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Bill Schneider, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said: ‘If I may, Madam President?’

‘Go ahead, Bill.’

‘We need to make a serious dent in their ability to attack Japan. If we look at the east coast of China, that’s to say the part nearest to Japan, their main naval bases are Qingdao and Ningbo. I suggest heavy missile assaults on each one, carefully targeted to minimize civilian casualties.’

Chess was already shaking his head in disagreement.

Pauline said: ‘That would be a major escalation.’

‘It’s what we did to the Pyongyang regime – we destroyed their ability to attack us.’

‘They deserved it. They’d used chemical weapons. The world was on our side because of that. This isn’t the same.’

‘I see it as proportionate, Madam President.’

‘All the same, let’s look for a less provocative option.’

Chess said: ‘We could protect the Senkaku Islands with a ring of steel: destroyers, submarines and jet fighters.’

‘Indefinitely?’

‘The protection could be scaled down later, when the threat diminishes.’

The Secretary of Defense, Luis Rivera, said: ‘The Chinese made a film of the bombing, Madam President. They released it to the world – they’re proud of what they’ve done.’

‘Okay, let’s take a look.’

The film came up on a wall screen. There was a long shot of a tiny island, a closer shot of some Japanese sailors planting a flag, and then a Chinese jet taking off from an aircraft carrier. Interspersed with further shots of the jet were close-ups of a young sailor making a rude finger-pointing gesture and another of his comrades laughing.

Luis said: ‘That’s the East Asian version of flipping the bird, Madam President.’

‘I guessed.’ The gesture would have infuriated the Chinese leadership, Pauline thought. Those men were nothing if not sensitive. She recalled the preparations for a meeting with President Chen at a G20 summit: his aides had demanded changes to a dozen minor details that they said would slight him, from the height of the chairs to the choice of fruit in the bowl on the side table.

In the film, the soldiers became alert and took up defensive positions, then the island seemed to explode. As the debris settled, a shot apparently taken from a drone zoomed in on the corpse of a young sailor lying on the sand, and a voice-over in Mandarin with English subtitles said: ‘Foreign armies that violate Chinese territory will all suffer a similar fate.’

Pauline felt sickened by what she had seen and by the pride the Chinese evidently felt. ‘That’s awful,’ she said.

Luis Rivera said: ‘That threat at the end suggests that one ring of steel would not be enough. There are other disputed islands. I’m not sure we could ring them all.’

‘Okay, but I’m still not going to overreact,’ Pauline said. ‘Give me something that’s more than a ring of steel but less than a missile onslaught on mainland China.’

Luis had an answer. ‘The jet that dropped the bomb came from a Chinese aircraft carrier called theFujian. We have ship-killer missiles that could destroy it.’

‘That’s true,’ said Bill Schneider. ‘Just one of our long-range anti-ship stealth cruise missiles can sink a ship, although we would fire a whole bunch of them to make sure of something as big as an aircraft carrier. The range is three hundred and fifty miles and we have plenty closer than that. They can be fired from ships and planes and we have both available.’

Luis said: ‘If we do this, we should let it be known that we will respond the same way to any similar attacks. Madam President, China can’t afford to see its aircraft carriers destroyed. We have eleven but they have only three, and if we sink theFujian, that will leave two. And they can’t easily replace them. Aircraft carriers cost thirteen billion dollars each and take years to build. It’s my judgement that sinking theFujian, combined with the threat of sinking the other two, would have a massively sobering effect on the Chinese government.’

Chess said: ‘Or it might drive them to desperate measures.’

Pauline said: ‘Can we get theFujianon camera?’

‘Of course. We have planes and drones in the air nearby.’

Within a minute the vast grey ship was on screen, seen from above. Its shape was distinctive, with a curved ramp at the front end like a ski jump. Half a dozen jets and helicopters were on deck, clustered near the superstructure, with a few men busy around them, looking at this distance like ants feeding larvae. The rest of the enormous deck was all bare runway.

Pauline said: ‘How many crew aboard?’

Bill answered. ‘About two thousand five hundred, including flight staff.’