Forty-eight hours ago, he and Hamid had been driving through the Iranian mountains. Twenty-four hours ago they had reached the southern shore of the Caspian Sea in spite of the throngs of Iranian secret police and Russian military forces they saw everywhere. Since then they had traveled roughly seven hundred miles, taking a nerve-racking twenty-hour ride across the Caspian Sea on a fishing trawler typically used for smuggling caviar and hashish. They’d passed so many naval ships packed with soldiers and weaponry they had long since lost count. Now, with only four days left before the U.N. deadline, they had finally arrived in the Russian port city of Astrakhan.
The border guard stared at the Russian passport, then back at Bennett’s face. “Why were you in Iran?”
“I was visiting my friend and his family,” Bennett said in Russian, terrified his rusty accent would give him away. “They have a lovely little cottage on the coast. I go every—”
“Weren’t you called up?”
Bennett froze. What was he talking about? Called up for what? “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Everyone is being called up. Why not you?”
The reserves, Bennett realized. The war. Every able-bodied Russian male between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two was already serving somewhere in the military. How long did one serve in the Russian reserves? Bennett had no idea. Mordechai had never brought it up. Nor had Hamid.
“I, uh…”
Bennett began to panic. He was seconds away from being arrested. How long would it take to determine he wasn’t really Russian? Ten minutes? Fifteen? He’d be shot as a spy, as would Hamid, and that was if they were lucky. And if Gogolov or Jibril realized they were holding a former senior advisor to the American president…
He needed an answer fast.
“I got a medical deferment.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed.
Bennett hoped he’d used the right word for deferment.
“You look fine to me,” the guard said.
Bennett could see the man’s hands move almost imperceptibly toward his revolver.
“I was wounded — shot, actually… during… an operation.”
“What operation?”
“I cannot say.”
“Your papers say nothing of a medical discharge.”
“Yes, but, sir”—Bennett’s mind was racing—“that passport is six years old.”
Again the guard just stared at him. He didn’t seem to be buying it.
“Where were you shot?”
This couldn’t be happening.
“In both shoulders,” Bennett said.
“No, no, I do not believe you. Take off your shirt.”
“Sir, it’s after midnight, and I—”
The guard gritted his teeth; his hand was squarely on his revolver now.
“Take… off… your… shirt.”
Bennett did as he was told.
The man moved closer, staring at the ugly, jagged scars on both of Bennett’s shoulders. The guard had no idea, of course, that Bennett had been wounded by Iraqi terrorists in the Jerusalem home of a former Mossad chief. Nor did he need to know. The very fact that the scars existed seemed to satisfy him.
“Fine,” the man said at last. “Welcome back to the Motherland.”
He snorted, stamped Bennett’s passport, and waved him through.
MacPherson snatched the phone.
“Yes?”
It was Bob Corsetti. “I’m sorry, sir. CNN is reporting that the Kremlin has officially rejected your request for further diplomacy.”
“I see,” the president said simply. “Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
His last-ditch plan had failed. All he could do now was wait.
McCoy lay in bed, listening to the police radio.
She was grateful for the Zorogins, the family who had taken her in. She appreciated their warmth and hospitality. But she couldn’t get comfortable.
She knew the second she lost focus, she was dead.
The hunt for her clearly had the authorities on edge. But there was a new mission under way as well. By order of the czar, Jews were being rounded up and taken to local police stations throughout the country, where they were subjected to fingerprinting, mug shots, and background investigations.
Officially, it was all being done “to ensure the safety of the Jews” and to clear them of any involvement in the “Zionist conspiracy” to destroy Mother Russia. But it was clear from the graphic, racist comments of the officers talking to each other on the radios — and the beatings of Jewish families of which the officers bragged — that Gogolov was unleashing a new round of anti-Semitic pogroms that McCoy feared would make Russia’s sordid past seem mild by comparison.
Astrakhan was an ugly city.
Bennett had been here with his father as a child, and it still looked the same. It was a gritty, polluted, industrial wasteland known for shipping petroleum and fish and shoes and fur, and it would soon be choked by ice that would refuse to melt for at least four months. The Mongols had loved the city they had conquered in the thirteenth century. But they were used to brutal winters. Bennett couldn’t stand them.
He and Hamid took a cab to a shopping plaza on the edge of town. They tipped the driver generously, waited for him to disappear, then found the charcoal gray Mercedes minivan Mordechai’s team had promised would be waiting.
Bennett would have given anything to take the two-and-a-half-hour Aeroflot flight into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Astrakhan. But that was out of the question. Instead, they had almost fifteen hundred miles to cover on the ground. Then they had to find their way into one of the most heavily guarded cities on the face of the planet.
Bennett did the math as he took the wheel.
Driving nonstop and averaging sixty miles an hour, it would take them at least twenty-five hours to get to the outskirts of Moscow. It was Monday afternoon. With stops to change drivers, refuel, stock up on food, and use the facilities, they’d be pushing it to get there by Wednesday morning. And they still had no idea if McCoy was alive or how to find her.
Bennett powered up the satellite phone for the first time and dialed Jerusalem.
Mordechai answered instantly. “Thank God. You had me worried sick. Are you well?”
“We are, but we can’t talk long. We’re on the move. Any news?”
“She is on the run.”
“You found her?”
“No, no, not yet, but neither has anyone else. Every entrance to the city is blocked off and there is a bounty on her head.” Mordechai briefed him on the manhunt.
“But she’s alive?”
“That is all I know. I will call you when I have more,” said Mordechai.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Bennett.
“Hadassah three-one-four,” Mordechai said. Then the line went dead.
Mordechai awoke early Tuesday morning.
With two Mossad agents at his side, he headed into town to mail some letters and get a cup of coffee. But fear was palpable. He could see it on people’s faces. He could feel it everywhere he went.
Few men were on city streets, or in office buildings, or in shops or factories. Every able-bodied Israeli male between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five had been deployed to the borders or to one of the support bases in the interior of the country.
Most Israeli women between the ages of eighteen and thirty had been called up as well, unless they had children. Those exempt from military service for religious reasons massed at the Wailing Wall in round-the-clock prayer vigils, asking for a miracle they were sure would never come.
Everyone else stayed home with gas masks close at hand.