The Last Days (40 page)

Bennett began by stating for the record that Resolution 242 (and its corollary, Resolution 338) had served as the basis of all previous Arab-Israeli negotiations and should continue to do so. He reaffirmed that the president would commence discussions with other countries in the region to enter peace talks with Israel, and that Morocco and Pakistan were already showing a surprising degree of interest. Then he dropped the bomb. He noted that the resolution called for an Israeli withdrawal “from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” not “from
all
territories occupied.” The distinction was important—land for peace, but not necessarily
all
the land for peace.

“My government accepts that there will be controversy on this point,” said Bennett. “And I don't want to bog down on this point right now. It's something for the final status negotiations, not this Transition Period. We simply want to acknowledge up front that we're aware of this controversy and sympathetic to both sides' points of view.”

Sa'id wasn't happy that Bennett had brought it up at all, but for now he let it pass. Grateful the land mine he'd just stepped on hadn't yet gone off, Bennett continued.

Bennett now began outlining the proposed guidelines for the Transition Period.

For now, neither Sa'id nor Doron registered an objection or asked a question.

Sa'id's interim appointment was only for eighteen months. But he'd insisted upon democratic Palestinian elections as part of his agreement to accept the prime ministership, and the PLC had readily agreed, so that wasn't likely to be a problem.

So far, so good. But it was the next section that would set off the fireworks.

 

Washington's focus was now on the FBI field office in Buffalo.

Special Agent George Polanski took a call from Dorothy Richards, Ruth Bennett's sister, from her farm in Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo. She was sorry for calling so early, but she was worried. Mrs. Richards explained that she and her husband had attended a New Year's Eve party at a neighbor's. It was their first time out of the house since Ruth's disappearance and they were hoping to let off a little steam. They'd just gotten home and found two voice-mail messages. Both were from their grown children, one in San Diego, the other in Austin, Texas. But when they'd checked their “call log,” they found two calls from the 212 area code in New York City. Both were from the same phone, but the number wasn't one they recognized. The caller ID system had been blocked from the other end.

Was it Ruth? Was it her kidnappers? Was it a ransom call they'd missed? They had no idea. Cursing themselves for not being home to get the calls, they wrote down the number and called the FBI field office, as they'd been instructed to do if anything unusual came up.

Polanski immediately dispatched agents to the Richardses' farm to take a full statement and tap their phones. A colleague began running a trace of the 212 number. Simultaneously, Polanski called the FBI Operations Center in Washington to brief them on the newest development. Nine minutes later, his phone was ringing off the hook.

“Polanski.”

“Special Agent George Polanski?”

“Yeah, who's this?”

“This is the White House operator. Please stand by for the president.”

Polanski couldn't believe it. He cradled the phone on his shoulder and began rummaging through his desk. He found his bottle of Tums and popped it open. It was empty. Suddenly the president was on the line.

“Agent Polanski?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is Jim MacPherson. How are you today?”

“Busy, sir. And you?”

“I'll bet you are. As you can imagine, I'm taking a special interest in this case. What can you tell me about this phone call to the Richardses' farm?”

“Not much sir, I…”

Polanski's partner was shoving a yellow legal pad in his face with some scribbles he could barely read.

“Wait, hold on a moment, Mr. President, I may have something here….”

“Take your time, son.”

“Yes, sir—I…”

“What is it?” MacPherson demanded.

“You sure this is right?” Polanski asked his partner.

“Agent Polanski, what have you got?” the president asked again.

“Sir, we just ran a trace on this number….”

“Whose phone is it?”

“Mr. President, it's…”

“It's
what?
”

“Sir…it's…it's Jon Bennett's cell phone.”

Bennett hesitated.

But there was no getting around it. So he braced himself, and dived in.

It sounded innocuous enough, but Sa'id was furious.

“Absolutely not—that's
completely
unacceptable,” he said instantly and a bit louder than he'd meant to. “Of course I accept Israel's need for security. But that last part is nothing but a thinly veiled cover for Doron's illegal and immoral ‘security fence' between our two peoples. We are absolutely and unequivocally opposed to such language, and I can tell you right now, Jonathan, that this is a deal breaker for us.”

Bennett had been warned in a conference call a few days before with Deputy Secretary (and now acting Secretary of State) Dick Cavanaugh to expect precisely this reaction. But Sa'id was even more heated than Bennett had expected from an old friend.

It was true that between Israel and the West Bank, the government of Israel was already building a wall some 20 feet high and 220 miles long, including around the 30-mile perimeter of Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, effectively cutting off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. This would be combined with a sophisticated network of underground and long-range electronic sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, trenches, land mines, guard paths and checkpoints reminiscent of Checkpoint Charlie between East and West Berlin during the cold war.

Eighty-five miles were already complete—at a cost of some $2 million a mile—but Palestinian officials were going ballistic. “This is a fascist, apartheid measure being done, and we do not accept it,” Arafat had told the Israeli newspaper
Ha'aretz.
“We will continue rejecting it by all means.” Mohammed Dahlan echoed the apartheid theme, telling the Israeli daily
Yedioth Aharonot
that “this fence will be a fence of hate. The ‘whites' will be in Tel Aviv and the ‘blacks' in the West Bank.”

Doron wasn't about to be swayed.

“A security fence is absolutely nonnegotiable,” the Israeli prime minister said quietly. “Look at all the suicide bombers. Look at what's happening in the territories right now. I simply cannot allow Israeli citizens to be vulnerable to such violence day after day after day. A fence doesn't solve every problem but it solves many of them. We should have finished it a long time ago.”

“No, no, I'm sorry, no,” Sa'id responded, careful to control his passion. “You are constructing the Berlin Wall. No matter what you call it, it becomes a de facto political boundary. And after you spend a billion dollars on it, are you going to take it down? Of course not. A fence creates facts on the ground that affect the final status. So it's either one or the other. Either we negotiate our boundaries now, and probably get nowhere, or we negotiate a Transition Period, and no fence.”

“Whoa, whoa, gentlemen,” Bennett broke in. “You've got problems with this section. That's fine. I promise you we will take all the time it takes to work our way through that mine field. But not today. That starts Monday. Fair enough?”

It was a serious stumbling block. But they could certainly wait another few days. Both men nodded, reluctantly.

 

Now it was the president who hesitated.

Bennett was in the middle of sensitive negotiations at a critical moment. The last thing MacPherson wanted to do was interrupt whatever momentum the peace talks were beginning to develop, or further distract an already beleaguered Bennett as he guided the two prime ministers through the plan.

Still, they needed Bennett's input. Did he have his cell phone with him on the “Mount of Olives”? It wasn't his White House phone. That had a 202 area code number. It was his GSX phone. Why was he still using it? Had he called his aunt? Twice? Why hadn't he left a message? Or did someone else have his cell phone? And if so, why?

A check of phone company records and Bennett's LUDs—line-usage details—indicated that some calls from the cell phone had been made from Germany. That had to be while Bennett was there in the hospital. Other calls had been made from Orlando. That had to be the two days Bennett was visiting his mom after getting out of the hospital and back to the States. After that, not a single call had been made for almost three weeks until the two calls to Buffalo. Had Bennett given the phone to his mother?

They needed answers and time was critical. If Ruth Bennett was still alive, the cell phone might now be their only hope. If she wasn't, the phone could lead the feds to her killers. Scott Harris—standing in the Oval Office with the president, vice president, Marsha Kirkpatrick, and Lee James—could see MacPherson was agonizing over the decision. He tried to take off some of the pressure.

“Mr. President, if I may?” said Harris.

“Please, Scott, by all means.”

“Let's allow Jon to keep working undistracted for now. My people can work this thing from several angles. We won't call the phone until we talk to Jon and find out what he did with the phone. Perhaps we can regroup in a few hours. Is that fair?”

The president looked around to the others. All nodded agreement.

“Fine. Let's meet back here this afternoon. Scott, you pick the time. Coordinate through Marsha. Now, where are we with the suicide bombers?”

Homeland Security Secretary Lee James took that.

“So far, so good, Mr. President. You know the stats. No attacks yet and lots of people scooped up. Moreover, it appears that when our Special Forces in Iraq took out those two carloads of people on the border of Syria—”

“You mean when we caught Daoud Juma?”

“Exactly—best we can tell at this point, most of the men in the two cars that were blown up by Hellfire missiles were fedayeen heading for the U.S.”

“You mean we got a bunch of suicide bombers and didn't even realize it?”

“That's the current thinking.”

“But there could still be some out there.”

“Well, sir, from all the interrogations—remember, we've got a lot of people in custody right now and we're working them pretty hard—anyway, from all these interrogations, we think we may have gotten all of the bombers but one.”

“Really?”

“Don't quote me on that. I don't want that out in the press. But yes, we think we've gotten all but one.”

“And this lone bomber—do you think he's already in the country?”

“Impossible to say. But I think we've got to go on that assumption.”

“So what do we do to find him?”

“If it is a
him,
” added Kirkpatrick.

“Well, sir, whoever it is had to have slipped into the country within days if not hours of your order to close the borders from any new people entering, and the arrival—or attempted arrival—of the other bombers.”

“Assuming it's not a sleeper agent,” noted the president.

“Right. But nothing we've gleaned from the bombers in custody would indicate that they're using sleeper agents for this mission,” James responded. “There may be some here, providing weapons, explosives, what have you. But they don't appear to be ready to blow themselves up.”

“OK, assuming you're right, it's still like finding a needle in a haystack, isn't it?”

“Well, assuming we're right, at least we've got the time frame narrowed down to a few hours or a few days before we went to Threat Condition Red. So what we're doing right now is rechecking—by hand—the identities of every single person who legally entered the country during that time frame, double-checking to see if they are who they said they are, and if any names ring a bell with us, the CIA, Interpol, the Israelis, you name it.”

“And if this guy—or gal—got into the country illegally?” asked MacPherson.

It was a question none of them wanted to answer.

Oblivious to events back home, Bennett pressed on with his presentation.

Doron liked what he saw, though he was careful not to show it. Sa'id, too, was pleased. How he was going to get all this passed by the legislature, however moderate they claimed to be, was another question. But that was a fight for another day.

Another diplomatic land mine was about to go off, and Sa'id could feel it coming.

Both men held their fire. Now was not the time.

Doron couldn't wait to see the Palestinian refugee camps dismantled and new apartments built with Arab and U.N. money. That should have been done decades before. But as Bennett and McCoy could see, he took serious exception at the suggestion that he should evacuate
every
Jewish settlement in the disputed territories.

And he was supposed to
sell
those settlements to the Palestinians? It was political suicide. He could see dismantling some. But all? There was no way, and the Americans knew it. Nevertheless, Doron calmly made a few cryptic notes in the margins, and nodded for Bennett to proceed. There was no need for alarm, he reminded himself. Americans were playing poker, and Israel had a full house. Israel still controlled the land, and possession was, after all, nine-tenths of the law.

 

The Viper snaked his way north on I-95.

Atlanta and Savannah were finally behind him, though they'd not gone as planned. He'd expected to get his share of explosives at the first stop, a cache of weapons at the second. But at the last moment, his Al-Nakbah control agent—a sleeper from Saudi Arabia, working for a midsize life insurance firm near Atlanta—had called an audible.