War of Eagles by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin Page A
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure
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contemplated the complexities of gestures and appearances as his state car pulled away from the government building at No. 2, Chaoyangmen Nandajie, Chaoyang District, in Beijing. His own life was full of such careful maneuvers. For example, the prime minister had two cars. One was a Chinese-made Lingyang, the Antelope, and the other a more comfortable Volkswagen Polo manufactured at the German-run plant in Shanghai. He rode the Antelope in Beijing, the Polo in the less populated countryside.
Always a balance for appearances, he thought. Please the nationalists while holding something out for potential foreign investors.
Except for the driver, the prime minister was the only passenger in the chauffer-driven car. Typically, an aide and a secretary rode home with the sixty-six-year-old native of the remote Xizang Zizhiqu province near Nepal. But the prime minister felt like being alone tonight. He wanted to reflect on the disturbing events of the day.
He looked out the window as the car drove past the lighted monuments and palaces surrounding Tian’anmen Square. It was a hot and rainy night. Large drops ran down the window. They smeared the lights of the city—fittingly, on a day when nothing was clear. The driver guided the small sedan through narrow side streets. At this hour, in this weather, the lanes were sparsely populated with the carts and bicycles that filled them during the day. The vehicle moved quickly toward Le Kwan Po’s nearby Beijing residence on the top floor of the exclusive Cheng Yuan Towers apartment complex. The prime minister had another official home, a weekend retreat in the Beijing suburbs at the foot of Shou’an Mountain near Xiangshan Park. During the week the prime minister preferred to remain in the city. That allowed him to work as late as possible. It also permitted him to stay synchronized with the pulse of Beijing.
It enabled him to watch those who wanted his job or sought to remove him as a thoughtful, mediating influence.
The prime minister enjoyed the tranquillity of the countryside, yet that scenic, agrarian world was China’s past. The future was in the increasingly cosmopolitan capital and cities like Shanghai, with their proliferation of students and businessmen—many of them from rich Taiwan, the supposed enemy. That was another act for an acrobat greater than any the Beijing Opera had yet produced: solving the Taiwan question. Chinese businesses were growing enormously due to investments coming across the strait. The Chinese military was being held to the budgetary levels of previous years as the threat from both Taipei and Russia was diminished. That did not make high-ranking career officers happy. Fewer commands meant fewer promotions. It caused grumbling up and down the ranks.
Though Le Kwan Po knew what the empress experienced a century ago, he did not have her wisdom. He had not fought wars and rivals, dealt with prejudice against his gender and heritage, nor had to guard against or formulate regicidal plots. He was simply a conservative career politician, the son of a schoolteacher mother. His father had been a village magistrate at twenty-one and had risen regularly to positions in town, county, municipality, province, and finally the central government. He was not the prime minister solely because of his experience in government. He was here because, unlike his colleagues, he had not made any serious missteps. His background was spotted and propped with careful alliances and cautious agendas.
Even more important than the ruthless will of the dowager empress, however, the prime minister did not have her unilateral authority to act. In addition to the president and vice president above him, there was a cabinet with very powerful and ambitious ministers and the National People’s Congress with its proliferation of special interests, both local and personal.
The current struggle between Chou Shin, head of the secretive 8341 Unit of the Central Security Regiment, and
Always a balance for appearances, he thought. Please the nationalists while holding something out for potential foreign investors.
Except for the driver, the prime minister was the only passenger in the chauffer-driven car. Typically, an aide and a secretary rode home with the sixty-six-year-old native of the remote Xizang Zizhiqu province near Nepal. But the prime minister felt like being alone tonight. He wanted to reflect on the disturbing events of the day.
He looked out the window as the car drove past the lighted monuments and palaces surrounding Tian’anmen Square. It was a hot and rainy night. Large drops ran down the window. They smeared the lights of the city—fittingly, on a day when nothing was clear. The driver guided the small sedan through narrow side streets. At this hour, in this weather, the lanes were sparsely populated with the carts and bicycles that filled them during the day. The vehicle moved quickly toward Le Kwan Po’s nearby Beijing residence on the top floor of the exclusive Cheng Yuan Towers apartment complex. The prime minister had another official home, a weekend retreat in the Beijing suburbs at the foot of Shou’an Mountain near Xiangshan Park. During the week the prime minister preferred to remain in the city. That allowed him to work as late as possible. It also permitted him to stay synchronized with the pulse of Beijing.
It enabled him to watch those who wanted his job or sought to remove him as a thoughtful, mediating influence.
The prime minister enjoyed the tranquillity of the countryside, yet that scenic, agrarian world was China’s past. The future was in the increasingly cosmopolitan capital and cities like Shanghai, with their proliferation of students and businessmen—many of them from rich Taiwan, the supposed enemy. That was another act for an acrobat greater than any the Beijing Opera had yet produced: solving the Taiwan question. Chinese businesses were growing enormously due to investments coming across the strait. The Chinese military was being held to the budgetary levels of previous years as the threat from both Taipei and Russia was diminished. That did not make high-ranking career officers happy. Fewer commands meant fewer promotions. It caused grumbling up and down the ranks.
Though Le Kwan Po knew what the empress experienced a century ago, he did not have her wisdom. He had not fought wars and rivals, dealt with prejudice against his gender and heritage, nor had to guard against or formulate regicidal plots. He was simply a conservative career politician, the son of a schoolteacher mother. His father had been a village magistrate at twenty-one and had risen regularly to positions in town, county, municipality, province, and finally the central government. He was not the prime minister solely because of his experience in government. He was here because, unlike his colleagues, he had not made any serious missteps. His background was spotted and propped with careful alliances and cautious agendas.
Even more important than the ruthless will of the dowager empress, however, the prime minister did not have her unilateral authority to act. In addition to the president and vice president above him, there was a cabinet with very powerful and ambitious ministers and the National People’s Congress with its proliferation of special interests, both local and personal.
The current struggle between Chou Shin, head of the secretive 8341 Unit of the Central Security Regiment, and
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