Milt said: ‘Cleopatra?’
Gus looked impatient. Milt was not conscientious about reading his briefings.
Pauline was. She said: ‘The CIA has an undercover officer who produced twenty-four-carat intelligence on an ISGS base in Niger. Yesterday a joint force of American, French and local troops wiped the place out. It’s in this morning’s briefing papers, but you may not have had time to read them all.’
Milt said: ‘Why did we bring in the French, for God’s sake?’
Gus gave him a look that said, Don’t you know anything? but he spoke politely enough. ‘A lot of those countries used to be French colonies.’
‘Okay.’
As a woman, Pauline constantly suffered suggestions that she was too nice, too soft, too empathetic to be commander-in-chief of the US military. She said: ‘I’m going to announce this myself. James Moore has a big mouth when he talks about terrorists. It’s time to show people that President Green actually kills the bastards.’
‘Good idea.’
Pauline turned to the Chief of Staff. ‘Jacqueline, would you ask Sandip to arrange a press conference?’ Sandip Chakraborty was the Communications Director.
‘Sure thing.’ Jacqueline looked at her watch. It was mid-afternoon. ‘Sandip’s going to suggest tomorrow morning, for maximum TV coverage.’
‘Fine.’
Gus said: ‘Couple of details that weren’t in the briefing because we’ve only just heard. First, the raid was led by Colonel Susan Marcus.’
‘The operation was commanded by a woman?’
Gus grinned. ‘Don’t sound so incredulous.’
‘This is great. Now I can say: If brute force is what you need, get a woman to do what’s necessary.’
‘Talking about Colonel Marcus, but also about yourself.’
‘I love it.’
‘Your briefing says that the terrorists’ guns were a mixture of Chinese and North Korean.’
Milt said: ‘Why does Beijing arm these people? I thought the Chinese hated Muslims. Don’t they lock them up in re-education camps?’
Pauline said: ‘It’s not ideological. Both China and North Korea make a lot of money making and selling weapons.’
‘They shouldn’t sell them to ISGS.’
‘They’ll say they don’t. And there’s a thriving second-hand market.’ Pauline shrugged. ‘What are you going to do?’
Gus surprised her by supporting Milt. ‘The vice-president has a point, Madam President. Something else that wasn’t in the morning briefing is that, as well as guns, the terrorists had three North Korean Koksan M-1978 self-propelled 170mm field artillery pieces, based on a Chinese Type 59 tank chassis.’
‘Jesus. They didn’t buy those in a flea market in Timbuktu.’
‘No.’
Pauline was thoughtful. ‘I don’t think we can let this pass. Rifles are bad enough, but the world is full of them, and no one can control the market. But artillery is different.’
‘I agree,’ said Gus, ‘but I’m not sure what we do about it. American arms manufacturers have to have government approval for overseas sales – I get their applications across my desk every week. Other countries should do the same, but they don’t.’
‘Then maybe we can encourage them.’
‘Okay,’ said Gus. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘We could propose a resolution at the United Nations.’
Milt said scornfully: ‘The UN! That won’t do any good.’
‘It would put the spotlight on China. The debate on its own might constrain them.’
Milt raised his hands in surrender. ‘All right. We’d be using the UN to draw attention to what the Chinese are up to. That’s how I’ll spin it.’
Gus said: ‘There’s no point in proposing a Security Council resolution – the Chinese would just veto it – so I presume we’re talking about a General Assembly resolution.’
‘Yes,’ said Pauline, ‘but we won’t just propose it. We should drum up support all around the world. US ambassadors should lobby their host governments to back the resolution – but quietly, not to forewarn the Chinese of how serious we are.’
Milt said: ‘I still don’t think it will change Chinese behaviour.’
‘Then we can follow up with sanctions. But first things first. We need Chess in the loop.’ Chester Jackson was the Secretary of State. His office was a mile away in the State Department building. ‘Jacqueline, arrange a meeting and we’ll kick this around some more.’