Trigger Point (21 page)

29

ON THE MORNING after the election, with the sense of political turmoil growing by the hour, Marion Ellman was pulled out of her regular staff meeting for a conference call with Bob Livingstone, who was on a visit to the Philippines. Doug Havering, the deputy secretary of state, was on the phone from Washington, together with Steve Haskell in Beijing. A National Security Council meeting had been scheduled for Friday to discuss the events leading up to the Fidelian bankruptcy and Bob Livingstone wanted to put a State Department paper to the president ahead of the meeting.

Marion didn’t know why a matter like that would be an issue for the National Security Council or why State should be called on to give a view. Within the State Department, only Livingstone and the deputy secretary knew what had taken place between Tom Knowles and the Chinese president in the hours before Fidelian failed. Five minutes after the call started, when Livingstone had given his summary of events, Marion knew as well.

By the time she got home that night, having been waylaid by the British and Dutch ambassadors in a corridor of the UN building for an impromptu meeting on the South Africa resolution, Daniel was asleep and Ella was just about ready for bed. Marion read to her a little before she went to sleep. Then she checked her email and found a draft paper for the president in her inbox. She wouldn’t get any other time to look at it so she sat down to work on it right away with a warmed-up dinner at her desk. By the time she was done another couple of hours had gone by.

Dave was in bed, reading a book.

He looked up as she came in. ‘You done?’

She nodded and sat down on the bed. ‘I’m beat.’

‘You know our net worth fell another ten per cent today.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. That makes us around twenty-five per cent down on the week. Not bad. I thought your boss might want to know. What’s his name again?’ Dave clicked his fingers. ‘Knowles? Somebody Knowles.’

‘I’ll be sure to tell him,’ said Marion.

‘You know, you should read this.’ Dave closed the book and tossed it across to her.

It was Joel Ehrenreich’s book, which had arrived a couple of days earlier. Marion had left it on her desk, fully intending to look at it, but hadn’t had a moment.

‘It’s good,’ said Dave.

‘Have you read it?’

‘Parts. You should read chapter 5.’

‘Is that one of the ones Joel mentioned?’

Dave shook his head. ‘Trust me, you should read it.’

She got ready and came back to bed. Dave had turned on the TV and was watching it with the volume low. Joel’s book was still on the bed. She was tired but picked it up anyway. She’d at least glance at it, she thought, before she went to sleep.

The next time she looked up, Dave was lying asleep, mouth open, and the TV was showing the closing credits of the
Late Show
.

Chapter 5 was one of a number in which Joel dissected the strands of global enmeshment, as he called them. It dealt with what he called the corporate strand. It was customary, Joel argued, to think that the sphere of corporate transnational companies was the one most free of national influence. It was efficiency-maximizing and nation-neutral, stretching across political boundaries in search of the lowest costs and highest profits. Yet in reality, on one critical criterion, this wasn’t the case. An analysis of a hundred publicly owned US-originated transnational corporations across all economic sectors, none of which had any US government ownership, showed that fewer than twenty were entirely free of known ownership by foreign national investment funds, and over thirty had ownership exceeding twenty per cent – enough, in most instances, for those owners to exert a prime if not controlling interest over the company. The chapter went on to outline the evolution of this situation: the avid acquisition of basement-priced stock by sovereign investment funds in the aftermath of the financial crisis; the provision of capital to enterprises hungry for funding as the upturn started; the continuing incremental accumulation of stakes in key corporations as the recovery gathered pace and surpluses built in oil-producing countries like the Gulf states and manufacturer-exporters such as China; and the tacit acquiescence by western governments in this program of acquisition in exchange for sales of the huge volumes of government bonds that were issued in the years during and after the recession.

In effect, Ehrenreich argued, the last decade had seen a massive recycling of the profits from western consumption obtained by the world’s oil producers and manufacturer-exporters into ownership of the west’s major businesses by state-owned funds, creating a situation in which the main economic engines and wealth creators of the free markets of the developed world were, to an unprecedented degree, government-owned. What the US government had never wanted to have – state ownership of private enterprise within the United States – had been achieved by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, China, Russia, Singapore and Kuwait. In benign conditions, this was unlikely to be an issue. But who could tell how these governments might use these holdings in conditions of stress? The world had sleepwalked into a situation in which the politics of global enmeshment, with all its tensions and potential flashpoints, was embedded deep inside the world’s major transnational corporations.

Ehrenreich’s point wasn’t that this shouldn’t have happened, or that it should be reversed. The reality of free markets was that in order to function as markets they had to be free. His point was that this situation would create an inevitable series of tensions so long as the world’s global governance was unaligned with this and other thickening strands of global enmeshment. Every one of these strands was like a fault line. Sooner or later, if governance didn’t come into line with them, the tension in one of these faults would cause a quake.

Dave looked around sleepily. ‘You still reading?’

‘I’m done,’ said Marion. She closed the book and put it on her bedside table.

Dave turned off the TV. ‘What do you think? I’m not sure if he’s made a point of incredible insight or if he’s talking out of his ass.’

‘I think if I hadn’t seen what I’ve seen over the last few days, I’d say it’s … interesting.’

‘Interesting?’

‘Joel-interesting. Thought-provoking. Paradigm-challenging. Rich in historical context.’

‘But about as likely to happen as me becoming a supreme court justice?’

Marion smiled.

‘And now?’

‘It gives me goose bumps.’

Dave looked at her in surprise.

‘There’s a little more to what’s been happening than most people know.’

Dave waited.

‘TS.’ That was their code. TS, Top Secret, for anything she knew she shouldn’t be telling him. ‘I only found out today. Before Fidelian crashed, apparently we tried to get the Chinese to stop it.’

‘We …?’

‘Tom Knowles spoke to Zhang.’

Dave took a deep breath.

‘Yeah,’ said Marion. ‘I know.’

30

TWO DAYS AFTER the election, pressure on the administration continued to build. The right-wing press was lacerating the president, using the results of the midterms as proof that the future of the Republican Party lay to the right. The liberal press was crowing, using the midterms as proof that the future of the country lay to the left. From within the party shots were being taken across the spectrum, with senior figures who should have known better, or who were positioning themselves for the race in two years’ time, making grave statements about the implications for the president’s ability to govern. There is nothing like electoral defeat to expose the fault lines in a political party. Tom Knowles had made a statement acknowledging the results of the midterms and affirming his determination to work with the new Congress to carry through his program, expressing optimism that events in the markets would prove to be temporary and contained. The markets had stopped falling but now they drifted, jittery, agitated by rumor, waiting for something to show them direction.

In the White House press briefing room, Dean Moss faced a pounding at the daily press conference. He had known a few tough days as President Knowles’ press secretary but there was nothing in his experience that equated to this. Every presidency has its defining moment, a crisis that takes it by the scruff of the neck and hurls it across the room followed by a braying press corps breathless to see how the administration will pick itself up and recover, hoping to sink a few kicks into its ribs while it’s down. After two relatively placid years in which Tom Knowles seemed to have lucked in for an easy ride, this was it. The pack hadn’t been impressed by the president’s statement and Moss bore the brunt of their dissatisfaction. They wanted more. They wanted to know what programs Knowles would be prepared to compromise on now that he had lost control of Congress. They wanted to know whether he had been involved in trying to broker a deal over Fidelian and, if so, why it had failed. They wanted to know whether there were going to be any cabinet changes, changes at the Fed, changes in the White House. Then someone put up a hand and wanted to know if the president had spoken to President Zhang.

There was pin-drop silence in the room. Everyone who heard the question immediately understood the implication if it was true that the president had spoken to Zhang. So did Dean Moss. Only the most senior figures at the Fed, the Treasury, the State Department and the White House were supposed to be aware of it.

‘You’re asking me if the president spoke to President Zhang?’ said Moss, playing for time. ‘Is that what you’re asking?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The president speaks to numerous world leaders on a regular basis. That’s an important part of his job.’

‘Then let me repeat the question as specifically as I can. Is it true, Mr Moss, that President Knowles spoke to President Zhang on the night before Fidelian filed for bankruptcy and asked for his help in making sure a deal was done?’

Moss hesitated. Technically he could answer no to this. The president had spoken to Zhang on the morning of Fidelian’s failure.

Impulse got the better of him. ‘No,’ he said.

‘So he didn’t speak to him before Fidelian failed about the need to rescue the bank?’

‘Margaret, you know I can’t give a list of every conversation the president has.’

He took other questions, but the journalists kept probing on the point of a conversation between Knowles and Zhang, sensing an evasiveness in Moss’s answer and homing in on it with the instinct of sharks for blood. Moss refused to answer the question again, or any variant of it, citing his principle of answering any given question only once. He didn’t know if this was convincing anyone. He could feel himself sweating. He was a man of middle height with a shaven head and he knew that when he sweated, his head glistened. The reporters could probably see it.

Then he got a different question.

‘How’s the president holding up?’

‘He’s fine,’ said Moss guardedly.

‘Really? He’s just come through what has undoubtedly been the worst midterm results for a governing party since Clinton in 1994. He’s got the biggest financial crisis on his hands since Bush in ’08. He’s suffering the biggest general attack on him since Obama over health care. Half of his own party is casting doubt on his suitability for the nomination at the next general election and the other half is damning him, if you will, by faint praise. It’s clear now he’ll face a credible bid by Senator Hotchkiss to take that nomination away from him.’ The journalist smiled. ‘So I just wondered, how’s he doing?’

Moss saw smiles around the press room. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he should refute those points one by one. Then he decided it wasn’t worth gracing a question like that with anything more than a rebuttal.

‘He’s fine. Thanks for asking. The president has a strong constitution and he’s upstairs in the Oval Office right now doing what needs to be done for this country. But I’ll be sure to tell him you inquired. And I wouldn’t go blowing things up too much. I know you guys like to do that, but this president and this administration are firmly in control. Okay, one more. Owen?’

‘I don’t know if we’re blowing things up,’ said the journalist Moss had picked out. ‘Let me ask you this. We’re hearing a large number of rumors circulating right now, that the Fed put a deal together, that the deal was rejected, that the people who rejected it were the Chinese government, and just now we’ve heard that the president was on the phone to President Zhang about precisely this thing hours before they did that. And it appears that you are not able to confirm or deny any one of these rumors. Now, I’m not asking you again, because I know you’re just going to tell me you don’t address rumors or you’ve answered that question already or whatever. So what I’m going to ask you is, Dean, what do you want me to report?’

Moss stared at him. ‘That’s your call, Owen.’

‘So it is. But I’m giving you a chance to help me out here. Because right now, from what I’ve heard, all I can say is that the White House refuses to deny that any of those things happened.’

Dean Moss could feel the eyes of the entire corps on him. His mind raced, searching for a response.

‘What I would like you to report, what I suggest you would report – because you’ve asked me, and because it’s the most important thing, a lot more important than rumors of what might or might not have happened prior to Fidelian Bank filing for bankruptcy – is what’s happening now. What’s going to happen over the next few days. The president is working with his advisors to understand the implications of these events and what further action, if any, needs to be taken to ensure that the economy – which is strong and still has a lot of growth in it according to the Treasury Department and projections from just about every respected commentator – the president is working to make sure we stay on track to get that growth and make sure it reaches into every corner of this country. And let me also say, there’s a lot of other things the president and this administration are doing. You guys tend to focus on one thing at a time, and that’s understandable, but that’s not how the presidency works. There are other things going on, important things, that we shouldn’t lose sight of as well.’

The reporter looked at him skeptically.

‘Take Jungle Peace. That’s an important intervention that America’s engaged in to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Uganda and free them from a scourge that’s blighted them for thirty years. Have we stopped that because of this? No, sir, we haven’t.’

‘Where are the results? When you went in there you told us there were going to be results.’

‘Watch.’ Moss looked at the reporters around the room. ‘Just watch.’

FOUR MILES AWAY, in the Pentagon, Gary Rose was meeting with Defense Secretary John Oakley and Mortlock Hale, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pete Pressler was on the line from the
Abraham Lincoln
off the coast of Kenya.

Rose didn’t beat around the bush. He wanted to know what was happening. A few days earlier, Pressler had reported that surveillance had revealed what appeared to be an extensive LRA camp in dense jungle a few miles south of Uganda’s border with Sudan. Further surveillance had confirmed the finding and suggested that the encampment most likely included some of the senior leadership of the LRA, possibly including Joseph Koni, if he was alive. The founder of the LRA hadn’t been sighted for years and there were conflicting reports if he was alive and, if so, whether he still exerted command over the group. The camp was clearly significant. Yet nothing had been done.

The problem, according to Pressler, was operational. Using drones in a jungle environment was proving to be a steep learning curve. In the almost treeless mountains of Afghanistan, visibility was unimpeded and a strike could be launched from a mile away under direct vision from the cameras on the unmanned planes. Over jungle, the drones had to fly low and slow in order for infrared detection to operate, which alerted the targets to their arrival. When they heard the drones the LRA men ran, as Pressler put it, like rats out of a sack. To hit them then would require widespread devastation, which was beyond the firepower carried by unmanned vehicles. The second problem was that once the drones did start firing, the infrared was pretty much useless as the whole detection field exploded with heat. In retrospect, this was something they should have anticipated but the operational implications only sank in after drone pilots had fired during a few early sorties. Once they let their first missile fly, the men piloting the drones back in Creech air force base in Nevada had a whiteout on their screen and from that point on were firing blind.

That left two options. They could put a force of Apaches over the area and attack with devastating power, but the helicopter pilots wouldn’t have a great view of what they were shooting at. They would be more effective than unmanned aircraft, but if they failed to take out a significant number of the enemy in the first moments of the attack it was likely that the majority would get away under the jungle canopy. Alternatively they could put men on the ground, but they would be sending them against a military camp that presumably had been fortified and whose defenders were expecting an assault, with no visual reconnaissance and little prior intelligence on the nature of the resistance they would face. While this would be the most effective way of clearing the area, it carried obvious risks that the president, Pressler understood, was unwilling to entertain.

‘Or Pete could continue to do what he’s doing now,’ added Hale. ‘Harassment and interdiction. If we look at the bigger picture, we are getting individuals coming out, not a lot maybe but a couple every day, walking out of the jungle and surrendering. Now, sure, these aren’t the hardline guys, mostly they’re kids who were stolen from some village. Also there have been a couple of unpleasant occurrences when local people got hold of some of these kids who’d come out. It wasn’t too pretty. We’re trying to do something about that because it doesn’t do much to encourage the others to give up. Anyway, the thing is, we could continue, and in many ways that’s the least risky option.’

‘But the longest,’ said Rose.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Admiral Pressler, how long would all this take, do you think, if that’s all we did?’

‘Until we’ve got rid of the whole LRA?’ came back Pressler’s voice over the phone. ‘To be honest, Dr Rose, I don’t think anyone can say. This group’s survived in that jungle for thirty years. On the other hand, its pattern has been to regularly come out for food and medical supplies and fresh recruits. So we’re not looking at a self-sufficient force and we’re not looking at a force that can extract what it needs from its local population because there ain’t no population in that jungle to extract it from. Probably depends on what their stores are like. We must have degraded them to some degree but, again, we can’t say how much.’

‘So it could be a year,’ said Rose.

‘I wouldn’t want to put a time on it.’

‘General?’

Hale shrugged.

It could be two, thought Rose. That was what that shrug meant. Gary Rose didn’t know how General Hale had the barefaced cheek to sit there and tell him these things. In the discussions prior to the launch of the operation, he could distinctly remember Hale saying they’d get hits just about as soon as Pressler’s force was deployed.

Rose glanced at Oakley. The defense secretary was committed to a strategy of unmanned vehicles both in the air and on land as the leading edge of the US military, and wanted Uganda to be a showcase. He wanted to see the big successes achieved by drones to help him push his case. But if unmanned force wasn’t going to be enough, it wasn’t going to be enough. The defense secretary knew the president wanted to see results. He wasn’t going to wait two years on it.

‘Let’s come back to this camp,’ said Rose. ‘Admiral, sounds like you’ve got a way to make this happen.’

‘Even if we just bomb the hell out of it and don’t kill too many of the enemy,’ said Pressler, ‘that’s got to hurt them. We could do that with a bunch of cruise missiles. They must have supplies in there, infrastructure. If they lose that it’s got to hurt.’

Rose glanced at Oakley and shook his head slightly. That wasn’t going to be enough. He could imagine the reports in a press that was already lashing the president with everything it had. This was the first significant LRA camp they had found and an attack on it that didn’t kill a substantial number of combatants was going to look like a failure, no matter how many coconuts they blew up. It would look as if the LRA had outsmarted them. In the current media environment, the fact that a bloodless attack might contribute to a long-term strategy of attrition was a subtlety that wouldn’t survive the press’s appetite for something else they could use to beat up on the president.

‘Let’s think a little more aggressively,’ said Oakley.

‘I take it you’re not referring to putting men on the ground,’ said the general.

‘No,’ said Rose. The president didn’t want American servicemen in harm’s way.