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conversations she was going to have the next time she had to persuade other countries to join an American initiative. Much as she liked Bob Livingstone, it was a curse to work with a weak secretary of state. There was no other department where weakness at the top made everyone so vulnerable.
    ‘Did you speak with Liu?’ asked Livingstone.
    ‘No. Do you want me to?’ Ellman wasn’t looking forward to her next conversation with the Chinese UN ambassador. She thought she had a reasonable working relationship with Liu, but this was going to test it. The Chinese had already lost face over the resolution. Now they were losing even more face with the US going into Uganda alone. And the president’s line in his statement about America having an interest in freedom and justice everywhere was gratuitous. More than gratuitous, inflammatory. However the president meant it – and Ellman realized he had probably viewed it from the domestic perspective, as an explanation to the American people about his motivation for sending troops to a foreign country – the Chinese were going to interpret it as a shot straight at them. They were incredibly sensitive to anything that could be interpreted, however indirectly, as a criticism of their political system and human rights record.
    She was about to ask Livingstone about that line, but stopped. He understood the nuances as well as she did. That line would never have come from him. It would have made it into the statement only despite his attempts to finesse it.
    ‘Bob,’ she said, ‘I could talk to Liu, but I’m not sure what I’d say. Have we got a line? Have we got anything to say apart from what the president said already?’
    ‘We could say we’re going to stick to the terms of the resolution, we don’t have any hidden objectives in the region.’
    ‘I’ve said that to him already. I can say it again but what’s the point? Anyone can see it’s not what we say that matters.’
    There was silence on the line. Ellman regretted having made that last remark.
    ‘Yeah, maybe we should leave it,’ said Livingstone eventually. ‘The president’s spoken. I don’t know if we want to gloss it.’
    ‘What’s the gloss? It is what it is.’
    ‘Yeah. You’re right.’ Livingstone paused. ‘I’ll talk to Haskell, see what he thinks.’
    Steve Haskell was the US ambassador in Beijing.
    ‘Sure,’ said Ellman. ‘Talk to Haskell. But you said it yourself, Bob. The president’s spoken. If the Chinese want to say something in response, they’ll find a way.’

5

    WU GUOZENG WAITED for Steve Haskell to sit down. Haskell had brought one of his senior aides as interpreter and note-taker. Wu had an interpreter with him as well, although his English was just about as good as Haskell’s. Between stints at the Chinese mission to the UN, four years in roles at the Washington embassy, and five years as the Chinese ambassador to the US, Wu had spent upwards of a dozen years in the States. This was his second year in the job as vice-foreign minister with responsibility for North America, and he was widely tipped as a potential future foreign minister for the People’s Republic.
    Haskell’s diplomatic credentials were a little slimmer. He was a longtime Republican Party donor and, as Tom Knowles’ appointee, had taken up his post as ambassador in Beijing just a year previously. But he had a thorough working knowledge of China and could even hold his own in Mandarin, and his appointment was widely considered to be an astute one. First as a partner with the international law firm Spearman Maybury and then with the investment bank UDB Philips, he had run offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai and otherwise been involved in China for over thirty years, and his network in the Chinese business community and amongst government financial officials was unrivalled.
    Wu had a long face and thinning hair with a combover. Haskell had once been red-headed but now had a bare cranium. There wasn’t enough