The Third Target: A J. B. Collins Novel

  I checked my text messages. There were three from my mom, telling me she was praying for me, asking me to come home, and asking me to read the Twenty-third Psalm. There was a smattering of others from various sources and colleagues, checking on me and asking me to call them. There were no new messages from Yael. I’d called her twice the previous evening—once immediately after my interview with the king, on the drive back to Le Méridien; the other right before I went to bed. I’d texted her too. I was eager to talk to her, to hear her voice, to learn more about the “dangerous developments” she had referred to. But so far, nothing.

  There was, however, a text from Matt.

  Just touched down in a faraway city, it read simply. Won’t say where for now, but wanted you to know we’re safe. Don’t worry about us. Kids don’t understand what’s happening. Think it’s an adventure. Annie’s fine. Sends her love.

  Two minutes later, another came in.

  Annie says read Psalm 3. Thought you might be encouraged by it too. Praying for you. Love you.—Matt

  A moment later, another SMS message arrived, this one with a link to Psalm 3 on some online Bible. With nothing else to do at the moment, I clicked on the link and read it aloud in my room.

  “O Lord, so many are against me. So many seek to harm me. I have so many enemies. So many say that God will never help me. But Lord, you are my shield, my glory, and my only hope. You alone can lift my head, now bowed in shame. I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me from his Temple in Jerusalem. Then I lay down and slept in peace and woke up safely, for the Lord was watching over me. And now, although ten thousand enemies surround me on every side, I am not afraid. I will cry to him, ‘Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God!’ And he will slap them in the face, insulting them and breaking off their teeth. For salvation comes from God. What joys he gives to all his people.”

  The heading above the psalm noted that its author was the ancient King David. I wondered how David could lie down and sleep peacefully when ten thousand enemies were hunting him down to kill him the first chance they got. I didn’t get it and wasn’t sure I ever would.

  I got up again and opened my laptop. While I was waiting for the computer to boot up, I thought about the king’s upcoming trip to Baghdad and whether I really wanted to go along after all. Professionally, it was probably the right thing to do. But I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. How much more of this could I really take? I was emotionally and physically exhausted. My nerves were shot, and truth be told, I had no idea if I could make it through the day. Maybe I should follow my own advice, I thought. Maybe it was time to get out of Jordan—get off the grid and lie low until this whole thing blew over.

  It was tempting, but I couldn’t just ditch my job now. People were counting on me, and I had to deliver. I had a huge day ahead of me—interviews with the leaders of Palestine, Israel, and Jordan, and perhaps one with the president of the United States as well. I had to ask them about the ISIS threat, but how could I engage them and get them to really make news, not just spit out prepackaged talking points?

  My thoughts shifted back to Abu Khalif. How had he known the peace treaty was a done deal? How had he known King Abdullah had been its broker? How had he known Ismail Tikriti was going to be at the Abu Ghraib prison that night, or that I would be there as well? There wasn’t a reporter on the planet who had known any of these facts in advance, except me. But clearly someone was feeding Khalif insider information. And if it wasn’t coming from the media, it could only be coming from a mole inside one of the four governments involved. Which meant I had to consider the possibility that Abu Khalif not only knew about the king’s upcoming trip to Baghdad but might know exactly what was happening later today. If there was ever a time for ISIS to strike and strike hard, it was now. It was here.

  I shifted my attention again, this time to scanning more of the latest headlines.

  Daily Mail—Another Day, Another ISIS Crucifixion: Man Accused of Joining Syrian Regime Found Hanging from a Cross in Busy Market Town with Cryptic Note Pinned to His Chest

  CNN—Death and Desecration in Syria: Jihadist Group Crucifies Bodies to Send Message

  The Washington Post—ISIS, Beheadings, and the Success of Horrifying Violence

  The Wall Street Journal—Militants Claim Photos Show Mass Execution in Iraq

  The Daily Express—The New Dark Ages: The Chilling Medieval Society ISIS Extremists Seek to Impose in Iraq

  The Guardian—British PM Warns ISIS Is Planning to Attack UK

  On top of all this were stories about the continuing spike in oil prices that was sending new shock waves through an already-battered and fragile global economy.

  I shut down the computer and collapsed on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the darkness.

  All the lights in the room were off. Only the red numbers on the digital clock were visible. It was 3:46 in the morning. And that’s the last thing I remembered until my alarm went off two hours later.

  52

  I had never seen Salim Mansour happy.

  Not “so happy.” Not “this happy.” I’m saying I had never seen him happy.

  Ever. Period. End of sentence. New paragraph.

  An economist by training, with a doctorate from the University of Chicago, the Palestinian president was not someone I would naturally characterize as an optimist. Once, over a meal of hummus and lamb at a restaurant in Jericho overlooking the Jordan Valley, he had told me—off the record, of course—how despondent he had become by Yasser Arafat’s “congenital incapacity to say yes” to any proposal the Israelis offered.

  “The U.N. offered Ben-Gurion a fraction of what he wanted in ’47, but he took it,” Mansour had said, referring to David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the Jewish State. “He didn’t demand the whole loaf, even though he wanted it. He took what he could get and he started building. And look where Israel is now. Their per capita GDP is over $32,000. Ours is not even a tenth of that. Their unemployment rate is under 7 percent a year. Ours is almost four times that number. They’re becoming a high-tech capital of the world. At times it feels like we’re stuck in the Stone Age. We have so much potential. But we’ve let ourselves get trapped in a cycle of violence and envy and resentment, and where has it gotten us?”

  Over dessert, he’d continued his diatribe. “Don’t get me wrong. The Israelis have done everything they could to slow us down and keep us back. I’m not absolving them of anything. Every charge Arafat makes against them is true. But when Barak offered him a serious, substantive deal at Camp David in 2000, Arafat rejected it out of hand. Why? How has that helped us? I’m not saying the deal was everything we wanted. Of course not. But think of it—Palestine could have been an independent, sovereign state since 2000. We could have been building. We could have been growing. Instead, we remain in the mire while the Israelis continue to prosper.”

  Less than a year later, in another off-the-record lunch, Mansour extended his complaints to include Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen.

  “Arafat was a revolutionary—I get it,” he’d said over stuffed grape leaves and grilled chicken. “Arafat aimed for the sky. Abu Mazen’s job was to turn the dream into a reality. Ehud Olmert gave him that chance in ’08, but he wouldn’t say yes. He was too much a disciple of Arafat. Too weak. No creativity. Imagine if he’d said yes—we could have been sitting in a bona fide State of Palestine since 2008. Yet here we are, stuck as ever.”

  What made him even more despondent, he said, was the “endemic corruption” and “bureaucratic incompetence” that he felt had characterized the Palestinian Authority for so long.

  “The world is not just going to hand us a state on a silver platter if we can’t tie our shoes and pay our bills on time,” he had insisted. “Maybe we can’t stop the Israelis from occupying us, oppressing us, imposing apartheid on us. Not yet. But we can make sure we are building a solid, functioning, serious economy and democracy. And the sooner we do it, the more credibility we will gain in the eyes of world leaders who can then ratchet up the
pressure on the Israelis to acknowledge our God-given right of self-determination.”

  But this meeting was different. Mansour was smiling.

  Born in Jenin but raised in Dubai, Mansour had stayed away from the West Bank and Gaza for decades. In 2010, however, he reluctantly accepted then-President Abbas’s request that he serve as the Palestinian Authority’s finance minister. Facing enormous odds and bureaucratic infighting, Mansour had set about to make the very reforms for which he had been advocating so long. It wasn’t easy. Indeed, it was often painful. But it began to work. The Palestinian economy began to grow. The bureaucracy began to function—not great, certainly not perfect, but better than before. The U.S. State Department took notice. So did the European Union. Jordan certainly did. And so did Mansour’s fellow Palestinians. As their fortunes began to improve bit by bit, Mansour’s stock began to rise as well. Then came Hamas’s repeated rocket wars against Israel and the resultant destruction of Gaza. That had been an enormous setback. Yet in the end, Hamas was humbled and internationally isolated. The rocket wars, as devastating as they’d been, had given the Palestinian Authority—not Hamas—a new lease on life. And when Abbas finally announced he was retiring and calling new elections, there was a groundswell of support for Salim Mansour, the balding, bespectacled economics professor who was offering a serious vision of growth and opportunity for a people long bereft of either.

  “It’s happening,” he now told me over a plate of fruit he wasn’t touching and a cup of Turkish coffee that was getting cold. “After all this time, the dream is really becoming a reality.”

  We were on the record. My digital recorder was on. And despite a deep sense of foreboding I couldn’t seem to shake, even I had to smile at Mansour’s self-evident joy. “Honestly, Mr. President, I have never seen you happy.”

  “You weren’t at my wedding,” he said.

  “True.”

  “Or the births of my four daughters.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Or their weddings or the births of my nine grandchildren.”

  “My apologies.”

  “I can be happy, Mr. Collins. I am happy when I have hope, when I see love and fruit and growth and dreams coming true. That’s what makes me happy.”

  “So you’re satisfied with this process?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “It was a circus.”

  “But you’re satisfied with the outcome.”

  “Hardly,” he said defiantly, the smile beginning to fade somewhat. “My people deserve so much more than this. But at the risk of sounding trite, I refused to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The Palestinian people want a state. They deserve a state. They have fought for one. They have worked for one. They have suffered without one. My job is not to think of a thousand reasons why they cannot have one. My job is to deliver one, and today I have. This is a historic day, one we will not forget for a long time.”

  “Are you worried about the ISIS threat?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not worried that Abu Khalif has threatened to assassinate you and anyone else who makes peace with the ‘criminal Zionists’?”

  “I am not wasting my time with the mad ravings of a sociopath.”

  “You know he is calling for a Third Intifada.”

  “There is no appetite among the Palestinians for another uprising,” Mansour said. “Why would there be? We are about to get a state of our own, a true and legitimate state. And once we have it, I believe we will take away the central argument of the takfiris, that only through violence will the Palestinian people be liberated. We have been oppressed. And we do need to be liberated. But not through violence. Not through jihad. Today we begin our own liberation. We don’t need the help of a rapist and a murderer. We’re not seeking a killing ground for jihadists. We’re building a real state here, one based on the rule of law and the principles of economic growth, democratic values, and respect for Islam and all religions.”

  “Do you fear an attack by ISIS using chemical weapons?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe they don’t really have them.”

  “They do,” I said. “I’ve seen them.”

  “Then that’s what our security forces are for, and Jordan’s and Israel’s,” he replied, a hint of exasperation now rising in his voice. “We have professional security forces, and I have every confidence they will do their job. But this is not our focus today. This is a day of celebration, a day for great joy and optimism, not fear and doubt. Don’t spoil this for us with your tales of imminent doom. We have had enough pain to last a thousand lifetimes. We have had enough stormy days. Let us, just this once, have our moment in the sun.”

  53

  I called Yael again but got voice mail and didn’t leave a message.

  Then I went to back to my room, wrote up the interview with Mansour, and filed it with Allen.

  I pulled out my grandfather’s pocket watch and saw it was almost 12:30 p.m. The limo that was supposed to pick me up on the way to the airport to meet President Taylor was late. I was about to call Yael again when my mobile phone rang. But it wasn’t her. It was Kamal Jeddeh.

  “There’s been a change of plans,” the Jordanian intelligence director said.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  “No, just a change,” he said. “I have a car waiting for you downstairs. It will take you to the airport. The foreign minister will meet Air Force One and greet the president when he arrives, and the president has requested that you join him for the drive to the palace.”

  “The king isn’t going?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “What about President Mansour and Prime Minister Lavi?”

  “They are not going either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Their meeting with His Majesty is running long. That’s all I know. But time is short. We must get you to the airport. Please head downstairs immediately.”

  Something was wrong. The protocol, the timing, every minute of this trip had been mapped out in excruciating detail. I rechecked the official schedule some envoy had slipped under my door earlier that morning. All three Middle Eastern leaders were supposed to greet the American president at Queen Alia International Airport. Why the sudden change—especially one as significant as this? The arrival of the president in Amman under such circumstances would be worldwide news. It would likely be broadcast on live television throughout the region and around the globe. Shouldn’t the king be there to greet him? The only thing I could think of that would warrant such a serious deviation from the itinerary was that a last-minute snag had occurred in the peace plan. Was it possible Lavi or Mansour were having second thoughts or reopening some final-status issue that was supposedly already, well, final?

  I grabbed my briefcase and camera bag and headed down the hallway. Waiting for the elevator, I quickly sent individual text messages to each of the principals, as well as separate texts to each of their top advisors. On the elevator, I called Prince Marwan but didn’t get him. I called Youssef Kuttab, the Palestinian president’s most trusted advisor, as well, but he wasn’t picking up either.

  Ali Sa’id, on the other hand, was waiting for me in the lobby.

  “Ali, my friend, how kind of you to fetch me,” I said.

  “Of course. Please, come; we must hurry.”

  We left the front entrance of the hotel and got into the back of Sa’id’s government-issue Mercedes. Up front were a driver and a bodyguard. But what really caught my attention was the black Chevy Suburban behind us, filled with a half-dozen additional well-armed men.

  “Expecting company?” I asked as Sa’id donned his sunglasses and we started moving through traffic.

  “You can never be too careful,” he replied.

  “Ali, how many Syrians are in Jordan at the moment?” I asked.

  “Around 1.3 million,” he replied.

  That was more than double the number I’d heard. “I thought it was
between five hundred thousand and six hundred thousand,” I said.

  “That’s registered refugees,” he explained. “There are just over six hundred thousand refugees living in the camps we’ve set up with the U.N. But there are another seven hundred thousand who are not officially registered with the Jordanian government.”

  “How do you know the number then?”

  “They came before the civil war—to work, to visit family, to take a vacation, to study, whatever. But they were already here when the civil war in Syria got so bad they couldn’t go back.”

  “So they got stuck here?” I asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “So the total number is 1.3 million?”

  “Give or take.”

  “Do you know who those people really are?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You know what I mean,” I replied. “Have they been vetted? Are they all safe? Or are there jihadists among them?”

  “The honest answer?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “You can’t print this.”

  “I understand. I’m just curious.”

  “Well . . .” He glanced nervously at the other agents in the car.

  “You can tell me,” I said. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  There was a long pause, and then he finally said, “The truth is we have no idea who they all are.”

  “You mean there could be extremists among them?”

  “Yes.”

  “A few?”

  “At least.”

  “Many?”

  “Perhaps.”