paid, however, on a per-voyage basis, and the funds for this trip had been wired only seven days before. That was hardly a matter of concern for the owners or the ship’s agent. After all, they were dealing with a nation-state, whose credit tended to be good. In due course, the loading was completed. A computerized system told the ship’s first officer that the ship’s trim was correct, and he so notified the master, who then told the chief engineer to wind up the ship’s gas-turbine engines. This engine type made things easy, and in less than five minutes, the ship’s power plant was fully ready for sea. Twenty minutes after that, powerful harbor tugs eased the ship away from the loading dock. This evolution is the most demanding for a tanker’s crew, because only in confined waters is the risk of collision and serious damage quite so real. But within two hours, the tanker was under way under her own power, heading for the narrows at Bandar Abbas, and then the open sea.
Yes, Qian,” Premier Xu said tiredly. ”Proceed.”
“Comrades, at our last meeting I warned you of a potential problem of no small proportions. That problem is with us now, and it is growing larger.”
“Are we running out of money, Qian?” Zhang Han San asked, with a barely concealed smirk. The answer amused him even more.
“Yes, Zhang, we are.”
“How can a nation run out of money?” the senior Politburo member demanded.
“The same way a factory worker can, by spending more than he has. Another way is to offend his boss and lose his job. We have done both,” Qian replied evenly.
“What ‘boss’ do we have?” Zhang inquired, with a disarming and eerie gentleness.
“Comrades, that is what we call trade. We sell our goods to others in return for money, and we use that money to purchase goods from those others. Since we are not peasants from ancient times bartering a pig for a sheep, we must use money, which is the means of international exchange. Our trade with America has generated an annual surplus on the order of seventy billion American dollars.”
“Generous of the foreign devils,” Premier Xu observed to Zhang sotto voce.
“Which we have almost entirely spent for various items, largely for our colleagues in the People’s Liberation Army of late. Most of these are long-term purchase items for which advance payment was necessary, as is normal in the international arms business. To this, we must add oil and wheat. There are other things which are important to our economy, but we will concentrate on these for the moment.” Qian looked around the table for approval. He got it, though Marshal Luo Cong, Defense Minister, and commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army—and lord of the PLA’s sizable industrial empire—was now looking on with a gimlet eye. The expenditures of his personal empire had been singled out, and that was not calculated to please him.
“Comrades,” Qian continued, “we now face the loss of much, perhaps most, of that trade surplus with America, and other foreign countries as well. You see these?” He held up a fistful of telexes and e-mail printouts. “These are cancellations of commercial business orders and funds transfers. Let me clarify. These are billions of lost dollars, money which in some cases we have already spent—but money we will never have because we have angered those with whom we do business.”
“Do you tell me that they have such power over us? Rubbish!” another member observed.
“Comrade, they have the power to buy our trade goods for cash, or not buy them for cash. If they choose not to buy them, we do not get the money we need to spend for Marshal Luo’s expensive toys.” He used that word deliberately. It was time to explain the facts of life to these people, and a slap across the face was sure to get their attention. “Now, let us consider wheat. We use wheat to make bread and noodles. If you have no wheat, you have no noodles.
“Our country does not grow enough wheat to feed our people. We know this. We have too many mouths to feed. In a few months, the great producing countries, America, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and so forth, they will all have wheat to sell—but with what shall we buy it? Marshal Luo, your army needs oil to refine into diesel fuel and jet fuel, does it not? We need the same things for our diesel trains, and our airlines. But we cannot produce