Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

While Blunt continues in a voiceover, the screen goes to the floor of the Knesset, where Israeli parliamentarians applaud a just concluded statement by Shula Amit in her trademark pearls and Chanel suit. The prime minister, who leads a broad coalition that only a week before was on the verge of collapse, simply beams.

“…that the normally fractious Israeli parliament has become one big ear-to-ear grin, the prime minister roundly lauded as, and I quote, ‘the prime minister of peace’, a far cry from how the rightwing politician is usually portrayed and portrays herself. Observers here point out that it was far right Prime Minister Menahem Begin who in 1979 signed a peace treaty with Egypt. Regarding any new peace treaty, however, officially the government here is playing it close to the vest. A foreign ministry spokesman limited his remarks to saying, ‘The State of Israel looks with favor upon recent developments in Kuwait.’ But I’ve talked to cab drivers, schoolteachers, restaurant workers, and even soldiers, and all are clearly excited that the current united Arab initiative may finally bring peace to a Middle East battered by a hundred years of senseless bloodshed. Connie Blunt, Jerusalem, Israel.”

Back to Atlanta, where despite his normal loathing for her, Damian Smith cannot help but feel Blunt is as much a television news pro as he is. The bitch. “Thank you, Connie. Stay with us for more on peace in the stormy Middle East, and regular updates on the northward march of what may soon become Hurricane Lucille. You’re watching Breaking News on CNN. Stay… connected.”

IN THE PRIVATE TOILET adjacent to her office, Shula Amit refreshes her makeup. This is one advantage men have over women in politics—that and not having a period, which at forty-seven Shula still has, in spades, ten bloody days a month. The extra-large breasts she developed at age thirteen are gone, however. As a child of privilege—her father’s contracting firm built much of Haifa’s seaport—Shula had them reduced immediately after serving her two years in the Israel Defense Forces, where despite custom-made restrictive bras she had to have her uniforms hand-tailored by her mother’s dressmaker, and twice asked her father to intervene with the chief of staff when her superior officers went beyond leering. Even then, she had in the back of her mind the idea of a career in public service, and knew she would be judged not by her ability to make decisions or analyze policy, but by her tits. To Israeli men, anything over a B indicates bimbo. A male politician may possess a huge dick but—aside from that bizarre case involving an inane congressman in America—the public does not see it, but a woman’s breasts, especially when so prominent, are the first part of her to enter a public space. Any public space. Even the Knesset plenum. Especially, she thinks, the Knesset plenum.

Back in her office, Shula takes the usual afternoon call from her mother, whose mission in life is to oversee the nanny who oversees her two grandchildren.

“She gives them watermelon for dessert.”

“Ah, yes. Watermelon poisoning,” Shula says while reviewing her notes for the cabinet meeting that will begin in minutes—why is a caterer on the list of attendees? “People do eat watermelon from time to time and survive.”

“But the children stop eating lunch. Once she puts the watermelon on the table—”

“Mom, don’t you read the papers, listen to the radio?”

“Peace, shmeace,” her mother says. “In seventy-two years of my life, how many peace conferences have there been?” She pauses for a moment of fraudulent modesty, a family trait: her late husband carried a hard hat with him a full thirty years after he had mixed his last bag of cement. He asked to be buried with it. “But what do I know? You’re the prime minister.”

“I am indeed the prime minister, and just between you and me and the rest of the world, a happy one at the moment. Mama, this could be real.” Shula will not say more. Not even to her mother. Considering her mother’s inability to keep secrets, especially not to her mother.

“From your mouth to God’s ear.”

“Let’s hope She has one,” Shula says.

This passes over her mother’s head. For years, the leading columnist at an opposition newspaper has signed off his column with, “And Shula speaketh to God, and God answereth, because Shula speaketh only to herself.” Nevertheless, Shula has a talent for political jiu jitsu, taking criticism head on and using it against her political rivals. When accused of being a person of privilege, Shula countered that this gave her no reason to take bribes. Still, the last thing she needs is an opposition party at home.

“Mama, you’re right to worry about the watermelon. Just make sure they do their homework.”

“Why bother?” her mother answers. “They’re like you. Five minutes after they return from school, it’s done.”

A caterer. The press would have a field day with that. SHULA’S LIFE IS A CABARET! or CUTS FOR THE POOR, CUTLETS FOR SHULA! A caterer in the cabinet room? Once that is known, the whole world will know negotiations have not simply begun, but have been concluded—with festivities. The secret will be out. As agreed all around, the US president is to have the honor of making the formal announcement, and—at least domestically—taking the credit in an election year. If he is cheated of that, there will be hell to pay.

A caterer , Shula thinks. I will have someone’s head .

THE BUILDING MAJOR GENERAL Dareh Niroomad enters, calmly smoking a Havana—he favors the Rothschild Magnum, but cigars with Jewish names are out of favor in Tehran, so this one is a Montecristo which, the general knows, because of its last two syllables, might soon come under similar prohibition—is faced with huge painted banners of the mullahs who rule Iran. Whether protectively or threateningly, take your pick, they look down on a fleet of black Land Rovers carrying the raised-rifle logo of the Revolutionary Guard, the most politically reliable force in the Iranian military, and the institutionalized motto of the Guard: Allahu Akbar , God is Great.

For Niroomad, all this God stuff is something of a bad joke, but he long ago came to terms with the zaniness of the theological-political echelon. Like his father, who perished leading an infantry division in the Great War of Defense—what the West calls the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88—he is prepared to die for his country, and to kill for it, but not to take seriously the sulfurous mouthings of the fools and brigands who run it. If the Shah manipulated Iranian nationalism to torture and imprison his own people, the mullahs manipulate religion to do the same. To Niroomad, it hardly matters: whether under a crown or a turban, the clowns decide and the military executes. That is all of it.

As the elevator descends, carrying the general and his staff—all of them wearing the sunglasses that have come to be as much part of the uniform as epaulets and insignia of rank—to a secret war room that even some of the ruling mullahs do not know exists, Niroomad feels the old excitement rising within him. The deeper they descend, the more intense his excitement. This is what he was trained for and what he has worked toward for almost a year. On the elevator wall, a panel of lights winks from white to coral to pink to red. Four stories underground, the elevator doors open to reveal the future of the Middle East.

IN THE MAIN SALON of a fifty-two-foot Hatteras yacht moored at the end of a long pier in the Tel Aviv marina, Misha Shulman wears what is in effect his professional uniform of too-tight black silk shirt, long sleeves in the Israeli style rolled up over arms rippling with muscle, his trousers shot through with silver thread, his shoes pointy-toed and Italian, around his neck a gold chain so heavy gravity keeps it from shifting as he moves. In Shulman’s hand is a gold-plated CZ .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol whose extended double-stack custom magazine holds twenty-two rounds. This weapon he does not hold to the head of the man tied to the chair in the center of the yacht’s salon so much as he gesticulates with it as though it is a laser pointer and he a teacher in a class of idiots, each articulation yet another threat.