The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [91]
"Stop!" the son nearly screamed. He took his father by the arm and pulled him back. "My God, how long has that been there?"
"Since the day you were hurt," the farmer answered.
The son's right hand went to his eye patch, and for one horrid moment the terror of the day came back to him. The blinding flash, flying through the air, his dead comrades screaming as they burned to death. The Israelis had done that. One of their cannons had killed his mother, and now - this?
What was it? He commanded his father to stay put and walked back to see. He moved very carefully, as though he were traversing a minefield. His assignment in the army had been with the combat engineers; though his unit had been committed to battle with the infantry, their job was supposed to have been laying a minefield. It was big, it looked like a thousand-kilo bomb. It had to be Israeli; he knew that from the color. He turned to look at his father.
"This has been here since then?"
"Yes. It made its own hole, and I filled it in. The frost must have brought it up. Is there danger? It is broken, no?"
"Father, these things never truly die. It is very dangerous. Big as it is, if it goes off it could destroy the house and you in it!"
The farmer gestured contempt for the thing. "If it wanted to explode, it would have done so when it fell."
"That is not true! You will listen to me on this. You will not come close to this cursed thing!"
"And what of my garden?" the farmer asked simply.
"I will find a way to have this removed. Then you can garden." The son considered that. It would be a problem. Not a small problem, either. The Syrian army did not have a pool of skilled people to disarm unexploded bombs. Their method was to detonate them in place, which was eminently sensible, but his father would not long survive the destruction of his house. His wife would not easily tolerate having him in their own home, and he could not help his father rebuild, not with only one hand. The bomb had to be removed, but who would do that?
"You must promise me that you will not enter the garden!" the son announced sternly.
"As you say." the farmer replied. He had no intention of following his son's orders. "When can you have it removed?"
"I don't know. I need a few days to see what I can do." The farmer nodded. Perhaps he'd follow his son's instructions after all, at least about not approaching this dead bomb. It had to be dead, of course, despite what his son had said. The farmer knew that much of fate. If the bomb had wanted to kill him, it would have happened by now. What other misfortune had avoided him?
The newsies finally got something to sink their teeth into the next day. Dimitrios Stavarkos, Patriarch of Constantinople, arrived by car - he refused to fly in helicopters - in broad daylight.
"A nun with a beard?" a cameraman asked over his hot mike as he zoomed in. The Swiss Guards at the door rendered honors, and Bishop O'Toole conducted the new visitor inside and out of view.
"Greek," the anchorman observed at once. "Greek Orthodox, must be a bishop or something. What's he doing here?" the anchor mused.
"What do we know about the Greek Orthodox Church?" his producer asked.
"They don't work for the Pope. They allow their priests to marry. The Israelis threw one of them in prison once for giving arms to the Arabs, I think," someone else observed over the line.
"So, the Greeks get along with the Arabs, but not the Pope? What about the Israelis?"
"Don't know," the producer admitted. "Might be a good idea to find out."
"So, now there are four religious groups involved."
"Is the Vatican really involved, or did they just offer this place as neutral ground?" the anchor asked. Like most anchormen, he was at his best when reading copy from a teleprompter.
"When has this happened before? If you want "neutral," you go to Geneva," the cameraman observed. He liked Geneva.
"What gives?" one of the researchers entered the booth. The producer filled her in.