"Now, Irene, would you please share with the rest of group what really happened."

Kennedy sighed ever so slightly. This was compartmentalized information and she had no desire to disseminate it to the various agencies represented in the room. She knew, though, that any attempt to try to convince the President otherwise would be useless. Reluctantly, she began.

"Through assets on the ground and reconnaissance photographs we have discovered that there was no bomb-making factory in Hebron."

Kennedy looked through her glasses at the confused expressions of the other high-level officials.

"The damage that was done was not caused by a secondary explosion."

"Then what in the hell was it caused by?" asked Secretary of Defense Culbertson.

After a brief hesitation, Kennedy said, "Sixteen Hellfire missiles were fired into the neighborhood."

With a confused frown on his face Culbertson asked, "Why?"

"That's the million-dollar question," replied the President in an unfriendly tone.

"Well… what does Freidman have to say about all of this?"

The President leaned back in his chair and looked to Kennedy for the answer.

"He's sticking with their story that there was a bomb-making factory."

"How sure are we," asked Secretary of State Berg, "that there was no bomb factory… that all of the damage was caused by the missiles?"

"The evidence is pretty clear-cut."

"How clear-cut?"

Kennedy thought about the satellite images and the reports she'd received from their people on the ground. She normally preferred to avoid going too far out on a limb but on this one she felt confident.

"I'd say the evidence we have convincingly contradicts the story that is being put out by the Israeli government."

"So what you're telling us," interjected Culbertson, "is that we can't trust what our only ally in the region is telling us."

The President nodded.

"That about sums it up. Beatrice, what does the Israeli Ambassador have to say about last night?"

Berg had not called Prime Minister Goldberg nor had she called the Israeli Ambassador. In the skilled game of diplomacy the higher-ups avoided asking questions of each other that might force lies to be told.

So one of Berg's underlings had called the deputy chief of mission for an unofficial response to the assassination of the Palestinian Ambassador.

The Ambassador's number-two man had dismissed any involvement by Israel as ludicrous. This was only the first round and the answer was expected. As the drama unfolded, tougher questions would be put to people with more weighty tides.

"The embassy," started Berg, "is saying exactly what we'd expect them to say."

"That they had no involvement," answered the President.

Berg nodded.

"Irene," asked the President, "what do we know about Ali? Is there any reason that we know of why the Israelis would want him killed, or more precisely why Ben Freidman would want him killed?"

"As with all things between the Israelis and the Palestinians, there is ample motive. Ali grew up in Gaza and was an active member in the terrorist group Force 17 and then later with the PLO. The Israelis claim that like Arafat, he was a terrorist and still is a terrorist. More recently there have been accusations of fund-raising for the martyr brigades and some questionable acquaintances with people who run in the wrong circles."

"What kind of circles?" asked Hayes.

"People who deal in arms trafficking."

Valerie Jones, who had been quiet up until now, asked, "Is that information we collected on our own, or intelligence that was provided by the Israelis?"

"That's information we gathered through our own sources."

"So," began the President, "do you see anything in Ali's recent history that would warrant Mossad wanting to kill him?"

The President was fixated on Freidman, and Kennedy couldn't really blame him. Despite Freidman's denials, Kennedy had been thinking quite a bit about the possibility that he had ordered the assassination of Ali. There were many logical reasons why Freidman should not have ordered such a bold move, but on the other hand, recently he had proven to be increasingly unpredictable and brazen. The President was looking to Kennedy for an answer and she settled on an honest if somewhat cautious course.

"A year ago, sir, I would have not thought Ben Freidman capable of such a drastic move, but today I'm not so sure." Kennedy hesitated for a moment as if she were about to say something else and then stopped.

The President picked up on this and said, "What is it?"

"I'm trying to step back and see the big picture from the Israelis' point of view. It's been a bloody couple of years for them. The homicide bombers have taken a massive toll in both life and morale. Israel already receives almost no support from the international community, so in that regard they risk almost nothing. They could be expanding the war… an extension of their attitude that if you hit them they will hit you back even harder."

President Hayes nodded.

"Hit the Palestinians where they feel safest, and keep them off balance."

Kennedy shrugged.

"It's a possibility. One that I think is a bit of a stretch, but a possibility."

Hayes seemed to like this line of thinking. It gave him something he could get his hands around to explain why Freidman would do something so reckless. In a final effort to draw out any disagreement, Hayes asked, "Can anyone right now come up with a suspect other than Mossad?"

Rapp had been listening keenly to the discussion, and despite his complete lack of faith in Ben Freidman, he thought there were quite a few other possibilities that should be explored. He also knew a few things that the others didn't, but under orders from Kennedy he was to keep his opinions to himself until they were alone with the President.

FIFTY THREE.

Prime Minister Goldberg had never in his life felt so beleaguered.

This was worse than the Yom Kippur War, when he had been surrounded by Syrian forces and shelled until his ears bled, and ordered by his commanders to hold his position until a counterattack could be mounted. He had hung on for three days without sleep. He and his men were fighting a much larger Syrian force in a bloody battle for the Golan Heights. The counterattack eventually arrived and an angry Israeli army threw the Syrians back across the border and closed to within spitting distance of Damascus.

Then the United States and the Soviet Union had stepped in and tried to separate the belligerents like fighting children on a playground.

Goldberg would never forget the lesson he learned in 1973, and that was to never trust his Arab neighbors. They had attacked on the holiest Jewish holiday of the year, when Israelis were either at home or in their synagogues praying. For the first three days they had hammered the Jewish people, and then when the Israeli army regrouped and pushed both the Egyptians and the Syrians back across their borders, the Arabs screamed for international intervention. They launched a sneak attack and then whined for peace and of course wanted their land back even though thousands of Israelis lay dead.

Under the pressure of an Arab oil embargo the United States had forced Israel to pull back and concede much of the land they had captured in a war they did not start. How many times did the world have to see proof that Arabs could not be trusted? It frustrated Goldberg to no end that the leaders of Europe refused to see things as they were. It saddened him deeply that despite everything his people had been through on that cursed continent that they did not come to the aid of Israel. All Goldberg wanted for his people was a safe place to live. And if things weren't already bad enough having to deal with suicidal Palestinians and bigoted heads of state, he now had to contend with dissenters within his own government.