The Last Days

  He paused for a moment, to take a breath, to order his thoughts.

  “But, Mr. President, these extremists represent a small fraction of the Arab world, and a small fraction of the Palestinian people. Most of us yearn for freedom. We want to raise our children in safety and security and freedom, with the freedom to choose our own leaders, and start our own businesses, and travel around the region and the world without being treated as terrorists and criminals. We are the silent majority. And when we have had no leadership, and our prospects for a future and hope have grown dimmer and dimmer, we have—in our weaker moments—cheered on the militants. Because though they are wrong, they are dying with honor. They are dying as heroes. And we want heroes. We are desperate for some heroes. We want men of honor to show us that we are not second-class citizens, that we can take on the Israelis and win, that we can stand up to the Americans and get Washington to do what we want, not bow down to their every demand.”

  Bennett stopped taking notes. He set his pen down and just listened, as Sa’id tried to break through to three Americans who saw the world from the top of the heap, and had no idea how it looked or felt from the bottom.

  “In the historic pantheon of Arab heroes, Mr. President, there are no businessmen. Only generals, and commandos, and fedayeen. Because people believe it’s on the battlefield—not in the boardroom—where a man can prove he has honor. Now, I was raised differently. I see the world differently than many of my countrymen, at least those who currently hold guns and thus power. I’m willing to give my life, if that’s what it takes, to try to take the Palestinian people to a new place. I’ll do everything I can to take us into a new era of peace and prosperity. But I cannot ignore our culture or traditions. And that’s why I’m asking you to follow this admittedly bizarre script. Not because I can guarantee you it’ll work. But because it offers the thinnest reed of a possibility that people will follow me, and right now I may be the only thing that stands between a slim prospect of peace and a thousand years of darkness.”

  THIRTY

  Bennett now took the lead.

  Dozens of decisions needed to be made immediately. Bennett had started scribbling down a checklist of issues and questions during the conference call, and with MacPherson’s permission, he began working his way through them one by one.

  “Mr. President,” Bennett began, “are you comfortable with the scenario so far?”

  It was a huge gamble, no question about it. Sa’id might be right. There might not be any other way, and they had almost no time to come up with a plan B. But the risks were enormous. In a sense, Sa’id was asking MacPherson and Doron and their top advisors to deceive their own countries, the world, and the Palestinians. Well, deceive might be too strong. It felt like deception, but it wasn’t really a lie, was it?

  Doron was about to order an invasion of the West Bank and Gaza. The prospect of massive Palestinian casualties at the hands of Israeli forces was high and growing higher by the hour. The White House was deeply reluctant to launch another series of U.S. military strikes in the region, and particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, a place where U.S. forces had never been before. The PLC was appointing Ibrahim Sa’id to be acting prime minister, and it was doing so precisely because of the connections Sa’id had to the MacPherson administration. And Sa’id was, in fact, a reluctant participant. He was demanding the introduction of U.S. forces in Palestine as his price of admission. And he was doing so—-in part, at least—to keep Israeli forces at bay. He was also doing so, in part, to strike a lethal blow at Islamic radicals operating in the West Bank and Gaza, and to dismantle or destroy all twelve separate

  and competing Arafat-era Palestinian security organizations whose mafialike reign of terror had to come to an end once and for all.

  All this was true. But how many people outside Gaza Station, the PLC, and the White House knew, understood, or were focused on these truths? Not many. Not at the moment. Hardly anyone understood their significance, or how they might be interrelated. So Sa’id had a point. If Palestinians and the world were really going to follow his lead, they would have to see the situation as he saw it, and draw the same conclusions he was drawing. And perhaps the only way for that to happen in such a compressed time frame was for the White House to participate in the kabuki dance Sa’id was now choreographing.

  “I’m getting there,” the president confided. “Erin, what’s your sense of

  “It’s a solid plan, Mr. President,” she said without hesitation. “And I think the prime minister is right. It’s really our best option at this point.”

  “How about you, Mr. President?” Bennett asked.

  “I need to confer again with Prime Minister Doron. But yes, I’m onboard.”

  Bennett looked over at Sa’id and saw something in his face. It wasn’t quite a smile. There was a long way to go before any of them would be ready for smiles. But there was something in the crinkles around the eyes of his Pal estinian friend that suggested an ever-so-slight glimmer of hope.

  Certainly no one in Albuquerque knew the Viper.

  He’d never been there before. He’d never be there again. He just needed a cheap motel, four or five hours of sleep, a shower, and some breakfast, Then he’d be back on the road, racing eastward. The road sign said thirty-five more miles. He’d already driven nearly eight hundred over the past fourteen hours. At least he’d be there in less than a half hour. He’d be in bed in less than an hour, and that would suit him just fine.

  Hour upon hour of country music were all that kept Nadir Sarukhi Hashemi company. He’d much rather listen to music of his youth, of course, or the Koran on tape or CD. But his training had been explicit. In the pursuit of jihad, do nothing to draw attention to one’s self or one’s religion.

  He could still hear the voice of his instructors and his classmates as they chanted the Code morning after morning. First, “have a general appearance that does not indicate Islamic orientation (beard, toothpick, book, long shirt, small Koran).” Second, “be careful not to mention the brother’s common expressions or show their behaviors (special praying appearance, ‘may Allah

  reward you,’ ‘peace be on you,’ while arriving and departing, etc.)’” Third, “avoid visiting Islamic places (mosques, libraries, Islamic fairs, etc.).” Fourth, “avoid outward signs of Islamic or Arabic belief or behavior or traditions in public (speaking in Arabic, singing in Arabic, praying five times a day, reading the Koran or anything in Arabic or about the Middle East or Islam, listening to the Koran or Islamic/Arabic music, etc.).” And fifth, “blend into the local culture as much as possible to deceive the enemy and appear as one of them (wear modern Western clothing, cut your hair short, be clean shaven, frequent bars and nightclubs, wear a crucifix or Star of David or hang one on the wall of your home, have a Bible among your possessions, etc.)—these are not violations of the Koran, they are not forbidden if you are in faithful pursuit of jihad against the infidels.”

  The Code followed the hourly recitation of the holy fatwa, the orders they had received from the Al-Nakbah high command: “In compliance with God’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque in Mecca from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God—‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,’ and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.’ We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”

  It felt good to say those words again. They were soothing and familiar. But there were times he missed those drill sessions, their sense of mi
ssion and comradery, the feelings of brotherhood with fellow warriors, each willing to sacrifice his very life for such a high calling. But human contact wasn’t something that he missed tonight more than usual. He’d spent most of his thirty-nine years alone or on the run, looking over his shoulder and listening for the sounds of footsteps coming up fast.

  The son of Palestinian refugees who fled to Iraq from Jericho on the West Bank during the Six Day War of 1967—Al-Nakbah, “the Disaster”—Nadir grew up in Saddam City, a Ba’ath party stronghold inside greater Baghdad. He’d not grown up in poverty or squalor. His parents were actually quite well off. His father had been a banker for a Jordanian branch office until the war, and he’d looted close to $37,000 before taking his family and fleeing into the night, bound for the Persian Gulf.

  But neither he nor his mother nor his four older brothers had known that his father had stolen the money until many years later. After he had gotten a job as a teller in the National Bank of Iraq, main branch. After he’d worked his way up to branch manager. After Nadir’s brothers had all grown up, served in the army, gone to college, and were now serving in various respected capacities throughout the country. After Nadir had served fifteen years in a Republican Guard Special Forces unit as a demolitions expert and twice-decorated instructor in the use of explosives for terrorist and tactical battlefield operations. After his mother had passed away four years ago from a brain hemorrhage.

  One night, three weeks after his mother’s funeral, Nadir and his father were alone in their top-floor apartment overlooking Baghdad. It was one of those August nights when the daytime temperatures have topped 120 degrees, and still haven’t dropped below 100, and the humidity is near 85 to 90 percent, and the air is still and there is simply no wind or breeze at all.

  The two men just sat completely still in the shadowy living room, lights off, the ceiling fan was set on high. Both men were stripped down to their boxer shorts, and covered with sweat. Both held towels soaked in ice-cold water with which they wiped their faces and necks as they sipped bottled water stuffed with ice chips, and tried not to talk. Nadir’s father was not a man who liked to talk. No one in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was much of a conversationalist. Especially not if he worked for the government, not if he handled the government’s money, as all money in Iraq ultimately was.

  But on this sweltering, oppressive night, Nadir’s father began to talk. For the first time in Nadir’s life, his father began telling him stories about growing up in Jericho, about life on the West Bank, about summers hiking through the Judean Hills with his friends, picking olives and begging for scraps of pita bread from owners of Arab cafes dotted along the Jordan River. He told stories of sneaking past Jordanian soldiers, into the Old City of Jerusalem, as a teenager without his parents, and winding his way through the aromatic alleyways of the Muslim Quarter. He could still remember breathing in the colorful spices, most of which he’d never heard of, and the smell of lamb roasting on spits in every restaurant and on every corner. And he remembered meeting a beautiful young teenage girl named Rania who would soon become his wife, and bear him five beautiful sons, and make a life with him far away from the city she grew up in, the city she loved.

  “Your mother was from Jerusalem,” Nadir’s father told him, “when it was controlled by the Arabs, when it was the home of good Muslims, not the Jews.”

  Then he reached over and took Nadir’s hands and held them in his own, and made his youngest son promise him that he would exact vengeance on the Zionist infidels who had broken his mother’s heart, and driven her into a long and bitter exile.

  “Your mother, on her deathbed, made me promise her,” his father told him in a whisper, his voice barely audible. “She made me promise that when she was gone, when it was safe, I would tell you she had one final request of you.”

  “What is it, Father?” Nadir had asked, taken by surprise by the tremor in the man’s voice, and the moisture in his eyes.

  “You need to leave Iraq. You need to use all the military skills that Allah has given you, and use them no longer to advance Saddam’s kingdom but to regain Palestine and Al-Quds—Jerusalem—the city of your mother’s birth.”

  “But how, my father? If you ask me to, I will do it. But how could I possibly do such a thing? I have no passport. No money. No contacts, except those in my military units, none of whom I could turn to or trust.”

  For the next hour Nadir’s father spoke in hushed tones, as though Saddam’s secret police—the Mukhabarat—were listening in and about to burst through the door and take them down in a blaze of machine-gun fire. He told Nadir of the men he’d met through the bank, the men who ostensibly worked for Saddam, but were actually building a secret army to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea. He told Nadir how he’d earned the trust of such men, how the men had chosen to begin banking with him almost a decade before precisely because they had heard that he and his wife were Palestinians, a fact Nadir’s family did nothing to broadcast and everything to keep to themselves. His father told him how these men had secretly been stashing money in small accounts through the Iraqi national banking system, and always allowing their favorite teller—and later branch manager—to skim off a little for himself, as a sign of their goodwill.

  Over the years, and combined with the $37,000 his father now explained he had stolen from the Jordanians on June 7, 1967—a night he would never forget—he had amassed nearly $150,000 in various international currencies, none of which were Iraqi dinars. And he was giving it to Nadir. To run. To flee the country. To join Al-Nakbah. To train suicide bombers. And then to become one himself.

  This was his mother’s dying wish, and thus his father’s in his old age. The man was almost eighty-five now. He was old, and without his precious wife of almost seventy years, he would soon die, too. He would die penniless and

  alone, but with the hope that his son would redeem all his wasted years in exile by inflicting vengeance upon the Jews and freeing Palestine from the grip of the infidels.

  Nadir could feel his eyes getting heavy. He was catnapping for a few hours at a time, feverishly racing for the East Coast. Time was short. He had no way of knowing how many others had or were about to make it across the borders and into the United States. There was no way to know how many were en route, even now, to complete their mission and strike terror in the heart of the Great Satan. But he was here. He had made it through. His mother’s dying prayers to Allah were guiding him—propelling him—forward. He would succeed. He would make his mother and father proud.

  Perhaps his father would be able to turn on the radio in that stifling little banker’s apartment in Baghdad in a few days and hear of a heroic attack in a major East Coast city, and fall asleep with the pride of knowing his youngest son had done his duty. But for now, Nadir needed to sleep. He would be no good to the revolution if he dozed off at the wheel and veered into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.

  As Nadir saw another sign for Albuquerque go by, he began to wonder why his mother and father had chosen him for this honor. He’d always been the least successful son in the family. Of his four brothers, one was a professor of mathematics. Another was an engineer, designing and building bridges in the southern tier of Iraq. A third was a police constable. A fourth was a tank commander. He had no idea where any of them were now, since the Amer ican rape of Iraq. But they were all men of distinction. All were married. All had borne their parents grandsons. All were highly respected by their families and their peers.

  How then had he turned out so poorly? He was not married. He had no lover. He had no close friends to speak of, no home or material possessions or much of anything holding him back. For years this had weighed heavily upon him, made him feel lonely and rejected and a failure.

  But perhaps Allah had prevented him from settling down and getting comfortable. Perhaps it was his will that he be restless and free and ready to carry out his parents’ wishes. Of all five sons, only he was truly qualified and willing to give his life for the cause. P
erhaps his mother had understood this all along. Perhaps she was waiting for him in Paradise, waiting to see if he would fulfill his destiny, waiting to tell him, “Good job, my son. I am proud of you. You have honored your father and me. Enter into the joy of Allah.” Of all this he was not certain. But he knew one thing. He was ready to die in a blaze of glory, and that day was coming up fast. So was his exit, and

  Nadir clicked on his turn signal, checked his mirrors, slowed to thirty-five, and carefully made the exit.

  “Should we hold the peace talks at Camp David?” asked MacPherson.

  Sa’id and the PLC wanted to start talking with Doron immediately. But something in his gut was warning him away from the historic presidential retreat site.

  “It’s a very kind offer,” he began.

  “But…”

  “I think we need to avoid the big, media-driven peace talks of the past— the one in Madrid in ‘93, the one Clinton tried to engineer between Barak and Arafat at Camp David in 2000. It’s my sense that those typically end in failure.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked the president.

  “Because they’re media-driven events. They’re designed to posture, not produce.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Jon, how about you?”

  “You know, I have to agree with the prime minister, Mr. President. I’m thinking the best-case scenario would be for Sa’id and Doron to meet somewhere in the region, not on U.S. soil, for secret talks—without the glare of the media, and without dozens of aides and advisors whispering a million reasons in their ears why making peace isn’t such a good idea after all. If they can strike a deal, great. If they simply begin a relationship and lay the groundwork for a deal down the road, that’s fine, too. But it should happen fast, and it should happen under the radar.”