named Suvorov—so we believe, that is. He used two ex-Spetsnaz soldiers. They have both been murdered, probably to conceal their involvement, or at least to prevent them from discussing it with anyone.” Shelepin didn’t add anything else. “In any case, we have heard good things about your Rainbow troops, and we want you to help train my protective detail.”
“It’s okay with me, so long as it’s okay with Washington.” Clark stared hard into the bodyguard’s eyes. He looked damned serious, but not very happy with the world at the moment.
“We will make the formal request tomorrow.”
“They are excellent, these Rainbow people,” Kirillin assured him. “We’re getting along well with them. Anatoliy used to work for me, back when I was a colonel.” The tone of voice told what he thought of the younger man.
There was more to this, Clark thought. A senior Russian official didn’t just ask a former CIA officer for help with something related to his personal safety out of the clear blue. He caught Ding’s eye and saw the same thought. Suddenly both were back in the spook business.
“Okay,” John said. “I’ll call home tonight if you want.” He’d do that from the American Embassy, probably on the STU-6 in the station chief’s office.
CHAPTER 37
Fallout
The VC-137 landed without fanfare at Andrews Air Force Base. The base lacked a proper terminal and the attendant jetways, and so the passengers debarked on stairs grafted onto a flatbed truck. Cars waited at the bottom to take them into Washington. Mark Gant was met by two Secret Service agents who drove him at once to the Treasury Department building across the street from the White House. He’d barely gotten used to being on the ground when he found himself in the Secretary’s office.
“How’d it go?” George Winston asked.
“Interesting, to say the least,” Gant said, his mind trying to get used to the fact that his body didn’t have a clue where it was at the moment. “I thought I’d be going home to sleep it off.”
“Ryan’s invoking the Trade Recovery Act against the Chinese.”
“Oh? Well, that’s not all that much of a surprise, is it?”
“Look at this,” SecTreas commanded, handing over a recently produced printout. “This” was a report on the current cash holdings of the People’s Republic of China.
“How solid is this information?” TELESCOPE asked TRADER.
The report was an intelligence estimate in all but name. Employees within the Treasury Department routinely kept track of international monetary transactions as a means of determining the day-to-day strength of the dollar and other internationally traded currencies. That included the Chinese yuan, which had been having a slightly bad time of late.
“They’re this thin?” Gant asked. “I thought they were running short of cash, but I didn’t know it was quite this bad ...”
“It surprised me, too,” SecTreas admitted. “It appears that they’ve been purchasing a lot of things on the international market lately, especially jet engines from France, and because they’re late paying for the last round, the French company has decided to take a harder line—they’re the only game in town. We won’t let GE or Pratt and Whitney bid on the order, and the Brits have similarly forbidden Rolls-Royce. That makes the French the sole source, which isn’t so bad for the French, is it? They’ve jacked up the price about fifteen percent, and they’re asking for cash up front.”
“The yuan’s going to take a hit,” Gant predicted. “They’ve been trying to cover this up, eh?”
“Yeah, and fairly successfully.”
“That’s why they were hitting us so hard on the trade deal. They saw this one coming, and they wanted a favorable announcement to bail them out. But they sure didn’t play it very smart. Damn, you have this sort of a problem, you learn to crawl a little.”
“I thought so, too. Why, do you think?”
“They’re proud, George. Very, very proud. Like a rich family that’s lost its money but not its social position, and tries to make up for the one with the other. But it doesn’t work. Sooner or later, people find out that you’re not paying your bills, and then the whole world comes crashing in on you. You can put it off for a while, which makes sense if you have something coming in, but if the ship don’t dock, you sink.” Gant flipped some pages, thinking: The other problem is that countries are run by politicians, people with no real understanding of money, who figure they can always maneuver their way out of whatever comes up. They’re so