But Lucente had a point, Al-Hassani realized: first things first. Their top priority had to be consolidating global political, economic, and military power into their own hands and making sure they had strong but loyal allies all around them. That would take some time. But once accomplished, they could exterminate the Jews and seize the Holy Land and the Holy City, and who would dare stop them?
Al-Hassani led Lucente into his sumptuous presidential dining hall for a lavish afternoon banquet that had been planned by Tariq.
“So, my friend, where would you propose we start?” the Iraqi leader asked as they took their seats on the dais.
“China,” Lucente whispered back without hesitation.
Al-Hassani was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we absolutely cannoT — under any conditions — let the U.S. declare war on the PRC,” Lucente insisted. “We need China too badly. Her consumers, her military, her influence in Asia — we need them all.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Al-Hassani said. “My sources tell me the U.S. is increasingly convinced Beijing is to blame.”
“Do you think they are?” Lucente asked.
“No, I don’t, actually,” the Iraqi replied.
“Neither do I,” the secretary-general agreed. “As you know, I was just in Beijing. As far as I could tell, they were completely caught off guard by this. But it was also clear that they are deeply worried the Americans are going to single them out.”
“Do you still think I’m responsible?”
Lucente smiled. “I take you at your word, Mustafa.”
“Good,” Al-Hassani said. “Then who’s your lead suspect?”
The two men looked out at the room from their places of honor at the head table as hundreds of USE legislators, Cabinet officials, and senior military commanders filed into the hall and found their assigned seats.
“I don’t know,” Lucente conceded, still talking only barely above a whisper to keep from being overheard. “And that’s the problem. I’m afraid if the Americans don’t get some solid proof — and fasT — that someone besides the Chinese did this, they’re going to feel they have no choice but to do the unthinkable.”
“How far do you think the Americans will go?”
“All the way,” Lucente said.
Al-Hassani was startled. “A full-scale retaliatory strike?”
Lucente nodded.
“ICBMs?”
Lucente nodded again.
“With nuclear warheads?” Al-Hassani asked.
“Of course,” Lucente said without hesitation. “Don’t forget, Mustafa — Bill Oaks was the hawk-in-chief in the MacPherson administration, far more so than Marsha Kirkpatrick or Burt Trainor or even President MacPherson himself. Oaks has been warning about the Chinese threat for years. Indeed, if you read his speeches over the past twenty years or so, you’ll find he’s been far more worried about the Chinese than the Russians.”
“Look how wrong he was about that one,” Al-Hassani said.
“That’s not how he sees it,” Lucente countered.
“What do you mean?”
“I guarantee you if Bill Oaks were sitting with us right here, right now, he’d be telling us that as dangerous as the Russians were, they never attacked the U.S. with nuclear weapons. He’d also be telling us that his fears about the Chinese were spot-on. And I suspect he’d be telling us it was time to destroy them once and for all.”
“Sounds like you’ve had that conversation with him already,” Al-Hassani said.
“Not today, if that’s what you mean,” Lucente demurred. “But I’ve spent enough time with him to know how he thinks.”
“And you really think he’ll go all the way.”
“I absolutely do,” Lucente replied. “Unless we give him another suspect.”
42
“The U.S. is going to attack somebody.”
Al-Hassani leaned forward in his chair and listened as Lucente continued.
“You can count on it. Oaks will feel it is his moral and constitutional obligation to strike back fast and hard. It’s not a matter of if, but when, and whom. And if we don’t want it to be China — and I’m sure you’ll agree, Mustafa, that it’s certainly not in our interests for the Americans to turn Beijing into a parking loT — then we’ve got to give the Americans another target, a convincing target, and quickly.”
The speaker of the parliament came over to the head table, greeted Al-Hassani and the secretary-general with a traditional Arab kiss on both cheeks, and expressed his condolences to Lucente for the tragic loss of U.N. life and property in Manhattan. Then, with Lucente’s permission, the speaker called everyone to order and asked for a moment of silence “to honor all the innocent souls who have perished in today’s unspeakable events in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Seattle” and to ask “the unseen hand of light that guides us all to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice swiftly and without mercy.”
Each man bowed his head and closed his eyes, and the room grew still and quiet. Then the speaker introduced President Al-Hassani, who, in turn, would introduce Lucente. As these were about to be the secretary-general’s first public remarks since the attacks, dozens of television cameras and still photographers were on hand to capture the scene, and several international networks — including CNN, Sky News, and the BBC — were carrying the event live.
It took all of Al-Hassani’s years of discipline and willpower, much of it forged in the gulag during the reign of Saddam Hussein, to keep from smiling as he introduced Lucente. He could hear himself saying things to the august assembly like “this is a great day of sadness” and “we join the world in mourning for the American people.”
But the truth was, Al-Hassani felt no sadness. He had not mourned, nor did he plan to. The American people, in his view, had gotten what they deserved. Yes, they had “liberated” his country, but so had they occupied it. So had they desecrated it. So had they looted its people and its natural resources.
What irony, he mused, as his lips uttered one banality after another about the suffering of a “wise and great people to whom the world owes a deep debt of gratitude.” American Christians loved to quote the book of Revelation about the coming destruction of Babylon, about the merchants of the earth “crying out as they saw the smoke of her burning.” Yet who was burning now?
Ever since he had taken office and started rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon into the wealthiest and most powerful city in the modern age, Al-Hassani had heard pompous prophecy gurus go on their glitzy TV programs and raise millions of dollars from hapless morons in the audience by saying idiotic things like “Babylon, the great city, will be thrown down with violence and will not be found any longer” and “Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more — cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones…. In one hour such great wealth has been laid waste!” and “In one day, her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong.”
Yet who was being judged today — Babylon or Washington? Baghdad or New York? Fallujah or Los Angeles? Mosul or Seattle?
He could not speak such things in public, of course. Only to Tariq. The last thing he could afford was to redirect the wrath of the American governmenT — or what was left of iT — from the People’s Republic of China to the United States of Eurasia. Moreover, there were many world leaders who did feel a pang of sympathy for the Americans. If he and Lucente were to win them over, they would have to play upon such sympathies, not offend them. But just because he could not say such things did not mean he could not feel them. And feel them he did, with an intensity that was building by the hour.