The Last Days Read online

  Bennett scanned the room again.

  If he was going to be pinned down in Gaza for a few hours or a few days, Bennett figured this was the place to be.

  Ziegler pointed to the five large, flat-screen plasma video monitors on the walls and explained that each displayed live feeds from Predator and Global Hawk UAVs hovering over Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, or from U.S. spy satellites operating overhead. THREATCON maps offered visual displays of the latest regional intelligence assessments from the CIA’s Global Operations Center at Langley, CENTCOM’s main headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida, as well as the most up-to-date intelli gence on the situation in Iraq via CENTCOM’s forward command center in Doha, Qatar. A bank of state-of-the-art notebook computers tracked the latest regional intelligence feeds and periodic updates from the Mossad (Is rael’s equivalent of the CIA), Shin Bet (their equivalent of the FBI), and Aman (Israeli military intelligence).

  A half dozen high-definition, twenty-seven-inch color televisions gave Zie gler and his team the ability to track local and regional news channels. Each was hooked up to a digital recording system that burned DVDs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, just in case any of the material was found to be needed somewhere down the line.

  Meanwhile, a dozen smaller black-and-white monitors showed a rotating series of images from tiny security cameras positioned all over the hotel and grounds upstairs. These images were also digitally recorded, though only kept

  for twenty-four hours at a time before they were erased and rerecorded. A bank of radio receivers, scanners, and digital recorders simultaneously provided Ziegler and his team the ability to listen to and store local and regional radio broadcasts, as well as intercept, monitor, and record cell phone calls and other wireless traffic.

  The Batmobile upstairs couldn’t have been less apdy named. The Bat Cave Bennett was now in couldn’t have been more so. There were multiple, independent, and redundant communications, power, water, and HVAC systems. Bathrooms. Showers. A fully stocked kitchen. A weapons and ammunition room, complete with gas masks and NBC—nuclear, biological, and chemical—gear. And a medical bay, with two operating rooms, twelve hospital beds, and life-saving equipment and supplies worthy of the best urban trauma units or mobile medical triage centers.

  Only a half dozen people worked here, Ziegler said, and thus far, less than three dozen people had ever been in these rooms, including those who’d helped build it. All of them were Americans. All of them worked for the CIA. And all of them held the highest possible security clearances, plus written authorization from the president of the United States. Gaza Station was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the U.S. intelligence arsenal. It was expensive, and virtually irreplaceable. And that, Ziegler explained, was why he was so nervous about an Israeli and a Palestinian knowing anything about where they were or why.

  “Israeli prime minister Doron doesn’t know where we are,” Ziegler explained. “And the Palestinians certainly don’t know. Arafat didn’t. Neither did Mazen. They all figure we’ve got intelligence assets on the ground, and some kind of headquarters. But for obvious reasons, the less they know about my team the better.”

  Bennett agreed to take Ziegler’s case under consideration. But he needed to change for a videoconference with the president. Everything else would have to wait.

  The president moved into the Situation Room and took the call.

  Israeli prime minister David Doron was on a secure line from Jerusalem. He knew the president was busy. He just wanted to reinforce what he’d said to the vice president: express his condolences and offer his full cooperation for whatever steps the president might be contemplating next.

  The situation on the ground was worsening. Various security forces loyal to Arafat and Abu Mazen were on the move, beginning to engage pockets of Islamic militants in fierce gun battles. The president explained he was

  about to meet with his National Security Council. He also explained the diplomatic pressure that was building from various Arab and European countries to keep the Israelis out of the crisis. He asked Doron to hold off on any military options at least until the NSC concluded its meeting. The two agreed to talk again in a few hours.

  Next came a call from Russian president Grigoriy Vadim.

  An NSC staffer provided simultaneous translation from Russian to English and then back again. Vadim was also calling to offer his condolences for the tragic turn of events in Gaza. He, too, pledged his government’s help in any practical way possible. But then he, too, went a step further. As a member of the “Quartet”—the self-appointed guardians of the Arab-Israeli peace pro cess made up of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia—Vadim urged the president not to let the peace process be derailed by this act of savagery. Too much was at stake, especially after the U.S. actions in Iraq, which they both knew all too well had caused no small degree of strain between Moscow and Washington. MacPherson was noncommittal, but promised to keep in touch with the Kremlin throughout the crisis.

  Tariq now led Bennett and McCoy down a hallway.

  He unlocked Ziegler’s private quarters, and showed them inside. There were no guest bedrooms in Gaza Station. There was no visitor’s suite. So for now, Tariq explained, this is where Ziegler wanted them.

  The “boss” had the nicest digs of anyone in the bunker, and he wanted them to be as comfortable as possible. For living in a safe house under Gaza eleven months of the year, it really wasn’t bad—two leather couches, a glass coffee table, a top-of-the-line entertainment system (with TV, VCR, DVD with Dolby surround sound), bunk beds, an office chair and a desk built into the wall, a brand-new laptop, and three separate phone systems sitting side by side.

  Through the walk-in closet, there was a bathroom and shower. Tariq gathered fresh towels and washcloths for each of them, and dug out some new toothbrushes, still in their boxes. For Bennett, he grabbed a white T-shirt, a thick gray fleece from the Naval Academy—Ziegler, it turned out, was an Annapolis grad—a pair of jeans, and some white athletic socks, and tossed them on the lower bunk. For McCoy, he promised to return with something similar but smaller, though he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d be able to scare up. When they were ready, he’d bring them some hot soup and fresh pita, just out of the oven. He knew they only had a few minutes before

  the NSC meeting began. He knew they needed to get ready. So as quickly as he’d gotten them there, Tariq left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Bennett and McCoy were suddenly alone.

  The room was quiet. Too quiet. The only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lamp over the desk. From the moment he’d arrived in Washington, it seemed like there’d been back-to-back, wall-to-wall meetings and briefings and strategy sessions, except for Christmas Eve. They’d been at the White House, Langley, and the State Department, working from six or seven in the morning until ten or eleven at night. There’d been piles of memos to write, and piles more to read.

  But there were so many questions he wanted to ask her, but didn’t know how. She intrigued him, and confused him, but he admired her. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever really noticed it before, or acknowledged it, but he did now. She had something he wanted. She knew something he didn’t. It gave her a quiet strength, a sense of purpose and confidence he found incredibly attractive. He’d thought about her a lot over the last month, but now they were finally together with no one else around and he didn’t know what to say. The silence was awkward.

  McCoy looked over at the dry clothes waiting for Bennett on the bunk bed.

  “Why don’t you go ahead,” she finally said, brushing away wet bangs from her eyes. “You can change in the bathroom first. I can wait.”

  The two were standing just inches apart, soaked to the bone.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” Bennett insisted. “You go first.”

  He stared into her eyes. She looked cold and sad. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to kiss her.

 
“You gonna be OK?” he asked.

  “Hey, you don’t have to worry about me, Jon Bennett. I’ll be fine.”

  He knew. He just couldn’t help it.

  The meeting in the Situation Room had now begun.

  Everyone was present and accounted for. MacPherson sat at the head of the polished mahogany table. The seal of the president mounted on the white wall behind him, illuminated by a small lamp recessed into the ceiling. To the president’s right sat Vice President Bill Oaks. White House Chief of Staff Bob Corsetti was next to him, followed by CIA Director Jack Mitchell. National Security Advisor Marsha Kirkpatrick sat directly across from the president.

  To her right was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four-star General Ed Mutschler, with Defense Secretary Burt Trainor next to him. Then came Attorney General Neil Wittimore. The seat traditionally belong ing to Secretary of State Tucker Paine was filled by Deputy Secretary of State Dick Cavanaugh, fresh in from the emergency NATO summit in Madrid.

  Along the wood-paneled walls sat a senior aide for each principal, several NSC Middle East experts, Ken Costello, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and the department’s senior crisis manager, and Marty Ben jamin, director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff.

  “Let’s get started,” the president began. “First of all, I’ve just asked Assis tant Secretary Dave Rogers to head over to Great Falls to Secretary Paine’s house. As soon as there’s a moment, I’ll go over there myself. Bob, let’s make sure all government flags are at half mast, and that notifications start going out to families of the DSS agents.”

  “Yes, sir,” Corsetti agreed, taking notes on a yellow legal pad. “Perhaps right now,” the president continued, “we could take a few minutes to pray for Claudia and the kids and the agents and their families—

  and, of course, for Jon and Erin and their team. Bill, would you mind leading us in prayer?”

  “It would be an honor, Mr. President,” the vice president said, and everyone bowed their heads and closed their eyes.

  Yuri Gogolov was not just a chess player.

  He was a Russian grand master. He seemed to see around corners and through walls. And he did not play to win. He played to conquer and humiliate, and thus far he had never lost.

  Born July 2, 1949, the only son of a highly decorated Soviet colonel— the grandson of Politburo members who traced their heritage back to the czars—Gogolov grew up in a gilded Moscow flat. He talked of a glorious future in the Red Army, but he secretly dreamed of a double life as the man who would destroy Bobby Fischer.

  When Fischer won the U.S. Junior Championship in 1956 at the age of thirteen, he captured international headlines and the imagination of Gogolov, then a seven-year-old chess novice. Gogolov became obsessed by the world’s youngest and most dangerous player. In time, he would become obsessed with the fact that the world’s greatest player was not only an American but an anti-Semite from Brooklyn.

  Fischer had a hatred of Jews that mirrored Gogolov’s own. Fischer called the Jews “filthy, lying bastard people.” He raged in public against his enemies as “Jews, secret Jews, or CIA rats who work for the Jews.” He attacked the U.S. government as a “brutal, evil dictatorship.” He studied Mein Kampf, slept under a framed picture of Adolf Hitler, and once told a friend that he admired Hitler so much “because he imposed his will on the world.”

  And Fischer didn’t just destroy the Soviet grand masters, he crushed their will to play. In 1972, at the tender age of twenty-nine, Fischer came from behind—two games to nothing—to annihilate Boris Spassky, one of the great Soviet champions. “Now he feels like a god,” Spassky fumed at the time. “Fischer thinks all his problems are over—that he will have many friends, people will love him, history will obey him. But it is not so. I am afraid what will happen to him now.”

  What would it feel like? Gogolov remembered thinking when he’d read that quote. To be a god? To make the world love you and history obey you, not because you could determine the fate of little marble statues, but because you could truly command the fate of real kings and kingdoms?

  Gogolov had never liked speed chess. His game was careful and quiet. He would bide his time, plan his moves. He would follow his father’s wishes,

  rise through the Soviet military ranks, and emerge as a Spetsnatz special forces commander. But that would only be the beginning. Deep down, in places he never spoke of, Yuri Gogolov wanted to live the reckless, ruthless life of Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player to have ever lived. To be him. To transcend him. To destroy him, and the country of Fischer’s birth. Now he found himself thirteen stories above Tehran—alone with his thoughts, transfixed by the coverage from Gaza. Thus far, the operation was going far better than expected, and these were only the early stages.

  Gogolov soon found himself on the New York Times home page and began scrolling through America’s newspaper of record. The lead headline: “Presi dent Denounces Gaza Attacks; Israeli Forces Go on Full Alert.” He clicked on the story and scanned through it quickly to see if there were any tidbits he didn’t yet know. And there, in the last paragraph, he hit pay dirt. “White House Press Secretary Charles A. Murray refused to comment when asked who the U.S. suspected was behind the multiple assassinations. But he confirmed that senior presidential advisor Jonathan M. Bennett escaped from the scene unharmed and is being kept in a secure, undisclosed location until his safe return to Washington can be arranged.” Jonathan M. Bennett.

  The name jumped off the screen at Gogolov. He knew very little about him, and neither Jibril nor any of the rest of his team seemed to know much either. But his name kept popping up on the radar again and again. Gogolov muted the television screens for a while and thought about that. “A secure, undisclosed location.” What did that mean? Could Bennett have already gotten out of Gaza? The weather didn’t permit a helicopter extraction, either by the Americans or the Israelis. The only way out of the Strip was in a car or truck or vehicle of some kind. But Al-Nakbah operatives either controlled or were monitoring most of the major roads in and out of Gaza, though neither the Israelis nor the Americans knew it.

  There’d been no word of Bennett’s limousine getting past his men. It was still early. Was it possible that Bennett had eluded them and slipped out before Jibril’s noose had tightened? Possible, but unlikely. More likely, thought Gogolov, was that Bennett was still inside the Strip. But for that to be true, for the White House press secretary to say that Bennett was in “a secure, undisclosed location” would mean, by definition, that the U.S. had a secure, undisclosed location inside Gaza. That would be news to Gogolov. A U.N.R.W.A. facility? That might be undisclosed—for the moment—but it would hardly be secure. Same with the Red Cross and Red Crescent fa cilities. None of them were secure against Palestinian military forces, and the U.S. had to know that, particularly given the current conditions. What could

  possibly be a secure location inside of Gaza for a White House advisor on the run?

  He would keep pondering that thought. But for now he wanted to know more about Bennett. Linked to the current story was a lead headline from The New York Times’s Sunday edition. Gogolov had read it a few days before, when it first came out. But now it intrigued him even more. “Point Man for Peace: Can Wall Street Wizard Really Cut Elusive Mideast Deal?” Gogolov took a sip of his piping hot Russian chai, and double-clicked to read it again.

  “The eyes of the world are on Jonathan Meyers Bennett, a Wall Street strategist turned senior advisor to the president, as he and the U.S. Secretary of State head to the Middle East Monday to meet Israeli prime minister David Doron and Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat. The mission is to jump-start peace talks in the bloody aftermath of the recent war with Iraq, but many questions are being raised about the man behind the mission.

  “Bennett who? It’s a reasonable question, admit senior administration sources, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. At forty, the New York City native may be one of the nation’s sawiest
and stealthiest financial deal makers. Colleagues say Bennett has an uncanny ability to find ‘buried treasure,’ obscure or low-profile companies whose products and stock prices are poised to explode in value. The story of how he was drafted into a White House job just last month, then seriously wounded in a hail of terrorist gunfire in Jerusalem, is told here exclusively for the first time.”

  Gogolov took another sip of chai.

  “But White House colleagues concede the president’s new point man for peace is inexperienced in the art of Washington politics, much less global diplomacy. Still, the president has tapped Mr. Bennett to be the chief architect of a dramatic and potentially historic peace plan about to be unveiled this week.”

  Gogolov kept reading.

  Bennett’s father, Solomon, had died of a heart attack just a few weeks ago. Gogolov hadn’t known that. Nor that Bennett’s mother, Ruth, now lived all alone in Florida, in a retirement community just outside of Orlando. Inter esting, Gogolov thought, and his mind began to wander. Orlando. How far

  was that from Savannah? It couldn’t be more than a few hours. He mulled the idea over for a few minutes, then logged off the Internet, clicked off the TVs, and closed his eyes.

  They’ve sent a rookie to challenge the grand master, Gogolov thought to himself. Better yet, they don’t even realize what kind of game they ‘re actually playing.

  Changed into dry clothes, Bennett was ready.

  He sat down in the small conference room off the main control room and sipped a cup of freshly brewed coffee as Tariq gave him a microphone to clip on, set up a digital video camera, and prepared to make the video feed to the White House go live.