“And if you actually find this scroll?” the book agent asked.
Murray could see Catrell’s eyes dancing with anticipation and he leaned in closer, oblivious to all the sirens and commotion just down the street.
“It will be the greatest archeological discovery of the twenty-first century,” he whispered. “Which is why I wanted to meet with you before I left. You’re actually the only—”
But Murray never finished his sentence.
A green Dodge Caravan suddenly jumped the curb and smashed into the front of the Willard. An instant later, a massive explosion ripped through the lobby. A ball of fire engulfed the famed hotel. Thick black clouds of smoke billowed high into the afternoon sky. Twisted metal and shards of glass were flying everywhere. The ceiling began to collapse.
When it was over, authorities would find George Murray and Gene Catrell among the dead and have no idea why.
2
Jon Bennett’s heart raced.
He’d been dreaming and planning and praying for this day for six months. He had considered every detail, spared no expense. But now that it was finally here, he couldn’t shake the butterflies in his stomach.
He wasn’t scared — just jittery, unsettled. His friends had warned him this was no time to get married or have children. Perhaps they were right. But Bennett couldn’t help himself. Even if this day was his last, he wanted to spend it married to the woman he loved. And who knew for sure? Maybe they had more time than they thought.
He shifted from foot to foot in the back hallway of the small church near Winchester that they had been attending for the past several months and checked his watch. The music would be starting any moment.
Peeling back the edge of a curtain, Bennett looked out the window over the rolling hills of Virginia horse country. They were freshly covered with a thin blanket of snow, and he watched the small flakes still falling. It was so calm and quiet. It was so far away from the high-speed political life he and Erin had been living for so long, and it felt good. It was time to settle down and catch his breath and think of family.
His thoughts drifted for a moment. He had never really pictured his father, Sol, giving a toast at his rehearsal dinner or proudly sitting in the front row at his wedding. He had never spent much time trying to imagine introducing his father to the girl he loved, much less asking his advice. They had never been close enough for that. But suddenly he wished his dad could be here for this.
It had been more than four years since Sol Bennett succumbed to the heart attack that took his life, and so much had happened since that his son rarely had time to think about him. But somehow in the quietness of the moment, it suddenly struck Jon Bennett how much it hurt not to have been at his dad’s side when he passed away, or to have had the chance to see him and talk to him one last time, or even to have been able to attend the memorial service or funeral.
He had been in Israel when he first got the news of his father’s death. He had been recovering from gunshot wounds at an American military hospital in Germany when his father’s services were held. He had never had the chance to say good-bye, and so much remained unsaid between them. An award-winning New York Times foreign correspondent and Moscow bureau chief, Jon’s father had simply been too busy for him growing up. He’d missed countless birthdays, his graduation from Georgetown, and even his graduation with an MBA from Harvard. That was not the kind of man Bennett wanted to be. But what if that was the kind of man he already was?
He could see a large farmhouse down the road and could smell the smoke from its old stone fireplace. He turned and looked in the antique mirror hanging a bit askew on the wall and smiled as he picked some lint off his lapels.
Now forty-four, Bennett was beginning to look a lot more like his old man than he’d ever realized, and the last few months had only accelerated the process. His new glasses were no longer just for reading. They were now full-time accessories. What were once hints of gray around his temples, meanwhile, were slowly but surely starting to spread through the rest of his short dark hair. And he’d put on a good six or eight pounds since getting home from Russia, forcing him to rent a tux rather than use the one he’d owned for years. It was time to get serious about his running again.
One of his fondest memories of the years his father served in Moscow was waking up every weekday morning at exactly 5:30 a.m. — rain or shine — jogging in Gorky Park together, and then eating breakfast before the bus came to get him for school. It was about the only time they ever spent together, and they rarely said much. But Bennett had been an avid runner since.
He fixed his collar and straightened his tie and thought back to the last time he had worn a tuxedo. It had been a muggy July night in Moscow. The night he had proposed. The night the world had changed forever.
Red Square, the Kremlin, and most of the government buildings in and around Moscow and throughout the Russian Federation now lay in ruins. All of Russia’s nuclear forces and nearly all of Russia’s conventional military bases were destroyed. A recent U.S. intelligence analysis had estimated that nearly 90 percent of Russia’s armed forces had been wiped out, including all of the forces that had been deployed to surround Israel in the weeks leading up to the now-infamous “Day of Devastation.”
Much the same was true in Iran, Turkey, and Libya, as well as in the other hotbeds of Arab-Islamic radicalism. Tunisia and Algeria in North Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea along the Red Sea, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and the once Fertile Crescent stretching from Lebanon and Syria down to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Where ornate and imposing palaces, capitols, government ministries, mosques, and military facilities once stood, little now remained but smoldering wreckage.
Remarkably, the government ministries of Egypt and Jordan — which had not taken up arms against the Jewish State — had emerged largely unscathed, but their mosques and Islamic colleges, universities, and religious training centers had been consumed by fire.
Hundreds of millions of men, women, and children throughout the region were without homes, without adequate food and water and medical services. They were grieving their dead, bereft of leadership, like sheep without a shepherd, not sure where to turn next. And they were not alone.
In Europe, Germany and Austria had been hit hard. Tens of thousands lay dead. More remained critically wounded, even months after the fact. The Reichstag was gone. Much of Berlin looked like it had after the Allies carpet bombed the city and left it in ruins. Parts of Vienna were gone. Most government and military buildings in both countries were gone. Every museum and cultural center in both countries was gone. Every library was gone. One BBC reporter had put it like this: “It’s as if every trace of the German past — notably the Nazi past — was consumed by fire in the snap of a finger, in the blink of an eye, without warning, without mercy.”
And yet Bennett knew that was not entirely true. Warning had been given. He had helped give it. It was he who had passed Dr. Eliezer Mordechai’s memo known as “The Ezekiel Option” on to the president and National Security Council. It was he who had encouraged Mordechai to leak his analysis of Ezekiel 38 and 39 to the American media, beginning with the New York Times.
It had cost Bennett his White House post, but it had ensured a global audience for Mordechai’s perspective on the prophetic significance of the Russian-Iranian coalition arrayed against Israel. And by the grace of God, Bennett and McCoy had survived the firestorm that followed, as had his mother, Ruth.
Now Bennett prayed for a quiet, peaceful life, off the political bullet train and far from harm’s way. He was exhausted. So was McCoy. They had given nearly everything they had trying to protect their country and bring peace to a troubled world, and now they desperately wanted a honeymoon that would never end.