She had brushed up on the details of the situation on the plane ride over. This particular crisis had begun with the deaths of several Palestinian teenagers at the hands of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. Harry’s disclaimers notwithstanding, the story had not blown over while she was in transit to Tel Aviv. In fact, it had done whatever the opposite of blowing over was.

So here Christine stood, on the brink of Armageddon, thinking about needless carnage and her linoleum. The Olive Branch War, they were calling it. Well, except for the BBC, which insisted, as a matter of principle, on calling it the “so-called Olive Branch war.” She wondered what the point of it all was. She wondered why it was necessary for so many to suffer and die. She wondered if she would still like the pattern when she got home. She wondered why, five thousand miles away from her condo in Glendale, she couldn’t get her brain off her floor. Linoleum, she thought. That’s a funny word. Linoleum. Li-no-lee-um. Linoleumlinoleumlinoleum.

Precisely at 10 a.m., she was met by a clean-cut man in a khaki uniform who showed her some credentials that could have been purchased from a vending machine for all she knew, and informed her that he was to escort her to the general. She was helped into the back of a Lincoln Navigator, blindfolded and then driven for nearly an hour along a circuitous route that seemed to be designed to hit every pothole in the Middle East. Finally, having reached the “undisclosed location” that was playing host to General Isaakson, she was led out of the vehicle and escorted inside some kind of building. Only then was the blindfold removed.

The building was an unremarkable concrete block house. In place of ordinary home furnishings there were the hastily assembled trappings of an Israeli military headquarters: folding chairs, tables, laptops and telephones all tethered by a chaotic mass of wires that fed into a conduit running through the wall to a generator humming in the next room. Elite armed guards stood watch on the front porch. Israeli soldiers patrolled the alleyway outside. In the distance were the sounds of explosions and men shouting.

At a folding table before her, engrossed in paperwork, was a stout, gray haired man. Christine recognized him from pictures as General David Isaakson, but he seemed smaller and less threatening than she expected. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.

“Do you ever get the feeling,” said Isaakson, looking up from the papers, “that you’re being manipulated by forces beyond your understanding?”

The question unnerved Christine. Of course she had felt that way. In fact, it had never really occurred to her that there was any other way to feel. What was more disturbing was that this man, General David Isaakson, was arguably one of the most powerful men on earth.

“No,” she said. “Have you?”

“Not until about three weeks ago,” said General Isaakson.