All done being diplomatic, Cooke thought. She decided that she preferred Stuart that way.
“Of course they remain ours,” Tian said, refusing to take Stuart’s bait. “We have chosen to demonstrate our resolve and our capabilities on a limited scale. Kinmen is hardly worth our notice or yours. It is our sincere hope that by our seizing this minor spit of land, President Liang will have to face the reality of his situation and choose to back down. But our strategy of restraint can only work if the United States does not offer Liang false hope by intervening. Any show of support from you, Mr. President, could only prolong the conflict and cause unnecessary suffering.”
It was a neat trap. Do nothing and China wins. Act aggressively and get painted as a scapegoat, Cooke thought. She guessed that Stuart wanted more time to think, and he wasn’t going to get it sparring with a Chinese president who’d had days to practice this conversation. Doubtless, there was nothing Stuart could say for which Tian didn’t already have an answer… nothing diplomatic, anyway.
Stuart proved her right. “President Tian, thank you for taking my call,” he said abruptly. “I do hope that this can be resolved swiftly and without unnecessary loss of life, or any interruption in trade between our two countries.”
“Of course. We are committed to stability and the preservation of our trade relationship with the United States. Your economic well-being is in our interest, as you know, as ours is in yours. We have invested in so many of your government securities and we do not wish to see them devalued,” Tian replied. “Your servant, sir.”
And the line went dead.
Stuart fell back into his chair and clutched the armrests with a frustrated grip. “We just got caught with our pants down and our laundry still hanging on the line.”
“You didn’t exactly strip the paint off the walls,” the secretary of defense observed. General Lance Showalter (USMC, retired) stood a head taller than Cooke, half again as wide at the shoulders. The observation was kinder than the one running through Cooke’s mind, but generals had to be diplomats as much as State department officers.
“Tian was right,” Stuart said. “We don’t have any evidence that the PLA took out the Ma Kong. We know they did it, but we can’t prove it, and without that my hands are tied.” He looked at his CIA director. “Any information on that?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Cooke replied. “Nothing on radar and this definitely wasn’t a Chinese sapper team. Security at the Tso Ying Naval Base is too good to let that happen. Navy Intelligence thinks that a Chinese submarine must’ve slipped through the Taiwanese sonar nets and put a torpedo into her.”
“That would be one quiet submarine,” Showalter said.
“Agreed,” Cooke said. “Not to mention it begs the question why they would only take out the Ma Kong. There were a half-dozen other vessels in port, including the Kee Lung, which is another Kidd-class destroyer. The Kidds are a cornerstone in Taiwan’s air defense network, so if this attack was the precursor to an invasion, the Chinese would take both ships out if they could. If the PLA Navy could get a submarine that close, they could’ve turned this into Taiwan’s Pearl Harbor. So why take out one ship and not the others?”
“So is this the prelude to invasion or not?” Stuart asked.
“We don’t know,” Cooke admitted. It hurt to say it.
“Figure it out,” Stuart ordered. “Until we do and can prove it, I don’t have room to move. Kinmen really is a piddling little spit of land.” He slapped the couch arm with his open hand and stared out the windows in thought. “A lot of the public wouldn’t be happy about going to war with China over Taiwan itself, much less over an island you can’t see on most of the world’s maps.” The president exhaled and turned back toward his guests.
“We’re not done yet, Harry,” Showalter consoled him. The SecDef was one of the few who could show such familiarity with Stuart in this office.
“No, but I think we’re going to be playing for a draw on this one. At least the Taiwanese legislature is screaming impeachment. Liang’s probably hiding under his desk,” Stuart said. “We can’t afford any more mistakes. The talk shows are already going to have a field day with this and I’m sure the Post headline tomorrow morning is going to be all kinds of calm and restrained. And I’m about to order my secretary to tell anyone calling from the Hill that I’m in an undisclosed location. I might have to send you out to do the rounds,” he told Showalter.
“I’d rather be shot.”
“I’d rather shoot you than go on television myself to talk about this.”
“And you call yourself a politician,” Showalter scoffed.
“I am a tired politician. Seven years in this office feels like seventy outside. There’s a reason all presidents go gray in here,” Stuart said, and followed the admission with a sigh. “What’s the next move?”
Showalter reached over the side of the couch to retrieve a map case and unrolled it onto the coffee table. As a soldier, he’d carried the case through two wars. As a civilian, he only pulled it out when he was ready to recommend that death and destruction become the official policies of the United States Government. Underneath the flimsy plastic cover was a large satellite photograph of the Taiwan Strait with map markings overlaid. Showalter pulled out a grease pencil and circled a small island. “Here’s Kinmen. Six townships, population of seventy-five thousand. It’s so close to the coast that for the PLA, putting troops on it was more like a river crossing than an amphibious attack. The Potomac is wider in places. The Taiwanese excavated some serious bunker and tunnel complexes in response to all the shelling during the Cold War, so the PLA would take high casualties clearing them out. Now that most of the shooting is over, they don’t have to. They just have to keep the troops penned inside, and there won’t be reinforcements coming from Taipei. Liang has to hold them back to defend against a larger possible incursion into the Strait.”
“Can we liberate the island?” Stuart asked.
Showalter shook his head. “Horatio Nelson said ‘a ship’s a fool to fight a fort’ and he was right. We’d have a tough time protecting battle groups in China’s littoral waters, and sustaining air superiority that close to the mainland would be tougher. PLA supply lines would only be a few miles long, while ours would stretch more than a few thousand. Any planes we sent over Kinmen would be within range of SAMs on the mainland, so we’d have to use the B-2s to attack sites on Chinese soil. You order that and we’ll have more to worry about than just liberating Kinmen.”
“So Kinmen is a done deal,” Stuart said.
“The PRC owns it now,” Showalter said, nodding his head. “Taiwan will only get it back if Tian is feeling generous.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t going to go further,” Stuart said. “We’re going to make sure of that.”
“‘This will not stand?’” Showalter offered.
“I may not be able to run the PLA off of Kinmen, but it’s the last island I’m going to let them take without a fight,” Stuart told him. He turned back to Cooke. “So what’s Tian’s next move? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”
She reached into a lockbag and pulled out a three-page paper stapled at the corner. “One of our Red Cell analysts drafted this a few years ago. It’s a model plan for how the PLA could take Taiwan with limited resources. Most analysts believe that China would want the invasion to go quickly to limit our ability to respond or for anyone to intervene diplomatically. This,” she said, passing the Red Cell paper to the president and a second copy to Showalter, “posits a strategy where they hit fast, stop fast, and supposedly give Liang time to think things over. But what they’re really doing is giving the PLA time to regroup and prepare for the next stage while confusing the diplomats as to China’s real intention.”