Gogolov signaled an aide, who brought over a rectangular velvet box, something in which a gold or diamond necklace might rest.
Bennett hesitated to open it. His hands began to shake.
“Take your time,” Gogolov said gently. “I realize this is difficult.”
The very sound of the man’s voice nauseated Bennett.
Cautiously, Bennett opened the box, and his face went ashen. There, resting on velvet, was a severed bloody finger, still wearing his diamond engagement ring.
21
Mohammed Jibril slipped into Tehran under the cover of darkness.
It had been almost a week since Gogolov’s televised address and more than eighteen months since Jibril had been home. Everything had changed. He was now a top aide to the most dangerous man on earth, and he would be treated as such.
Iran’s foreign minister met Jibril on the tarmac and whisked him into a bulletproof limousine. Flanked by three security vehicles, they drove to a nearby military base, where they boarded a waiting helicopter and were flown to the presidential retreat complex in the mountains overlooking the Iranian capital.
At daybreak, Jibril had breakfast with the ayatollah and Ifshahan Kharrazi, president of Iran, both of whom had already sent their greetings and congratulations for Jibril’s new post and Gogolov’s new government. Jibril began the meeting with the story of how he had masterminded the hijacking of Aeroflot 6617, conspiring with Andrei Zyuganov, President Vadim’s chief of staff, to replace the copilot and Russian air marshals with men loyal to Al-Nakbah and to smuggle arms on board before takeoff. But this was just an appetizer.
The main course consisted of Czar Gogolov’s suggestion that it was time to formalize the military alliance that had been developing between Russia and Iran since the early 1990s and to show the Americans that a new global superpower was on the rise.
To that end, Jibril said, Gogolov was prepared to sell Tehran the twenty-five nuclear warheads they had been seeking for the better part of two decades.
No longer would the reactors at Bushehr and elsewhere be necessary. Nor would Iran’s covert, subterranean nuclear research centers. Gogolov was willing to sell the warheads outright.
The price, of course, would be steep. There were also terms and conditions to which the ayatollah and the mullahs would have to agree without negotiation. But if a deal could be struck, the warheads could be in Tehran in fourteen days. They could be shipped by railway in standard freight cars, unlikely to attract attention. Russian technicians could then have the warheads attached to Iran’s ballistic missiles, known as Shahab-3s — meaning “meteor” or “shooting star” in Farsi — by the end of September. And done properly, neither the Americans nor the Zionists would have a clue.
Still no word.
Ruth Bennett hung up the phone.
Somehow the White House staff always managed to sound pleasant, but they had to be getting annoyed by her calling three or four times a day. She didn’t care.
Bennett was a man possessed.
He’d just been released from captivity and put aboard a State Department plane headed back to Washington. But thoughts of vengeance — not home — consumed him. Yuri Gogolov had stripped him of the only woman he’d ever had the courage to love. And for that he would pay.
Bennett stared out the window of the Gulfstream IV jet at the roiling North Atlantic, trying in vain not to think of Erin’s severed finger in that box. Was she dead? Was she being tortured? Would he ever see her again? He knew he should pray, but he was seething with a rage that both frightened and inspired him.
Then suddenly he reached into his jacket pocket and tore up the letter of resignation he had planned to submit upon his return.
For weeks he’d been telling himself it was time to step down, settle down, become a husband, and get a life. Now everything had changed. If he was going to find a way to kill Gogolov, the last thing that made sense was to go back to Wall Street. He had all the military and intelligence resources he needed right where he was, a new DSS security team watching his back, and the ear of the president. He would stay at the White House and plot his revenge from there.
For starters, though, he needed to regain his strength, gather as much information as he could, and look for an opening he was sure would come. And there was something else. He picked up a satellite phone and dialed Orlando.
“Mom? It’s Jon — they just let me go.”
The fires in Moscow were now out.
A sense of order and calm was being restored throughout the capital and the country. For Russians, at least. For Americans it was a far different story.
By noon on Monday, August 11, all U.S. embassy and consulate officials were back in Washington, but thousands of American tourists, students, businessmen, and journalists continued to clog roads to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo airports, trying desperately to get on a flight out of Russia before the deadline was up.
News coverage showed European airports crammed with U.S. passengers with nothing but the luggage they could carry scrambling to arrange connecting flights to the States. There had been no time to pack up homes or apartments, much less ship any of it back home, and now there were reports that Russian mafia factions had begun looting those abandoned American residences and places of business.
But no one had any hint of the horror yet to come.
22
Misdirection is an essential tool in the illusionist’s arsenal.
And Gogolov was a master of the magician’s black arts.
He began by summoning the ambassadors of France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, and China, as well as the foreign minister of the European Union, for a special evening at the Kremlin. He did not tell them why.
As night fell over the capital, the honored guests arrived in their armor-plated limousines and were escorted to Gogolov’s private dining room — an intimate, wood-paneled, candlelit chamber with a large round table for twelve, covered in white linens and hand-painted china dating back to the time of Czar Nicholas II.
“Mr. Foreign Minister, what an honor to finally meet you,” Gogolov said as he greeted the E.U.’s Salvador Lucente, the first to arrive, with a warm handshake. “How is your wife, Esperanza?”
“She is well, thank you.”
“And your son, Miguel — just turned twelve, did he not?”
“He did indeed, three days ago,” Lucente responded, caught off guard by Gogolov’s charm offensive. “You have been well briefed.”
“Not at all; I have actually been tracking you for some time,” Gogolov continued, his eyes locked on Lucente’s. “You have had a remarkable career for such a young man. A degree in mathematics — summa cum laude — from the University of Barcelona. MBA and JD from Harvard. Doctorate from Oxford. Vice president of AT&T’s operations in southern Europe before founding your own multibillion-dollar telecommunications company. Elected to the Spanish parliament in ’97. Later the minister for industry, commerce, and tourism. Followed by labor minister. Then Spanish foreign minister before becoming deputy secretary-general of the Council of the European Union, and now this distinguished post. A renaissance man, to be sure; am I right?”
Lucente’s experience proved not to be unique, as Gogolov surprised each of the arriving ambassadors with his detailed knowledge of their years in Moscow, their previous tours of duty, and their professional credentials, as well as the names of their wives and children.