The Last Days (36 page)

Rounding out the team were two dozen male and female “house staff,” all agents from the CIA's Directorate of Operations, sent by Danny Tracker to Gibraltar to cook, clean, do errands, provide communications and administrative support, and act as a backup security detail. Nine were on duty from 6:00
A.M.
to 2:00
P.M.
Nine more from 2:00
P.M.
until 10:00 at night. Six took the night shift. All were experienced field operatives. All spoke fluent Arabic, Farsi, or Hebrew, and were all handpicked by Tracker and approved first by Jack Mitchell, then by the president and vice president themselves.

At 8:00
A.M.,
Galishnikov was still in his room, sound asleep. The house staff finished serving the four principals, then cleared the room and locked the doors behind them. Meanwhile, the American security details maintained their protective vigilance, even inside a mountain protected by a detachment of Royal Marines and three infantry rifle companies of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, British army commandos.

Bennett took a sip of water, cleared his throat, and smiled at his two friends. This was really it. Even though his presentation was merely a briefing—perhaps even of information these two men already knew, at least in part, from their own governments—he still had butterflies. He wasn't simply beginning a conversation with two friends. They were leaders of two nations—nations at war.

“First of all, again,” Bennett began, still seated, “on behalf of President MacPherson and his senior team, and Erin and myself, let me welcome you to the ‘Mount of Olives.'”

Both men nodded graciously.

“And let me say thank you to both of you for the courage you've displayed already by agreeing to these talks, and waging a very difficult war against the extremists who have spilled so much blood to keep these talks, and others before them, either from happening at all or bearing any fruit.”

Again, both men nodded.

“These aren't exactly the most scenic accommodations,” he continued, getting a small laugh, “but we'll do everything we can to make your stay as comfortable as possible, and to make sure you both have secure communications with your home governments, and plenty of time to confer with your advisors by telephone or by videoconference. Again, our only request is that everyone maintain strict operational security, that none of your teams refer to our actual location during any of their communications, simply to the Mount of Olives. My security team, as I'm sure you know, has already briefed your teams about a wide range of contingency operations, should anything go wrong. But so long as the world doesn't know where we are, we don't foresee any problems.”

Bennett took another sip of water, then shifted gears.

“If you'll indulge me for a moment, I'd like to begin this morning with a story. One of Aesop's fables, to be precise—the story of the North Wind and the Sun.”

He hadn't told McCoy about this. He hadn't been entirely sure he'd go through with it. Now he was trying to ignore the intense curiosity in her eyes.

“The North Wind boasted of great strength,” Bennett began. “The Sun argued that there was great power in gentleness. ‘We shall have a contest,' said the Sun. Far below, a man traveled a winding road. He was wearing a warm winter coat. ‘As a test of strength,' said the Sun, ‘let us see which of us can take the coat off of that man.' ‘It will be quite simple for me to force him to remove his coat,' bragged the Wind. The Wind blew so hard, the birds clung to the trees. The world was filled with dust and leaves. But the harder the wind blew down the road, the tighter the shivering man clung to his coat. Then, the Sun came out from behind a cloud. Sun warmed the air and the frosty ground. The man on the road unbuttoned his coat. The sun grew slowly brighter and brighter. Soon the man felt so hot, he took off his coat and sat down in a shady spot. ‘How did you do that?' said the Wind. ‘It was easy,' said the Sun, ‘I lit the day, and through gentleness I got my way.'”

His tone was not accusatory. But he was firm, and direct, and to the point.

“We all want something from each other. You both want something from each other. Your people want something each of you is unsure he can deliver. Those who've gone before us have failed. I'm not here to assign blame. I'm not here to point fingers. But let's be honest with one another. Maybe one side wasn't ready. Maybe neither was ready. Perhaps the U.S. wasn't perceived as being an honest broker. Perhaps we weren't. But for whatever reason—and I suspect there were many—our predecessors failed to make peace, and many more from all sides lie dead. I hope we can all agree that the North Wind's approach hasn't worked.”

Bennett was trying to be evenhanded. It was hard to read the thoughts behind each man's stony exterior. But he continued.

“The bluster. The rhetoric. The ultimatums. The violence on both sides. None of it has worked—not in and of itself—unless we accept that all of it has brought us to this point, to this place, to you two men as leaders of two great nations. And now we have a shot at accomplishing something extraordinary: a real peace, a lasting peace. Let's not kid ourselves. The road to peace is narrow. It won't be easy. Broad is the path that leads to destruction. The way to peace is hard to find. But all I ask, all my government asks of you both, is that we not miss that narrow path in the heat of the moment. Let us not miss it for our lack of gentleness.”

Breakfast went well enough.

Both leaders seemed satisfied that Operation Palestinian Freedom was proceeding according to plan, and accomplishing real results. Both were also impressed by McCoy's briefing and her breaking news.

Overnight, federal agents had intercepted six suicide bombers trying to cross in the U.S.—three in Maine, two at the Niagara Falls border, and one in a dramatic shoot-out in Washington State that left the suspected terrorist dead and two U.S. border guards in the hospital. With the exception of the Washington incident, none of the others had been reported by the media yet. The five Syrians, Saudis, and Palestinians in federal custody were being interrogated, and no official announcements would be made until it was determined whether these men were willing to talk.

At one o'clock in the afternoon local time, the four principals reassembled for a working lunch. They munched on pita, hummus, various salads, light sandwiches, soft drinks, and sipped endless cups of Turkish coffee. Kosher provisions for Doron were brought in from a local restaurant, as was fresh baklava for Sa'id, and after an hour or so, they moved to a living-room area with four large, comfortable leather chairs surrounding a large glass table, upon which were bowls of fresh fruit, pitchers of cold water, a supply of napkins, and plenty of coasters for their drinks.

The mood was casual. Both sides were slowly beginning to warm up to each other. And once everyone had finished eating, Bennett began his second presentation of the day. It was aimed primarily at Doron, who was hearing the details of Bennett's oil-for-peace proposal for the first time. He'd been briefed by his Foreign Ministry officials, of course, and he'd read various tidbits about the plan in the papers. But Doron was looking forward to finally getting the full presentation directly from its chief architect.

“Gentlemen,” Bennett began, “as you know, there's long been a common misperception that the Holy Land is the only place in the Middle East that isn't blessed with petroleum. Most people don't realize that since 1948, more than four hundred wells have been drilled in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. To be sure, many have come up dry, or haven't proven to possess commercial quantities of oil and natural gas. Some, on the other hand, have proven to be quite valuable. But until recently, most people have had absolutely no idea exactly how much black gold is actually there.”

Bennett reached for his glass, took another sip of water, and continued.

“In part, of course, this was because the political and military climate made venture capital resources scarce, and thus serious exploration difficult, to say the least. In part, it was because until very recently the technology simply wasn't available to do sophisticated exploration from space and using smaller, more advanced drilling equipment. And in part, there simply wasn't the entrepreneurial spirit to hunt for buried treasure. Most of the Israeli gas and oil industry was owned by the government and run by bureaucrats without any imagination and without any incentive to hunt for such treasure because they had no stake in the cause. They weren't going to make a single extra shekel if the Israeli government struck oil, so why bother?

“But all that began to change in 1988. As you of course know, Mr. Prime Minister, your government began privatizing the exploration, drilling, and production companies at the time, a process that continued throughout much of the 1990s. At the same time, the Gulf War seemed to neutralize—at least for a while—the Iraqi threat. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process picked up speed. Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. The world economy was growing. An explosion of new technology came onto the market making petroleum exploration easier and cheaper. A confluence of many different events meant suddenly, everything was changing. And one man who saw these changes and decided to take advantage of them became a friend of mine.

“Now, that said, I must tell you, Prime Minister Doron, that one of the few men in the world who knows what treasures lie beneath is right here at this table. Ibrahim Sa'id has shown tremendous foresight and true entrepreneurial moxie to get where he is today. And one of the central questions we've gathered here to answer is whether or not his unexpected rise to leadership of the Palestinian people—offers a window of opportunity for both sides to find a measure of peace and prosperity never before imagined.”

Bennett paused to let his rhetorical flourish sink in.

“It is Ibrahim Sa'id and his company—the Palestinian Petroleum Group, known more commonly as PPG—who have partnered with the Israeli company Medexco, run by Dmitri Galishnikov. They've formed an extraordinary joint venture that crosses racial, religious, and national bounds, a joint venture my government believes could literally change the course of history. As you know, Mr. Prime Minister, Erin and I, in our previous nongovernment lives as senior executives at Global Strategix, Inc.—GSX—and the Joshua Fund, one of the world's largest and most successful global growth mutual funds, got to know Mr. Sa'id and Mr. Galishnikov. We learned their remarkable stories. We vetted them. And we chose to invest one billion dollars into their joint venture to turn a dream into a reality. We've crunched the numbers a thousand times from a thousand different angles, and I daresay every fact and figure is now part of our very souls.”

McCoy caught Bennett's eye. She could see he was finally in his element, and enjoying every minute of it, no matter how anxious he'd been leading into the luncheon.

“Prime Minister Doron, some of this, I suspect, will be new for you. All of it is in the briefing book Erin just handed to you. But let me just say, sir, that the figures are almost unimaginable. Let me take some time to walk you through them.”

 

Something was wrong.

It was just after 2:00
P.M.
Gibraltar time, just after 9:00
A.M.
in D.C. FBI director Scott Harris stepped back into his office after briefing the president at the White House with Homeland Security Secretary Lee James. Harris's chief of staff, Larry Kirstoff, was waiting for him.

“What is it now?” Harris asked, seeing the anxiety in his colleague's face.

“We just got a hit.”

“On what?”

“Ruth Bennett's ATM card,” said Kirstoff.

Harris swallowed hard.

“Where? Just now?”

“Eighteen minutes ago. At a bank near Radio City Music Hall.”

“New York? You're sure?”

“I just got the call from the ELINT unit a few seconds ago. They're sure.”

“You think it was her?”

“We've got no idea. Not yet. But the cops aren't taking any chances, especially if we're dealing with suicide bombers.”

“Oh my God. Eighteen minutes—why'd it take so long?”

“Some glitch in the system. Can't say for sure yet. We're checking on that. But for now NYPD is flooding the area—uniformed officers, SWAT teams, helicopters, the works. They're shutting down a twenty-square-block radius and all points in and out of the city. We've got our own units on the way. We'd like to put the Hostage Rescue Team on standby in New York, just in case.”

“Do it—whatever you need. And get me the president—
now.
”

 

Bennett had no idea what was unfolding back home.

The entire country was glued to breaking television news coverage of the manhunt in Manhattan. It wasn't just cable. All four major broadcast networks broke into regular programming with a story in their own backyard.

The images were riveting. Every car, every taxicab, every truck and bus was being stopped at gunpoint. Local and federal agents dressed in black and armed with automatic weapons were taking people out of vehicles and searching them one by one. But who or what were they looking for? Ruth Bennett? Was she still alive? Had someone forced her PIN number out of her before…

Before what? No one wanted to say out loud the worst-case scenario. Especially not network anchors. But the thought was on everyone's mind.

If Ruth Bennett were dead—or held hostage somewhere in New York, or anywhere on the eastern seaboard, for that matter—how exactly were they going to find her? And who else might they be looking for? Faces on the federal terrorist watch list, to be sure. Anyone of Arab or Middle East descent or looks? Anyone some law enforcement official deemed “suspicious”? It had the potential to be a civil liberties nightmare. But in the adrenaline of the moment, that wasn't the first worry on most people's minds.

Additional security was rushed to protect the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. The Empire State Building was shut down. Heavily armed police officers stood watch outside city hall, One Police Plaza, and all local, state, and federal government buildings. Every tunnel was sealed by the Port Authority. All bridges were being shut down. Scott Harris briefed the mayor while Lee James briefed the president. On top of everything else, there was another question to decide. It was New Year's Eve. A quarter of a million people were expected to descend upon Times Square as night fell. It would be the perfect target for a suicide bomber—high profile, high security, but almost impossible to fully defend. Should everything be canceled?

Bennett turned on a Power Point projector and continued.

“When they first secured exploration licenses from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority and began doing some preliminary test wells off the coast of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ashkelon, Medexco and PPG thought they were getting themselves into a natural gas deal. So did we, to be honest. And, as our friend Dmitri might say,
dayenu
—that alone would have been enough. But that, it turned out, was just the beginning.”

Bennett clicked to the first slide, revealing a satellite photograph of the coast of Israel and Gaza.

“Tracts of natural gas were actually discovered back in 1999, by accident. A marine geologist working for
National Geographic
—the same one who'd actually located the sunken
Titanic
in the North Atlantic—was trolling the floor of the Mediterranean with high-tech sonar equipment near Ashdod, just north of Gaza. He was looking for the shipwrecks of ancient Phoenician vessels, and he'd found them—two of them—dating back to seven hundred and fifty years before the time of Christ.”

The next slide showed underwater images of both vessels.

“But this geologist hadn't just found sunken ships. He'd found buried treasure. He'd unknowingly found the most spectacular energy discovery in the history of modern Israel and Palestine—hidden underwater reserves capable of producing millions of cubic feet of natural gas
per day,
every day, for decades, perhaps centuries.”

Bennett now had Doron's full attention, and he could see Sa'id warming as well, excited to see his counterpart becoming engaged.

“But it turned out there was more,” Bennett added, carefully building the drama. “Last year, a team of Medexco and PPG geologists—paid for by GSX—discovered oil as well. Unbelievable amounts of oil. Perhaps enough oil to make Israel and Palestine—if they were to work together to drill it, pump it, and refine it—the second-largest oil producer in the world, behind Saudi Arabia.”

A new slide showed the top ten oil producing and exporting countries in order of their annual production. The next slide showed the top ten list in order of annual sales. The next showed Israel and Palestine in the number two position.

“Now, the Saudis have about a quarter of the world's known petroleum reserves, and they pump about eight and a half million barrels a day. When the price of oil is between twenty-five and thirty dollars a barrel, they gross somewhere north of two hundred million dollars a day—nearly eighty to ninety
billion
dollars a year. Iraq also has tremendous potential, and we believe they are going to become a very aggressive new player in the international oil markets. By aggressive, I mean in the competitive business sense, not the military, nuclear sense, of course.”

That got a laugh from all of them, and bought Bennett more goodwill.

“Now, Prime Minister Doron, I'd be happy to get into Iraq's potential if you'd like. But the details aren't particularly important. What's essential to understand is that they've got a huge head start on you both. Their equipment is substandard. It's old. It's poorly maintained. It needs to be replaced, and that's going to take time and a lot of money. But they've got the whole world hoping the U.S. will secure order, the new provisional government will get the country functioning again, and the U.N. will lift the sanctions and allow Iraqi oil to be sold on the open market.

“Once that happens—and I believe it will happen relatively soon, Iraq's oil industry is poised for explosive growth. If they accept foreign direct investment, they will have the opportunity to begin dealing with their technology problems fairly quickly. And, of course, they already have quite a bit of infrastructure already in place, regardless of its quality. You don't. All this oil and gas is sitting off your coastlines. But no one can start getting it out of the ground and into refineries and into the world markets until there's some kind of political agreement, some real assurances that there's going to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians—and that there will be enforceable property rights and legal mechanisms necessary for the proper functioning of a free market.”