MacPherson was waiting for a briefing on Bennett’s meetings with Doron and Mordechai. He couldn’t just lie and say the former Mossad chief had nothing useful to say about the crisis. It simply wasn’t plausible. Besides, he’d already e-mailed an electronic copy of the brief to a number of the president’s other advisors. He would find out about it sooner or later.
But was he really prepared to pass Mordechai’s brief directly to the president? Every fiber of his being told him it was professional suicide, that he’d be written off as one of the “UFO people.” Then again, “The Ezekiel Option” was Mordechai’s view, not his own, right? He was just the delivery boy. Why should he be blamed for the message?
He got up and put on a pot of coffee. Then he sat down at the kitchen table, powered up his wireless laptop, logged on to the secure White House Internet server, and checked his e-mail. There were messages from Ken Costello at State and Indira Rajiv at Langley. Both confirmed they’d received the copy of Mordechai’s brief he’d e-mailed to them. Both promised to read and review it overnight, as he’d directed.
Bennett checked his AOL account as well. There was a message from his mom — six, to be precise — none of which he had even seen much less responded to in the last two weeks. A wave of guilt washed over him. Why was he so standoffish? She was a widow, for crying out loud, and he was all she had in the world. Fine, so she hadn’t been the greatest mom. She hadn’t always been there for him. She’d put her husband’s career above spending time with him. Was he going to hold it against her forever? The woman was lost and alone, and all she wanted was to keep in touch with him on a regular basis. Why was that so hard for him?
He hated feeling guilty every time he thought about her, every time her name popped up on his caller ID. But it occurred to him that maybe he felt guilty because he was. He had not been there when she had needed him most, and she deserved better. From her only son. From a follower of Christ.
He was tempted to call her right then, to tell her he loved her and to give Mordechai’s answer to her question. But it didn’t seem fair to wake her up in the middle of the night. He’d call in a few hours. He sent back a quick e-mail apologizing for not staying in touch, then found an online florist and ordered her three dozen roses. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was a start.
Bennett suddenly noticed that Mordechai’s name appeared in bold in the list of regular contacts along the side of the screen. Mordechai was using his AOL account. Shifting gears, Bennett quickly tapped out an instant message.
“dr. m — it’s jon.”
A moment later came the reply.
“hello, jonathan. welcome home. how was your flight?”
“long and lonely… but quick question for you.”
“shoot.”
“how come i’ve never heard of all this stuff?”
“what, the gog and magog prophecies?”
“exactly. I mean, the rapture, armageddon, the return of Christ — everybody who watches the history channel knows about the big doomsday prophecies. how come nobody talks about what you’re talking about?”
“what do you mean, nobody? read the dead sea scrolls. you will find all kinds of references to ezekiel’s prophecy and coming salvation of israel. read ancient arab texts that call the great wall of china the ‘wall of gog and magog,’ built to keep the russians from invading china. read THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO. wait just a moment….”
Nearly a minute passed before Mordechai continued. Bennett imagined him flipping through one of his hundreds of reference books.
Then Mordechai was back, having found the quote he was looking for.
“marco polo wrote of a province where ‘the lord of the tartars and of all the neighbouring provinces and kingdoms’ lived, a place ‘which we call in our language gog and magog; the natives call it yng and Mungul.’ who are the tartars? they’re turkic-speaking people who live in Russia!”
“no, no, that’s all fascinating, but you’re missing my point,” Bennett responded. “i’m talking about now. something modern, something current. if some huge prophecy is about to take place in our lifetime, it seems a little hard to believe you’re the only guy talking about it.”
“jonathan, my friend, just because you have never heard of this prophecy does not mean nobody has…. ever heard of the left behind series?”
“i remember a newsweek cover story about it a few years back, but no, never read the books…. too busy making money.”
“how could i forget?…. well left behind is a series of novels by an evangelical prophecy expert named tim lahaye and a writer named jerry jenkins… it’s about the last days, the rapture, the rise of the antichrist…. they sold over 60 million copies.”
“and?”
“and the first chapter of left behind refers to the gog and magog prophecy as having already taken place before the rapture. why? because lahaye believed ezekiel 38–39 might very well take place before Christ comes back for his church. in fact, in 1984 lahaye wrote a nonfiction book called the coming peace in the middle east. in it, he concluded magog was russia, meshech was moscow, tubal was tobolsk — everything we have been talking about for the past few days.”
Was that possible? Had the number-one best-selling fictional series in American publishing history been based on the notion that a Russian-Iranian alliance to attack Israel would foreshadow the second coming of Christ?
Before Bennett could even respond, a new IM popped up.
“ever heard of hal lindsey?” Mordechai asked.
“no, why?”
“he wrote a nonfiction book in 1970 called the late great planet earth. it was about a coming russian-islamic attack on israel and the coming of Christ. sold over 15 million copies. the new york times called it ‘the number one nonfiction best seller of the decade.’ now, lindsey and lahaye differed on some of the specifics, like the timing of these events. but both were convinced that ezekiel referred to russia and iran and that the war of gog and magog was coming soon.”
Bennett poured himself a cup of fresh coffee. Perhaps he needed to broaden his reading habits beyond the Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated.
The motorcade passed the Marriott Tverskaya.
Gogolov picked up the car phone and speed-dialed his chief of staff. “Get me Andrei,” he said, turning back toward the windows.
But the connection was never made.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gogolov saw it coming from the left, a city bus careening through a police roadblock and smashing full force into the decoy limousine ahead of them, triggering a massive explosion and a fireball that could be seen for blocks.
Gogolov’s bodyguard pulled him to the floor of the car, but not before the shock waves from the blast shattered all of the windows in their vehicle.
Smoke and blood filled the interior of the car.
Machine-gun fire filled the air outside.
“Stay down, stay down!” shouted the lead agent, covering the czar’s body with his own and ordering the protective detail to return fire at the snipers on the roofs.
Sirens began to wail in the distance.
A helicopter soon hovered overhead.