Our Sacred Honor. Джек Марс

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      “Are you worried?” Luke said.

      Gunner shook his head. “No. I think you can probably take care of yourself.”

      Now, on the plane, Luke smiled to himself. Funny kid. He had been through a lot, and somehow hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

      Luke glanced around at his team. In the seat next to him sat big Ed Newsam, in khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Steely-eyed, huge, as eternal as a mountain. Ed was older now, certainly. There were lines on his face, especially around the eyes, that hadn’t been there before. And his hair wasn’t as jet black as it used to be – there were a few gray and white strands running around loose in there.

      Ed had left the FBI Hostage Rescue Team for this gig. The FBI was moving Ed up the ranks – more seniority, more responsibility, more sitting at a desk, and a lot less time in the field. To hear Ed tell it, he was switching because he wanted to see some action again. But that didn’t stop him from holding out for more money. It didn’t matter. Luke had been ready to make the SRT budget cry out in agony if that’s what it took to get Ed back on board.

      Across from Luke and to the left, facing him, was Mark Swann. He stretched his long legs out into the aisle as usual, an old pair of ripped jeans and a pair of red Chuck Taylor sneakers there for anyone to trip over. Swann had changed, of course. Barely surviving his time as a prisoner of ISIS had made him more serious – he no longer joked about the danger of missions. Luke was glad that he had come back at all – there was a period of time when it seemed like Swann might become a recluse, and never emerge from his penthouse condo overlooking the beach again.

      Then there was Trudy Wellington. She sat directly across from Luke. She had curly brown hair again, and hadn’t aged at all. That made sense. Despite everything she had seen and done – her time as an analyst with the original SRT, her relationship with Don Morris, her escape from prison and her time in hiding – she was still only thirty-two years old. She was slim and as attractive as ever in a green sweater and blue jeans. At some point, she had done away with the big, round, red-rimmed owlish glasses she used to hide behind. Now her pretty blue eyes were front and center.

      Those eyes were staring hard at Luke. They didn’t look friendly.

      What did she know about his relationship with Susan? Was she angry about it? Why would she be?

      “Do you know what you’re doing, man?” Ed Newsam said. He said it good-naturedly enough, but there was an edge, an undercurrent to it.

      “You mean, with this mission?”

      Ed shrugged. “Sure. Start with that.”

      Luke glanced out his window as he spoke. It was a bright day, but the sun was already behind them. In a little while, as they moved further east, the sky would begin to darken. It gave him the sense of events surging out ahead – a familiar feeling, but one of his least favorite aspects of the job. It was a race against time. It was always a race against time, and they were way behind. The war they were trying to prevent had already started.

      “I guess that’s what we’re about to find out. Trudy?”

      She shrugged, seemed noncommittal. She picked the tablet up from her lap. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to assume no prior knowledge.”

      “Sounds good to me,” Luke said. “Boys?”

      “Good,” Swann said.

      “Let’s hear it,” Ed said. He eased back into his seat.

      “This is Israel and Iran,” Trudy said. “It’s not exactly a short story.”

      Luke shrugged. “It’s a long flight,” he said.

      “Israel is a young country, existing only since 1948,” Trudy said. “But the idea of the Land of Israel as a place has been sacred to the Jewish people since Biblical times, possibly as long ago as two thousand years before Christ. The first written reference to Israel as a place occurs around 1200 BC. The area was invaded, conquered, and reconquered throughout ancient times by the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Persians, to name a few. Through it all, the Jews persisted.

      “In 63 BC, the Roman Empire conquered the region, transforming it into a Roman province. For almost two hundred years, it became the site of a violent struggle between the Jews and the Romans, which ended in widespread destruction, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. The final Jewish revolt against the Romans failed in 132 AD, and the majority of Jews were either killed or dispersed – many went north into modern-day Russia, northwest into eastern and central Europe, or directly west toward Morocco and Spain. Some went east into Syria, Iraq, and Iran. A handful might have headed south into Africa. And some stayed in Israel.

      “Over time, the Roman Empire faded, and the region was conquered by Arabs in the middle 600s, who themselves had recently adopted the new religion of Islam. Despite frequent attacks by Christian Crusaders, the area remained mostly under the control of Muslim sultans for the next nine hundred years. In 1516, it was conquered again, this time by the Ottoman Empire. On Ottoman maps as early as 1600, the area we think of as Israel was referred to as Palestine. When the Ottoman Empire was destroyed in World War One, Palestine came under the control of its next ruler, the British.”

      “Setting us up for modern problems,” Ed said.

      Trudy nodded. “Naturally. Throughout history, some Jews had remained there, and over the centuries, there were numerous idealistic attempts to have Jews from other parts of the world return. By the early 1900s, those efforts were picking up steam. The rise of the Nazis led to vastly increased numbers of Jews leaving Europe. At the end of World War Two, the population of Palestine was about one-third Jewish. After the war, a massive influx of Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, left their destroyed communities across Europe and made their way to Palestine.

      “In 1948, the State of Israel was formed. This set off a series of violent conflicts between Muslims and Jews that continue to the present day. In the initial fighting, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded, joined by contingents of irregulars from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. The Israelis fought them off. At least seven hundred thousands Arabs fled or were expelled by advancing Israeli forces to the areas now known as the Palestinian Territories – the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

      “See, here’s the part I don’t get,” Ed Newsam said. “1948 is old news. Right now you have all these Palestinians locked up in Gaza and the West Bank. Why not just give them their freedom and let them become their own country? Failing that, why not just give them all citizenship and incorporate them into Israel? It seems like either thing might put the brakes on all this fighting.”

      “It’s complicated,” Swann said.

      “Complicated, to put it mildly,” Trudy said. “Impossible is more like it. For one thing, Israel was established as a Jewish state – a homeland for Jews all over the world. This is a project nearly two thousand years in the making.

      “If Israel wants to remain a Jewish state, it can’t simply incorporate the Palestinians into the country as citizens. It would set the clock ticking on a demographic time bomb, one which would go off sooner rather than later. The country has universal suffrage – every citizen gets the right to vote. There are roughly six and a half million Jews in Israel, and nearly two million Israeli Arabs, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. There are about four and a half million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank combined.

      “If the Palestinians all became citizens, suddenly you’d have a society nearly split СКАЧАТЬ