deputy, and speaking in the name of his boss did not come easily.
“Your evaluation?” the Prime Minister asked gently. Someone at the table, he decided, had to be calm.
“The Americans are entirely sincere,” Avi replied. “Their willingness to provide a physical guarantee — the mutual-defense treaty, and the stationing of troops — is genuine. From a strictly military point of—”
“I speak for the defense of Israel!” Mandel snarled.
Ben Jakob turned to stare his former commander down. “Rafi, you have always outranked me, but I've killed my share of enemies, and you know it well.” Avi paused for a moment to let that rest on the table. When he went on, his voice was quiet and measured and dispassionate as he allowed his reason to overcome emotions no less strong than Mandel's. “The American military units represent a serious commitment. We're talking about a twenty- five percent increase in the striking power of our air force, and that tank unit is more powerful than our strongest brigade. Moreover, I do not see how that commitment can ever be withdrawn. For that to happen — our friends in America will never let it happen.”
“We've been abandoned before!” Mandel pointed out coldly. “Our only defense is ourselves.”
“Rafi,” the Foreign Minister said. “My friend, where has that led us? You and I have fought together, too, and not merely in this room. Is there to be no end to it?”
“Better no treaty than a bad treaty!”
“I agree,” the Prime Minister said. “But how bad will this treaty be?”
“We have all read the draft. I will propose some modest changes, but, my friends, I think it is time,” the Foreign Minister said. “My advice to you is that we accept the Fowler Plan, with certain conditions.” The Foreign Minister outlined them.
“Will the Americans grant those, Avi?”
“They'll complain about the cost, but our friends in their Congress will go along, whether President Fowler approves them or not. They will recognize our historic concessions, and they will wish to make us feel secure within our borders.”
“Then I will resign!” Rafi Mandel shouted.
“No, Rafi, you will not,” the Prime Minister said, growing a little tired of his histrionics. “If you resign, you cast yourself out. You want this seat someday, and you will never have it if you leave the cabinet now.”
Mandel flushed crimson at that rebuke.
The Prime Minister looked around the room. “So, what is the opinion of the government?”
Forty minutes later, Jack's phone rang. He lifted it, noting that it was his most secure line, the direct one that bypassed Nancy Cummings.
“Ryan.” He listened for a minute and made some notes. “Thanks.”
Next the DDCI rose and walked into Nancy 's office, then turned left through the door into Marcus Cabot's more capacious room. Cabot was lying on the couch in the far corner. Like Judge Arthur Moore, his predecessor, Cabot liked to smoke the occasional cigar. His shoes were off, and he was reading over a file with striped tape on the borders. Just one more secret file in a building full of them. The folder dropped, and Cabot, looking like a pink, chubby volcano, eyed Ryan as he approached.
“What is it, Jack?”
“Just got a call from our friend in Israel. They're coming to Rome, and the cabinet voted to accept the treaty terms, with a few modifications.”
“What are they?” Ryan handed over his notes. Cabot scanned them. “You and Talbot were right.”
“Yeah, and I should have let him play the card instead of me.”
“Good call, you predicted all but one.” Cabot rose and slipped into his black loafers before walking to his desk. Here he lifted a phone. “Tell the President I'll meet him at the White House when he gets back from New York. I want Talbot and Bunker there also. Tell him it's a go.” He set the phone back in the cradle. He grinned around the cigar in his teeth, trying to look like George Patton, who hadn't smoked to the best of Ryan's knowledge. “How about that?”
“How long you figure to finalize it?”
“With the advance work you and Adler did, plus the finishing work from Talbot and Bunker…? Hmm. Give it two weeks. Won't go as fast as it did with Carter at Camp David, because too many professional diplomats are involved, but in fourteen days the President takes his seven-four-seven to Rome to sign the documents.”
“You want me to go down with you to the White House?”
“No, I'll handle it.”
“Okay.” That wasn't unexpected. Ryan left the room the same way he'd come in.
7
THE CITY OF GOD
The cameras were in place. Air Force C-5B Galaxy transports had loaded the newest state-of-the-art ground-station vans at Andrews Air Force Base and flown them to Leonardo da Vinci Airport. This was less for the signing ceremony — if they got that far, commentators worried — than what wags called the pre-game show. The fully digital improved-definition equipment just coming on line, the producers felt, would better depict the art collections that litter Vatican walls as trees line national parks. Local carpenters and specialists from New York and Atlanta had worked around the clock to build the special booths from which the network anchors would broadcast. All three network morning news shows were originating from the Vatican. CNN was also there in force, as were NHK, BBC, and nearly every other television network in the world, all fighting for space in the grand piazza that sprawls before the church begun in 1503 by Bramante, carried on by Raphael, Michelangelo, and Bernini. A brief but violent windstorm had carried spray from the central fountain into the Deutsche Welle anchor booth and shorted out a hundred thousand marks' worth of equipment. Vatican officials had finally protested that there would be no room for the people to witness the event — for which they prayed — but by then it had been far too late. Someone remembered that in Roman times this had been the site of the Circus Maximus, and it was generally agreed that this was the grandest circus of recent years. Except that the Roman “circus” was mainly for chariot races.
The TV people enjoyed their stay in Rome. The crews for Today and Good Morning America were able, for once, to rise indecently late instead of before the paperboy, to begin their broadcasts after lunch—!!!—and finish in time for afternoon shopping, followed by dinner at one of Rome 's many fine restaurants. Their research people scoured reference books for historical remote locations like the Colosseum — correctly called the Flavian Amphitheater, one careful back-room type discovered — where people waxed rhapsodic on the Roman substitute for NFL football: combat, to the death, man against man, man against beast, beast against Christian, and various other permutations thereof. But it was the Forum that was the symbolic focus for their time in Rome. Here were the ruins of Rome 's civic center, where Cicero and Scipio had walked and talked and met with supporters and opponents, the place to which visitors had come for centuries. Eternal Rome, mother of a vast empire, playing yet another role on the world stage. In its center was the Vatican, just a handful of acres, really, but a sovereign country nonetheless. “How many divisions has the Pope?” a TV anchorman quoted Stalin, then rambled into a discourse on how the Church and its values had outlasted Marxism-Leninism to the extent that the Soviet Union had decided to open diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and had its own evening news, Vremya, originating from a booth less than fifty yards from his own.
Additional attention was given to the two other religions present in the negotiations. At the arrival ceremony, the Pope had recalled an incident from the earliest days of Islam: a commission of Roman Catholic bishops had traveled to Arabia, essentially on an intelligence-gathering mission to see what Mohammed was up to. After a cordial first meeting, the senior Bishop had asked where he and his companions might celebrate Mass. Mohammed had immediately offered the use of the mosque in which they stood. After all, the Prophet had observed, is this not a house consecrated to God? The Holy Father extended the same courtesy to the Israelis. In both cases there was some measure of discomfort to the more conservative churchmen present, but the Holy Father had swept that aside with a speech characteristically delivered in three languages.
“In the name of the God Whom we all know by different names, but Who is nevertheless the same God of all men, we offer our city to the service of men of good will. We share so many beliefs. We believe in a God of mercy and love. We believe in the spiritual nature of man. We believe in the paramount value of faith, and in the
