Bennett could see the president clench the arm of his chair.
“When?”
“He wants to meet in less than an hour — at nine o’clock sharp.”
Yuri Gogolov carefully opened the manila envelope.
Inside was a photocopy of President Vadim’s latest internal polling results, numbers so new Vadim himself hadn’t even seen them yet. Three years earlier, Gogolov and Ilyushkin had paid handsomely to buy an ally inside the Kremlin. And now their investment was finally paying off.
Gogolov’s pulse quickened as he scanned the data. Vadim’s job- approval rating had dropped sixteen points in less than seventy-two hours. Only one in three registered voters felt “good” or “very good” about the job the embattled Russian leader was doing. Fifty-one percent of Russians now disapproved of Vadim’s performance. The rest were undecided.
What’s more, a stunning 71 percent of Russians believed Vadim should withdraw the Russian ambassador from Washington. And 65 percent believed Vadim should expel all Americans from Russian soil for at least one full year.
Gogolov could only imagine the look on Andrei Zyuganov’s face when he’d first seen the numbers. As Vadim’s chief of staff and senior political advisor, it would fall to Zyuganov to bring the bad news to the president of the Russian Federation. Gogolov just wished he could be in the room when it happened.
He flipped through a few more pages and found something even more intriguing. Zyuganov’s political team was polling in the U.S., too, and the data were striking. President MacPherson’s numbers were already down nine points. A mere 41 percent of Americans now approved of the job MacPherson was doing — the lowest since he came to office — while 48 percent disapproved and 11 percent remained undecided. And if that weren’t enough, 62 percent of Americans now said they felt MacPherson was “too quick to use military force to resolve international conflicts” and “unwilling to exhaust all diplomatic possibilities.”
Gogolov sipped his cup of hot chai and smiled to himself. What would the numbers be when his little operation was complete?
Mordechai was desperate.
He had tried calling Bennett for the past half hour. He’d tried paging and e-mailing him as well. Thus far, however, he had struck out, and he was quickly running out of time. Frantic, he called the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
“Miriam, this is Eli Mordechai,” he said in breathless Hebrew to the aide who picked up his call. “I need to get through to Jonathan Bennett at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow…. Yes, it is an emergency…. I tried that…. Of course I tried that — that is why I need your help…. OK, call me back at this number as soon as you track him down…. Yes, I will be waiting in my room…. Thank you.”
Mordechai set down his satellite phone and tried to steady his nerves. He glanced back at the open package on his bed and the stacks of opened files sitting all around him. It was a gold mine, an intelligence operative’s dream. But what good would it do if he couldn’t get the information into the right hands in time?
“This is CNN breaking news.”
National Security Advisor Marsha Kirkpatrick grabbed the remote and turned up the sound. “Mr. President, you’d better see this.”
MacPherson looked up to find a live report from the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan.
“CNN can now report that the French ambassador to the United Nations has just introduced a resolution before the U.N. Security Council condemning the United States government for shooting down a Russian airliner earlier this week, killing all 173 people on board, including 41 children.
“French officials are calling on the secretary general to convene an emergency session of the Security Council tonight to bring the resolution to an immediate vote. Sources tell CNN that France already has all but three members of the Security Council behind their resolution. Great Britain and Poland are believed to be opposed, as is, of course, the United States. As of this hour, the Russian ambassador to the U.N. has refused to comment on the resolution, but everyone is expecting the Russian Federation to support the resolution.
“Now, there has been some confusion here in the last few hours. It was originally rumored that Libya would introduce this resolution. But CNN has learned that late last night, Salvador Lucente, the increasingly influential foreign minister for the European Union, suggested that for such a resolution to be taken seriously by the global community, it should actually be introduced by one of the permanent members of the Security Council and preferably by a major NATO ally. By this morning, French and Libyan officials had begun talks in New York and Paris, and — as we just reported — the two countries struck a deal only minutes ago.”
The car phone rang.
Bennett didn’t even look up. He was reviewing his notes for the Vadim meeting and trying to ignore the rocks and bottles being thrown at their motorcade as they raced through the streets of Moscow surrounded by a full Russian military escort.
McCoy checked the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number. Still, she picked up the phone, if for no other reason than to keep it from bothering Bennett.
“Hello?”
“Erin, thank God it is you — this is Eli — I must talk to Jonathan.”
“Dr. Mordechai, it’s good to hear from you. But can he call you back? He’s right in the middle of—”
“No, no, Erin, this is urgent. It is about his meeting with President Vadim.”
McCoy was caught off guard. How could he possibly have known where they were heading? No one outside Vadim’s office and the NSC knew. No one was supposed to know. McCoy wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t want to lie to a man she respected so much, but she certainly wasn’t authorized to confirm the meeting.
“Dr. Mordechai, really, I’m so sorry, but I can’t—”
“Erin,” Mordechai insisted, “please, I must talk to Jonathan before he talks to President Vadim.”
Bennett could see the question in McCoy’s eyes.
They had only a few minutes. He wasn’t about to take a social call, even from his friend and mentor.
His eyes drifted to the phone in McCoy’s left hand and the engagement ring sparkling on her finger. It was a spectacular two-carat diamond in an eighteen-carat-gold setting from Tiffany’s. He’d bought the diamond itself on a business trip to Johannesburg years before. It hadn’t been for anyone in particular at the time, just for “Mrs. Someday,” and it had cost him only a third of what it would have cost retail in the States. Had he known at the time it was going to be for Erin McCoy, he’d have easily paid ten times that amount.
The band was a little large. They’d agreed to get it resized in London or Washington on their return trip. But McCoy didn’t seem to mind in the least. Bennett had the sudden, almost irresistible urge to kiss her.
She could tell, and smiled. “Later,” she whispered, pointing out the window.
They were pulling into the Kremlin through the Borovitskaya Tower gate. Bennett knew she was right. They were out of time, but that hardly made his desire go away.
“You promise?” he whispered back.
McCoy nodded, her eyes sparkling like the diamond on her hand. He would hold her to it. And she knew it. Yet she promised anyway. Why? What had he ever done to deserve someone like her?
Suddenly, McCoy hit the speaker button, snapping Bennett back to reality.
“Dr. Mordechai, it’s Jon.”
“Jonathan, thank the Lord it is you. Now listen carefully, both of you.”