international and religious affairs would be managed under Vatican authority by a troika of three clerics. Local security for Jerusalem was to be handled by a Swiss motorized regiment. Avi might have snorted at that, but the Swiss had been the model for the Israeli army, and the Swiss were supposed to train with the American regiment. The 1oth Cavalry were supposed to be crack regular troops. On paper, it was all very neat.
Things on paper usually were.
On Israel 's streets, however, the rabid demonstrations had already begun. Thousands of Israeli citizens were to be displaced. Two police officers and a soldier had already been hurt — at Israeli hands. The Arabs were keeping out of everyone's way. A separate commission run by the Saudis would try to settle which Arab family owned what piece of ground — a situation that Israel had thoroughly muddled when it had seized land that may or may not have been owned by Arabs, and — but that was not Avi's problem, and he thanked God for it. His given name was Abraham, not Solomon.
Will it work? he wondered.
It cannot possibly work, Qati told himself. Word that a treaty had been signed had thrown him into a ten-hour bout of nausea, and now that he had the treaty text, he felt himself at death's door itself.
Peace? And yet Israel will continue to exist? What, then, of his sacrifices, what of the hundreds, thousands, of freedom fighters sacrificed under Israeli guns and bombs? For what had they died? For what had Qati sacrificed his life? He might as well have died, Qati told himself. He'd denied himself everything. He might have lived a normal life, might have had a wife and sons and a house and comfortable work, might have been a doctor or engineer or banker or merchant. He had the intelligence to succeed at anything his mind selected as worthy of himself — but no, he had chosen the most difficult of paths. His goal was to build a new nation, to make a home for his people, to give them the human dignity they deserved. To lead his people. To defeat the invaders.
To be remembered.
That was what he craved. Anyone could recognize injustice, but to remedy it would have allowed him to be remembered as a man who had changed the course of human history, if only in a small way, if only for a small nation…
That wasn't true, Qati admitted to himself. To accomplish his task meant defying the great nations, the Americans and Europeans who had inflicted their prejudices on his ancient homeland, and men who did that were not remembered as small men. Were he successful, he would be remembered among the great, for great deeds define great men, and the great men were those whom history remembered. But whose deeds would be remembered now? Who had conquered what — or whom?
It was not possible, the Commander told himself. Yet his stomach told him something else as he read over the treaty text with its dry, precise words. The Palestinian people, his noble, courageous people, could they possibly be seduced by this infamy?
Qati stood and walked back to his private bathroom to retch again. That, part of his brain said, even as he bent over the bowl, was the answer to his question. After a time, he stood and drank a glass of water to remove the vile taste from his mouth, but there was another taste that was not so easily removed.
Across the street, in another safe house run by the organization, Gunther Bock was listening to Deutsche Welle's German overseas radio service. Despite his politics and his location, Bock would never stop thinking of himself as a German. A German revolutionary-socialist, to be sure, but a German. It had been another warm day in his true home, the radio reported, with clear skies, a fine day to walk along the Rhein holding Petra 's hand, and…
The brief news report stopped his heart. 'Convicted murderess Petra Hassler-Bock was found hanged in her prison cell this afternoon, the victim of an apparent suicide. The wife of escaped terrorist Gunther Bock, Petra Hassler-Bock was convicted of the brutal murder of Wilhelm Manstein after her arrest in Berlin, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Petra Hassler-Bock was thirty-eight years of age.
“The resurgence of the Dresden football club has surprised many observers. Led by star forward Willi Scheer…”
Bock's eyes went wide in the unlit darkness of his room. Unable even to look at the lit radio dial, his eyes found the open window and stared at the stars of evening.
Petra, dead?
He knew it was true, knew better than to tell himself it was impossible. It was all too possible… inevitable, in fact. Apparent suicide! Of course, just as all the Baader-Meinhof members had apparently committed suicide, one having reportedly shot himself in the head… three times. “A real death-grip on the gun,” had been the joke of the West German police community of the time.
They'd murdered his wife, Bock knew. His beautiful Petra was dead. His best friend, his truest comrade, his lover. Dead. It should not have hit him as hard as it did, Gunther knew. What else might he have expected? They'd had to kill her, of course. She was both a link with the past, and a potentially dangerous link with Germany 's socialist future. In killing her, they'd further secured the political stability of the new Germany, Das Vierte Reich.
“ Petra,” he whispered to himself. She was more than a political figure, more than a revolutionary. He remembered every contour of her face, every curve of her youthful body. He remembered waiting for their children to be born, and the smile with which she'd greeted him after delivering Erika and Ursel. They, too, were gone, as totally removed from him as though they'd also died.
It was not a time to be alone. Bock dressed and walked across the street. Qati, he was glad to see, was still awake, though he looked ghastly.
“What is wrong, my friend?” the Commander asked.
“ Petra is dead.”
Qati showed genuine pain on his face. “What happened?”
The report is that she was found dead in her cell — hanged.' His Petra, Bock thought in delayed shock, found strangled by her graceful neck. The image was too painful for contemplation. He'd seen that kind of death. He and Petra had executed a class enemy that way and watched his face turn pale, then darken, and… The image was unbearable. He could not allow himself to see Petra that way.
Qati bowed his head in sorrow. “May Allah have mercy on our beloved comrade.”
Bock managed not to frown. Neither he nor Petra had ever believed in God, but Qati had meant well by his prayer, even though it was nothing more than a waste of breath. At the very least, it was an expression of sympathy and good will — and friendship. Bock needed that right now, and so he ignored the irrelevancy and took a deep breath.
“It is a bad day for our cause, Ismael.”
“Worse than you think, this cursed treaty—”
“I know,” Bock said. “I know.”
“What do you think?” One thing Qati could depend on was Bock's honesty. Gunther was objective about everything.
The German took a cigarette from the Commander's desk and lit it from the table lighter. He didn't sit, but rather paced the room. He had to move about to prove to himself that he was still alive, as he commanded his mind to consider the question objectively.
“One must see this as merely one part of a larger plan. When the Russians betrayed World Socialism, they set in motion a series of events aimed at solidifying control over most of the world on the part of the capitalist classes. I used to think that the Soviets merely advanced this as a matter of clever strategy, to get economic assistance for themselves — you must understand that the Russians are a backward people, Ismael. They couldn't even make Communism work. Of course, Communism was invented by a German,” he added with an ironic grimace (that Marx had been a Jew was something he diplomatically left out). Bock paused for a moment, then went on with a coldly analytical voice. He was grateful for the chance to close the door briefly on his emotions and speak like the revolutionary of old.
'I was wrong. It was not a question of tactics at all. It is a complete betrayal. Progressive elements within the Soviet Union have been outmaneuvered even more thoroughly than in the DDR. Their rapprochement with America is quite genuine. They are trading ideological purity for temporary prosperity, yes, but there is no plan on their part to return to the socialist fold.
“ America, for its part, is charging a price for the help they offer. America forced the Soviets to deny support for Iraq, to lessen support for you and your Arab brothers, and finally to accede to their plan to secure Israel once
