“I think you understand. But let me plainly summarize. My government has no knowledge of any actions against your cable ship. There is no Chinese naval militia. We have sufficient maritime assets without using fishing boats as projections of our national security. However, we see this as a humanitarian situation and will try to be helpful.”

“Whatever you can do, Mr. President. And thank you. I know it’s late in Beijing and expect you’re getting ready for bed.”

“In fact, I rarely sleep. Matters of state occupy me day and night.”

“Well, then, OK. I won’t keep you. We’ll be in touch.”

“Goodbye.”

President Fucillo looked directly at the secretary of state through her new progressive lenses. They enabled her to see him across the room without fumbling off her reading glasses. Peachy. They had also inspired a popular, loudmouthed television opinionator to take some obvious and predictable jabs at her. The president’s always been a closet progressive. Now she wears it on her face.

Not so peachy. Fucillo didn’t give half a damn about his idiotic grade-school punditry. Call her what you wanted, she did not view herself as a political ideologue but a hard-core, dead-center pragmatist. Labels annoyed her because they made it harder to put across her ideas to the American people.

Still, she could live with it. As long as she got things done.

“What was Tsao talking about?” she asked Woodbridge.

He leaned forward to scratch behind Celia’s ear. “Beats the fuck out of me,” he said. “I guess nobody ever told the son of a bitch not to kick a fresh cow turd on a hot day. You gave him three chances—or was it four?—to outright spit on the idea that his boats are mixed up with whatever’s going on with the Stalwart. He didn’t take a single one of them.”

She shook her head. “That isn’t what I meant. You heard his remark about the underwater cable networks.”

“It’s the usual crap. His people have been playing that tune so long I can hum it in my sleep. A legacy claim to over a million square miles of sea and every rock sticking out of it. Going back thousands of years to the Western Han dynasty. And then there’s the stale, old chorus about us spying on them. I’d dismiss it.”

“No. I’ve known Tsao since I was with State and he was minister of foreign affairs. He’s measured. Precise. He doesn’t escalate on reflex.”

Woodbridge shook his head. “I didn’t hear escalation in his comment. Not to say he knows anything. And not to say he doesn’t. But I took it as a defensive swing. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”