Secretary Adler.

“It looks okay, Cliff, assuming that you can deliver the message in an appropriate way,” SecState told his subordinate.

“Process is something I understand.” Then he paused. “The President wants this message delivered in unequivocal terms, correct?”

Secretary Adler nodded. “Yep.”

“You know, Scott, I’ve never really landed on people this hard before.”

“Ever want to?”

“The Israelis a few times. South Africa,” he added thoughtfully.

“But never the Chinese or Japanese?”

“Scott, I’ve never been a trade guy before, remember?” But he was this time, because the mission to Beijing was supposed to be high-profile, requiring a higher-level diplomat instead of someone of mere ambassadorial rank. The Chinese knew this already. In their case negotiations would be handled publicly by their Foreign Minister, though they would actually be run by a lesser-ranked diplomat who was a foreign-trade specialist, and who had experienced a good run of luck dealing with America. Secretary Adler, with President Ryan’s permission, was slowly leaking to the press that the times and the rules might have changed a little bit. He worried that Cliff Rutledge wasn’t exactly the right guy to deliver the message, but Cliff was the on-deck batter.

“How are you working out with this Gant guy from Treasury?”

“If he were a diplomat, we’d be at war with the whole damned world, but I suppose he does know numbers and computers, probably,” Rutledge allowed, not troubling to hide his distaste for the Chicago-born Jew with his nouveau-riche ways. That Rutledge had been of modest origins himself was long forgotten. A Harvard education and a diplomatic passport help one forget such distasteful things as having grown up in a row house, eating leftovers.

“Remember that Winston likes him, and Ryan likes Winston, okay?” Adler warned his subordinate gently. He decided not to concern himself with Cliff’s WASP-ish anti-Semitism. Life was too short for trivialities, and Rutledge knew that his career rested in Scott Adler’s hands. He might make more money as a consultant after leaving the State Department, but being fired out of Foggy Bottom would not enhance his value on the free-agent market.

“Okay, Scott, and, yeah, I need backup on the monetary aspects of this trade stuff.” The accompanying nod was almost respectful. Good. He did know how to grovel when required. Adler didn’t even consider telling Rutledge about the intelligence source in his pocket, courtesy of POTUS. There was something about the career diplomat that failed to inspire trust in his superior.

“What about communications?”

“The Embassy in Beijing has TAPDANCE capability. Even the new phone kind, same as the airplane.” But there were problems with it, recently fielded by Fort Meade. The instruments had trouble linking up with each other, and using a satellite lash-up didn’t help at all. Like most diplomats, Rutledge rarely troubled himself with such trivialities. He often expected the intelligence to appear as if by magic, rarely wondering how it had been obtained, but always questioning the motives of the source, whoever that might be. All in all, Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.

But on the plus side, Adler admitted to himself, Rutledge was a competent diplomatic technician who knew how the banter worked, and how to present a position in the gentlest possible but still firm terms. The State Department never had enough of those. As someone had once remarked of Theodore Roosevelt, “The nicest gentleman who ever slit a throat.” But Cliff would never do that, even to advance his own career. He probably shaved with an electric razor, not for fear of cutting himself so much as fear of actually seeing blood.

“When’s your plane leave?” EAGLE asked his subordinate.

Barry Wise was already packed. He was an expert at it, as well he might be, because he traveled about as much as an international airline pilot. At fifty-four, the black ex-Marine had worked for CNN since its beginnings more than twenty years before, and he’d seen it all. He’d covered the contras in Nicaragua, and the first bombing missions in Baghdad. He’d been there when mass graves were excavated in Yugoslavia, and done live commentary over Rwanda’s roads of