“Understood, sir.” She knew she shouldn’t prod the beast with a stick, but she couldn’t help herself. “So, otherwise, how are the talks going?”
She knew he hated to say it, but he had no choice. “Not well, even with all my efforts, but still, it will turn around, once you get the Israelis back to the table. I have another twenty-four hours left to get them all on board. Do your job, Callan,” and he hung up. Callan immediately dialed her chief of staff, Quinn Costello, her own personal gold mine, snapped up a decade earlier when Senator Willis Reed of Missouri had conveniently retired, for family reasons, now the current code word for extramarital frolicking.
“Morning, ma’am,” came Quinn’s bright voice. “You’re on your way?”
“Not yet. Is my schedule insane today? I have some work I’d like to do from here.”
“You have three meet and greets, a photo op with the dairy farmers at ten. We don’t need you here until nine at the earliest. I take it Bradley is making you jump?”
“Of course. Gather the security folks. I want a full briefing on COE at ten-fifteen. I’ll send word when I’m on my way.”
She hesitated only a moment before dialing a number she knew by heart. When he answered, his deep voice was so familiar, and now so distant, she wanted to chuck it all and set things right between them.
“Mizrahi.”
“Ari? It’s Callan.”
“I know. I still recognize your number.” The coldness of his tone broke her heart. At least he’d answered, and that was an improvement. He wouldn’t take her calls for months after she’d broken it off, had no choice when she’d joined the campaign. She’d needed him the most then, but he’d cut her off completely, seeing her as a traitor since she’d teamed up with Bradley, a man he distrusted. She understood, all too well. She’d chosen her career over him and he wouldn’t get over it. She’d hoped she could break through, but after today, she knew there wouldn’t be a chance. Today she had to rattle his cage.
“I’m calling on official business.”
“I would expect nothing else from you.”
Another stab to the heart. “Ari, please. Let’s not fight. You know my situation. You know when I accepted this job I could hardly go on the campaign trail with a lover from Mossad.”
He went silent, and she rested her forehead in her hand. “This is temporary, Ari. You know how I feel. That hasn’t changed.”
When he spoke again, his voice cool and remote, she knew their personal fight was put back in its bottle for another time. Please be patient, Ari. Please forgive me for today.
“What do you need, Madam Vice President?”
“I need your people, your government, back at the table in Geneva, to cooperate with President Bradley’s talks.”
“Our stance hasn’t changed, Callan. We won’t capitulate here, we can’t afford to, and you of all people know exactly why we can’t. Iran has their warheads pointed at us. Any concessions on our part right now will be tantamount to opening the border and letting the dogs through. They stand down, take those reactors offline permanently, then we’ll talk, but you know they have no intention of doing that, not in my lifetime.”
“We’re working on it, Ari, I promise you we are. If you’d give us one bit of a good-faith showing—”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this, from you of all people. You, who knows firsthand what we’ve sacrificed, how we’ve continued to bend and compromise. Do you wish to ignore that we’re under constant attack? That we live daily with death riding on our shoulders and blood in our coffee shops? My own innocent young daughter, slaughtered, moldering in the ground? And yet you, you, come to me with Bradley’s message, asking my government to accept their lies?”