"Then I will resign!" Ran Mandel shouted.

"No, Rafi, you will not," the Prime Minister said, growing a little tired of his histrionics. "If you resign, you cast yourself out. You want this seat someday, and you will never have it if you leave the cabinet now."

Mandel flushed crimson at that rebuke.

The Prime Minister looked around the room. "So, what is the opinion of the government?"

Forty minutes later, Jack's phone rang. He lifted it, noting that it was his most secure line, the direct one that bypassed Nancy Cummings.

"Ryan." He listened for a minute and made some notes. "Thanks."

Next the DDCI rose and walked into Nancy's office, then turned left through the door into Marcus Cabot's more capacious room. Cabot was lying on the couch in the far corner. Like Judge Arthur Moore, his predecessor, Cabot liked to smoke the occasional cigar. His shoes were off, and he was reading over a file with striped tape on the borders. Just one more secret file in a building full of them. The folder dropped, and Cabot, looking like a pink, chubby volcano, eyed Ryan as he approached.

"What is it, Jack?"

"Just got a call from our friend in Israel. They're coming to Rome, and the cabinet voted to accept the treaty terms, with a few modifications."

"What are they?" Ryan handed over his notes. Cabot scanned them. "You and Talbot were right."

"Yeah, and I should have let him play the card instead of me."

"Good call, you predicted all but one." Cabot rose and slipped into his black loafers before walking to his desk. Here he lifted a phone. "Tell the President I'll meet him at the White House when he gets back from New York. I want Talbot and Bunker there also. Tell him it's a go." He set the phone back in the cradle. He grinned around the cigar in his teeth, trying to look like George Patton, who hadn't smoked to the best of Ryan's knowledge. "How about that?"

"How long you figure to finalize it?"

"With the advance work you and Adler did, plus the finishing work from Talbot and Bunker - Hmm. Give it two weeks. Won't go as fast as it did with Carter at Camp David, because too many professional diplomats are involved, but in fourteen days the President takes his seven-four-seven to Rome to sign the documents."

"You want me to go down with you to the White House?"

"No, I'll handle it."

"Okay." That wasn't unexpected. Ryan left the room the same way he'd come in.

CHAPTER 7

The City of God