“Good, then our files are indeed accurate.”
The two men laughed again, and Al-Hassani led the way from the foyer to his personal office inside the presidential palace.
Mordechai had never seen such opulence.
The vaulted ceilings of the palace were covered in pure gold. So were the pillars running down each side of the hallway leading into the heart of the mammoth building. Even the doorknobs and light switches were made of pure gold.
“Saddam Hussein — may Allah torment his soul — did one useful thing in his lifetime,” said Al-Hassani without emotion. “In 1978 he began rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon on its original site. He did so, of course, against the counsel of all of his highly paid archeological advisors who insisted it would be a sin to build on top of the remains of the great capital without more time to excavate and explore. But Saddam was, shall we say, unencumbered by the advice of lesser mortals than he.”
Mordechai smiled at the understatement of the evening.
“So the palace we are walking through,” Al-Hassani continued, “is literally located in the heart of the legendary city, alongside the Euphrates River, which you will be able to see from my office. Down the hill is the great palace of Nebuchadnezzar — my personal favorite — and, of course, the Guest House, where you are staying. In a moment I shall show you a model of the city as we envision it will look when it is completely restored.”
They continued walking down corridors the length of football fields, lined on each side with marble pillars and with diamond chandeliers hanging overhead.
“We have been working on the plans for the past several months. They depart somewhat from what Saddam wanted to accomplish, because he never envisioned the city as the actual political and commercial center of the country. I do. Saddam ran out of money after launching his foolish invasion of Iran, then his foolish invasion of Kuwait. Then, of course, came the U.N. oil embargo and two wars with the Americans, and Babylon just sat here waiting, not quite deserted, but only barely rebuilt.”
“Which is where you enter the picture,” noted Mordechai.
“That is true,” Al-Hassani beamed. “I look at what is left of Baghdad after the war, and I can’t help but think of it as the capital of Saddam, a city of our sordid, ugly recent past. When I look at Babylon, on the other hand, I see not just a testament to Iraq’s glorious history but a symbol of our glorious future. I want the citizens of the new Iraq to be proud of their heritage and excited by what lies ahead. That is why I moved the government here and made Babylon our new capital. Yes, it was an enormous expense, and yes, it was a logistical nightmare. But I could not just allow this great city to rot in the sun — unused, unseen, unappreciated. Whatever else you say about Saddam, you must say he was an aberration of history. But Babylon is history. Babylon is who we are — and who we will become.”
Al-Hassani stopped in one of the courtyards, lush with palm trees and other vegetation.
“We are not content to be second-rate actors on the world stage, Dr. Mordechai. Like you Jews, we long to resurrect our holy city and make her the envy of the world. And we believe that all the prerequisites for rapid economic growth are in place. I want Babylon to become the new epicenter of international commerce and tourism, and I will do whatever it takes to succeed.
“We don’t begrudge what you Jews are doing now that you’ve discovered oil. Indeed, we applaud it. You are making the deserts bloom like never before. You are attracting trade and tourists, and you are quickly becoming the envy of the world. Why should my people not aspire to the same, or more? Like the great tower of Babel of old, who knows what the race of men can do when their resources are as limitless as their dreams?”
The two men approached the end of the hallway and passed an enormous mural, commissioned by Saddam, depicting King Nebuchadnezzar leading the armies of Babylon to capture Israel and destroy Jerusalem. The craftsmanship was extraordinary. The message was clear.
Mordechai was tempted to ask Al-Hassani when the mural was coming down, when a spirit of cooperation — if not outright friendship — might begin between their two countries. But he decided against it. It was not just that the request was inappropriate to discuss on a first visit, even for an old maverick spymaster like himself. It was that Mordechai already knew the answer, and just the thought of what lay ahead made him shudder with fear.
9
The death of Ibrahim Sa’id hit Bennett and McCoy hard.
Since first meeting him in the earliest days of the Oil-for-Peace negotiations, they had grown to love his quick mind and gentle spirit. He was a generous man, generous with his time and his trust, and they had enjoyed spending time with him and his family in his sprawling home in the hills overlooking Jericho.
McCoy had once likened Sa’id to one of America’s founding fathers, and in many ways the comparison was accurate. He had pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to build a Palestinian democracy, and for it he had paid the ultimate price.
“Salaam, this is Jon Bennett,” he said, choking back his emotions as he spoke to Sa’id’s eldest son by phone. “I just heard the news — I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, how sorry Erin and I both are. You know we loved your father very much.”
The young man, just fourteen, could barely respond. He was clearly in shock, and Bennett could hear his mother sobbing in the background.
McCoy, meanwhile, called Dmitri Galishnikov and his wife.
It was Galishnikov, a Russian Jewish émigré to Israel, who had nearly twenty years earlier founded a small petroleum company called Medexco and proceeded to create a joint venture with the Palestinian Petroleum Group, founded by Sa’id. There weren’t a whole lot of Russian Jews forming business partnerships with Palestinian Muslims back then. Certainly not any others trying to strike oil.
But with Bennett and McCoy at their side, Galishnikov and Sa’id had done the impossible, landing themselves on the covers of Time, Forbes, Business Week, and The Economist and fundamentally changing the economic and political dynamic of the Middle East. And now the radicals were taking their revenge.
When McCoy finally hung up the phone, she buried her face in Bennett’s chest and wept. How many times over the past few years had they seen friends killed by the jihadists? How much more could they take?
For Bennett, it was yet another reason to leave the White House and carve out a new life. He held Erin in his arms, trying to comfort her. Despite all they’d been through, he could still count on one hand the number of times he’d ever seen her actually cry. The first was the night he’d been shot by Al-Nakbah terrorists in Dr. Mordechai’s house in Jerusalem. The most recent was just Tuesday night when he had proposed. This was not a woman prone to displays of emotion. Whether that was innate or her CIA training, he wasn’t quite sure, but it made the few times he’d seen it happen all the more memorable, if for no other reason than it seemed to indicate that she increasingly trusted him with the things that mattered most to her.
Bennett gently stroked her hair and forced back tears of his own.
He, too, needed time to grieve. But time was not a luxury he had at the moment. He had calls to make to Israeli prime minister David Doron and the speaker of the Palestinian parliament. He was still waiting on return phone calls from Russian foreign minister Aleksandr Golitsyn and E.U. foreign minister Salvador Lucente.
He had to stay focused. First the attack on Washington, now Sa’id. Assuming President MacPherson himself had been the specific target of the Aeroflot hijacking, did that mean Israeli prime minister David Doron would be next?