news took a while to percolate through their bureaucracy.”
“How do we expect them to react?” one of Rutledge’s underlings asked, sparing his boss the necessity of asking the obvious and fairly dumb question.
The answer was just as dumb: “Your guess is as good as mine,” Hitch said.
“So, this could be a minor embarrassment or a major whoopsie,” Rutledge observed. “Whoopsie” is a term of art in the United States Department of State, usually meaning a massive fuckup.
“I’d lean more toward the latter,” Ambassador Hitch thought. He couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for why this was so, but his instincts were flashing a lot of bright red lights, and Carl Hitch was a man who trusted his instincts.
“Any guidance from Washington?” Cliff asked.
“They haven’t woken up yet, have they?” And as one, every member of the delegation checked his watch. The embassy people already had, of course. The sun had not yet risen on their national capital. What decisions would be made would happen in the next four hours. Nobody here would be getting much sleep for a while, because once the decisions were made, then they’d have to decide how to implement them, how to present the position of their country to the People’s Republic.
“Ideas?” Rutledge asked.
“The President won’t like this very much,” Gant observed, figuring he knew about as much as anyone else in the room. “His initial reaction will be one of disgust. Question is, will that spill over into what we’re here for? I think it might, depending on how our Chinese friends react to the news.”
“How will the Chinese react?” Rutledge asked Hitch.
“Not sure, Cliff, but I doubt we’ll like it. They will regard the entire incident as an intrusion—an interference with their internal affairs—and their reaction will be somewhat crass, I think. Essentially they’re going to say, ‘Too damned bad.’ If they do, there’s going to be a visceral reaction in America and in Washington. They don’t understand us as well as they’d like to think they do. They misread our public opinion at every turn, and they haven’t shown me much sign of learning. I’m worried,” Hitch concluded.
“Well, then it’s our job to walk them through this. You know,” Rutledge thought aloud, “this could work in favor of our overall mission here.”
Hitch bristled at that. “Cliff, it would be a serious mistake to try to play this one that way. Better to let them think it through for themselves. The death of an ambassador is a big deal,” the American ambassador told the people in the room, in case they didn’t know. “All the more so if the guy was killed by an agent of their government. But, Cliff, if you try to shove this down their throats, they’re going to choke, and I don’t think we want that to happen either. I think our best play is to ask for a break of a day or two in the talks, to let them get their act together.”
“That’s a sign of weakness for our side, Carl,” Rutledge replied, with a shake of the head. “I think you’re wrong on that. I think we press forward and let them know that the civilized world has rules, and we expect them to abide by them.”
What lunacy is this?” Fang Gan asked the ceiling. “We’re not sure,” Zhang Han San replied. “Some troublesome churchman, it sounds like.”
“And some foolish policeman with more gun than brains. He’ll be punished, of course,” Fang suggested.
“Punished? For what? For enforcing our population-control laws, for protecting a doctor against an attack by some gwai?” Zhang shook his head. “Do we allow foreigners to spit upon our laws in this way? No, Fang, we do not. I will not see us lose face in such a way.”
“Zhang, what is the life of one insignificant police officer next to our country’s place in the world?” Fang demanded. “The man he killed was an ambassador, Zhang, a foreigner accredited to our country by another—”
“Country?” Zhang spat. “A city, my friend, no, not even that—a district in Rome, smaller than Qiong Dao!” He referred to Jade Island, home of one of the many temples built by the emperors, and not much larger than the building itself. Then he remembered a quote from Iosef Stalin. “How big an army does that Pope have, anyway? Ahh!” A dismissive wave of the hand.
“He does have a country, whose ambassador we accredited, in the hope of improving our position in the diplomatic world,” Fang reminded his friend. “His