“Salvador, Salvador, you don’t really believe all that was an act of God, do you?” Al-Hassani demanded to know. “You’re not going to tell me you think a bunch of superstitious prophecies came true, are you? Come, come; tell me you are smarter than that.”
“I don’t know what happened out there, and neither do you,” Lucente said carefully, weighing every word. “And frankly, I don’t care. I know only one thing: nobody in his right mind is going to try to invade Israel again anytime soon. I certainly wouldn’t.”
Tariq was disgusted. “So the Jews just get what they want; is that it?”
“No,” Lucente said, more forcefully than Al-Hassani had expected. “But we need to be wise, gentlemen. We need to be shrewd.”
“Meaning what?” Tariq demanded.
“Meaning we need to bide our time, take things one step at a time,” Lucente said. “Don’t forget, the world desperately needs Israel’s oil every bit as much as it needs yours. And the world needs oil prices to stabilize and start coming down, not continue spiking ever upward. That means the world wants peace in the Middle East, not another war. Not yet. Not now. So don’t fool yourselves, my friends. You think a war with Israel would help you, and maybe it would help the USE in the short run. You are raking in hundreds of billions of petrodollars, and this city you’ve built is quickly becoming the world’s commercial nerve center. But for the rest of us, another war in this region would be a disaster. The U.S. economy is finished. Wall Street has been obliterated. Most of the world’s major banks based in Manhattan have been wiped out as well. The world is about to plunge into a global depression. You and I have the power to stabilize things and to consolidate power in the process. But we must cooperate with the Israelis, not confront them.”
“We have absolutely no intention of cooperating with the Jews,” Tariq insisted. “We’re trying to build a new nation, and believe me, Salvador, nobody wants me to make nice with the Zionists. We’ve been humiliated by them for too long. Now they build a Temple on the site that has been holy ground to us for the ages, and no one dares lift a finger to stop them, not even you?”
“Mustafa, Khalid, please,” Lucente countered, “you’re not listening to me. We don’t have a choice. Not yet, anyway. Look, you know I am with you both in spirit. Between you and me, I don’t like the Jews any more than you do. Mark my words, as soon as I can do something about them, I will. On that you have my word. But if we’re going to do it right, it’s going to take time.”
“How much time?” Tariq pressed. “Our people cannot wait forever.”
“They won’t have to,” Lucente assured him. “But first we need to win the Israelis’ confidence. We need them to lower their guard. Look at how weak they are. Their political leaders are feckless. Their Zionist ideology is exhausted. Their military leaders are corrupt. Their diplomatic leaders are so desperate to be loved, to be accepted by the rest of the world, they’re willing to give away almost anything. But we must not make the ridiculous mistakes of the past. We must not threaten Israel with war. We must invite them to make peace. We must not turn our backs to them. We must offer them an open hand. We must not boycott them. We must take you and your top leadership there to Jerusalem. We must shock them. We must offer them a comprehensive peace treaty, the likes of which the world has never seen before. We must lure them into feeling safe and secure. We must lull them into trusting us, into trusting me, and all the while consolidate our power and build a military coalition far greater than what the Russians and the Iranians ever had. And then, when all this has been accomplished, when the time is right, you and I will make our move. We will seize Jerusalem. We will raze the Temple. Perhaps we will even build the new U.N. headquarters there, right on the Temple Mount. But not now. We’re not ready… yet.”
34
“Mr. President, may I ask you a question?”
It was Homeland Security Secretary Lee James.
The president nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Mr. President, on a scale from one to ten, with ten being absolute certitude that China is behind these attacks, where would you say you are at the moment?”
Oaks pondered that for a few moments. “I’m not sure yeT — six or seven. Why do you ask?”
“Well, sir,” James continued, “I’m just thinking — what would possibly be Zhao’s intent? I mean, he has to know that if we find proof it’s them, we’ll launch a massive counterattack and wipe them off the face of the planet. But then they’d retaliate in kind before our missiles landed and launch all of their nuclear missiles at us, wouldn’t they?”
“Probably,” the president said. “So what’s your point?”
“My point, Mr. President, is, do we really believe Zhao and his cronies are suicidal? Power hungry, yes. Tyrannical, absolutely. But are they suicidal?”
“What if they didn’t see this sort of attack as suicidal?” the president asked. “What if they were counting on us being completely decapitated and thus unable — or unwilling — to launch a full retaliation?”
“You really think they’d try that, completely unprovoked?” James responded.
“Look,” the president said, “China desperately wants to be a superpower, don’t they?”
Secretaries James and Trainor and General Briggs all agreed.
“So what if they concluded this was their moment?” Oaks asked. “Russia’s gone. If we were gone too, they’d be the only ones left standing, right?”
“Of course,” Trainor said. “But, Mr. President, I find myself leaning in Lee’s direction here. I mean, the Chinese have had a very clearly stated no-first-strike policy since they did their first nuclear test back in ’64. It just doesn’t seem plausible to me that they suddenly changed their minds today.”
“Come on, Burt,” the president shot back. “You know as well as I do that several high-ranking Chinese generals through the years have threatened the use of nukes over the Taiwan conflict, right?”
Unfortunately, the president was correct on that. Back in July of 2005, for example, Major General Zhu Chenghu, the head of China’s National Defense University, was discussing the possibility of an armed conflict with Taiwan and warned, “If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided weapons on to the target zone on Chinese territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons. We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”
China’s first-strike military capabilities had increased significantly since 2005. What’s more, even tougher threats had been voiced by other high-ranking Chinese military officials in recent months. One of the most strident anti-American voices was now China’s defense minister, and a close personal friend of Premier Zhao.
Still, was it really possible that China’s first-strike policy had changed without anyone in the U.S. government realizing it? Then again, why would Beijing announce such a change in policy, if one had, in fact, occurred?
The rush was fading.