The Last Jihad

by Rosenberg, Joel C.

  “Get Galishnikov on a plane,” Bennett commanded, albeit in a whisper. “I want him in my office in New York by dinner.”

  Sure enough, Galishnikov took the bait, came for dinner, and bared his soul. The fact was, he’d gotten a few other calls. But no one seemed interested in making a billion-dollar bet on the bloody Middle East. Gas and oil were risky enough. Nobody wanted a bunch of Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad terrorists blowing up their investments with a smile on their faces as some gift to Allah. They’d rather drill in Siberia or the Artic Circle. Hell, they’d rather drill anywhere than get in the middle of the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Bennett was ready. And he said so. And Galishnikov agreed to go back and talk to his partner, a gentle, soft-spoken Arab by the name of Ibrahim Sa’id—head of a new, privately held company called the Palestinian Petroleum Group, or PPG—to see what could be done.

  By September 28, there was a new headline in the New York Times: “Arafat Hails Big Gas Find Off the Coast of Gaza Strip.” In fact, Times reporter Bill Orme wrote Arafat was “celebrating the multibillion-dollar discovery of what industry officials confirmed is a major gas deposit” and telling people it would provide “a strong foundation for a Palestinian state.”

  “This is a gift from our God to our people,” Arafat told Orme, “to our children, to our women, to our people inside and outside, to our refugees and those who are living here on our land.”

  So began a seemingly never-ending chain of meetings with the principals in New York, London, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. Staffers began constantly shuttling back and forth from the U.S. to Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Then came the blizzard of business plans, background checks, geological surveys, cost-benefit analyses, insurance assessments, credit checks, and financial negotiations. It seemed to go on forever. But everyone involved knew it would be worth it, and they could barely contain their excitement.

  Until September 11, 2001. The day Islamic terrorists attacked New York and Washington. The day the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon burned. The day three thousand Americans lost their lives. The day Palestinians began dancing in the streets. The day Osama bin Laden became a household name around the globe, and brought cheers throughout the Muslim world. The day President Bush declared a “war on terrorism.” The day any prospect for Arab-Israeli peace and prosperity was mothballed, yet again.

  But time heals all wounds. Almost a decade later, Bennett now believed there were once again signs of hope. The war on terrorism had been a huge success. Not only were al Qaeda and the Taliban destroyed. Key Palestinian terrorist networks such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad also had been effectively ripped up and wiped out by the Israelis, with tacit approval from Washington. And several moderate Arab countries like Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco were clamping down on terrorist cells within their borders or just passing through. It wasn’t perfect. But it was progress. Overall, the good guys were winning.

  In the meantime, not only had natural gas reserves been discovered off the Israeli-Palestinian coastlines. Medexco and PPG geologists and engineers had recently, quietly, and unexpectedly discovered massive tracts of oil reserves as well. The Israelis and Palestinians were sitting on a gold mine, and it was time to move decisively. Every light looked green. All systems seemed go. They’d better be. So much hung in the balance.

  Barshevsky popped his head in the door of the restaurant.

  He caught Bennett’s eye. The car was ready. It was time to go. Bennett looked at Galishnikov.

  “Well?”

  Galishnikov straightened up, took off his glasses for a moment and rubbed his eyes. Then he cleaned his glasses with a white cloth napkin, and carefully repositioned them on his pale, gaunt face.

  “Tov,” he said quietly, in his newly acquired Hebrew. Then he picked up Bennett’s Mont Blanc pen and signed his name.

  “Good,” said Bennett, looking Galishnikov square in the eyes. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

  “You, too, my friend.”

  Bennett slipped the papers into his briefcase, and slipped quietly out the door and into the waiting black Mercedes. This was no time for celebrating. Not now. Not in public. The deal of the century had just been signed. It was going to change everything. Not more than two dozen people in the entire world had any idea, and Bennett’s job was to keep it that way for a little while longer.

  Galishnikov watched his young friend leave, sighed, then stared down at his plate of cold, untouched breakfast. He’d awoken with no appetite whatsoever. Now he felt famished.

  Bennett leaned back into the leather seat of the black Mercedes.

  He rolled down the tinted window beside him to get some fresh, cool air. The drive to Ben Gurion airport wouldn’t take long. But the flights ahead of him would feel like a lifetime. Why hadn’t he simply taken the company’s private jet? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine MacPherson and Iverson’s faces when he told them the good news. Suddenly, his digital cell phone rang.

  “Bennett.”

  “Mr. Bennett. This is the White House operator. I have Treasury Secretary Iverson on the line. I remind you, it is not a secure line. Stand by one.”

  A crackle of static, and then…

  “Jon, it’s Stu.”

  “Hey, Stu, er—Mr. Secretary—I’ve got good news.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Mac may be dead.”

  “What?”

  Bennett sat bolt upright.

  “His motorcade was attacked a few minutes ago.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. A plane. A kamikaze. Something. I don’t know.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I don’t know anything yet. The Secret Service just woke me up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The Brown Palace…we’re…we’ve got a dinner tonight…later tonight.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Everybody. Bob just walked in. He came on some earlier flight to schmooze some donors. It’s a nightmare, Jon. We don’t know any details. Not yet.”

  “Oh my God. I can’t believe this.”

  “I know. I know. It’s 9-11 all over again. Look, where are you right now?”

  “Uh, I’m, uh…I’m in a caron the way to the airport.”

  “New York?”

  “No, no—Jerusalem.”

  “Right, well, just get here as fast as you can.”

  The line went dead.

  Bennett’s mind went numb.

  James “Mac” MacPherson—the Vietnam vet turned Wall Street wizard turned two-term governor of Colorado turned President of the United States—was poised to be Time’s “Man of the Year,” the chief architect of America’s dazzling economic comeback.

  Now…he might be dead.

  THREE

  The acrid stench of blazing jet fuel and thick, black smoke overwhelmed him.

  Three deafening helicopters hovered overhead, beaming their spotlights onto the carnage below. A fourth could be seen circling a larger perimeter, and now a squadron of F-15s streaked overhead, flying CAP. Despite the chilly night breeze he could feel the intense heat of the roaring flames. Close his eyes and he could easily be back with the Army Times, back in the Gulf War, back on Iraq’s “highway of death,” picking his way through the putrefying bodies and smoldering hulks of tanks, trucks, and other scorched remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.

  It had been almost two decades since Marcus Jackson, now with the New York Times, had covered a hot war. It had been at least six or seven years since he stopped waking up in the wee hours of the morning, drenched with sweat from yet another nightmare, his wife holding his shaking body. Like many men his age, he signed up for military service in the early ’80s not truly believing he’d ever see combat. And for the sake of his twin girls—both of whom had just turned five the previous weekend in another slumber party he had missed—he prayed every night that he’d never have to witness the horrors of co
mbat again. The White House beat was more than enough for him now, especially over the last few years. But, in an instant, it all came rushing back.

  Jackson was several miles back from the wreckage of Stagecoach and the G4. Prevented from exiting Press Bus #1, he could see a wall of police officers surrounding his bus, and the others behind him, guns drawn. But with a front-row seat, high-powered binoculars hanging from his neck, and a digital wireless phone in each hand, he was now one of the most valuable witnesses in the world.

  With one phone, Jackson repeatedly speed-dialed his assignment desk back in New York. Busy. Again. Busy. Again. No luck. With the other phone, he quickly speed-dialed CNN in Atlanta, connecting immediately. Some kind of party was going on in the control room. Jackson could hear the night crew singing happy birthday to someone. Jackson shouted into the phone.

  “Josh, it’s Marcus. Oh my God. Everything’s on fire. I’m with the pres—”

  “What? I can’t hear you. Hold on—everybody shut up.”

  Jackson could hear the party in the control room die instantly as Josh Simon, CNN’s overnight producer, shocked everybody with his uncharacteristic outburst.

  “All right, Marcus, what is it?”

  “I saw it all, Josh—the thing just came screaming down out of the sky and erupted into a fireball…”

  “What? Whoa, whoa. What are you talking about?”

  “Some kind of kamikaze just attacked MacPherson’s motorcade.”

  “Holy…”

  “It’s total chaos.”

  “Not again…”

  “It’s bad, Josh, it’s bad.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We just left DIA. The whole road’s on fire.”

  “Unbelievable. You’re the first to call in. Nothing’s on the wires.”

  “I know, I know. It literally just happened.”

  “What about MacPherson?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell. I’m looking at his car right now through binoculars. Cops are everywhere. The thing’s upside down. They’re trying to get the doors open. There’s fire everywhere.”

  “Marcus, we’ve got to get you on the air. Hold on—can you hold on?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Simon quickly explained to his team what they were about to report. He checked again, but the story still wasn’t on the AP or Reuters wires yet.

  It would be soon. Jackson could hear over his left shoulder as the Associated Press’s Tom Perkins dictated an urgent bulletin to a night editor in Washington. He could also hear the gasps in the CNN control room back in Atlanta as Simon spoke.

  Just twenty-nine, Josh Simon was young but sharp, intense, and already losing his hair. Too much stress, too many graveyard shifts, too many Marlboros. His superiors weren’t yet convinced of his full potential. But to Jackson—who’d known him for years—Simon seemed to have a gift. He truly understood the power of live, breaking television news. He’d grown up with it. Gone to school for it. Sacrificed his marriage for it. He understood its style, its rhythm, its cadence. He knew how to tell a story visually and—when pictures weren’t available—he knew how to capture a viewer through music and graphics and the tone of an anchor’s voice.

  Now Jackson heard his friend on the other end of the line prepare his team to be the first to break this story to the entire world.

  “Josh—can you hear me?”

  “Hold on, Marcus. Bill, we’re cutting in—breaking news—I’ll cue you as we go. It’s huge—stand by.”

  “Camera two, stand by…we’re going to breaking news…ready graphics…cue music…Dirk—get me a map of Colorado—OK, everybody, this is it…let’s get it right…going live…stand by…three…two…one…go.”

  Simon’s voice was calm and steady and professional. Jackson could hear a roundup of the day’s financial news suddenly interrupted by the distinctive music. Then: “This is CNN Breaking News.” Even as a hardened, cynical, battle-weary reporter, that very sound sent shivers down his spine. Simon dictated a lead-in as anchor Bill Blake flawlessly repeated every jarring word.

  “Marcus, stand by one…”

  For a moment, a hiss of static made it sound like the phone had gone dead. But Jackson could tell he’d actually been patched through and was live on the air. Blake was already introducing him.

  “…on the line now from I-70, just outside of Denver…Mr. Jackson, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Bill, I can.”

  “CNN is now reporting that the president’s motorcade has just been attacked, apparently by a kamikaze, on the road leaving the Denver International Airport. I understand you’ve witnessed the whole thing. What can you tell us?”

  Bennett stared out the window.

  Roni Barshevsky maneuvered the aging Mercedes through morning traffic and raced to the airport. But Bennett’s mind was elsewhere. He needed information. What was happening? Was it true? How could it be? President MacPherson couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be.

  James MacPherson was practically Bennett’s godfather. More than any other man in Bennett’s life—except his own father—MacPherson had taken a personal interest in his skills, his career, and his life, teaching him the tricks of the financial trade and treating him as much like a son as a protégé. Back in the early ’90s, when he’d first been hired by GSX and before MacPherson was elected governor, the young Bennett had often been surprised to be a regular guest in his boss’s gorgeous Cherry Creek home, sometimes working deep into the night on some proposal or another, sometimes devouring Mrs. MacPherson’s incredible chocolate chip cookies, or shooting hoops with the girls in the driveway, or helping plot the CEO’s political future.

  When MacPherson began planning his first run for governor, Bennett was one of a dozen people in the room—despite the fact that the governor called him his “resident Democrat”—taking notes and helping draft policy papers and campaign speeches. When MacPherson won his reelection campaign overwhelmingly, Bennett was one of only six other men in the Denver hotel suite election night mapping out the road from Denver to Iowa to New Hampshire to the GOP convention. For some strange, inexplicable reason, he’d been invited into the inner circle, the inner sanctum—the “circle of trust,” as the MacPhersons liked to joke. He’d become family in the process, not to mention a multimillionaire.

  Bennett closed his eyes and let himself sink into the rich, thick leather in the back seat of the Mercedes. He rubbed his eyes, now aching from the early stages of what felt like a sinus headache. He took a swig of water and could feel his throat getting worse. He reached for the window and opened it wide, his dark brown hair now whipping around in the incoming wind. The thrill of the Medexco deal was gone.

  He felt tired, achy, sluggish, his brain on mental overload. He soon found his thoughts drifting back a few years, to the MacPherson’s breathtaking lodge, nestled high up in Beaver Creek on the slope of the Rockies. He’d been invited to go skiing with the governor, his family and Iverson.

  Instead, he found himself with an excruciating case of strep throat. Mrs. MacPherson—he’d never quite felt right calling her Julie, though she’d always insisted—wrapped him up under heaps of wool blankets, gave him a steaming pot of Earl Grey tea, and left him to rest in the huge, quiet house, staring out a massive plate glass window, overlooking some of the most beautiful mountains he’d ever seen.

  He could still see the snowy, cold white peaks, and the thick, sturdy evergreens, and the hazy orange sunset, and the long, dark shadows in the valley, and the twinkling white lights of the family Christmas tree. He could still hear the howl of the bitter winds outside, the roaring crackle of the fire inside, and the gentle carols rising from tiny speakers hidden all over the house. Perhaps for the first time since hopping onto the Wall Street bullet train, he’d felt safe.

  The weight of the world—the weight of the massive deals and the anticipation of the next global economic or financial crisis—slowly slipped off his shoulders and he’d slept and slept and slept.

  I
t was never built to be a fortress.

  The elegant three-story, white-brick, nineteenth-century Victorian house on the southeast corner of Thirty-Fourth Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., may have been built by and for the military, but it was not impregnable.

  Set on a lovely, hilly knoll, surrounded by towering trees and within the gates of a calm and grassy compound, the Queen Anne-style structure completed in April of 1893 began as the home of the various superintendents of the U.S. Naval Observatory, until 1928, when it became the official home of the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations.

  In 1974, Congress designated the home the official residence for the Vice President of the United States. Nelson Rockefeller and his family entertained there, but it wasn’t until 1977 that Walter Mondale and his family actually became the first “Second Family” to take up full-time residence. Now it was the home of Vice President William Harvard Oaks, and the stillness of the historic grounds was about to be shattered.

  Special Agent-in-Charge Steve Sinclair sat behind his desk at Checkpoint One, just inside the front doors of the Residence. He’d just finished editing his oldest son’s tenth-grade term paper on Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg and was settling down with a steaming cup of coffee, a fresh blueberry muffin, and the early edition of the Washington Post sports section when all three of his secure phones began ringing almost simultaneously. All six of the agents on post in the living room and dining room snapped to attention. Sinclair grabbed the red phone first.

  “Sinclair, go.”

  “Code Red. Code Red,” shouted the watch commander beside Bud Norris at the Secret Service headquarters at Treasury. “Fire up the chopper and get Checkmate the hell out of there.”

  “Copy that—hold one.”

  Sinclair grabbed his wrist-mounted microphone and shouted, “Code Red. Code Red. Evacuate. Evacuate. Marine Two—scramble, scramble, scramble.”