“It’s eight o’clock, Mr. Secretary.”
For a moment, Hamson Van Lynden couldn’t remember where he was, a common occupational hazard for those in the profession of jet age statesmanship. Then his memory came back on line.
Manila. The first day of the crisis-reduction talks. “Thank you, Frank I’m awake,” he replied, sitting up.
“Breakfast, sir?” the Secret Service man inquired from the bedroom door.
“Yes My usual in about fifteen minutes.”
“It’ll be ready, Mr. Secretary. Ms. Sagada will also be up shortly with the morning situation update.”
“Again.”
The door closed. Van Lynden rose from the bed stretching out the last kinks of the previous day’s long air journey.
Crossing to the full-length balcony windows, he pulled aside the gold brocade curtains, revealing the glittering gunmetal blue of Manila Bay. For security’s sake, the Philippine government had elected to house all of the different delegations attending the Chinese crisis reduction talks at a single location, one that could also serve as the site for those talks. With a profound sense of either irony or history, they had chosen the Hotel Manila.
The sixteen-story grand dame of the Philippines had served many purposes during its long existence. Prior to World War II, it had served as Douglas Macarthur’s residence as he had futilely attempted to prepare the old commonwealth for the coming conflict. The hotel had seen an invading Japanese army march in to seize its namesake city, and had served as the headquarters for its conquerors. Surviving, the hotel had seen another army, this one of liberation, storm Manila. Its walls still bore the bullet scars of strafing American fighters.
Now as he watched the morning traffic build along the waterfront boulevards, he wondered what new chapter would unfold here the ending of a conflict or the beginning of a holocaust.
The bacon and eggs were excellent, and the atypical side dishes — fried rice, guava, and jackfruit — added piquancy to the meal. Seated in the suite’s living room, the secretary of state divided his attention between his breakfast and the young woman seated on the couch across from him. Lucena Sagada, his Embassy liaison, had the honey colored skin and ebon eyes and hair of a Philippine native. Her light summer suit had the cut of the Beltway, however. After serving her State Department internship in Washington, she had returned to the homeland of her grandparents to make the optimum use of her linguistic and cultural heritage.
“We finally have a complete delegation listing, Mr. Secretary,” she said, looking up from her open laptop.
“Let’s see, that should be Mr. Apayo from the Philippines, Keo Moroboshi from Japan, and Mr. Chung Pak from Korea Any word on the Russians and Vietnamese?”
“Still no word from Hanoi. I think they can be safely counted out. As for the Russians, we’ve received official notification that they will not be sending a delegation. They do request, however, that a member of their local embassy staff be permitted to sit in as an observer.”
“I don’t have any problem with that,” Van Lynden replied. “We won’t have them stirring the water, but at the same time, they’ll be kept current on the developing situation. Good compromise.”
He speared a final neat slice of jackfruit on the tines of his fork.
“Now, let’s get on to the main show. Who are we meeting from the Chinas?”
“Both delegations arrived yesterday evening, sir. Within an hour of each other.”
Ms. Sagada removed a recordable compact disc from her briefcase and snapped it into the input slot of her laptop. Rising, she crossed the room and set the little computer on the coffee table beside Van Lynden’s breakfast tray.
“The CIA Station Chief at the Embassy had a video crew out there covering the arrivals,” she said, tapping the actuation key. “Here are the Nationalist and the United Democratic Forces representatives arriving. They flew in together from Taipei.”
On the flatscreen, Van Lynden observed two individuals descending the stairway of a smart looking executive jet.
“I recognize the first man. Mr. Duan Xing Hoof the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry. I’ve worked with him a couple of times through the American Institute in Taiwan. He’s a good international man. One of their best. I don’t recognize this gentleman, though.” He indicated the spare, white-haired figure that followed Duan.
“According to the NSA database on the United Democratic Forces of China, he is Professor Djinn Yi. He’s a former faculty member of the People’s University of Canton, having taught history and political science. Currently, he appears to be serving as a kind of ambassador-at-large for the UDFC.”
“What do we have on him?”
“Not very much, Mr. Secretary. Unmarried Native of Guangdong Province. Considered academically brilliant. At one time, an unimpeachable Party member. However, that wasn’t enough to protect him when the Red Guard went on their rampage back in 1966. He and his older brother were among the Chinese intellectuals herded into the reeducation camps during the Cultural Revolution. Professor Djinn was incarcerated for over eighteen months. His brother died, supposedly from a combination of beating and starvation.”
“I imagine that could turn just about anyone.”
The video zoomed in on Djinn, and Van Lynden studied the man, looking past his age-gaunt features and the stiffness of his movements to the alert glitter of his eyes and the calculating way he studied his surroundings. The Chinese Presidium had made a very bad enemy out of this old man.
The video clip ended and Ms. Sagada reached forward to call up another track.
“Okay. Here we go with the Communist delegation.”
Two more men descending another aircraft stairway. One, short, heavyset, and wearing an old-style Maoist suit. Haven’t seen one of those in a while. What might that indicate, Harry? A throwback of attitude or a statement of policy? The other was tall, soldierly in bearing, and clad in the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army.
“These are the two representatives from the People’s Republic,” Sagada continued. “Deputy Premier Chang Hui’an and General Ho Chunwa.”
“Very heavy metal indeed. I know Chang only by reputation. He’s not an international man. I don’t think he’s ever even been out of the country before. He does carry a lot of Party weight, though.
“As for Ho,” Van Lynden continued, “I’ve met him. It was years ago, before Tiananmen. Very sharp. Very tough. But he thinks. He’s open to reason. Who’s the senior man of the delegation?”
“That’s … rather nebulous at the moment, Mr. Secretary. The delegation appears to be under a joint leadership.”
Now, that’s interesting, Van Lynden thought. The only time the Communists don’t work with linear chain of command is when there’s a factional confrontation going on between two near-party power groups. A trust breakdown between the Party and the PLA? Is somebody afraid that somebody else is ready to sell out? Very interesting indeed …
Ms. Sagada snapped off the laptop. “That’s about all we have new on the delegations, sir. I also have a prospective conference agenda for your consideration and a request from the press corps for a statement from you concerning the goals of the United States in these talks.”
“I’ll be pleased to let them know as soon as I’m sure myself” Van Lynden laid his napkin across his plate “What’s the latest military update from the Chinese mainland? The short version.”
“Static, but with buildups continuing on all fronts The Nationalists are continuing to land troops within the Amoy beachhead, while the Communists continue to mass forces to the north and west of the city. Apparently, they’re preparing a major counterattack to drive the Nationalists back into the sea before UDFC can break through to them from the south.” The young Embassy liaison shook her head. “Our military attache says things should blow out there soon. Very soon.”
“That battle goes, so may go this conference.”
Van Lynden got to his feet “Is there a secure terminal here in the hotel?”
“Not yet, sir. The communications rooms for the delegations won’t be up and running until sometime this after noon.”
“Then we’ll need to go across to the Embassy for a while. Let me see, the opening session isn’t scheduled until ten tomorrow morning. Right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Until then, from, say, noon today on see if you can dial us in to meet with as many of the other delegates, one on one, as possible. Nobody may be willing to talk substance before the first session, but at least we might be able to feel out some attitudes.”
“We, sir?” There was a faint hint of expectancy beyond the professionalism in Lucena Sagada’s voice.
Van Lynden paused in donning his suit jacket. “You’re my liaison officer, aren’t you? Part of your job is keeping Ambassador Dickenson fully apprised on the status of these talks. As far as I can see, the best way to accomplish that is for you to be directly involved in them Is that amenable to you?”
The young woman’s sobriety momentarily disappeared in the bright flash of her smile.
“I’d like that very much, sir.”
“Fine Start setting us up. In the meantime, I’ve got some people to talk to.”
Van Lynden started for the elevators, his security team deploying around him with the unobtrusive efficiency of the stage ninjas in a kabuki play. The secretary of state was already losing himself in what he had learned that morning, adding the scraps of information he had garnered to the matrix of knowledge, instinct, and intuition he was building around the China crisis. During his years in the diplomatic service, Van Lynden had developed an entire arsenal of mental mechanisms to help him maintain the clarity of thought and total focus needed for this brand of heavy gauge statesmanship. One of them was “tagging” — applying a descriptive and readily recallable symbol to each of the other involved parties. In those video clips today, he had found his tags for the Chinas — the planes the opposing delegations had arrived aboard. The Nationalists and UDFC had flown in on a gleaming new Taiwanese Air Force Dassault 9000. Sleek compact, and efficient, the little executive jet had more resemblance to a model put together by some painstaking hobbyist than it had to a real aircraft. The Communists had arrived on board an aging Boeing 727, its paint stripped by a myriad of hail and rainstorms, its tail cone blackened by years of burning low-grade jet propellant. An unmatching aileron and cabin door had indicated where another airframe had been stripped to make this one operational. That was the dichotomy. The cutting edge of tomorrow, driven by the power of global trade and technology, versus the outworn giant, obsolescent and weary, but not quite ready for the scrap heap.