“Thanks, Wang Li,” Cameron said. “We understand the secretary-general will be holding a press conference later today in Babylon to discuss the destruction of the U.N. headquarters in New York and where the international community goes from here. CNN will bring that to you live when it happens. For now, we go to London to bring the latest international reaction to…”
Bennett excused himself, took a bottle of water from the small refrigerator in Dr. Kwamee’s office, and stepped outside the clinic.
The temperature was now soaring. There was little shade and no breeze. But he couldn’t watch any more television. He couldn’t listen to the doctors arguing over whether China was behind the attacks or what the U.S. should do if they were. Erin was still asleep. He couldn’t reach his mom or anyone else he knew in the States. He needed to be alone. He needed time to think, time to pray, time to figure out what in the world he was supposed to do in light of the events unfolding around him.
He walked past the guards at the main gate, who expressed their shock and their condolences and asked if there was anything they could do. Bennett thanked them and moved on. The answer was no, there was nothing they could do, but he greatly appreciated the concern.
Bennett now walked toward his and Erin’s tent, baking in the morning heat. Perhaps he could take a shower and change his clothes before Erin awoke and needed him again, he decided. But first he headed to the mess tent and apologized to his supervisor for missing the breakfast shift. It wasn’t necessary, she assured him. She had heard what had happened to Erin and about the attacks in the U.S. She urged him to take as much time as he needed. She and her team of volunteers would get by. She didn’t know how exactly, but somehow they would get by.
Bennett thanked this kindly older woman from Bangladesh and began heading back to his tent when a thought hit him: they were leaving. He wasn’t sure when. It couldn’t be soon. But something within Bennett told him he and Erin weren’t going to be in Jordan much longer.
If Erin were healthy, of course, there would be no question. They would head home immediately. What they would do when they got there, he had no idea. How they would even get back into the country — he had no idea about that either. All flights in and out of the continental United States were shut down. Canada, too, for the moment.
Mexico? The Caribbean? Were any of these options? He really didn’t know, and there was no point thinking about it. He couldn’t move Erin. Not for another week or two, at least. Perhaps by then things would be clearer. But something made Bennett wonder if they had another week.
Bennett took a sip of water and kept walking. As he did, he found himself mulling over the photo he had seen on CNN of Vice President Oaks taking the oath of office from the federal judge from Jacksonville. To Bennett, it was eerily reminiscent of the famous November 22, 1963, photo of Vice President Lyndon Johnson being sworn in aboard Air Force One after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Johnson, Bennett recalled, had also been sworn in by a woman. Bennett had even met the woman once — Judge Sarah T. Hughes — at some party in Washington his parents had dragged him to as kid. He hadn’t been even the slightest bit interested back then. Now he couldn’t help but wonder what it had been like on that plane at Love Field as the nation mourned the tragic death of Camelot and tried to adjust to a new president, with a vastly different style and temperament, in a vastly different America than had existed just a few hours before.
William H. Oaks was a good man, Bennett reminded himself as he made his way through the dusty alleyways of the camp. He had been one of the most effective vice presidents in the country’s history, and Bennett respected him enormously.
For one thing, Oaks had far more government experience — particularly federal experience and national security experience — than MacPherson had had when the two were elected eight years earlier. That seemed to give Oaks a confidence Bennett found reassuring. He could always be trusted to be calm, cool, and collected in a crisis. Bennett had seen it firsthand after the kamikaze attack in Denver had nearly killed MacPherson five years earlier. He had seen it again when suicide bombers had taken out the Palestinian leadership and triggered a civil war in the West Bank and Gaza.
What had really impressed Bennett about Oaks was that, at heart, the man was a strategist. In the 1980s, he had been a key Senate ally to President Reagan in helping outflank and outfox the Evil Empire. In the 1990s, he’d been a staunch and unwavering voice for expanding the CIA’s HUMINT — or human intelligence — capacity, as well as for modernizing U.S. nuclear forces and special operations capabilities.
Oaks had also applied his impressive intellectual heft to the rethinking of the U.S. role in a post-Soviet world. He was one of the first leaders in Washington to warn that radical Islam would replace Communism as the most serious threat to U.S. national security, and he had seen the Iranian threat long before most others in the American political system had.
The man had an uncanny ability to play three-dimensional chess, the ability to calculate and assess each possible move and countermove and counter-countermove when it came to domestic politics and global affairs. And more often than not, he was right. It was no wonder to Bennett that the Secret Service had code-named Oaks “Checkmate.” But now Checkmate was no longer a deputy. He was the president of the United States at a moment of tremendous peril. What was he seeing? Bennett wondered. What was he thinking? What was he getting ready to do?
Bennett’s satellite phone rang again. He checked the caller ID again. No name. No number. It was him. It had to be. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to say, or do, but he answered the call, and silently prayed for the wisdom to do the right thing.
“Mr. Bennett?” said the voice at the other end.
“Yes, this is he,” Bennett said, steeling himself for what was coming.
But the words that came next caught him completely off guard.
“Mr. Bennett, this is the Air Force One operator; please hold for the president of the United States.”
27
Salvador Lucente looked pale and exhausted.
Al-Hassani greeted him warmly with the traditional Arab kiss on both cheeks, but Lucente was distant and largely unresponsive. Then again, with all that he was going through, Al-Hassani was surprised he had not canceled the meeting altogether.
“Salvador,” Al-Hassani began somberly, “on behalf of my people, please accept our condolences for the terrible tragedy that has befallen the entire United Nations family.”
Lucente nodded but said nothing. The two men stepped out onto the Iraqi president’s private balcony and took seats in their usual places. Khalid Tariq followed them and sat to one side. Lucente, for once, had left his entourage back at the hotel.