their good will, and after a few initial teething problems, that good will prevailed. Over coffee, after concluding one dispute over scheduling access to one shrine or another, the Greek Patriarch noted with a chuckle that perhaps this was the first miracle he had ever witnessed. No, the Rabbi had replied, it was no miracle that men of God should have the conviction to obey their own religious principles. All at once? the Imam had asked with a smile, perhaps not a miracle, but certainly it had required over a millennium to achieve. Let us not begin a new dispute, the Greek had said with a rumbling laugh, over the settlement of another — now, if you can only help me find a way to deal with my fellow Christians!
Outside on the streets, when clerics of one faith encountered those of another, greetings were exchanged to set an example for everyone. The Swiss Guards saluted each in their turn, and when speaking with the most senior, they would remove their glasses or helmets to show public respect.
That was the only humanity the Swiss Guards were allowed to demonstrate. It was said that they didn't even sweat.
“Scary sons of bitches,” Ryan observed, standing in shirt-sleeves at a corner. American tourists snapped pictures. Jews still looked a touch resentful. Arabs smiled. The Christians who'd largely been driven out of Jerusalem by increasing violence had barely started to return. Everyone got the hell out of their way as the five men moved briskly down the street, not quite marching, their helmeted heads turning left and right. “They really do look like robots.”
“You know,” Avi said, “there hasn't been a single attack on them since the first week. Not one.”
“I wouldn't want to fool with them,” Clark observed quietly.
In the first week, as though by Providence, an Arab youth had killed an elderly Israeli woman with a knife — it had been a street robbery rather than a crime with political significance — and had made the mistake of doing so in view of a Swiss private, who'd run him down and subdued him with a martial-arts blow right out of a movie. The Arab in question had been taken to the troika and given the choice of a trial by Israeli or Islamic law. He'd made the mistake of choosing the latter. After a week in an Israeli hospital to allow his injuries to heal, he'd faced a trial in accordance with the word of the Koran, chaired by Imam Ahmed bin Yussif. One day after that, he had been flown to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, driven to a public square, and, after having had time to repent his misdeeds, publicly beheaded with a sword. Ryan wondered how you said pour encourager les autres in Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic. Israelis had been amazed at the speed and severity of justice, but the Muslims had merely shrugged and pointed out that the Koran had its own stern criminal code, and that it had proven highly effective over the years.
“Your people are still a little unhappy with this, aren't they?”
Avi frowned. Ryan had faced him with the necessity of expressing his personal opinion, or speaking the truth. “They'd feel safer with our paratroops here… man-to-man, Ryan?” Truth won out, as it had to with Avi.
“Sure.”
“They'll learn. It will take a few more weeks, but they will learn. The Arabs like the Swiss, and the key to the peace on this street is how our Arab friends feel. Now, will you tell me something?” Clark 's head moved fractionally at that.
“Maybe,” Ryan answered, looking up the street.
“How much did you have to do with this?”
“Nothing at all,” Jack replied with a neutral coldness that matched the pace of the soldiers. “It was Charlie Alden's idea, remember? I was just the messenger boy.”
“So Elizabeth Elliot has told everyone.” Avi didn't have to say any more.
“You wouldn't have asked the question unless you knew the answer, Avi. So why ask the question?”
“Artfully done.” General Ben Jakob sat down and waved for the waiter. He ordered two beers before speaking again. Clark and the other bodyguard weren't drinking. “Your president pushed us too hard. Threatening us with withholding our arms… ”
“He could have gone a little easier, I suppose, but I do not make policy, Avi. Your people made it happen when they murdered those demonstrators. That reopened a part of our own history that we wish to forget. It neutralized your congressional lobby — a lot of those people were on the other side of our own civil rights movement, remember. You forced us to move, Avi. You know that. Besides—” Ryan stopped abruptly.
“Yes?”
“Avi, this thing just might work. I mean, look around!” Jack said, as the beers arrived. He was thirsty enough that a third of it disappeared in an instant.
“It is a slim possibility,” Ben Jakob admitted.
“You get better intel from Syria than we do,” Ryan pointed out. “I've heard that they've started saying nice things about the settlement — very quietly, I admit. Am I right?”
“If it's true.” Avi grunted.
“You know the hard part about 'peace' intel?”
Ben Jakob's eyes were focused on a distant wall as he contemplated — what? “Believing it is possible?”
Jack nodded. “That's one area where we have the advantage over you guys, my friend. We've been through all that.”
“True, but the Soviets never said — proclaimed — for two generations that they wanted to wipe you from the face of the earth. Tell the worthy President Fowler that such concerns are not so easily allayed.”
Jack sighed. “I have. I did. Avi, I'm not your enemy.”
“Neither are you my ally.”
“Allies? We are now, General. The treaties are in force. General, my job is to provide information and analysis to my government. Policy is made by people senior to me, and smarter than me,” Ryan added with deadpan irony.
“Oh? And who might they be?” General Ben Jakob smiled at the younger man. His voice dropped a few octaves. “You've been in the trade for what — not even ten years, Jack. The submarine business, what you did in Moscow, the role you played in the last election—”
Ryan tried to control his reaction, but failed. “Jesus, Avi!” How the hell did he find that out!
“You cannot take the Lord's name in vain, Dr. Ryan,” the deputy chief of the Mossad chided. “This is the City of God. Those Swiss chaps might shoot you. Tell the lovely Miss Elliot that if she pushes too hard, we still have friends in your media, and a story such as that…” Avi smiled.
“Avi, if your people mention that to Liz, she will not know what you are talking about.”
“Rubbish!” General Ben Jakob snorted.
“You have my word on that, sir.”
It was General Ben Jakob's turn to be surprised. “That is difficult to believe.”
Jack finished off the beer. “Avi, I've said what I can. Has it ever occurred to you that your information may not have come from an entirely reliable source? I will tell you this: I have no personal knowledge of what you alluded to. If there was any kind of deal, I was kept out of it. Okay, I have reason to believe that something may have happened, and I can even speculate what it might have been, but if I ever have to sit in front of a judge and answer questions, all I can say is that I do not know anything. And you, my friend, cannot blackmail someone with something that person doesn't know about. You'd have to do a pretty good selling job just to convince them that something had happened in the first place.”
“My God, what Moore and Ritter set up really was elegant, wasn't it?”
Ryan set down his empty glass. “Things like that never happen in real life, General. That's movie stuff. Look, Avi, maybe that report you have is a little on the thin side. The spectacular ones often are. Reality never quite keeps up with art, after all.” It was a good play. Ryan grinned to carry the point.
“Dr. Ryan, in 1972 the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization contracted the Japanese Red Army to shoot up Ben Gurion Airport, which they did, killing off mainly American Protestant pilgrims from your island of Puerto Rico. The single terrorist taken alive by our security forces told his interrogators that his dead comrades and their victims would become a constellation of stars in the heavens. In prison he purportedly converted himself to Judaism, and even circumcised himself with his teeth, which speaks volumes for his flexibility,” Brigadier General Avi Ben Jakob added matter-of-factly. “Do not ever tell me that there is something too mad to be true. I have been an intelligence officer for more than twenty years, and the only thing of which I am certain is that I have not yet seen it all.”
“Avi, even I'm not that paranoid.”
“You have never experienced a holocaust, Dr. Ryan.”
