Badges had trails, and trails led to discovery.
He was ostensibly a GS-15 in the CIA, working as an analyst in the counterterrorism center. He had to be formally put on an access list each and every time he entered. He hoped this time it would fail.
It did not.
The guard handed him a badge with a giant “V” on it, meaning visitor, escort required, and waved him forward. He pulled into a spot and was met by some intern who looked to be about the age of the cheese in his refrigerator.
“George Wolffe?”
He exited the car and said, “Yeah. Who are you?”
With an attitude bestowed upon him by the perceived power he held, but belied by the pimples on his face, the man said, “I’m your escort. Follow my rules.”
He turned and began walking. Wolffe rolled his eyes and fell in line behind him across the grounds to the building.
They walked up the stairs, passing through two more security checkpoints, then entered a conference room. The only man Wolffe recognized was the national security advisor, Alexander Palmer. The rest were strangers.
The guide said, “You sit in the back. The back row. Do not talk. You’re just here to listen.”
Palmer came over and the young man grew compliant, saying, “Sir, here’s George Wolffe. Like you asked.”
Palmer waved him away with a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks.”
The kid nodded, waiting, and Palmer said, “What do you want? An invitation to leave?”
Wolffe saw the disappointment on the kid’s face and thought it wouldn’t be his last. The kid wanted the trappings of power without actually sacrificing for them. He basked in being the chosen one but had never earned the right to be called such. Like just about every single politician in Washington, DC.
Wolffe shook Palmer’s hand and said, “So why am I here?”
“This is a subcommittee meeting of the nonproliferation taskforce for Asian affairs.”
“Yeah? No offense, but so what? Why did you ask me to be here? What does this have to do with the Taskforce?”
“Nothing . . . yet. I just want you to hear the debate. That’s all. We’re about to discuss the sale of F-35s to Taiwan.”
Wolffe squinted his eyes and said, “What does the nonproliferation taskforce have to do with selling next-gen fighters to Taiwan? And beyond that, what the hell am I doing here? Come to think of it, what are you doing here? At a subcommittee meeting?”
His words caused a few people to look his way. Palmer raised his hands and said, “Hey, calm down. Lower it a notch.”
Wolffe looked left and right, saw the interest, and said, “Yeah, okay. What do you want me to hear?”
Palmer glanced at the podium, where a man was about to start speaking, and said, “I work for the president of the United States. He wanted you to hear this. That’s all I can say. You need to take your seat.”
Palmer walked away, and Wolffe wondered what was happening. If President Hannister wanted him here, it was for a significant reason, but he’d heard no traction for China via the Taskforce. There were no terrorist threats coming from the country. He’d told Pike a story that he’d thought was just spitting in the wind, getting him prepared for the impossible, but now it looked like the impossible was coming true. But he was still the commander. The one who dictated Project Prometheus actions. He took his seat at the back of the room.
A man in a coat and tie brought the meeting to order, but he was clearly military by the fact that his suit looked like it had been purchased off the rack at JCPenney.
“So, let’s cut to the chase on this. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about extraneous stuff. We’re here to decide whether the sale of F-35s to Taiwan is in the national interest. First on the order is that we don’t have any to sell. Taiwan is begging for them, but we don’t have them. But if we do in the future, do we recommend selling them to the ROC?”
Giving deference to Alexander Palmer, he said, “Sir, do you want to add anything here?”
Palmer went to the front of the room and said, “Okay, this is a big decision, not without consequences, which is why I’m here. Do we want to sell F-35s to Taiwan? If we do, it’ll be a direct provocation to China. If we don’t, we’re signaling a loss of support to Taiwan. It’s a no-win, but it’s in front of us.”
Since its creation in 1949, the Republic of China had been one of the most delicate balances in the entire portfolio of U.S. national security engagements, and like the shifting sands on a beach, it had gone through many changes with respect to the United States, from outright support in the early days, to Nixon’s détente with China in the seventies, and then finally culminating with President Carter formally shifting diplomatic recognition of the country from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China in 1979, for the first time officially recognizing Beijing as the rightful power, and causing the abandonment of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Through it all, to this day, the United States had maintained a vague commitment of defense of Taiwan against Chinese encroachment—defined nebulously so as not to give Taiwan the courage to demand independence under the umbrella of American firepower, but still to give China a great enough pause that they wouldn’t outright attack.
And that dilemma was driving the debate about selling the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Taiwan.
A woman with a prim and proper blouse, looking like she should have been teaching English at a boarding school, said, “Not to be a minion of the fabled ‘military-industrial complex,’ but we just cut off Turkey from its purchase of F-35s for its acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system. That leaves a few F-35s in the wind. It’s not like we’re talking about ramping up production. We have them sitting around, and selling them to Taiwan is a hell of a lot better than selling them to Turkey. My opinion.”
Sitting in the back, George Wolffe liked her opinion.
A man at the end of the table scoffed, then said, “So we just jerk those fighters away from Turkey and sell them to Taiwan? I understand we have an issue with Turkey right now, but taking their agreed purchase and selling it to Taiwan will be a mess of the first order. Turkey is a NATO partner. Taiwan is not. Why are we even talking about this?”
The woman gave him a laser gaze and said, “The weapons are already ‘jerked’ from Turkey. That’s a done deal, by lawmakers. Not by you on this council. It’s done. They bought a Russian air defense system against our expressed objections and lost the purchase.”
Chastised, the man said, “It’s not a done deal yet. We’re still working on it.”
Alexander Palmer, the arbitrator by his status alone, said, “Geoff, it’s done. Turkey isn’t getting the F-35. Let’s focus on Taiwan.”
Geoff glared at him, then flicked his eyes to the woman who’d called him out, but said nothing. Palmer said, “Can we continue?”
The man in the JCPenney suit said, “Yes, sir. I’ll start with some background, if that’s okay.”
Palmer nodded, and the man flicked up a slide, saying, “The problem with China is that they work in the nether zone. The hybrid zone. They don’t want to go to war with bullets. They want to win without a shot fired.”
The first slide was about Africa, and China’s inroads into that country. “This is what the PRC calls its ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, which is nothing more than a loan shark deal. They promise to help the country in question with infrastructure at low, low interest rates, and then when the country can’t pay, they take over the infrastructure, basically owning the lifeblood of the country. Ports, airfields, oil wells, rare earth minerals, you name it, China’s sinking its teeth into the globe.”