by Tom Clancy
The Arabs were there. It was a disappointment that there were so many, like fleas, like rats in a place they didn’t belong. Just so long as they kept out of the way. They wouldn’t, of course, and Zadin knew it. They were opposed to the Will of God. That was their misfortune.
Zadin’s radio squawked, but he ignored it. It would just be his commander, asking him what the hell he was up to and ordering him to desist. Not today. Kohn and Goldmark strode fearlessly to the Arabs blocking their path. Zadin nearly wept at their courage and their faith, wondering how the Lord would show his favor to them, hoping that they would be allowed to live. Behind him, about half his men were truly with him, which was possible because Benny had worked his watch bill to make it so. He knew without looking that they were not using their Lexan shields; instead, safety switches on their shoulder weapons were now being flicked to the Off position. It was hard waiting for it, hard to anticipate the first cloud of stones that would be coming at any moment.
Dear God, please let them live, please protect them. Spare them as you spared Isaac.
Zadin was now less than fifty meters behind the two courageous rabbis, one Polish-born, a survivor of the infamous camps where his wife and child had died, where he had somehow kept his spirit and learned the importance of faith; the other American-born, a man who’d come to Israel, fought in her wars, and only then turned to God, as Benny himself had done so brief a span of days before.
The two were barely ten meters from the surly, dirty Arabs when it happened. The Arabs were the only ones who could see that their faces were serene, that they truly welcomed whatever the morning might hold for them, and only the Arabs saw the shock and the puzzlement on the face of the Pole, and the stunned pain on the American’s at the realization of what fate had in mind.
On command, the leading row of Arabs, all of them teenagers with a lengthy history of confrontation, sat down. The hundred young men behind them did the same. Then the front row started clapping. And singing. Benny took a moment to comprehend it, though he was as fluent in Arabic as any Palestinian.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
The TV crews were immediately behind the police. Several of them laughed in surprise at the savage irony of it. One of them was CNN correspondent Pete Franks, who summed it up for everyone: “Son of a BITCH!” And in that moment Franks knew that the world had changed yet again. He’d been in Moscow for the first democratic meeting of the Supreme Soviet, in Managua the night the Sandinistas had lost their sure-thing election, and in Beijing to see the Goddess of Liberty destroyed. And now this? he thought. The Arabs finally wised up. Holy shit.
“I hope you have that tape rolling, Mickey.”
“Are they singing what I think they’re singing?”
“Sure as hell sounds like it. Let’s get closer.”
The leader of the Arabs was a twenty-year-old sociology student named Hashimi Moussa. His arm was permanently scarred from an Israeli club, and half his teeth were gone from a rubber bullet whose shooter had been especially angry on one particular day. No one questioned his courage. He’d had to prove that beyond doubt. He’d had to face death a dozen times before his position of leadership had been assured, but now he had it, and people listened to him, and he was able to activate an idea he’d cherished for five endless, patient years. It had taken three days to persuade them, then the fantastic good luck of a Jewish friend disgusted with the religious conservatives of his country who’d spoken a little too loudly about the plans of this day. Perhaps it was destiny, Hashimi thought, or the Will of Allah, or simply luck. Whatever it was, this was the moment he’d lived for since his fifteenth year, when he’d learned of Gandhi and King, and how they had defeated force with naked, passive courage. Persuading his people had meant stepping back from a warrior code that seemed part of their genes, but he’d done it. Now his beliefs would be put to the test.
All Benny Zadin saw was that his path was blocked. Rabbi Kohn said something to Rabbi Goldmark, but neither turned back to where the police were stopped, because to turn away was to admit defeat. Whether they were too shocked at what they saw or too angry, he would never learn. Captain Zadin turned to his men.
“Gas!” He’d planned this part in advance. The four men with gas guns were all religious men. They leveled their weapons and fired simultaneously into the crowd. The gas projectiles were dangerous and it was remarkable that no one was injured by them. In a few seconds, gray clouds of tear gas bloomed within the mass of sitting Arabs. But on command, each of them donned a mask to protect himself from it. This impeded their singing, but not their clapping or resolution, and it only enraged Captain Zadin further when the easterly wind blew the gas toward his men and away from the Arabs. Next, men with insulated gloves lifted the hot projectiles and threw them back toward the police. In a minute, they were able to remove their masks, and there was laughter in their singing now.
Next Zadin ordered the rubber bullets launched. He had six men armed with these weapons, and from a range of fifty meters they could force any man to run for cover. The first volley was perfect, hitting six of the Arabs in the front line. Two cried out in pain. One collapsed, but not one man moved from his place except to succor the injured. The next volley was aimed at heads not chests, and Zadin had the satisfaction of seeing a face explode in a puff of red.
The leader—Zadin recognized the face from earlier encounters—stood and gave a command the Israeli captain could not hear. But its significance became clear immediately. The singing became louder. Another volley of rubber bullets followed. One of his marksmen was very angry, the police commander saw. The Arab who’d taken one fully in the face now took another in the top of his head, and with it his body went limp in death. It should have warned Benny that he had already lost control of his men, but worse still was that he was losing control of himself.
Hashimi did not see the death of his comrade. The passion of the moment was overwhelming. The consternation on the faces of the two invading rabbis was manifest. He could not see the faces of the police behind their masks, but their actions, their movements, made their feelings clear. In a brilliant moment of clarity he knew that he was winning, and he shouted again to his people to redouble their efforts. This they did in the face of fire and death.
Captain Benjamin Zadin stripped off his helmet and walked forcefully toward the Arabs, past the rabbis who had suddenly been struck with incomprehensible indecision. Would the Will of God be upset by the discordant singing of some dirty savages?
“Uh-oh,” Pete Franks observed, his eyes streaming from the gas that had blown over his face.
“I got it,” the cameraman said without bidding, zooming his lens in on the advancing Israeli police commander. “Something is going to happen—this guy looks pissed, Pete!”
Oh, God, Franks thought. Himself a Jew, himself strangely at home in this barren but beloved land, he knew that history was occurring before his eyes yet again, was already composing his two or three minutes of verbal reporting that would overlay the tape his cameraman was recording for posterity, and was wondering if another Peabody might be in his future for doing his tough and dangerous job supremely well.
It happened quickly, much too quickly, as the captain strode directly to the Arab leader. Hashimi now knew that a friend was dead, his skull caved in by what was supposed to be a nonlethal weapon. He prayed silently for the soul of his comrade and hoped that Allah would understand the courage required to face death in this way. He would. Hashimi was sure of that. The Israeli approaching him was a face known to him. Zadin, the name was, a man who’d been there before often enough, just one more Israeli face most often hidden behind a Lexan mask and drawn gun, one more man unable to see Arabs as people, to whom a Muslim was the launcher for a rock or a Molotov cocktail. Well, today he’d learn different, Hashimi told himself. Today he’d see a man of courage and conviction.
Benny Zadin saw an animal, like a stubborn mule, l
ike—what? He wasn’t sure what he saw, but it wasn’t a man, wasn’t an Israeli. They’d changed tactics, that was all, and the tactics were womanly. They thought this would stand in the way of his purpose? Just as his wife had told him that she was leaving for the bed of a better man, that he could have the children, that his threats to beat her were empty words, that he couldn’t do that, wasn’t man enough to take charge of his own household. He saw that beautiful empty face and wondered why he hadn’t taught her a lesson; she’d just stood there, not a meter away, staring at him, smiling—finally laughing at his inability to do what his manhood had commanded him to do, and, so, passive weakness had defeated strength.
But not this time.
“Move!” Zadin commanded in Arabic.
“No.”
“I will kill you.”
“You will not pass.”
“Benny!” a levelheaded member of the police screamed. But it was too late for that. For Benjamin Zadin, the deaths of his brothers at Arab hands, the way his wife had left, and the way these people just sat in his way was too much. In one smooth motion he drew his service automatic and shot Hashimi in the forehead. The Arab youth fell forward, and the singing and clapping stopped. One of the other demonstrators started to move, but two others grabbed him and held him fast. Others began praying for their two dead comrades. Zadin turned his gun hand to one of these, but though his finger pressed on the trigger, something stopped him a gram short of the release pressure. It was the look in the eyes, the courage there, something other than defiance. Resolution, perhaps ... and pity, for the look on Zadin’s face was anguish that transcended pain, and the horror of what he had done crashed through his consciousness. He had broken faith with himself. He had killed in cold blood. He had taken the life of someone who had threatened no man’s life. He had murdered. Zadin turned to the rabbis, looking for something, he knew not what, and whatever he sought simply was not there. As he turned away, the singing began again. Sergeant Moshe Levin came forward and took the captain’s weapon.
“Come on, Benny, let’s get you away from this place.”
“What have I done?”
“It is done, Benny. Come with me.”
Levin started to lead his commander away, but he had to turn and look at the morning’s handiwork. Hashimi’s body was slumped over, a pool of blood coursing down between the cobblestones. The sergeant knew that he had to do or say something. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. His mouth hung open, and his face swung from side to side. In that moment, Hashimi’s disciples knew that their leader had won.
Ryan’s phone rang at 2:03 Eastern Daylight Time. He managed to get it before the start of the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“This is Saunders at the Ops Center. Get your TV on. In four minutes CNN is running something hot.”
“Tell me about it.” Ryan’s hand fumbled for the remote controller and switched the bedroom TV on.
“You ain’t gonna believe it, sir. We copied it off the CNN satellite feed, and Atlanta is fast-tracking it onto the network. I don’t know how it got past Israeli censors. Anyway—”
“Okay, here it comes.” Ryan rubbed his eyes clear just in time. He had the TV sound muted to keep from disturbing his wife. The commentary was unnecessary in any case. “Dear God in heaven ...”
“That about covers it, sir,” the senior watch officer agreed.
“Send my driver out now. Call the Director, tell him to get in fast. Get hold of the duty officer at the White House Signals Office. He’ll alert the people on his end. We need the DDI, and the desks for Israel, Jordan—hell, that whole area, all the desks. Make sure State’s up to speed—”
“They have their own—”
“I know that. Call them anyway. Never assume anything in this business, okay?”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“Yeah, send me about four hours’ more sleep.” Ryan set the phone down.
“Jack ... was that—” Cathy was sitting up. She’d just caught the replay.
“It sure was, babe.”
“What’s it mean?”
“It means the Arabs just figured out how to destroy Israel.” Unless we can save the place.
Ninety minutes later, Ryan turned on the West Bend drip machine behind his desk before running over the notes from the night-duty staff. It would be a day for coffee. He’d shaved in the car on the way in, and a look at the mirror showed that he’d not done a very good job of it. Jack waited until he had a full cup before marching into the Director’s office. Charles Alden was there with Cabot.
“Good morning,” the National Security Advisor said.
“Yeah,” the Deputy Director replied in a husky voice. “What do you suppose is good about it? The President know yet?”
“No. I didn’t want to disturb him until we know something. I’ll talk to him when he wakes up—sixish. Marcus, what do you think of your Israeli friends now?”
“Have we developed anything else, Jack?” Director Cabot asked his subordinate.
“The shooter is a police captain, according to the insignia. No name on him yet, no background. The Israelis have him in the jug somewhere and they’re not saying anything. From the tape it looks like two definitely dead, probably a few more with minor injuries. Chief of Station has nothing he can report to us except that it really happened, and we have that on tape. Nobody seems to know where the TV crew is. We did not have any assets at the site when all this happened, so we’re going exclusively from the news coverage.” Again, Ryan didn’t add. The morning was bad enough. “Temple Mount is shut down, guarded by their army now, nobody in or out, and they’ve closed access to the Wailing Wall also. That may be a first. Our embassy over there has not said anything, they’re waiting for instructions from here. Same story for the others. No official reaction from Europe yet, but I expect that to change within the hour. They’re at work already, and they got the same pictures from their Sky News service.”
“It’s almost four,” Alden said, wearily checking his watch. “In three hours people are going to have their breakfasts upset—what a hell of a thing to see in the morning. Gentlemen, I think this one’s going to be big. Ryan, you called it. I remember what you said last month.”
“Sooner or later the Arabs had to wise up,” Jack said. Alden nodded agreement. It was gracious of him, Jack noted. He’d said the same thing in one of his books several years earlier.
“I think Israel can weather this, they always have—” Jack cut his Director off.
“No way, boss,” Ryan said. Someone had to straighten Cabot out. “It’s what Napoleon said about the moral and the physical. Israel depends absolutely on having the moral high-ground. Their whole cachet is that they are the only democracy in the region, that they are the guys in white hats. That concept died about three hours ago. Now they look like Bull—whoever it was—in Selma, Alabama, except he used water hoses. The civil-rights community is going to go berserk.” Jack paused to sip at his coffee. “It’s a simple question of justice. When the Arabs were throwing rocks and cocktails, the police could say that they were using force in response to force. Not this time. Both the deaders were sitting down and not threatening anybody.”
“It’s the isolated act of one deranged man!” Cabot announced angrily.
“Not so, sir. The one shot with a pistol was like you say, but the first victim was killed with two of those rubber bullets at a range of more than twenty yards—with two aimed shots from a single-shot weapon. That’s cold, and it wasn’t any accident.”
“Are we sure he’s dead?” Alden asked.
“My wife’s a doc, and he looked dead to her. The body spasmed and went limp, probably indicating death from massive head trauma. They can’t say this guy tripped and fell onto the curb. This really changes things. If the Palestinians are smart, they’ll double-down their bets. They’ll stay with this tactic and wait for the world to respond. If they do that, they can’t lose,” Jack concluded.
“I agree with Ry
an,” Alden said. “There’ll be a UN resolution before dinner. We’ll have to go along with it, and that just might show the Arabs that nonviolence is a better weapon than rocks are. What will the Israelis say? How will they react?”
Alden knew what the answer was. This was to enlighten the DCI, so Ryan took the question. “First they’ll stonewall. They’re probably kicking themselves for not intercepting the tape, but it’s a little late for that. This was almost certainly an unplanned incident—I mean that the Israeli government is as surprised as we are—otherwise they would have grabbed the TV crew. That police captain is having his brain picked apart now. By lunchtime they’ll say that he’s crazy—hell, he probably is—and that this is an isolated act. How they do their damage control is predictable, but—”
“It’s not going to work,” Alden interrupted. “The President’s going to have to have a statement out by nine. We can’t call this a ‘tragic incident.’ It’s cold-blooded murder of an unarmed demonstrator by a state official.”
“Look, Charlie, this is just an isolated incident,” Director Cabot said again.
“Maybe so, but I’ve been predicting this for five years.” The National Security Advisor stood and walked to the windows. “Marcus, the only thing that has held Israel together for the past thirty years has been the stupidity of the Arabs. Either they never recognized that Israeli legitimacy is based entirely on their moral position or they just didn’t have the wit to care about it. Israel is now faced with an impossible ethical contradiction. If they really are a democracy that respects the rights of its citizens, they have to grant the Arabs broader rights. But that means playing hell with their political integrity, which depends on soothing their own extreme religious elements—and that crowd doesn’t care a rat’s ass about Arab rights, does it? But if they cave in to the religious zealots and stonewall, try to gloss over this thing, then they are not a democracy, and that imperils the political support from America without which they cannot survive economically or militarily. The same dilemma applies to us. Our support for Israel is based on their political legitimacy as a functioning liberal democracy, but that legitimacy just evaporated. A country whose police murder unarmed people has no legitimacy, Marcus. We can no more support an Israel that does things like this than we could have supported Somoza, Marcos, or any other tin-pot dictator—”