At the conclusion of the dinner, the three men retired to the study for cigars and Cognac. Billingsly slowly rolled the cigar in his mouth while he sucked the flame from the wood stick match into the flat end, igniting the tobacco. He had come up through the ranks of the Navy primarily through carefully planned political acumen. He had spent the minimum required time at sea, but his real strength was working people. He was 58 and in line for his fourth star, which would make him a full admiral and eligible for a position with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. He was five-ten, broad in the shoulders and carried his success in a moderate pot belly. The hair on the top of his head had long since thinned to the point where he generally kept all of his hair cut short. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses and had blue eyes that sometimes appeared gray.
Billingsly looked at the two men he had recruited. They had been quietly working together for years, helping to shape and steer America’s relationship with other countries. Billingsly was anxious to hear about China.
“You told them, right?” Billingsly asked.
“I told them exactly what you said,” Ralph Cummings replied. “But you know they don’t believe in God, right?” Ralph was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and spent most of his time flying to countries all over the globe, arranging for the sale of U.S Bonds and Treasury Notes. Cummings was thin and tall, just over six-four. His medium gray suit always seemed to be wrinkled, as if he slept in the only suit he had. At 37, he was near the height of his career in the Treasury Department. His experience and connections made him more of a permanent fixture at Treasury and less subject to replacement with the political change of the Secretary of the Treasury that often took place with the periodic change of the presidency.
“So who’d you talk to in China?”
“Minister Hu Gao Chen of the Ministry of Commerce,” Cummings said.
“Well,” Billingsly said, taking another puff on his cigar and blowing it into a smoke ring above him, “maybe he believes now.”
“Come on,” Ralph said. “It’s a different world out there now. The global economy is changing. Hell, with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa collaborating to create a new banking system, it’s no surprise the Chinese don’t want to buy more U.S. debt. Yeah, we pay them good interest, but the Chinese are committed to buying up as much gold as they can. That message was loud and clear when I was there. And telling them the God of America would punish them for refusing to buy U.S. debt was a joke — a bad joke. But I told ‘em, James, I told ‘em.”
“Good,” Billingsly replied. “I think you will find them more cooperative on your next visit.”
“Look,” Ralph said, “I get the American Gung Ho thing, I really do. But you have to understand; the Chinese aren’t some dumb backward country anymore. They’re savvy, shrewd business people. They aren’t thinking about today, or tomorrow, or next year. They’re looking a hundred years down the road, and you know what they see? They see China where the U.S. is today, the single super power in the world. Do you know what the Chinese character for China is?”
“I can hardly wait,” Billingsly replied taking another puff of his cigar.
“It’s a rectangle with a line drawn down through the middle of it. It means the center. That’s how they see China, the center of the world, the only center and the only power that will prevail over everything. God, or no God, they intend to rule the world.”
Billingsly smiled. “They don’t know what real power is. You can’t become what you don’t understand. We wield the real power in this world. Just you remember that on your next trip to China. You’ll see. They’re smart enough to know who holds the power and who doesn’t. They’ll be happy to buy all the Bonds and Treasury Notes you offer them. Trust me, it’s a done deal.”
Billingsly looked over at Clive Bentonhouse, an Under Secretary in the Department of State. “So who’s not cooperating with you?” Bentonhouse was a career bureaucrat at State. He wore an immaculate dark-toned suit with a light gray shirt and a gold tie. He was 48, hair graying around the temples, well groomed, and at six feet tall with a medium build, he mixed well with diplomats from the Middle East. He spoke the local languages fluently, having grown up in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. His father was British and his mother American. The two had met during assignments in the Middle East and gradually arranged their placements to coincide with each other.
“The usual suspect,” Clive replied, “Iran has walked away from negotiations on limiting their nuclear ambitions, again.”
“When’s your next meeting with them?” Billingsly asked.
“Next week.”
“Send them a message,” Billingsly said. “Privately.” He checked the calendar on his phone and smiled. “Tell them that we will be sending them a warning on the thirteenth, at noon, their time.”
“What kind of warning?” Bentonhouse asked.
“Just leave it at that,” Billingsly replied. “They’ll figure it out.”
“Okay,” Bentonhouse replied, “the thirteenth at noon. You sure it’s okay to do things this way?”
“Which way is that?” Billingsly asked rhetorically. “Tell me, what did your Secretary of State know about foreign relations when he became your boss?”
“Nothing, really,” Bentonhouse replied.
“And how much experience do you have in foreign relations?”
“Twenty four years.”
“Look,” Billingsly said. “These political appointees will come and go. They can’t be trusted or depended on for anything approaching serious transactions. That requires our experience and collective wisdom. We serve a higher purpose than whatever political wind is blowing this week in Washington. We act in the interest of the world’s only superpower, to maintain and increase that superpower status and respect throughout the world. An elected politician can’t be expected to maintain that vision, always needing to be re-elected, that’s why we have to work beneath the surface, to continue the legacy that made us the one superpower of the world. That’s our purpose and our function. We make the politicians look good, and they never know the nitty-gritty details of how things are made to happen. That’s our job, and we do it well. Just remember, they may take the credit, but we are the ones who make things happen.”
CHAPTER 7
Guang Xi was awakened by the doctor and a team of nurses.
“Wha — What are you doing?” Guang Xi asked.
“Your bandages have to be changed,” the nurse stated.
For the first time Guang Xi realized that there were bandages on his face, hands and chest. “Why do I have all of these bandages?” he asked.
“You were severely burned,” the doctor replied.
“But there’s no pain,” Guang Xi said. “Burns cause pain, and I don’t have any pain in my face and hands.”
“Severe burns, like you have, kill the nerves, so there is no pain,” the doctor said.
“Severe burns?” Guang Xi said. “How severe?”
The doctor looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m sorry. You have lost the skin on your face, the back of your hands and on your fore arms and chest. The damage has been extensive.”
“But, how?” Guang Xi asked.
“We don’t really know,” the doctor replied. “The army doctor that brought you in said he thought the burns were from very high levels of electromagnetic radiation, but we’ve never seen anything like your burns before. We’re really just guessing at this point.”
Guang Xi looked down at his hands as the nurse removed the last bandage. His hands looked bright red, and somewhat shiny. “I can’t feel my hands,” Guang Xi said. “What have you done to me?”