Details of Gogolov’s meeting with the European and Asian ambassadors were beginning to leak to the public. Bennett had known about the meeting for weeks, first via a tip from Israeli intelligence, then from a lengthy phone conversation with E.U. foreign minister Salvador Lucente. But there had been no mention of a U.N. speech by Gogolov.
What struck Bennett now as the news broke was how differently each side of the Atlantic was reacting. The White House had spent the last weeks behind the scenes urging the U.N. to condemn Gogolov’s coup as a breach of international law and a threat to global security. The administration had floated the possibility of applying economic sanctions against the Russian Federation until a legitimate, democratically elected government was restored to power.
But the Europeans weren’t playing along.
Lucente, for one, was now on CNN warning that such moves were “more appropriate to an old Hollywood Western than modern diplomacy.” He said several members of the European Union were concerned that the U.S. was overreacting to events in Moscow.
“Look,” the E.U. Foreign Minister told his interviewer, “all of us mourn the loss of innocent life in Moscow, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms the way President MacPherson’s senior advisor Jonathan Bennett was treated. Furthermore, we join the White House in calling on the Gogolov government to disclose the whereabouts and condition of Erin McCoy, another senior advisor to President MacPherson.”
Bennett reached for his remote and turned up the sound.
“That said,” Lucente continued, “it would be completely irresponsible to try to isolate a country as important as Russia or to treat it as some kind of rogue threat. As I have said to the U.S. secretary of state and to Mr. Bennett, Pakistan’s General Musharraf seized the reins of that nuclear nation in a military coup a number of years ago. But neither the U.S. nor the E.U. tried to isolate him. To the contrary, Washington, Brussels, and the international community sought to work with General Musharraf, and to good effect. All I am saying is that we should not rule out the possibility that we can all work with Mr. Gogolov as well.”
Who were these people? thought Bennett. What was it about European leaders that made them blind to demagogues and dictators rising in their midst? Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Khrushchev, Ceausescu, Milosevic — how could they have been blind to them all? How could they now be so blind to the Gogolov threat?
Disgusted, Bennett clicked off the set and went to the kitchen to take his medicine. But something made his blood run cold.
Every muscle in his body froze.
He strained to hear another sound. All he could hear was the hum of the refrigerator. But he was sure.
Someone else was in the house.
26
Bennett’s eyes darted to the left.
No one was there. He calculated the odds of racing to the door but decided against it. It was more than twenty yards away. If someone was in the house — if they were determined to kill him — he’d never make it out alive.
His heart was racing. He could feel beads of perspiration on his upper lip.
Was his mind playing tricks?
Four DSS agents were stationed outside. One was posted there even when Bennett was at work. It was impossible for anyone to be in the house, wasn’t it? Why didn’t he just pick up the phone and call them? But what if someone was listening in? Then again, what if they weren’t? Was all this just his imagination gone wild? How stupid would it look if he called for help and it was just a case of fatigue mixed with paranoia?
The chance that anything was wrong was about a thousand to one, Bennett calculated. He had enough troubles without making the DSS think he’d gone nuts. Still, he couldn’t shake the fear rising within him.
He slowly opened a kitchen drawer and rummaged around until he felt the Beretta 9 mm McCoy had given him after they had narrowly escaped an Al-Nakbah attack. His fingers wrapped around the cold steel.
In one clean motion he swung around, holding the pistol with both hands.
But no one was there.
Bennett slipped off his shoes and began creeping out of the kitchen, the gun leading the way, elbows bent slightly, just as McCoy had taught him.
Sweeping side to side through the living and dining rooms, looking for any sign of movement, listening for anything out of the ordinary, he reached the stairs.
He was still ten or fifteen yards away from the front door. But it was locked — dead bolted. His back would be to the stairs leading up to the second floor.
He glanced left. The door to the basement was slightly ajar.
Bennett pressed his back against the wall. He opened the door slowly with his right foot. Nothing.
Moving quickly, he flipped the light switch on, turned the corner, and breathed a sigh of relief. No one was on the stairs.
But if someone was down there, they knew he was coming now.
He looked back at the front door, his heart pounding. He was being ridiculous, wasn’t he? He stood there for a moment. The odds were good that if someone really was lying in wait, he’d be upstairs — in the hall, in the bathroom, in one of the bedrooms, waiting for him to sleep. The basement featured a walkout exit to the rear of the house. He’d have a better chance of getting away by going through the sliding glass doors downstairs to the backyard.
Bennett began working his way down to the basement he rarely used. Built in the 1940s, the town house was relatively young for Georgetown, where many homes dated back to the nineteenth century, some even to the late eighteenth century. But that didn’t mean the stairs wouldn’t creak.
Though it was finished and carpeted and he had a home office down there, the basement was mostly stacked with unopened boxes of books and files and clothes he’d never wear again.
His hands were sweating. He gripped the Beretta so hard his knuckles turned white. Any minute he expected someone to pivot around the corner and double-tap him to the head. It would be a silencer, of course. How long would it be before the agents found him? He couldn’t imagine they’d come looking for him before morning.
Bennett turned the lights off.
It took a moment to adjust to the darkness.
Only the moonlight coming through the sliding glass doors at the far end of the room provided any illumination. Again Bennett pressed his back against the far wall of the basement and held the gun out in front of him, approaching the door to his office and trying to stay quiet.
The phone rang. It was so shrill, Bennett almost yelled out.
A shiver ran through his body.
On the next ring, Bennett made his move. He kicked in the door of the office. Someone was in his swivel chair, his back to him. Bennett pressed the Beretta to the man’s head.
“Hands, show me your hands!” he yelled, and the man complied instantly.
It was too dark for Bennett to see his face.
Should he shoot now and ask questions later?
The phone rang again.
“Are you going to answer that?” the stranger said slowly.
Bennett knew that accent.
“Dr. Mordechai?”
“Shalom, my friend.”
Bennett’s heart was still beating hard. It took a moment for his breathing to return to normal. What was his old friend doing in his house?
He flipped the switch on the wall, turning on a small lamp on the desk and booting up the computer.
“Dr. Mordechai, what are you doing here? I almost killed you.”
Mordechai’s eyes twinkled.