Bennett protested again, but it was becoming clear Dr. Kwamee had made up his mind. He was not going to be swayed. Bennett was touched, but worried. The man was not only an excellent physician. He had a heart of mercy. But that’s not what he and Erin needed at the moment. They needed privacy. They needed secrecy. They needed to get themselves into the protective custody of the U.S. government as rapidly as possible, before anyone connected to “the voice” figured out which choice they were making.
Still, Bennett couldn’t very well refuse this man’s kindness. Erin certainly needed excellent medical care on the way, and they couldn’t afford to make Dr. Kwamee suspicious. So Bennett tried to act as normal as the situation would allow.
“That’s very kind,” he replied, shaking the man’s hand vigorously. “Thank you so much.”
“It is my pleasure,” the doctor said. “Now, go finish packing. I will get the nurses, get Mrs. Bennett into the ambulance, and meet you at the south gate in ten minutes.”
Bennett nodded and thanked the doctor again, but the man wouldn’t hear of it.
“Go quickly, my friend,” Dr. Kwamee said. “You said it yourself — we haven’t a moment to spare.”
39
Bennett, bags in hand, finally saw the ambulance approaching.
But as it came to a stop, he also heard Dr. Kwamee shouting, “Mr. Bennett, Mr. Bennett, get in quick; you have a phone call.”
“Let me just throw these in the back,” Bennett replied, but the doctor jumped out of the driver’s side and scooped up the bags away from him.
“Please, my friend, it’s a very important call,” he insisted, pointing to the satellite phone sitting on the passenger’s seat.
“What about my wife?” Bennett asked.
“She’ll be fine,” Dr. Kwamee insisted, pulling Bennett to him and whispering in his ear. “Please, my friend, it’s Prime Minister Doron’s office on the line. They say it’s urgent. I will take the bags. I will take care of everything. But please, you must hurry.”
Bennett was stunned. “David Doron?” he asked, nearly in shock.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “He’s waiting.”
“I’ll be right there,” Bennett said. He had to see Erin, give her a kiss, let her know everything was going to be all right.
Despite the doctor’s protests, he opened the back of the ambulance and greeted the two nurses caring for his wife.
“She’s sleeping right now, Mr. Bennett,” one said.
She looked so peaceful. There was no point waking her up. They’d talk later. There was so much to catch up on, so much to tell her. But they had a long flight home.
Bennett closed the doors, ran around the front of the ambulance, got in, picked up the phone, and stared at the caller ID.
“PMO — secure,” it read.
It was, in fact, directly from the prime minister’s office. Doron was the last person he wanted to talk to at the moment. He was in the early stages of a highly sensitive operation. It was no time for making idle chitchat with the head of the best intelligence agency in the world.
“Hello?” Bennett said tentatively.
“Who is this?” asked a brusque Israeli woman at the other end of the line.
“Jon Bennett,” he replied. “Who’s this?”
“Jonathan Meyers Bennett?” the woman asked, ignoring his question.
“Yes, that’s me,” he confirmed. “Who am I speaking with?”
“Please hold for the prime minister,” the woman replied simply. “He’s just finishing up a call with Secretary-General Lucente. Then he’ll be right to you.”
“Thank you,” Bennett said. “I’ll wait.”
The woman parked him on hold, and he was soon listening to an instrumental version of “HaTikva,” the Israeli national anthem. Bennett tried to compute how Doron could have tracked him down. He and Erin had left the U.S. in February and intentionally slipped into this U.N. camp without telling anyone besides his mother where they were going. They didn’t want publicity. They didn’t want pen pals. They didn’t want communication of any kind with the outside world, least of all the political world. They just wanted to disappear and do some good, and yet somehow it seemed everyone knew where they were. How? Why? It didn’t make any sense.
Dr. Kwamee slammed the back doors of the ambulance and jumped into the driver’s seat. He flipped on the flashing lights, mercifully chose not to use the siren, threw the specially equipped vehicle into four-wheel drive, and pulled out of the refugee camp’s heavily guarded south gate. A moment later, they were driving through the town of Umm Qais, also known as Gadara, headed to Route 15—the main north-south artery — which would take them straight to Amman.
As they maneuvered around numerous and often enormous potholes, and the occasional charred wreckage of military vehicles that had been destroyed in the war, Bennett feared it was going to take them a lot longer than an hour to reach the airport. At this rate, he thought they’d be lucky to make it there in two. And the truth was he had no idea exactly what he and Erin were doing next.
Bennett’s military liaison, the colonel working for Secretary Trainor, had assured him someone would meet them at the CENTCOM regional operations facility set up in one of the hangars at the edge of the airfield. But he hadn’t said what kind of aircraft they’d be using to leave the country. There was, after all, very little commercial traffic coming in and out of Amman these days. Mostly the runways were jammed night and day with enormous military transport planes — C-5 Galaxies, C-17 Globemasters, and C-141 Starlifters chief among them — bringing in humanitarian relief supplies for refugee camps in Jordan, as well as for those in Syria and the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. None of them would be appropriate for their flight back to the States. None of them had the medical facilities aboard to care for Erin. Nevertheless, the colonel insisted they be in the Jordanian capital and at the airfield by noon, and every detail would be worked out by then. Bennett just prayed it was true.
“HaTikva” was starting again. Bennett was still on hold. He stared out his window at the passing scenery. He and Erin had never had any time for sightseeing over the past six or seven months. They’d had no time for tour guides or history books or even much time to rest and relax. They had been working themselves to the bone. Moved by all the suffering around them that had come in the wake of the war, they had never felt right about taking time for themselves to explore or to learn much about the area they’d been living in, but now Bennett wished they had at least carved out a weekend or two.
Gadara, after all, had been one of the ten cities built by the Romans that made up the Decapolis. Jesus had spent time here, on the eastern banks of the Jordan River, preaching a message of repentance, teaching the love of an almighty God for sinful men, and demonstrating that love with power and authority. And it was here, of course, that Jesus had done some of His most dramatic miracles.
He remembered Erin poking him in the ribs one night in late March or early April. He had already fallen fast asleep after a particularly intense day. She was exhausted too but was still up reading the Scriptures, and as so often happened, she had just found a passage she simply couldn’t resist sharing with him. This time it was from Matthew chapter 4.
Jesus went throughout Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues,
preaching the good news of the kingdom,
and healing every disease and
sickness among the people.
News about Him spread all over Syria,
and people brought to Him
all who were ill with various diseases,