In the countryside, where food was more plentiful, people organized themselves into self-defensive communes. There was a run on gun and ammunition shops. Farms were turned into self-sufficient stockades. As one sheriff in Wyoming said: `No one seems to be breaking the law much. But there's a lot more guns around than there were twelve hours ago.' Car dealers also reported the buying up of four-wheel-drive vehicles, trucks, and station wagons. `Some people are coming in with their money in sacks and buckets, taking a car, and driving off with it,' said a dealer in Kansas City. `They don't take no papers and don't wait for me to count it. They're paying all right. Sometimes too much. Nuclear war sure is good for business as long as it never happens.'
State governors and finally the President went on network television to appeal for calm, but their appearances only seemed to increase the panic.
The driver of the Lincoln Continental navigated through the back streets of the diplomatic district to get to the China World Hotel, where the Embassy had booked a suite on the Horizon Floor. Half-burnt effigies lay in the roads. The military newspaper Liberation Army Daily, which many of the students had been carrying, blew around in the streets. Posters had been pasted up on embassy walls proclaiming the glory of President Wang. They only saw three cars on the short journey; taxis with foreign fares. The bicycle lanes were empty. These roads had been commandeered by the Party. They were off limits to the Chinese people. No one would dare venture in. A quiet hung over this part of Beijing, a sanitized section of China where the battle against Imperialism had been played out for a few hours and then just as quickly abandoned. Soon the car was in the China World Trade Complex, lit up and busy. The doorman, rugged up in a red coat, showed Overhalt in.
Music from a chamber orchestra on his right wafted across the lobby. He heard the beat of a Filipino rock and roll band from a darkened bar on his left. The staff kept an elevator waiting for him. The carpet inside said: `Have a nice Thursday.' On the twenty-first floor Jamie Song's guards met him and took him straight to the suite at the end of the corridor. The Foreign Minister was already there and had mixed himself a vodka and tonic from the minibar.
`Reece, how good to see you,' he said in English.
`You too, Jamie,' replied Overhalt. Song told his aides to leave the room, but Overhalt spoke knowing that every word was being taped, translated at the Ministry of State Security technical surveillance post just behind the hotel, and fed straight to the Central Committee in Zhongnanhai. Overhalt believed all this would be an advantage. `After you called me on Wednesday,' he continued, `I spoke to the President. It was on his urging that I am here tonight. Your demonstrators, I fear, may have cost us time and raised the risk of a nuclear exchange.'
The Foreign Minister looked directly at Overhalt with a passive expression. `There is nothing the Party can do against the people who wish to express spontaneous anti-imperialistic feelings.'
Overhalt ignored the remark and swiftly brought the conversation round to Dragonstrike. `Anyway I am here now. This crisis, a crisis of your making, has got out of hand. So I will be quick and blunt. I told you earlier today we had missiles with firing solutions ready to go. I am now authorized by the President to tell you this: if China fires a missile we will launch a retaliatory strike. There are no ifs, no buts. We don't just mean Beijing. We mean Dalian, Qingdao, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu. Your cities will become radioactive rubble. Your infrastructure will be broken concrete and twisted metal. Your country will no longer work.'
Jamie Song interrupted: `Reece, hold back, hold back. Who's talking nuclear war?'
Overhalt was not sure whether his friend was genuinely unaware of how much the PLA had increased the stakes of the war. `You have primed your land-based ICBMs for launch. You have abandoned your no-first-strike policy. Yet your naval forces are being slaughtered. If we wish we will destroy what's left of your air force. If that happens the PLA will be publicly humiliated. The Party will crumble. Your dream of the economic superpower within the authoritarian state will never happen. Is that what you want, Jamie? For China to lose, like the Soviet Union? Is that your aim?'
`China will never again be humiliated into slavery,' said Song after a pause. `We are a very old civilization. You may bomb our whole country, but we will recover, even if it takes a thousand years. Yet if we turn just one suburb of one city into what you call radioactive rubble, what will happen to America?'
`We can handle it.'
`Can you? Look at the television. Look how America panics as soon as its own country is threatened like ours has been so many times.'
Overhalt didn't answer.
`Why don't you compare us to an African-American gang in Los Angeles?' said Song. `They're tearing around in their trucks shooting everything and getting shot back. Kids aged eleven, twelve, thirteen are being torn apart by automatic weapons. But they're still doing it. They expect to die. It's part of the gang life. If American citizens go out and destroy themselves, why is it so impossible for you to comprehend that China won't?'
`This whole conversation is putting a bitter taste in my mouth, Jamie,' said Overhalt. `We've put a lot of time, money, and loyalty into your country, believing that you really did want to modernize and reform. But I'll tell you this, and make no mistake, America and Boeing would survive. India is already giving you guys a run for your money; Latin America is growing rapidly. Russia and Eastern Europe are queuing up for our technology and building skills. The days are gone when developing countries cry victim and get away with it. There are big markets out there that are much easier to get into than here. There are democratic leaders who have real plans to let their countries develop. China isn't special any more, and if you don't have us you won't have the European Union either. If Boeing goes, Airbus goes. You throw out Ford and Chrysler, Citroe¨n and Mercedes pack their bags as well. You ban AT&T and Motorola, you won't get Nokia and Siemens. We'll all cut our losses and go. The people you are threatening with nuclear attack are the best builders of infrastructure in the world.'
At this stage, Jamie Song stood up and walked to the window. `I've been authorized to tell you that our Xia nuclear missile submarine is in the Pacific with the new JL2 intercontinental ballistic missile. From where it is now, it can hit Washington.'
`We sank it,' snapped Overhalt. `You sank the older Xia carrying the JL1. The commander of the Xia 407 is awaiting orders to launch. I have to return to Zhongnanhai and report our meeting. Why don't you talk to President Bradlay on the secure line from the Embassy, and we can meet back here in say two hours? You can tell Bradlay we won't launch until after our next meeting. You have my word on that.'