"This is a betrayal of the State of Israel," he said, after receiving the first question. Surprisingly, he spoke with calm reason. "In forcing Israel to return what was rightfully hers, the United States has betrayed the Jewish people's historic right to the land of their fathers, and also gravely compromised the physical security of the country. Israeli citizens will be forced from their homes at gunpoint, just as happened fifty years ago," he concluded ominously.

"Now wait a minute," another commentator responded heatedly.

"God, these people are passionate," Jack noted.

"I lost family members in the Holocaust," Mendelev said, his voice still reasonable. "The whole point of the State of Israel is to give Jews a place where they can be safe."

"But the President is sending American troops -"

"We sent American troops to Vietnam," Rabbi Mendelev pointed out. "And we made promises, and there was a treaty involved there, also. Israel's only possible security is within defensible borders behind her own troops. What America has done is to bully that country into accepting an agreement. Fowler cut off defense supplies to Israel as a means of "sending a message." Well, the message was sent and received: either give in or be cut off. That is what happened. I can prove it, and I will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to prove it."

"Uh-oh," Jack observed quietly.

"Scott Adler, Deputy Secretary of State, personally delivered that message while John Ryan, the Deputy Director of the CIA, made his own pitch to Saudi Arabia. Ryan promised the Saudi king that America would bring Israel to heel. That's bad enough, but for Adler, a Jew, to do what he did " Mendelev shook his head.

"This guy's got some good sources."

"Is what he says true, Jack?" Cathy asked.

"Not exactly, but what we were doing over there was supposed to be secret. It wasn't supposed to be widely-known that I was out of the country."

"I knew you were gone -"

"But not where to. It won't matter. He can make a little noise, but it won't matter."

The demonstrations began the next day. They'd bet everything on this. It was the last desperate throw. The two leaders were Russian Jews who'd only recently been allowed to leave a country that manifestly had little love for them. On arrival in their only true home, they'd been allowed to settle on the West Bank, that part of Palestine that had been taken from Jordan by force of arms in the Six Day War of 1967. Their pre-fabricated apartments - tiny by American standards, but incomprehensibly luxurious by Russian ones - stood on one of the hundreds of rocky slopes that defined the region. It was new and strange to them, but it was home, and home is something people fight to defend. The son of Anatoliy - he'd renamed himself Nathan - was already a regular officer in the Israeli army. The same was true of David's daughter. Their arrival in Israel so short a time before had seemed to all of them like salvation itself - and now they were being told to leave their homes? Again? Their lives had borne enough recent shocks. This was one too many.