–and, no, they couldn't allow another country to dictate political practices to them, because their lives all depended on that illusion. It was like smoke on a calm day, seemingly a pillar to hold up the heavens, but the slightest wind could blow it all away, and then the heavens would fall. On them all.
But Fang also saw that there was no way out. If they didn't change to make America happy, then their country would run out of wheat and oil, and probably other things as well, and they would risk massive social change in a groundswell from below. But if to prevent that, they allowed some internal changes, they would just be inviting the same thing on themselves.
Which would kill them the more surely?
Did it matter? Fang asked himself. Either way, they'd be just as dead. He wondered idly how it would come, the fists of a mob, or bullets before a wall, or a rope. No, it would be bullets. That was how his country executed people. Probably preferable to the beheading sword of old. What if the SWORDSMAN missed his aim, after all? It must have been a horrid mess. He only had to look around the table to see that everyone here had similar thoughts, at least those with enough wit. All men feared the unknown, but now they had to choose which unknown to fear, and the choice was yet another thing to dread.
"So, Qian, you say we risk running out of things because we can no longer get the money we need to purchase them?" Premier Xu asked.
"That is correct," the Finance Minister confirmed.
"In what other ways could we get money and oil?" Xu asked next.
"That is not within my purview, Chairman," Qian answered.
"Oil is its own currency," Zhang said. "And there is ample oil to our north. There is also gold, and many other things we need. Timber in vast quantities. And that which we need most of all-space, living space for our people."
Marshal Luo nodded. "We have discussed this before."
"What do you mean?" Fang asked.
"The Northern Resource Area, our Japanese friends once called it," Zhang reminded them all.
"That adventure ended in disaster," Fang observed at once. "We were fortunate not to have been damaged by it."
"But we were not damaged at all," Zhang replied lightly. "We were not even implicated. We can be sure of that, can we not, Luo?"
"This is so. The Russians have never strengthened their southern defenses. They even ignore our exercises that have raised our forces to a high state of readiness."
"Can we be sure of that?"
"Oh, yes," the Defense Minister told them all. "Tan?" he asked.
Tan Deshi was the chief of the Ministry of State Security, in charge of the PRC's foreign and domestic intelligence services. One of the younger men here at seventy, he was probably the healthiest of them all, a nonsmoker and a very light imbiber of alcohol. "When we first began our increased exercises, they watched with concern, but after the first two years, they lost interest. We have over a million of our citizens living in eastern Siberia-it's illegal, but the Russians do not make much issue of it. A goodly number of them report to me. We have good intelligence of the Russian defenses."
"And what is their state of readiness?" Tong Jie asked.
"Generally, quite poor. They have one full-strength division, one at two-thirds, and the rest are hardly better than cadre-strength. Their new Far East commander, a General-Colonel Bondarenko, despairs of making things better, our sources tell us."
"Wait," Fang objected. "Are we discussing the possibility of war with Russia here?"
"Yes," Zhang Han San replied. "We have done this before."
"That is true, but on the first such occasion, we would have had Japan as an ally, and America neutralized. On the second, we assumed that Russia would have been broken up beforehand along religious lines. Who are our allies in this case? How has Russia been crippled?"
"We've been a little unlucky," Tan answered. "The chief minister-well, the chief adviser to their President Grushavoy is still alive."
"What do you mean?" Fang asked.
"I mean that our attempt to kill him misfired." Tan explained on for two minutes. The reaction around the table was one of mild shock.
"Tan had my approval," Xu told them calmly.
Fang looked over at Zhang Han San. That's where the idea must have originated. His old friend might have hated capitalists, but that didn't stop him from acting like the worst pirate when it suited his goals. And he had Xu's ear, and Tan as his strong right arm. Fang thought he knew all of these men, but now he saw that his assumption had been in error. In each was something hidden, and sinister. They were far more ruthless than he, Fang saw.
"That is an act of war," Fang objected.
"Our operational security was excellent. Our Russian agent, one Klementi Suvorov, is a former KGB officer we recruited ages ago when he was stationed here in Beijing. He's performed various functions for us for a long time and he has superb contacts within both their intelligence and military communities-that is, those segments of it that are now in the new Russian underworld. In fact he's a common criminal- a lot of the old KGB people have turned into that-but it works for us. He likes money, and for enough of it, he will do anything. Unfortunately in this case, a pure happenstance prevented the elimination of this Golovko person," Tan concluded.
"And now?" Fang asked. Then he cautioned himself. He was asking too many questions, taking too much of a personal position here. Even in this room, even with these old comrades, it didn't pay to stand out too far.
"And now, that is for the Politburo to decide," Tan replied blandly. It had to be affected, but was well acted in any case.
Fang nodded and leaned back, keeping his peace for the moment.
"Luo?" Xu asked. "Is this feasible?"
The Marshal had to guard his words as well, not to appear too confident. You could get in trouble around this table by promising more than you could deliver, though Luo was in the unique position-somewhat shared by Interior Minister Tong-of having guns behind him and his position.
"Comrades, we have long examined the strategic issue here. When Russia was the Soviet Union, this operation was not possible. Their military was much larger and better supported, and they had numerous intercontinental and theater ballistic missiles tipped with thermonuclear warheads. Now they have none, thanks to their bilateral agreement with America. Today, the Russian military is a shadow of what it was only ten or twelve years ago. Fully half of their draftees do not even report when called for service-if that happened here, we all know what would happen to the miscreants, do we not? They squandered much of their remaining combat power with their Chechen religious minority-and so, you might say that Russia is already splitting up along religious lines. In practical terms, the task is straightforward, if not entirely easy. The real difficulty facing us is distance and space, not actual military opposition. It's many kilometers from our border to their new oil field on the Arctic Ocean-much fewer to the new gold field. The best news of all is that the Russian army is itself building the roads we need to make the approach. It reduces our problems by two thirds right there. Their air force is a joke. We should be able to cope with it-they sell us their best aircraft, after all, and deny them to their own flyers. To make our task easier, we would do well to disrupt their command and control, their political stability and so forth. Tan, can you accomplish that?"
"That depends on what, exactly, is the task," Tan Deshi replied.
"To eliminate Grushavoy, perhaps," Zhang speculated. "He is the only person of strength in Russia at the moment. Remove him, and their country would collapse politically."
"Comrades," Fang had to say, taking the risk, "what we discuss here is bold and daring, but also fraught with danger. What if we fail?"