They sting us slightly with their air forces, but what is that? The buzzing of insects.” Zhang dismissed the issue.
“How many have underestimated America, and this Ryan fellow, and done so to their misfortune?” Qian demanded. “Comrades, I tell you, this is a dangerous situation we are in. Perhaps we can succeed, all well and good if that comes to pass, but overconfidence can be any man’s undoing.”
“And overestimating one’s enemy ensures that you will never do anything,” Zhang Han San countered. “Did we get to where we are, did our country get to where we are, by timidity? The Long March was not made by cowards.” He looked around the table, and no one summoned the character to argue with him.
“So, things go well in Russia?” Xu asked the Defense Minister.
“Better than the plan,” Luo assured them all.
“Then we proceed,” the Premier decided for them all, once others had made the real decisions. The meeting soon adjourned, and the ministers went their separate ways.
“Fang?”
The junior Minister-Without-Portfolio turned to see Qian Kun coming after him in the corridor. “Yes, my friend?”
“The reason the Americans have not taken firmer action is that they act at the end of a single railroad to move them and their supplies. This takes time. They have not dropped bombs on us, probably, because they don’t have any. And where does Zhang get this rubbish about American ideology?”
“He is wise in the ways of international affairs,” Fang replied.
“Is he? Is he really? Is he not the one who tricked the Japanese into commencing a war with America? And why—so that we and they could seize Siberia. And then did he not quietly support Iran and their attempt to seize the Saudi kingdom? And why? So that we could then use the Muslims as a hammer to beat Russia into submission—so that we could seize Siberia. Fang, all he thinks about is Siberia. He wishes to see it under our flag before he dies. Perhaps he wishes to have his ashes buried in a golden urn, like the emperors,” Qian hissed. “He’s an adventurer, and those men come to bad ends.”
“Except those who succeed,” Fang suggested.
“How many of them succeed, and how many die before a stone wall?” Qian shot back. “I say the Americans will strike us, and strike us hard once their forces are assembled. Zhang follows his own political vision, not facts, not reality. He may lead our country to its doom.”
“Are the Americans so formidable as that?”
“If they are not, Fang, why does Tan spend so much of his time trying to steal their inventions? Don’t you remember what America did to Japan and Iran? They are like the wizards of legend. Luo tells us that they’ve savaged our air force. How often has he told us how formidable our fighters are? All the money we spent on those wonderful aircraft, and the Americans slaughter them like hogs fattened for market! Luo claims we’ve gotten twenty-five of theirs. He claims only twenty-five. More likely we’ve gotten one or two! Against over a hundred losses, but Zhang tells us the Americans don’t want to challenge us. Oh, really? What held them back from smashing Japan’s military, and then annihilating Iran’s?” Qian paused for breath. “I fear this, Fang. I fear what Zhang and Luo have gotten us into.”
“Even if you are right, what can we do to stop it?” the minister asked.
“Nothing,” Qian admitted. “But someone must speak the truth. Someone must warn of the danger that lies before us, if we are to have a country left at the end of this misbegotten adventurism.”
“Perhaps so. Qian, you are as ever a voice of reason and prudence. We will speak more,” Fang promised, wondering how much of the man’s words was alarmism, and how much was good sense. He’d been a brilliant administrator of the state railroads, and therefore was a man with a firm grasp on reality.
Fang had known Zhang for most of his adult life. He was a highly skilled player on the political stage, and a brilliantly gifted manipulator of people. But Qian was asking if those talents translated into a correct perception of reality, and did he really understand America and Americans—and most of all, this Ryan fellow? Or was he just forcing oddly shaped pegs into the slots he’d engraved in his own mind? Fang admitted that he didn’t know, and more to the point, didn’t know the answers to the implicit questions. He did not know himself whether