political leaders for pocketbook issues, but history was made of more important stuff. What earned a man a few paragraphs in a general-history text and focused volumes of scholarly study were the fundamental changes in the shape of the political world. That was what really counted. Historians remembered the ones who shaped political events — Bismarck, not Edison — treating technical changes in society as though they were driven by political factors, and not the reverse, which, she judged, might have been equally likely. But historiography had its own rules and conventions that had little to do with reality, because reality was too large a thing to grasp, even for academics working years after events. Politicians played within those rules, and that suited them because following those rules meant that when something memorable happened, the historians would remember them.
“Service to the world?” Elliot responded after a lengthy pause. “Service to the world. I like the sound of that. They called Wilson the man who kept us out of war. You will be remembered as the one who put an end to war.”
Fowler and Elliot both knew that scant months after being reelected on that platform, Wilson had led America into his first truly foreign war, the war to end all wars, optimists had called it, well before holocaust and nuclear nightmares. But this time, both thought, it was more than mere optimism, and Wilson 's transcendent vision of what the world could be was finally within the grasp of the political figures who made the world into the shape of their own choosing.
The man was a Druse, an unbeliever, but for all that he was respected. He bore the scars of his own battle with the Zionists. He'd gone into battle, and been decorated for his courage. He'd lost his mother to their inhuman weapons. And he'd supported the movement whenever asked. Qati was a man who had never lost touch with the fundamentals. As a boy he'd read the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao. That Mao was, of course, an infidel of the worst sort — he'd refused even to acknowledge the idea of a God and persecuted those who worshipped — was beside the point. The revolutionary was a fish who swam in a peasant sea, and maintaining the good will of those peasants — or in this case, a shopkeeper — was the foundation of whatever success he might enjoy. This Druse had contributed what money he could, had once sheltered a wounded freedom fighter in his home. Such debts were not forgotten. Qati rose from his desk to greet the man with a warm handshake and the perfunctory kisses.
“Welcome, my friend.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Commander.” The shopkeeper seemed very nervous, and Qati wondered what the problem was.
“Please, take a chair. Abdullah,” he called, “would you bring coffee for our guest?”
“You are too kind.”
“Nonsense. You are our comrade. Your friendship has not wavered in — how many years?”
The shopkeeper shrugged, smiling inwardly that this investment was about to pay off. He was frightened of Qati and his people — that was why he had never crossed them. He also kept Syrian authorities informed of what he'd done for them, because he was wary of those people, too. Mere survival in that part of the world was an art form, and a game of chance.
“I come to you for advice,” he said, after his first sip of coffee.
“Certainly.” Qati leaned forward in his chair. “I am honored to be of help. What is the problem, my friend?”
“It is my father.”
“How old is he now?” Qati asked. The farmer had occasionally given his men gifts also, most often a lamb. Just a peasant, and an infidel peasant at that, but he was one who shared his enemy with Qati and his men.
“Sixty-six — you know his garden?”
“Yes, I was there some years ago, soon after your mother was killed by the Zionists,” Qati reminded him.
“In his garden there is an Israeli bomb.”
“Bomb? You mean a shell.”
“No, Commander, a bomb. What you can see of it is half a meter across.”
“I see — and if the Syrians learn of it…”
“Yes, as you know, they explode such things in place. My father's house would be destroyed.” The visitor held up his left forearm. I cannot be of much help rebuilding it, and my father is too old to do it himself. I come here to ask how one might go about removing the damned thing.'
“You have come to the right place. Do you know how long it has been there?”
“My father says that it fell the very day this happened to me.” The shopkeeper gestured with his ruined arm again.
“Then surely Allah smiled on your family that day.”
Some smile, the shopkeeper thought, nodding.
“You have been our most faithful friend. Of course we can help you. I have a man highly skilled in the business of disarming and removing Israeli bombs — and then he takes the guts from them and makes bombs for our use.” Qati stopped and held up an admonishing finger. “You must never repeat that.”
The visitor jerked somewhat in his chair. “For my part, Commander, you may kill all of them you wish, and if you can do it from a bomb the pigs dropped into my father's garden, I will pray for your safety and success.”
“Please excuse me, my friend. No insult was intended. I must say such things, as you can understand.” Qati' s message was fully understood.
“I will never betray you,” the shopkeeper announced forcefully.
“I know this.” Now it was time to keep faith with the peasant sea. “Tomorrow I will send my man to your father's home. Insh'Allah,” he said, God willing.
“I am in your debt, Commander.” Sometime between now and the new year, he hoped.
8
THE PANDORA PROCESS
The converted Boeing 747 rotated off the Andrews runway just before sunset. President Fowler had had a bad day and a half of briefings and unbreakable appointments. He would have two more even worse; even presidents are subject to the vagaries of ordinary human existence, and in this case, the eight-hour flight to Rome was coupled with a six-hour time change. The jet lag would be a killer. Fowler was a seasoned enough traveler to know that. To attenuate the worst of it, he'd fiddled with his sleep pattern yesterday and today so that he'd be sufficiently tired to sleep most of the way across, and the VC-25A had lavish accommodations to make the flight as comfortable as Boeing and the United States Air Force could arrange. An easy-riding aircraft, the -25A had its Presidential accommodations in the very tip of the nose. The bed — actually a convertible sofa — was of decent size and the mattress had been selected for his personal taste. The aircraft was also large enough that a proper separation between the press and the administration people was possible — nearly two hundred feet, in fact; the press was in a closed-off section in the tail — and while his press secretary was dealing with the reporters aft, Fowler was discreetly joined by his National Security Advisor. Pete Connor and Helen D'Agustino shared a look that an outsider might take to be blank, but which spoke volumes within the close fraternity of the Secret Service. The Air Force Security Policeman assigned to the door just stared at the aft bulkhead, trying not to smile.
“So, Ibrahim, what of our visitor?” Qati asked.
“He is strong, fearless, and quite cunning, but I don't know what possible use we have for him,” Ibrahim Ghosn replied. He related the story of the Greek policeman.
“Broke his neck?” At least the man was not a plant… that is, if the policeman had really died, and this was not an elaborate ruse of the Americans, Greeks, Israelis, or God only knew who.
“Like a twig.”
“His contacts in America?”
“They are few. He is hunted by their national police. His group, he says, killed three of them, and his brother was recently ambushed and murdered by them.”
“He is ambitious in his choice of enemies. His education?”
“Poor in formal terms, but he is clever.”
“Skills?”
