It was Kai who broke the silence. ‘And so, comrades,’ he said, ‘we find ourselves at war against Japan.’
DEFCON 1
NUCLEAR WAR IS IMMINENT OR HAS BEGUN.
CHAPTER 40
Pauline was not sleeping when Gus called. It was unusual for her to lie awake at night. No previous crisis had stopped her falling asleep. When the phone rang she did not need to look at the bedside clock, for she already knew the time: 12.30 a.m.
She picked up and Gus said: ‘The Chinese bombed the Senkaku Islands. Killed a bunch of Japanese sailors.’
‘Fuck,’ she said.
‘The key people are in the Situation Room.’
‘I’ll get dressed.’
‘I’ll walk you there. I’m in the Residence, on your floor, in the kitchen by the elevator.’
‘Okay.’ She hung up and got out of bed. It was almost a relief to be doing something instead of lying there thinking. She would sleep later.
She put on a jeans jacket over a dark-blue T-shirt and brushed her hair. She walked the length of the Center Hall, entered the kitchen area, and found Gus where he had said he would be, waiting by the elevator. They got in and he pressed the button for the basement.
Pauline suddenly felt discouraged and tearful. She said: ‘All I do is try to make the world a safer place, but it just gets worse!’
There was no security camera in the elevator. He put his arms around her, and she laid her cheek against his shoulder. They stayed like that until the elevator came to a stop, then they separated before the doors opened. A Secret Service agent was waiting outside.
Pauline’s moment of discouragement passed quickly. When they reached the Situation Room she was her normal self. She took her seat, looked around, and said: ‘Chess. Where are we?’
‘Up against the wall, Madam President. Our defence treaty with Japan is a cornerstone of stability in East Asia. We’re obliged to defend Japan against attack, and two recent presidents have publicly confirmed that this commitment includes the Senkaku Islands. If we don’t retaliate it makes our treaty with Japan meaningless. A lot hangs on what we do now.’
Doesn’t it always, she thought.
Bill Schneider, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said: ‘If I may, Madam President?’
‘Go ahead, Bill.’
‘We need to make a serious dent in their ability to attack Japan. If we look at the east coast of China, that’s to say the part nearest to Japan, their main naval bases are Qingdao and Ningbo. I suggest heavy missile assaults on each one, carefully targeted to minimize civilian casualties.’
Chess was already shaking his head in disagreement.
Pauline said: ‘That would be a major escalation.’
‘It’s what we did to the Pyongyang regime – we destroyed their ability to attack us.’
‘They deserved it. They’d used chemical weapons. The world was on our side because of that. This isn’t the same.’
‘I see it as proportionate, Madam President.’
‘All the same, let’s look for a less provocative option.’
Chess said: ‘We could protect the Senkaku Islands with a ring of steel: destroyers, submarines and jet fighters.’
‘Indefinitely?’
‘The protection could be scaled down later, when the threat diminishes.’
The Secretary of Defense, Luis Rivera, said: ‘The Chinese made a film of the bombing, Madam President. They released it to the world – they’re proud of what they’ve done.’
‘Okay, let’s take a look.’
The film came up on a wall screen. There was a long shot of a tiny island, a closer shot of some Japanese sailors planting a flag, and then a Chinese jet taking off from an aircraft carrier. Interspersed with further shots of the jet were close-ups of a young sailor making a rude finger-pointing gesture and another of his comrades laughing.
Luis said: ‘That’s the East Asian version of flipping the bird, Madam President.’
‘I guessed.’ The gesture would have infuriated the Chinese leadership, Pauline thought. Those men were nothing if not sensitive. She recalled the preparations for a meeting with President Chen at a G20 summit: his aides had demanded changes to a dozen minor details that they said would slight him, from the height of the chairs to the choice of fruit in the bowl on the side table.
In the film, the soldiers became alert and took up defensive positions, then the island seemed to explode. As the debris settled, a shot apparently taken from a drone zoomed in on the corpse of a young sailor lying on the sand, and a voice-over in Mandarin with English subtitles said: ‘Foreign armies that violate Chinese territory will all suffer a similar fate.’