Solomon Bennett, late father of Jon Bennett
Marcus Jackson, New York Times White House correspondent
Dorothy Richards, sister of Ruth Bennett
EPIGRAPH
Then Jacob called for his sons and said:
"Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in the last days…"
The real test of a man is not
when he plays the role
that he wants for himself,
but when he plays the role
destiny has for him.
ONE
"You really want me to kill him?"
The question hung in the air for a moment, and neither said another word.
The flames crackled in the fireplace of the elegant penthouse apartment overlooking central Tehran. Light rain fell on the clay balcony tiles. Bitter December winds howled outside, rustling trees and rattling windows. Thun der rumbled in the distance. And the room and the sky grew dark.
Mohammed Jibril looked out over the teeming city of his youth, as the haunting call to prayer echoed across the rooftops. He knew he should not feel so tired, but he did. Tired of sleeping in different beds, different houses, different cities. Tired of constantly watching his back, and that of Yuri Gogolov, the man sitting in the shadows behind him, puffing casually on one of his beloved Cuban cigars. Jibril considered his options. There weren't many.
You understand, of course," Jibril continued, "that you will be unleashing a war that could escalate beyond our control — beyond anyone's control?" A silent, unnerving pause.
And you're ready for this war?" Jibril asked, perhaps too bluntly. Instantly regretting the question, he could feel a chill descend upon the room. Gogolov sat motionless in an overstuffed velvet chair. He looked out at the mountains and the minarets and the twinkling lights of the ancient Iranian capital. He drew long and hard on the Cohiba, and the cigar glowed in the shadows.
Air Force One roared down runway 18–36 "Lima."
Flanked by four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, the gleaming new Boeing 747 quickly gained altitude and banked toward the Atlantic. President James "Mac" MacPherson stared out the window. He could no longer see the lights of Madrid Barajas International Airport, or the lights of the Spanish capital itself, just nine miles away. The emergency one-day NATO summit was over. In a few hours, he'd be home, back at the White House, under pressure to answer the question on everyone's mind: Now what?
Osama bin Laden was dead. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were obliterated. And now — just three and half weeks after it began — the war in Iraq was effectively over. Saddam Hussein was dead and buried under a thousand tons of rubble. His sons were dead, too, cut down in a hail of allied gunfire. His murderous regime had been toppled. His henchmen were being scooped up by U.S. Special Forces, one by one, day by day. But the president had never felt more alone.
Rebuilding Iraq and keeping it from blowing apart like Bosnia would be difficult enough. But that wasn't the only thing on his plate. Wars and rumors of wars dominated the headlines. New threats surfaced constantly. North Korea was just months away from building six to ten nuclear bombs. Iran would soon complete a nuclear reactor with Russian assistance, capable of producing two to three nuclear warheads a month. Syria and Iran appeared to be harboring top Iraqi military officials and scientists. NATO was badly divided. The U.N. was a mess. Democrats threatened to filibuster most of the White House's major legislative priorities. And now this: the FBI and Justice Department were recommending the death penalty in United States v Stuart Morris Iverson, one of the most chilling acts of espionage in the nation's history, not to mention one that involved one of the president's closest friends and a man who was, until a month ago, Secretary of the Treasury.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, was insisting that all U.S. forces leave its soil immediately. And OPEC — outraged by the U.S. strikes against Iraq — was threatening an all-out oil embargo unless war reparations were made to the Iraqi people and pressure was brought to bear on Israel to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. The president recoiled at the thought of an ultimatum from countries he had just saved from nuclear, chemical, and biological an nihilation. He wasn't about to submit to blackmail, but he was painfully aware of the risks he was running. Even now, his handpicked diplomatic team were on their way to Jerusalem.
MacPherson — feeling quite vigorous at sixty until a team of Iraqi assassins nearly took his life the month before — was beginning to feel his age. He swallowed a handful of aspirin and washed it down with a bottle of water, His head was pounding. His back and neck were in excruciating pain. He needed sleep. He needed to clear his head. The last thing he needed was an oil price shock reminiscent of '73. So much of the road ahead was foggy, But one thing was painfully obvious: the horrific battle of Iraq wasn't the end of the war on terror. It was just the beginning.
When ordering a hit, Jibril preferred the anonymity of an Internet cafe.
No one would bother him. No one could trace him. And at less than 25,000 rials an hour — about three U.S. dollars — it was far cheaper than using his satellite phone.
Tehran alone boasted more than fifteen hundred cyber shops, which had exploded in popularity ever since Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997 and gave the fledgling Internet sector his blessing. The hard-line religious clerics continued to be wary. In 2001, they'd forced four hundred shops to close their doors for operating without proper business licenses, breaking Islamic laws and trafficking in "Western pollution." They'd insisted that the government deny anyone under the age of eighteen from entering the shops. But that just made the idea of an electronic periscope into the West all the more alluring, and Web traffic shot up faster than ever.
The bulletproof sedan eased off the main boulevard. Mohammed Jibril told his driver to drop him off at the Caspian Cyber Cafe on Enghelab Avenue, across from Tehran University. A moment later he logged on, and sent a half dozen cryptic e-mails. Next, he pulled up the home page for Harrods of London and quickly found what he needed. "Harrods Chocolate Batons with French Brandy — twelve individually wrapped milk chocolate batons filled with Harrods Fine Old French Brandy. Made from the finest Swiss chocolate. 100g." He hit the "buy now" button, typed in the appropriate FedEx shipping information, paid with a stolen credit card, and left as quickly as he came. Now all he could do was wait, and hope the messages arrived in time.
The eyes of the world were now on Jon Bennett.
A senior advisor to the president of the United States, Bennett was the chief architect of the administration's new Arab-Israeli peace plan. The frontpage, top-of-the-fold New York Times profile the day before — Sunday, December 26—had just dubbed him the new "point man for peace." The media was now tracking his every move and the stakes couldn't be higher.
The president was eager to shift the world's attention from war to peace, to rebuilding Iraq and expanding free markets and free elections in the Middle East. The Pentagon and CIA insisted the next battles lay in Syria and Iran. But the State Department and White House political team argued such moves would be a mistake. It was time to force the Israelis and Palestinians to the bargaining table, to nail down a peace treaty the way Jimmy Carter did with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David in '77, and the way Clinton tried to do with Barak and Arafat in the summer of 2000. "Blessed are the peacemakers," they reminded the president. And the president was listening.