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3. To urge the United Nations to pass without further procrastination the long-delayed Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing the Coalition Allies to begin the air war as soon as they are ready.

4. To appear to welcome but in fact to frustrate any peace plan that might enable Iraq to escape unscathed from her present dilemma. Clearly the UN Secretary-General, Paris, and Moscow are the principal dangers here, likely to propose at any time some naive scheme capable of preventing what must be done. The public, of course, will continue to be assured of the opposite.

Respectfully submitted,

PIAG

“Itzhak, we really have to go along with them on this one.”

The Prime Minister of Israel seemed, as always, dwarfed by the big swivel chair and the desk in front of it, as his Deputy Foreign Minister confronted him in the premier’s fortified private office beneath the Knesset in Jerusalem. The two Uzi-toting paratroopers outside the heavy, steel-lined timber door could hear nothing of what went on inside.

Itzhak Shamir glowered across the desk, his short legs swinging free above the carpet, although there was a specially fitted footrest if he needed it. His lined, pugnacious face beneath the grizzled gray hair made him seem even more like some northern troll.

His Deputy Foreign Minister was different from the Prime Minister in every way: tall where the national leader was short, well-tailored where Shamir was rumpled, urbane where he was choleric. Yet they got along extremely well, sharing the same uncompromising vision of their country and of Palestinians, so that the Russian-born Prime Minister had had no hesitation in picking and promoting the cosmopolitan diplomat.

Benjamin Netanyahu had made his case well. Israel needed America: her goodwill, which had once been automatically guaranteed by the power of the Jewish lobby but was now under siege on Capitol Hill and in the American media; her donations, her weaponry, her veto in the Security Council. That was an awful lot to jeopardize for one alleged Iraqi agent being run by Kobi Dror from down there in Tel Aviv.

“Let them have this Jericho, whoever he is,” urged Netanyahu. “If he helps them destroy Saddam Hussein, the better for us.”

The Prime Minister grunted, nodded, and reached for his intercom.

“Get on to General Dror, and tell him I need to see him here in my office,” he told his private secretary.

“No, not when he’s free. Now.”

Four hours later, Kobi Dror left his Prime Minister’s office. He was seething. Indeed, he told himself as his car swung down the hill out of Jerusalem and onto the broad highway back to Tel Aviv, he did not recall when he had been so angry.

To be told by your own Prime Minister that you were wrong was bad enough. To be told he was a stupid asshole was something he could have done without.

Normally he took pleasure in looking at the pine forests where, during the siege of Jerusalem when the highway of today had been a rutted track, his father and others had battled to punch a hole through the Palestinian lines and relieve the city. But not today.

Back in his office, he summoned Sami Gershon and told him the news.

“How the hell did the Americans know?” he shouted. “Who leaked?”

“No one inside the Office,” Gershon said with finality. “What about that professor? I see he’s just got back from London.”

“Damned traitor,” snarled Dror. “I’ll break him.”

“The Brits probably got him drunk,” suggested Gershon. “Boasting in his cups. Leave it, Kobi. The damage is done. What have we got to do?”

“Tell them everything about Jericho,” snapped Dror. “I won’t do it. Send Sharon. Let him do it. The meeting’s in London, where the leak took place.”

Gershon thought it over and grinned.

“What’s so funny?” asked Dror.

“Just this. We can’t contact Jericho anymore. Just let them try. We still don’t know who the bastard is.

Let them find out. With any luck, they’ll make a camel’s ass out of it.”

Dror thought it over, and eventually a sly smile spread across his face. “Send Sharon tonight,” he said.

“Then we launch another project. I’ve had it in my mind for some time. We’ll call it Operation Joshua.”

“Why?” asked Gershon, perplexed.

“Don’t you remember exactly what Joshua did to Jericho?”