Page 24 of The Last Days

  President, and it will cost a lot. But I don’t see that we’ve got a choice.”

  “Lee, would you concur on all that?” the president asked his Homeland

  Security secretary, Lee Alexander.

  “I do, Mr. President. I’d further recommend that we split functions here.

  My team can coordinate defensive homeland security operations through my office. We’ve got the war room set up at the NAC,” the secretary said, referring to the Nebraska Area Complex, a former navy administrative headquarters in Washington, D.C., where the Department of Homeland Security

  was centralized. “That’s defense, trying to keep the bad guys out, or off balance. The FBI should handle the offense—proactively going after the bad guys. Rounding up potential suspects. Shaking down sources. Coordinating a massive manhunt as new details come in of who we’re looking for. Director Harris can speak to that in specifics. But that’s what we’ve been war gaming in recent weeks, trying to make sure that what happened to you, Mr. Pres ident, doesn’t happen again.” The president turned to his FBI director. “That work for you, Scott?”

  “It does, Mr. President. We’ve vacuumed up an enormous amount of information just in the last few weeks. I can put my team into motion the minute you say go.” Corsetti now took the floor.

  “Mr. President, we still need a decision on what you’ll say to the Israelis.” “Yes, I’m getting to that,” the president responded. “But let’s nail this thing down first. We are now at Threat Level Red. Lee, Scott, I’d suggest you get moving on this stuff right now. Get your teams into crisis mode, Send out bulletins to all state and local law enforcement. Chuck, page the White House press corps. Get them back in here. Have your team alert the networks and the newspapers. I want you to do a briefing in the next half hour, once we figure out what and how much we can and should say. But I want to make sure lots of information gets in the East Coast papers and that’s going to be tough. Many of them are on or past deadline, right?” ‘That’s right, sir,” the press secretary confirmed.

  “Scott, Lee, I want you two to do live briefings here at the White House within the next forty-five minutes. Coordinate with Bob and Chuck, OK?” “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “OK, go to it. The rest of us will shift our attention back to the situation in Israel. Let me know what else you need from me.”

  Nadir Sarukhi Hashemi tried to stay calm.

  A U.S. federal agent approached and asked for his passport, asked a few questions, then went back to her guard station to run a computer check. Nadir thought about his five and a half months at the training camp, the brothers he’d met—Syrians, lots of Saudis, some Jordanians, a few Chechnyans, but mostly Palestinians.

  They’d all been trained in light arms, how to hijack airplanes, and how to use explosives—C4 and TNT—to attack a country’s infrastructure. Military bases, nuclear plants, electric plants, gas storage facilities, airports, railroads, large corporations, public buses and trains. They’d been taught how to carry out operations in cities, how to block roads, how to assault buildings, elementary schools, and various strategies for evasion and escape. What they hadn’t been taught—or taught well, Nadir suddenly realized—was how to fight the urge to bolt the minute it looked like their cover might be blown.

  A moment later, the border officer returned. She stared Nadir in the eye. Her face bore no smile, nor makeup. She was almost at the end of her shift, and exhausted.

  “And why again are you visiting the United States?” she asked.

  “I am here on business,” Nadir said, only partially lying.

  “Why aren’t you flying in directly from Rome?”

  “I had some business in Mexico City. I’d never been to Mexico before. I thought it might be nice to drive a bit and see some scenery.”

  “Where are you staying in San Diego?”

  “At the Del Coronado—let’s see, I’ve got my reservation number.”

  Nadir frantically fished through his briefcase, trying to find the paper, cursing himself for not having it out already, yet trying not to betray how nervous he really felt. A few seconds later, he found the paper. The customs agent read it over and gave it back to him.

  “Have a nice stay in the United States.” She smiled, and waved him through.

  It couldn’t be that easy. First stop: San Diego to exchange rental cars and get one with American plates. Then he’d race cross-country. He had to be in position in less than seventy-two hours and he still had to pick up the “package” along the way. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol. It was actually full of amphetamines. He popped two into his mouth, washed them down with bottled water, thanked Allah, and gunned the engine.

  He still couldn’t believe it. He was “in.”

  It was decision time.

  He’d heard all the arguments, sifted through all the intelligence, asked all the questions. Now it was his decision to make, and his alone. Again.

  David Doron stood up, and thanked his Security Cabinet. He asked them to reassemble in fifteen minutes, then walked out of the conference room, back to his personal office, trailed by his four ubiquitous bodyguards. He needed a few minutes alone—time to think, time to process.

  At seventy-one, he was getting too old for this, he told himself as he strode down the hall—too old, too tired, and worst of all, too cynical. Growing up in Jerusalem in the 1940s and 1950s, he’d never imagined that one day he’d be the prime minister of Israel. Sometimes it was hard for him to believe there still was a State of Israel. How could the Jewish people, much less the Jewish state, still be around after the horrors of the twentieth century? What drove so many to try to exterminate the Jews? Why couldn’t he and his family and his people just live a quiet, peaceful, uneventful life?

  As a combat veteran of four Arab-Israeli hot wars—the Six Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO, and the launch of the first Palestinian intifada in December of 1987 (he’d been too young for the War of Independence in 1948 and the Suez Crisis in 1956)—he’d seen with his own eyes the worst human beings could do to each other. He had seen his closest friends blown to pieces right beside him.

  There’d been those three months as a prisoner of war in Iraq, the terrors of which he still refused to talk about with his wife of forty-one years. Why

  should he burden her more? She and her father were Holocaust survivors. Somehow, they made it out of Auschwitz alive. Her mother and three sisters had not. She still bore emotional scars so deep that they rarely talked about her past. How could he, then, talk about his? Instead, they talked constantly about the future, but their future always seemed to hold in store another war that threatened to annihilate everyone and everything they’d ever held dear.

  The more pain they experienced, the more cynical he’d become, determined to protect Israel’s security at all costs, yet increasingly exhausted by the conflict with the Arab world in general and with the Palestinians in particular. He didn’t believe peace would ever come, not now, perhaps not ever, but frankly he was sick of being such a passionate ideologue.

  In public, he was careful to preach his party’s line—no Palestinian state, no compromise on the Golan Heights, no dismantling of the Jewish settlements, no relinquishing Jewish access to the Temple Mount, and not one single solitary inch of Jerusalem would ever be given away. Ever. That’s what he said in public. And he was turning out to be a rather eloquent speaker, despite his wife’s constant teasing that his Hebrew was almost as bad as his English.

  But in private he was slowly coming to the point that he just wanted the whole mess to be over with. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know when. He didn’t have the energy or the political self-interest to try to figure out a way forward. He just knew he was tired. So was his country.

  If he could, he’d give away Gaza in a heartbeat. Only as a demilitarized zone, of course. But of course he’d give it back to the Palestinians. Who wanted to occupy such a wasteland?
Even Likud’s patriarch, Menachem Begin, tried to give Gaza back to the Egyptians during the Camp David peace talks in the late 1970s. The Egyptians said no.

  As for Judea and Samaria—what the world insisted on calling the West Bank of the Jordan River—yes, Doron believed that the God of the Bible had given that land to the Jews for time immemorial. Bethlehem, for example, was on the so-called West Bank. But it wasn’t a Palestinian town. It was Jewish. It was the birthplace of David, King of Israel—David the Jew— David whose son Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem—David who defeated Goliath the Philistine—that’s right, the Philistine, from whom the modern day word Falastine or Palestine, was derived.

  Jericho, too, was on the so-called West Bank, but it wasn’t Palestinian, Doron had long argued. It was conquered fair and square a couple of thousand years ago by Joshua, the Jewish right-hand man to Moses, the leader of the Jews, not the Arabs. And what of Hebron? It, too, was on the so-

  called West Bank of the Jordan. But it was the home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the great Jewish patriarchs who first established the Jewish presence in the land of milk and honey.

  So yes, Doron believed all these things. But somehow, such arguments were beginning to wear thin, at least to him. Not because they weren’t true, They most certainly were. But they weren’t the only truths on the ground. The West Bank was now home to nearly 3 million Arabs. They were angry at the appalling living conditions in which they found themselves. They were bitter and resentful, and rightfully so. They lived in hopelessness, and something had to give.

  He’d never give away Jerusalem, of course. But he hated everything about the current situation. He hated the idea of the Jewish people being an oc cupying power. He hated sending in young Israeli soldiers into the “disputed territories” to kill and get killed. He did it only because he had to. He had a job to do, to protect his people, and he took his job seriously. But in his heart, Doron knew the current situation was unsustainable. Occupation—was there honestly any other word for it?—was steadily eroding the character of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. It was turning them into a hard, bitter people. The generous, hospitable spirit of the Israeli people was slowly fading in the intense heat, and it grieved Doron. Yet here he was. The prime minister of Israel. It didn’t seem real. Somehow, he’d become a successful cynic. Somehow, after Doron had gotten out

  of the army, he’d been fortunate enough to get a bachelor’s degree from Tel Aviv University, and then a masters’ and doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. He’d eventually been tapped as a young economic advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, then deputy finance minister for Bibi Netanyahu. Somehow, he still looked back in amazement, the Likud party had insisted that he run for a seat in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and he’d won handily. Eventually, he’d been asked by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to serve as deputy foreign minister, then as minister of industry and trade, then as a deputy prime minister. Then he’d run, albeit reluctantly, for the top slot—and won.

  Now he had to choose. At his command, Israel had held back during the Americans’ recent war with Iraq, even when her very existence hung in the balance. It was an enormous risk, a gamble that could have cost millions of lives. That time it worked out. The question was whether he was prepared

  to acquiesce to American pressure again.

  This White House and State Department’s insistence upon Israeli “re straint” in the face of relentless, barbaric terror was absolutely preposterous.

  It was downright hypocritical, not to mention incredibly dangerous.

  Why was it that every time Palestinian homicide bombers—that is what they were, after all, cold-blooded murderers, committing homicides, not suicides—why was it that every time the Palestinians killed Israeli women and children, the Americans demanded that the Israelis exercise restraint! And not just the Americans, of course. The Europeans all demanded that Israel show restraint. So did the Russians, and of course the Arab League.

  Restraint? What in the world did that mean?

  Had the Americans shown restraint against Al-Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan? Absolutely not. Had Washington shown restraint against Saddam Hussein? Of course not, and thank God. Had the British shown restraint against IRA terrorists? Had the Russians shown restraint against Chechnyan terrorists?

  The whole notion was as foolish as it was infuriating. How dare President MacPherson demand on worldwide television that in the wake of Palestinian terrorists blowing up Yasser Arafat, Abu Mazen, the U.S. Secretary of State and dozens upon dozens of Americans and Palestinians, that somehow Israel should “exercise restraint” and not “inflame the situation”? Doron could feel his blood pressure rising, not a good thing for a man approaching his seventy-second year.

  The temptation to strike hard and fast, and wipe out every last vestige of these lethal Palestinian mafia factions was almost overpowering. Everything in him wanted the violence to be over once and for all. Perhaps this was the only way. The world would no doubt condemn him. The question was, would his conscience?

  It was decision time at the White House, as well.

  The president turned to his senior team, cognizant of the fact that they were out of time, and resigned to the fact that it was probably time to unleash the Israelis after all.

  “All right,” he began, shaking his head, “back to the territories. I think we all know what needs to happen. I asked you all to work up military options in case there was some reason for us to go in unilaterally instead of the Israelis, or in case we needed to lead an international peacemaking or peacekeeping force. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to be necessary. If everyone’s in agreement, I’ll give Doron the go-ahead to commence operations, while we concentrate on a massive global manhunt to hunt down these suicide teams. Does that sound about right to everyone?”

  Bennett struggled to keep his mind focused on the conversation. He worried about his mom, berated himself for not having done something sooner.

  She was practically all alone in the world now. She needed him, and he was half a world away, so consumed in a crisis that he might in fact have fatally neglected her. Still, as guilty as he felt about it, thinking about her safety and security was actually a luxury he couldn’t afford right now.

  He could see MacPherson was battling mental and physical fatigue, not to mention an overwhelming consensus among his top political, military, and diplomatic advisors that the peace process was over. A new Palestinian-Israeli war was about to begin. It was a war whose ferocity, duration, and death toll could very well be unlike anything the Holy Land had experienced for de cades, and Bennett could feel his window of opportunity slipping away.

  “Mr. President?” he broke in, knowing he was about to go up against some tremendous resistance. “I realize events are moving very rapidly. But there are some new developments here I think you should know about before you make a final decision.”

  Before MacPherson could respond, his CIA director cut in.

  “Jon, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, son, I really do,” Mitchell said with an edge of condescension. “But we’ve crossed the Rubicon. The Israelis are going in, and that’s that.”

  Bennett was instantly defensive.

  “Mr. President, I understand that, but—”

  “Jon, really, I’m afraid Jack’s right,” MacPherson said, cutting him off. “You’ve done a great job mapping out this peace plan, and maybe when this war is over, after the two sides cool down, I don’t know when, but maybe we’ll have another shot down the road a few years, but not right now. I’m afraid it’s just too late.”

  “No, Mr. President, please—I need two minutes of your time. Just two minutes.”

  “Jon, really, I don’t see how—”

  “Two minutes, Mr. President, that’s all I’m asking for.”

  Both rooms were dead silent. The tension was palpable. Bennett worried he’d overplayed his hand, but he didn’t see how he had a choice. He had to take a shot, a
nd he was prepared to face the consequences, regardless of what happened next.

  The president stared at him through the video camera in the Situation Room, then glanced around the room at Kirkpatrick, Corsetti, Mitchell, and then the vice president. Bennett was tempted to seize the moment and just start talking, to get out the facts as quickly as he could and see what hap pened. But he hesitated. The stakes were too high. He couldn’t come off looking emotionally involved. It wasn’t his call, after all. It was the presi dent’s. His job was to give the man the facts and his best judgment, not to

  blast his way through an NSC meeting and expect to ever be invited back. Yet wasn’t this precisely why he’d been hired? To be the “point man for peace”? McCoy jokingly drilled it into his head day after day. But maybe she was right. What kind of point man was he if he didn’t do everything in his power to force the president to seek peace, not war? So many lives hung in the balance. How could silence be an option? How dare he hesitate?

  Bennett shifted in his seat and leaned forward. He began opening his mouth to speak. But before he could—before anyone noticed he was about to—he suddenly heard the voice of the vice president.

  “Mr. President,” the VP said calmly. “I don’t think two minutes can hurt.” All eyes were on the president. MacPherson looked at the VP, then down at his hands, still scarred from the attacks just a few weeks before. He took a deep breath, then leaned back and nodded. He’d put Bennett through an awful lot. Hadn’t he earned the right to be heard, even for a few minutes? Perhaps Checkmate was right.

  “All right, Jon, you’ve got two minutes—but I don’t want a speech. If you’ve got something new, fine, otherwise we move on.” McCoy exhaled with relief. Bennett did, too.