She noticed that most of the military officers were eating standing up, talking earnestly with one another while most of the civilians were eating at the table, reading through their papers. Interesting, why is that, she wondered? She sat with her food and did what she did best: analyzed. Hmmm. Well, most of the military personnel work at the Pentagon and many probably know each other. Talking together would make sense. Good networking. Common experiences, etc. Most of the civilians are probably from other agencies. Ye was from Commerce. The good doctor, from State with others, perhaps. No doubt there was the guy from Energy, a nuclear weapons analyst probably. She saw a slightly familiar face in a suit across the table. The nametag on the table in front of the man was knocked down. CIA? She spoke up, “Donna Klein, CIA.”
The forty-something man looked up. He was between mouthfuls. “O’Donnell, CIA.” He returned to his sandwich. But just as he tucked his head down to take a large bite of pastrami, Donna could see his blue eyes smile at her from under his bushy red eyebrows.
“Does everyone from the CIA think they’re super-spies or something? What are you doing here? Hal, is it?”
Hal O’Donnell took a large burning, fizzing drag of his Seven Up to down the huge bite of meat and bread he swallowed, “Why yes, Ms. Klein, how perceptive of you. I’m flattered you remembered my name. Do you remember what I do?” At the last comment he twice wriggled his eyebrows, making them look for all in the world like small rodents.
For some reason, the memory of Hal’s specialty popped into Donna’s head. Then she knew why; Hal taught a two-hour course to a group of freshmen analysts on the psychology of leaders. “You’re a psychologist,” she said firmly.
“Bingo, you win the cigar!” Hal exclaimed, revealing tobacco and coffee stained teeth. “I’m here to make sure all you warmongers don’t choose a course of action that results in certain death for those who made the decision.”
“I see,” Donna retorted, “How do you figure in the Asian concept of face and dishonor?”
Hal looked mockingly serious, “Veeery carefully.” His face then changed again to semi-serious, “Just think of me as the devil’s advocate or the reality check — if you choose an everyone-dies, Armageddon scenario, it won’t be easy with me around nagging you!”
Donna chuckled. “Nice to meet you again. Behave yourself or I’ll have you executed so I can harvest your organs to finance my next junket to Paris!”
“Yes, Comrade Premier,” Hal said impishly.
Colonel Lake walked up behind Hal just as he finished. “Comrade Premier, do you want me to fix this for you?” He said menacingly.
“No comrade people’s general, you may let him keep his kidneys for another day,” Donna turned serious in a heartbeat, “But Colonel Lake, I am very interested to hear more about your two previous simulations. Please take a seat and fill me in. By the way,” she added as an afterthought, “Isn’t it uncomfortable to eat standing up?”
The colonel grinned. His jaw was very square and she noticed that his nose was a bit askew. You couldn’t tell from the profile but it was obvious this man had his nose broken at least once. “I guess you get used to eating standing up when all you have to sit on is sharp, hot rocks with scorpions lurking underneath. It’s an Army thing.” He walked around the end of the table and took Cliff Dowling’s empty chair — Cliff had vanished as soon as lunch arrived. “What do you do for the Company?”
Donna thought briefly of using the old standby: if I told you I’d have to kill you — but thought better of it. It was time to get serious. “I work the China section as a political intelligence analyst in the Office of Asian Pacific and Latin American Affairs with the Directorate of Intelligence. And you?”
The colonel looked sadly contemplative, “I work for the Office of Secretary of Defense, Plans and Operations. I’m really a tanker who must have offended some god of war somewhere who decided to punish me by ending my career in the dreaded five sided building.”
“So tell me about your last two failed attempts at attacking Taiwan.”
“It was simple, really. I mobilized my forces. Crossed the straits. And was unceremoniously sunk by the U.S. fleet. The few troops that made it across dry were rounded up by day two. I was humiliated.” The Colonel gave a look of mock hurt.
“I see. How did it happen that the U.S. fleet was there in force, did the PLA employ strategic deception?”
The Colonel nodded appreciatively, then said with quiet strength, “The game wasn’t that sophisticated. It was mainly seen as a force-on-force exercise to see if the U.S. Navy could still control the Taiwan Strait, protect Taiwan, and do so with acceptable casualties.”
“And?”
“And they did so quite well. On the second scenario one of my Russian-built Kilo class attack subs actually got into position to torpedo a carrier but they declared EndEx before the skipper could pull the trigger.”
“So they ended the exercise on you before you could exact some revenge? It sounds like the simulation was more tactical than this one.”
“Yes. It was run in double real time. We squeezed in two days for every one day and ran it for five days. Didn’t sleep much but I had a blast. Best time I’ve had, uh, since I was exiled to the Pentagon.” (the Colonel was going to say, “Best time I’ve had with my clothes on since…” but his sexual harassment training kicked in and he squelched it.)
“Did you use NBC?” Donna used the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical.
“Hell no, we weren’t allowed to incorporate it into our game.” Colonel Lake frowned, “I heard that the folks that wrote the scenario were overruled by some Sched Cs in the SECDEF’s office. The little weasels thought the butchers of Tiananmen wouldn’t slime their capitalist brothers across the straits — or that it wasn’t politically correct to think so, anyway.”
Donna picked up the reference to “Sched C”, it stood for Schedule C employee, an employee exempted from civil service job protections by dint of the fact they were political appointees who worked in the government at the will of the President. They weren’t high enough up the food chain to be confirmed by the Senate, but they formed the political backbone of any administration. Donna remembered that each administration could appoint about 1,100 Schedule Cs. They had a few at the CIA, not too many though — most political hacks from this administration couldn’t get a CIA clearance. The reference to “slime” meant getting hit with chemical agents as she recalled from a CIA military analyst who had previously served in the Army before getting out and letting the GI Bill pay for his masters degree. “How would you do things differently Colonel?”
“I’d remove America from the way, either by deception or by intimidation. Then I’d use every asset at my disposal to make the invasion as swift and violent as possible. The quicker I could crush the opposition, the less chance for things to go wrong. Of course, there’s one small problem…”
“What’s that Colonel?”
“I’ll need about $10 billion and a few years to prepare.”
“Oh?”
“The Peoples’ Liberation Army-Navy only has enough landing craft to lift about 20,000 combat troops into battle. Right now I could only take Quemoy or Matsu.”