The Last Days (38 page)

It would take most of the evening to do a proper autopsy.

Several days would be needed to identify the body. And they didn't have several days. A conference call was hastily organized between the president, the director of the FBI, the secretary of Homeland Security, the National Security advisor and senior New York officials, including the mayor, the governor, and both United States senators.

The evidence was sketchy and thus far inconclusive. But the tension in the city and throughout the country was palpable. They couldn't afford to be wrong. A bombing in Times Square would have incalculable consequences within the United States and around the world.

It was an agonizing decision, but at a few minutes before noon, a vote was taken among the participants. The conclusion was unanimous. All New Year's Eve events in New York were canceled. The governor would call out the National Guard to provide additional security in Manhattan and the boroughs. And the president would talk to the mayor of Washington about canceling events in the nation's capital as well.

 

Bennett now turned to McCoy.

“Erin, why don't you go over some of our projections of what could be possible if an adequate agreement was struck by both sides.”

“I'd be happy to, Jon. Thanks. Prime Minister Doron, our assessment is that Gaza, the West Bank, and the Sinai would very likely become the new Saudi Arabias of the Mediterranean. In that sense, we mean their competitive advantage may best be in focusing on the actual drilling, refining, and industrial development of the petroleum.

“There's going to be a tremendous explosion of new jobs, particularly for young men building roads, buildings, industrial facilities, putting in water, sewage, electrical and communications infrastructure, and the like. Large portions of this will be well suited for the Palestinian labor force, not to mention Egyptians and Jordanians, though that would, of course, take a great deal of thinking through to make sure no Palestinians are cheated out of jobs that should more rightfully be theirs, and that there are no security problems related to foreign workers coming into Gaza and or the West Bank. But you can see where we're going with this.”

“I can,” Doron agreed, not bothered by discussions that were still, obviously, in the conceptual stage. “What do you see for Israel? You've got my wheels churning, I must say. But I'm curious what you're thinking.”

“Well, I appreciate that. I think Jon and I would say that Israel seems best positioned to become the new Silicon Valley and Switzerland of the Mediterranean basin. You've got tremendous potential—especially with all this influx of capital—to continue emerging as one of the world's great high-tech, banking, financial services and health-care capitals. You're already operating well ahead of other countries in the region, more on par with Europe and the United States, and this could very well put your high-tech industries into the stratosphere.

“We haven't got specific numbers on it, but I think if you input all these numbers into an economic model for Israel, you'd see inflows of capital into your country that had nothing directly to do with oil or gas or anything petroleum related, per se, but began flowing simply because people began to believe that peace really was at hand and that Israel was ready for exponential growth. It's not been surprising for you guys to grow six to eight percent a year in real terms. I think it's fair to say that under many of these scenarios, you guys would be growing in double digits for much of the next decade, if not longer.”

The room was silent for a few long minutes. Bennett and McCoy glanced at each other, but said nothing. They glanced at Sa'id. The man was still stone-faced and motionless. Doron, meanwhile, leafed through his briefing book, nodding and occasionally underlining something that caught his eye.

“I see you've got a section on Jordan, here,” he finally said. “Can you give me the executive summary?”

“Jon?” McCoy asked.

“Hey, go right ahead,” Bennett responded. “You're doing great.”

McCoy appreciated that more than Bennett knew, but she tried not to tip her hand. Bennett had been doing most of the talking, and would be for the next few days. But she'd done most of the legwork to get to this point, and it was nice to have an opportunity—however brief—to make her case.

“Well, fair enough. The bottom line is that Jordan is in an incredible position to benefit from the president's oil-for-peace proposal. The Hashemite Kingdom, of course, already has a peace treaty with Israel. It's got a large labor pool that could be hired for all kinds of infrastructure projects. Moreover, with the right strategic plan, it could very well become the Palm Springs or Phoenix of the region, focusing on tourism, resorts, luxury spas, that kind of thing.”

Doron looked across the table at Sa'id.

“And golf?”

Sa'id was surprised by the question.

“Perhaps—yes, maybe even golf.”

“The king would like that, wouldn't he?”

“Yes, I suspect he would.” Sa'id laughed.

McCoy then directed the two men to page 114 of their briefing books, while she put a new Power Point slide up on the wall. She and Bennett and their team had crunched more numbers, and these were astounding.

McCoy explained that if all things went as well as expected, every Israeli and Palestinian could, two or three years from that moment, be holding Medexco stock worth somewhere between a half a million and a million dollars per family. If the region remained peaceful and people held on to their stocks after the holding period, they could very well be sitting on several multiples of that.

For now, Doron said nothing. His face betrayed nothing. He just looked at the numbers, jotted some notes, and kept flipping through the pages. Bennett and McCoy were dying to know what he was thinking. But they would soon enough.

Doron could do the math. He knew the average Palestinian family currently earned less than $1,500 a year, while the families of suicide bombers had gotten checks from Saddam Hussein's regime for at least $25,000, sometimes more. Iraq's cash-for-terror machine had just been shut down by the Americans, thank God. But the Iranians already seemed to be moving into the vacuum with full force. He knew that nearly half the men in the West Bank—and upward of 70 percent of men in Gaza—were unemployed, and he knew all too well that idle hands were the devil's workshop. What's more, the exploding birthrates in the territories meant five out of every ten Palestinians were under the age of fifteen.

The bottom line, thought Doron—the West Bank and Gaza were ticking demographic time bombs. Teeming masses. Youthful passions. Filthy housing. Cramped quarters. Few jobs. Low wages. Seething resentments. And poisonous, anti-Semitic messages preached every day in overcrowded Palestinian schools, and every Friday in hundreds of mosques to thousands of weary, angry souls. A quarter of a million Muslims turned out every week at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount alone. They were told there was no hope for a better life other than permanent revolution against the Jews. Why should they believe any differently?

Something had to change. Israel couldn't live the way she was living. There was no way she could remain a Jewish democracy ruling over millions of Palestinians. And there was no way she could remain an island of prosperity in an ocean of poverty and misery. Something had to give. Maybe Bennett was right. Perhaps the immediate prospect of more jobs, better jobs, good pay, health-care benefits, new schools, new apartments, pools and community centers and stock and bonds and personal investment accounts that would turn many into millionaires—combined with the prospect of a state they could call their own—maybe such a package really could be a strong enough inducement for Palestinians to break with the past and make peace with Israel. Doron hoped so. He really did. But he'd lived in the Middle East long enough to know how dangerous mirages are to thirsty men—false gods offering false hope, and you cannot drink the sand.

“Well,” Bennett concluded, “we've given you a lot to chew over.”

“You have indeed,” said Doron. “And I appreciate not only the imagination and creativity you've brought to the table but the careful, and I might say extensive, detail you've put into this. It's a very impressive proposal, and I'm looking forward to going over this briefing book in great detail. I'm sure that I'll have a lot of questions.”

“And we'll do everything we can to answer them as best we can,” said Bennett.

“I'm sure you will.”

Doron now turned to Sa'id and looked him in the eye.

“Mr. Prime Minister, I want you to know that I appreciate your willingness to participate in these meetings on your holy day. Your gesture has not gone unnoticed.”

“Neither has yours,” Sa'id responded. “Neither has yours.”

 

Fox broke the story first.

Nadir Sarukhi Hashemi heard the story on CNN a few minutes later. New York was canceling all New Year's Eve festivities. So was Washington, D.C., Chicago, and L.A. Over the course of the next thirty minutes, cancellations began coming in from cities and towns throughout the United States. No one wanted to surrender the night to terrorists. But given all that was happening, the risks simply seemed too great. Nadir hoped to Allah there was another team in play, if not several. But his orders were clear. He couldn't stay in Arkansas. He had to get to Atlanta and Savannah, pick up his weapons and supplies, and get in position. He'd already let too much time go by, and his sense of shame was almost overpowering.

 

Bennett sat alone on the couch in his room.

He was numb. Overwhelmed by the president's call and the prospect that his mother had been kidnapped, Bennett's emotional circuit breakers had simply shut everything down. Normally, his mind would start racing. He was a strategist so he'd strategize. He'd make lists. He'd make calls. He'd work the phones, gathering more information to process and analyze and assess. But now he just stared at the phone. His breathing was calm. His pulse was normal.

If anything, he had the sudden urge to run. For a jogger as obsessive-compulsive as he was, missing a single day wreaked havoc with his body, mind, and soul. Every morning at six, he was pounding the pavement. Five miles at least. Ten miles if he could. More on weekends. Back in New York, it wasn't unusual for him to rack up fifty to sixty miles total every week. It was time to get alone—away from the phones, away from the e-mail, away from the stresses of deals and deal makers and let everything go.

But he'd been locked in underground bunkers for the better part of a week. He hadn't laced up once. He'd barely tasted fresh air. Nor could he now. It was still raining outside. And what was he going to do, run through the mountainous streets of Gibraltar with a bulletproof vest on and a dozen navy SEALs surrounding him?

There was a knock at the door. He could barely gather enough strength to answer it. So he didn't. But the knocking continued. He kept ignoring it, but it wouldn't go away. Then the door clicked open. It was McCoy.

“Hey, I just heard—how're you doing?”

He looked at her a few seconds, but didn't say anything. The smell of Jack Daniel's said it for him. She had no idea where he'd gotten it from. But the bottle was half-empty and there wasn't a glass in sight.

McCoy whispered something to Tariq and the rest of the detail standing post outside Bennett's room. Then McCoy came in, shut the door, and sat down on the couch beside him. It was quiet for a little while. Neither said a word. They just sat together, listening to the windup alarm clock sitting on the nightstand beside Bennett's bed.

Normally, the silence would have been awkward for both of them. More so for Bennett. But it wasn't today. It felt good to have someone sit with him, and he was glad it was her, glad she'd thought of coming down to be with him.

“It's funny, McCoy,” he began saying. “My dad was a newspaper man all of his life. Loved it. Delivering papers on his bike every morning, rain or shine. Working on the school paper. Going to S.U.—Newhouse. All those years with the
Times.
Course, he couldn't have cared less about me. Dragged my mom and me all over the world so he could get
the story.
Gotta get
the story.
Spent his whole life getting
the story.
”

Bennett closed his eyes.

“My dad knew details about every single kid of every single member of the Politburo. Every one of them—birthdays, hobbies, how they were doing in school, favorite Olympic sport, you name it, he knew it. It was incredible. And it's not like this was easy stuff to get. It was the
Soviet Politburo,
for crying out loud. But it didn't matter. He'd stay out all night, gone for weeks, talk to anyone he had to talk to, all to get a little more buried treasure to put in his story. Gotta get
the story.
It's all about
the story.
”

He leaned against the back of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

“Ask me how many term papers of mine he ever read.”

McCoy didn't say anything. She knew Bennett didn't really want an answer.

“Guy's a freaking two-time Pulitzer Prize winner—never read one of his own kid's term papers.”

It was quiet again for a few minutes.

“And my mom never said anything. She hated what that job did to my dad. She hated all that time he spent on the road. But she hated confrontation more. She never told him to quit. She never told him to spend more time with us. She just kept everything to herself. Sometimes I wonder why she ever married him.”

“To have you,” said McCoy, nudging him with her arm.

Bennett shook his head and took another swig from the bottle in front of him.

“I was a mistake. My dad never wanted to have kids. My mom, she wanted like six or seven or twenty, I don't know. She wanted a lot, but little munchkins running around the house wasn't exactly
conducive
to the life of a
New York Times
foreign correspondent….”