331: Chapter 331 Four Lines of Words Subdue the President

He picked up the flip phone and pressed a pre-saved number.

"Get me President Te's personal secretary."

Washington, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Oval Office.

1:23 AM.

President Te was not sitting in the executive chair behind the Resolute Desk. He had taken off his suit jacket, his tie hung loosely around his shirt collar, and he was standing by the window, repeatedly rubbing the tassels on the edge of the curtain with his knuckles. Outside, the lawn lights of the White House South Lawn cast pale halos in the night, and further away, the silhouette of the Washington Monument was faintly visible.

Two documents were spread out on the desk.

The one on the left was an emergency assessment just delivered by Secretary of State Pompeo: "Impact of Middle East Escalation on Our Strategic Interests and Recommended Responses." He turned to page twelve, where a section marked with a red underline stated: "If direct military intervention in the Middle East is chosen, the first-year ground troop deployment cost is estimated at $80-120 billion, with casualties projected between three thousand and five thousand, and no guarantee of achieving strategic goals within twenty-four months. Referring to the precedents of Afghanistan and Iraq, long-term occupation costs could exceed two trillion dollars."

The one on the right was an encrypted fax delivered ten minutes ago by Chief of Staff Meadows—a letter from New York with extremely blunt wording. It wasn't a diplomatic note, a policy suggestion, or even a formal document. It was just a short note written on Greenberg's personal stationery.

There were only four lines of text on the stationery.

Line one: "Mr. President, over the past two years, we have given you 240 million reasons for support."

Line two: "Now we need a reason to continue."

Line three: "Deploy additional carrier strike groups to the Eastern Mediterranean. Restore unconditional military aid to Squid Nation. Veto any ceasefire resolution in the United Nations that is unfavorable to the Israelis."

Line four: "Your plane is scheduled to take off from Joint Base Andrews for Des Moines in twenty minutes. The speechwriting fee for the rally comes from the United Precision Systems PAC. The lighting fee for your time on stage comes from Elbit Systems' lobbying budget. Even the rubber formula for the soles of the shoes on your feet contains our patents."

There was no signature. But none was needed.

President Te crumpled the note into a ball and threw it into the wastepaper basket. The basket was already half full, containing polling data from that morning—his approval rating had dropped below 40% for the first time since taking office, and the general election was less than a year away.

"Who does he think he is?" He turned and roared at the other two men in the office—Pompeo and Meadows. "I am the President! Not him! Not those people sitting in clubs smoking cigars who never pick up a gun to go to the battlefield—"

He saw Pompeo and Meadows exchange a look. He was all too familiar with that look. Over the past four years, every time his staff explained some "political reality" to him in the Oval Office, they would exchange this look first. It meant: he's going to have an outburst again, wait until he's tired to talk.

President Te suddenly went quiet.

He walked back to the Resolute Desk and plopped into the executive chair, which gave an overburdened creak.

"Talk." He took a gulp of his cold coffee. "Say whatever you have to say."

Pompeo spoke first. Having sat in the position of CIA Director for two years, his speech carried the typical phrasing habits of an intelligence official—every sentence sounded like it was plucked from a threat assessment report.

"Mr. President, while Mr. Greenberg's wording is... direct, the issues he reflects are unavoidable. Naval Intelligence confirms that Zhang Cheng has provided Houssa with at least five DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile systems, as well as an unknown number of YJ-12 and YJ-18 anti-ship missiles. Our USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group in the Red Sea was forced to retreat to the waters south of the Gulf of Aden, essentially losing its freedom of movement in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait."

He turned to the next page of the folder.

"Sinwar has formed a new full-strength brigade in Gaza. The opposition has somehow acquired a large number of modern individual anti-tank weapons and man-portable air-defense systems, and there is even suspected evidence of some kind of meter-wave radar network—we still haven't been able to explain how it shot down an F-35. The defense lines of Squid Nation's Southern Command have retracted to pre-war coordinates, and multiple Kibbutz settlements are effectively in a state of semi-abandonment."

He closed the folder.

"Mr. President, if substantive action is not taken to demonstrate resolve, our alliance system in the Middle East will face systemic questioning. Saudi Arabia has already begun private contacts with Houssa, and Persia has opened a de facto embassy in Sana'a—though they call it a 'commercial representative office.'"

"Enough." President Te held up a hand. "Every word you're saying is just repeating what was written on Greenberg's piece of paper."

He turned to Meadows.

"How are things in Des Moines?"

Meadows sighed. He was the only one in the room who had grown up in the cornfields of Iowa, and he spoke with a slow Midwestern drawl, but the content was anything but slow.

"Sir, it's not very optimistic. You have the Iowa primary next month. People in the Tea Party are already spreading word that you are 'too soft on enemies and too stingy with allies' regarding national security. They didn't make that up themselves—it was passed along by Greenberg's crowd through their lobbying groups."

He paused and lowered his voice.

"Sir, they aren't just talking."

The Oval Office was silent for a full five seconds.

President Te stared at the crumpled note in the wastepaper basket. He could smell something in it—not pulp and ink, but something older and more pungent. It was the smell of a transfer of power. Anyone who had been in Washington long enough could recognize it, just as a sailor could smell the ozone before a storm. American 'democracy' was never just about numbers in a voting machine; it was also about quotas in a boardroom. Campaign ads need money, lobbying Congress needs money, and even the illusion of momentum on social media itself requires money to buy traffic. And the money is in the hands of those twelve men.

He finally spoke, his voice much lower than before.

"What if I deploy more carriers, but no ground troops?"

Pompeo pursed his lips and thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully: "From a military perspective, deploying additional naval forces alone can strengthen the deterrence posture in the Eastern Mediterranean, but it's not enough to change the balance of power on the Gaza ground battlefield. However," he added, "from a political perspective, the movement of a carrier is a signal in itself. It tells Greenberg we are listening. It tells Sinwar we haven't retreated."

"What does it tell Zhang Cheng?" President Te pressed.

No one could answer that question. Because everyone knew that Zhang Cheng never cared about aircraft carriers.

President Te was silent for a while longer, then reached out and picked up the red encrypted phone on the Resolute Desk.

"Get me the Chief of Naval Operations. I want the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group to set sail from Norfolk within seventy-two hours to rendezvous with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea, forming a dual-carrier strike group for deployment to the Eastern Mediterranean."