Israelis have asked for and will get credits with which to purchase prefabricated housing made in America. We're also paying to set up a factory of that type for them to continue on their own. Many thousands of people will be relocated. That will be somewhat painful, but we're going to make it just as easy as we can.'
“At the same time,” Liz Elliot put in, let's not forget that quality of life is more than having a roof over your head. Peace has a price, but it also has benefits. Those people will know real security for the first time in their lives.'
“Excuse me, Mr. President,” the Tribune reporter said with a raised glass. “That was not meant as criticism. I think we all agree that this treaty is a godsend.” Heads nodded all around the table. “The way it is implemented is an important story, however, and our readers want to know about it.”
“The relocations will be the hardest part,” Fowler responded calmly. “We must salute the Israeli government for agreeing to it, and we must do the best we can to make the process just as painless as is humanly possible.”
“And what American units will be sent over to defend Israel?” another reporter asked.
“Glad you asked,” Fowler said. He was. The previous questioner had overlooked the most obvious potential obstacle to treaty-implementation — would the Israeli Knesset ratify the agreements? “As you may have heard, we're reestablishing a new Army unit, the 1oth United States Cavalry Regiment. It's being formed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and at my direction ships of the National Defense Reserve Fleet are being mobilized right now to get them over to Israel just as quickly as we can. The 10th Cavalry is a famous unit with a distinguished history. It was one of the Black units that the westerns have almost totally ignored. As luck would have it”—luck had nothing to do with it—“the first commander will be an African American, Colonel Marion Diggs, a distinguished soldier, West Point grad and all that. That's the land force. The air component will be a complete wing of F-16 fighter-bombers, plus a detachment of AWACS aircraft, and the usual support personnel. Finally, the Israelis are giving us home-porting at Haifa, and we'll almost always have a carrier battle-group and a Marine Expeditionary unit in the Eastern Med to back up everything else.”
“But with the draw-down—”
“Dennis Bunker came up with the idea on the 1oth Cavalry, and frankly I wish I could say that it's one of mine. As for the rest, well, we'll try to fit it in somehow or other with the rest of the defense budget.”
“Is it really necessary, Mr. President? I mean, with all the budget battles, particularly on the matter of defense, do we really have to—”
“Of course we do.” The National Security Advisor cut the reporter off at his ugly knees. You asshole, Elliot's expression said. “ Israel has serious and very real security considerations, and our commitment to preserving Israeli security is the sine qua non of this agreement.”
“Christ, Marty,” another reporter muttered.
“We'll compensate for the additional expense in other areas,” the President said. “I know I'm returning to one more round of ideologically based wrangling over how we pay for the cost of government, but I think we have demonstrated here that government's costs do pay off. If we have to nudge taxes up a little to preserve world peace, then the American people will understand and support it,” Fowler concluded matter-of-factly.
Every reporter took note of that. The President was going to propose yet another tax increase. There had already been Peace Dividend-I and — II. This would be the first Peace Tax, one of them thought with a wry smile. That would sail through Congress, along with everything else. The smile had another cause as well. She noted the look in the President's eyes when he gazed over at his National Security Advisor. She'd wondered about that. She'd tried to get Liz Elliot at home twice, right before the trip to Rome, and both times all she'd gotten on her private line was the answering machine. She could have followed up on that. She could have staked out Elliot's townhouse off Kalorama Road and made a record of how often Elliot was sleeping at home, and how often she was not. But. But that was none of her business, was it? No, it wasn't. The President was a single man, a widower, and his personal life had no public import so long as he was discreet about it, and so long as it didn't interfere with his conduct of official business. The reporter figured she was the only one who'd noticed. What the hell, she thought, if the President and his National Security Advisor were that close, maybe it was a good thing. Look how well the Vatican Treaty had gone…
Brigadier General Abraham Ben Jakob read over the treaty text in the privacy of his office. He was not a man who often had difficulty in defining his thoughts. That was a luxury accorded him by paranoia, he knew. For all of his adult life — a life that had started at age 16 in his case, the first time he'd carried arms for his country — the world had been an exceedingly simple place to understand: there were Israelis and there were others. Most of the others were enemies or potential enemies. A very few of the others were associates or perhaps friends, but friendship for Israel was mostly a unilateral business. Avi had run five operations in America, “against” the Americans. “Against” was a relative term, of course. He'd never intended harm to come to America, he'd merely wanted to know some things the American government knew, or to obtain something the American government had and Israel needed. The information would never be used against America, of course, nor would the military hardware, but the Americans, understandably, didn't like having their secrets taken away. That did not trouble General Ben Jakob in any way. His mission in life was to protect the State of Israel, not to be pleasant to people. The Americans understood that. The Americans occasionally shared intelligence information with the Mossad. Most often this was done on a very informal basis. And on rare occasions, the Mossad gave information to the Americans. It was all very civilized — in fact, it was not at all unlike two competing businesses who shared both adversaries and markets, and sometimes cooperated but never quite trusted each other.
That relationship would now change. It had to. America was now committing its own troops to Israeli defense. That made America partly responsible for the defense of Israel — and reciprocally made Israel responsible for the safety of the Americans (something the American media had not yet noted). That was the Mossad's department. Intelligence-sharing would have to become a much wider street than it had been. Avi didn't like that. Despite the euphoria of the moment, America was not a country with which to entrust secrets, particularly those obtained after much effort and often blood by intelligence officers in his employ. Soon the Americans would be sending a senior intelligence representative to work out the details. They'd send Ryan, of course. Avi started making notes. He needed to get as much information as he could on Ryan so that he could cut as favorable a deal with the Americans as possible.
Ryan… was it true that he'd gotten this whole thing started? There was a question, Ben Jakob thought. The American government had denied it, but Ryan was not a favorite of President Fowler or his National Security Bitch, Elizabeth Elliot. The information on her was quite clear. While Professor of Political Science at Bennington, she'd had PLO representatives in to lecture on their view of the Middle East — in the name of fairness and balance! It could have been worse. She wasn't Vanessa Redgrave, dancing with an AK-47 held over her head, Avi told herself, but her “objectivity” had stretched to the point of listening politely to the representatives of the people who'd attacked Israeli children at Ma'alot, and Israeli athletes at Munich. Like most members of the American government, she had forgotten what principle was. But Ryan wasn't one of those…
The Treaty was his work. His sources were right. Fowler and Elliot would never have come up with an idea like this. Using religion as the key would never have occurred to them.
The Treaty. He went back to it, returning to his notes. How had the government ever allowed itself to be maneuvered into this?
We shall overcome…
That simple, wasn't it? The panicked telephone calls and cables from Israel 's American friends, the way they were starting to jump ship, as though…
But how could it have been otherwise? Avi asked himself. In any case, the Vatican Treaty was a done deal. Probably a done deal, he told himself. The eruptions in the Israeli population had begun, and the next few days would be passionate. The reasons were simple enough to understand:
Israel was essentially vacating the West Bank. Army units would remain in place, much as American units were still based in Germany and Japan, but the West Bank was to become a Palestinian state, demilitarized, its borders guaranteed by the UN, which was probably a nice sheet of framed parchment, Ben Jakob reflected. The real guarantee would come from Israel and America. Saudi Arabia and its sister Gulf states would pay for the economic rehabilitation of the Palestinians. Access to Jerusalem was guaranteed, also — that's where most of the Israeli troops would be, with large and easily-secured base camps, and the right to patrol at will. Jerusalem itself became a dominion of the Vatican. An elected mayor — he wondered if the Israeli now holding the post would keep his post… Why not? he asked himself, he was the most even-handed of men — would handle civil administration, but
