News of the Sa’id assassination rocked the White House.
President MacPherson grieved the loss of his friend. He had known Ibrahim Sa’id for years. He considered him a kindred spirit in the war on terror and the long march toward freedom in the Middle East. And now he was gone. The loss felt from his absence would be incalculable.
It was too early in the morning to talk to the press in person, so the president went to the Oval Office to draft a statement. “Like the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the late Iraqi president, my friend and colleague Ibrahim Sa’id has become another martyr for peace,” MacPherson wrote in longhand. “But like these other Arab heroes, Prime Minister Sa’id’s death will not be in vain. In the past few minutes I have spoken to senior members of the Palestinian leadership, as well as to the Saudi government and to several of our allies in Europe. I have assured all of them that the United States will do everything in our power to help hunt down those responsible for this act of barbarism and bring them to justice. The peace process will go on. America’s commitment to peace and security in the Middle East will never waver.”
When he was finished, he sent the draft to the Press Office and was joined by National Security Advisor Marsha Kirkpatrick, Director of Central Intelligence Jack Mitchell, and White House Chief of Staff Bob Corsetti. There was more troubling news.
“Mr. President,” the DCI began, “I know we’ve got enough going on this morning, but we’ve just learned that President Vadim has ordered several elite military units into the heart of Moscow, ostensibly to assist with crowd control. Deputy Speaker Sergei Ilyushkin is scheduled to hold a nationally televised press conference at the Duma in a few hours, followed by an anti-American rally in Red Square. He’s expected to draw over a hundred thousand people, and Vadim’s people apparently want to make sure there isn’t any trouble. Checkpoints are up on all the highways leading into Moscow, and security is being beefed up around our embassy.”
“Are our people at risk?”
“We don’t believe so, Mr. President,” answered Kirkpatrick. “The Moscow police seem to have things in hand. Typical protest stuff — people holding signs, shouting anti-American slogans, that kind of thing. A college student burned you in effigy a little while ago. Unfortunately, that video is likely to pop up on cable news any minute.”
That said, Kirkpatrick assured the president this wasn’t Tehran circa 1979. The Russians weren’t radical Islamic jihadists. They weren’t going to storm the embassy and take Americans hostage for 444 days.
Still, there was no question that events were taking a turn for the worse.
Ruth Bennett was stunned by the news.
Ibrahim Sa’id was dead? It couldn’t be true. She knew him.
Jon and Erin had introduced her to Prime Minister Sa’id at the State of the Union address three years before. She’d had dinner with Sa’id and his wife at a White House state dinner just last year. Ever since, she’d followed every development in the peace process, clipping any article that mentioned Jon or Erin and arranging them all in a scrapbook she hoped to one day give her grandchildren.
And for a moment, she panicked, desperately trying to remember where Jon and Erin were at the moment. Had they been with Sa’id? Could they be dead?
The very thought seemed to suck the life out of her. She was already a widow. She’d lived through the near death of her only son and her daughter-in-law-to-be so many times she didn’t think she could take it again.
Clicking on the light beside her bed, she groped for her glasses and ran downstairs to check her calendar. No, thank God. They weren’t in Saudi Arabia. They were in Moscow. Which meant they were safe.
10
St. Basil’s Cathedral was the symbol of Russia.
Construction had begun on the magnificent monument in 1555 upon the order of Czar Ivan IV (aka “Ivan the Terrible”) to commemorate the Russian conquest of the Khanate of Kazan.
Built in the heart of Moscow, on the edge of Red Square, the basic structure was completed six years later, though additions and improvements were constantly under way. The onion domes, for example, weren’t added until 1583. They weren’t painted the brilliant colors visible today until 1670. The Central Chapel of the Intercession, the ninth of the nine chapels, wasn’t built for another two centuries.
Nearly five centuries after its auspicious beginnings, it was not only a magnet for tourists, it was the icon of an empire. But like so much of Russian history, St. Basil’s story was stained in blood. It was said, for example, that Ivan was so struck by the cathedral’s splendor that he ordered the eyes of the architect who had designed it to be gouged out so that the man could never again create something so beautiful. Directly in front of the cathedral’s south side was a small, circular stone platform known as Lobnoe Mesto. It was from here that the czars used to address the people when they were not having them executed on the same dais. And it was here that Sergei Ilyushkin could now be found, in full rant.
Bennett sat alone in the Bubble.
McCoy was for the moment busy with something elsewhere in the embassy compound, leaving Bennett with some rare time to himself. He found himself unable to take his eyes off the bank of television monitors on the far wall of the conference room. One was tuned to RTR, a major Russian network. The others showed CNN International, Sky News, and the BBC, respectively. All covered Ilyushkin’s speech live, though for the moment all the sets were on mute.
Sergei Ilyushkin had risen quickly through Russia’s post-Putin political scene. Now deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, he constantly lamented the collapse of the Soviet Empire and blasted the Kremlin’s “limp-wristed, weak-willed, cowardly foreign policy” in the face of “American aggression and expansionism.” He warned that falling world oil prices were making the “Yankee imperialists” stronger while devastating the oil-dependent Russian economy, destroying jobs and incomes, and adding to the pervasive image of Russian weakness in Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin. What’s more, he seemed to make it his mission in life to blame Russia’s problems on the “dirty Jews and their Zionist coconspirators.”
As he watched Ilyushkin preaching through the powerful sound system — the Kremlin and Lenin’s Tomb to his left, the GUM Department Store to his right — Bennett could see his dark eyes darting from face to face, flashing with rage. His face was beet red. Thick veins bulged from his throat and neck. His hair was tousled, his tie askew. His shirt was drenched in sweat and opened several buttons down, revealing a chest full of hair. It was not a pretty picture, but it was a compelling one. The crowds were listening, and they were growing.
Even without the sound Bennett felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Ilyushkin struck Bennett more like a drunken fan at a Russian hockey game than one of the highest-ranking members of the Russian legislature. He was speaking so fast, so furiously, you could see the spit coming out of his mouth.
Bennett scanned the quotes running across the bottom of the screen via the BBC’s electronic ticker tape. “Ilyushkin demands Vadim expel all Americans from ‘sacred Russian soil’… warns Vadim to recall the Russian ambassador from Washington ‘or face the wrath of the Russian people’… denounces MacPherson administration as ‘cold-blooded murderers’… says U.S. represents the world’s ‘new Roman imperialists’ who ‘kill with impunity’ and see Russians as ‘second-class citizens’ worthy only of ‘target practice.’…”