The date was November 13, 1973. After a banquet in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a startling offer to Premier Zhou Enlai: a secret military alliance against the Soviet Union, something that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev explicitly had warned him against.
Washington, Kissinger promised, would supply equipment and other services if a Sino-Soviet war began. But it would provide other help immediately. Included would be a direct intelligence feed from the US spy satellite system, allowing extra warning of possible attack, plus blueprints so China could build the most modern radars.
An agitated Premier Zhou hurried after midnight to consult Chairman Mao Zedong. But he failed: the nurses, bodyguards and other female attendants who tended the ailing chairman - known as the 'liaison women' - would not let him in.
Acting on his own in the morning, Zhou told Kissinger he found the offer interesting. But when a suspicious Chairman Mao later learned details of the talks, he sharply criticised his premier, authorised a leftist campaign against him and let the deal die.
Already afflicted with cancer, this marked the beginning of Zhou's political decline. Thus did the secretive Kissinger, making an offer which almost certainly would not have withstood political scrutiny at home, help weaken the Chinese leader he most admired.
This is just one example of the mistrust, misadventure and misunderstanding that have marked US and Chinese relations over the past 30 years, recounted in fascinating detail in this book, which accurately calls itself 'an investigative history'.