"In part, of course, this was because the political and military climate made venture capital resources scarce, and thus serious exploration difficult, to say the least. In part, it was because until very recently the technology simply wasn't available to do sophisticated exploration from space and using smaller, more advanced drilling equipment. And in part, there simply wasn't the entrepreneurial spirit to hunt for buried treasure. Most of the Israeli gas and oil industry was owned by the government and run by bureaucrats without any imagination and without any incentive to hunt for such treasure because they had no stake in the cause. They weren't going to make a single extra shekel if the Israeli government struck oil, so why bother?
"But all that began to change in 1988. As you of course know, Mr. Prime Minister, your government began privatizing the exploration, drilling, and production companies at the time, a process that continued throughout much of the 1990s. At the same time, the Gulf War seemed to neutralize — at least for a while — the Iraqi threat. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process picked up speed. Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. The world economy was growing. An explosion of new technology came onto the market making petroleum exploration easier and cheaper. A confluence of many different events meant suddenly, everything was changing. And one man who saw these changes and decided to take advantage of them became a friend of mine.
"Now, that said, I must tell you, Prime Minister Doron, that one of the few men in the world who knows what treasures lie beneath is right here at this table. Ibrahim Sa'id has shown tremendous foresight and true entrepreneurial moxie to get where he is today. And one of the central questions we've gathered here to answer is whether or not his unexpected rise to leadership of the Palestinian people — offers a window of opportunity for both sides to find a measure of peace and prosperity never before imagined." Bennett paused to let his rhetorical flourish sink in.
"It is Ibrahim Sa'id and his company — the Palestinian Petroleum Group, known more commonly as PPG — who have partnered with the Israeli company Medexco, run by Dmitri Galishnikov. They've formed an extraordinary joint venture that crosses racial, religious, and national bounds, a joint venture my government believes could literally change the course of history. As you know, Mr. Prime Minister, Erin and I, in our previous nongovernment lives as senior executives at Global Strategix, Inc. — GSX — and the Joshua Fund, one of the world's largest and most successful global growth mutual funds, got to know Mr. Sa'id and Mr. Galishnikov. We learned their remarkable stories. We vetted them. And we chose to invest one billion dollars into their joint venture to turn a dream into a reality. We've crunched the numbers a thousand times from a thousand different angles, and I daresay every fact and figure is now part of our very souls."
McCoy caught Bennett's eye. She could see he was finally in his element, and enjoying every minute of it, no matter how anxious he'd been leading into the luncheon.
"Prime Minister Doron, some of this, I suspect, will be new for you. All of it is in the briefing book Erin just handed to you. But let me just say, sir, that the figures are almost unimaginable. Let me take some time to walk you through them."
Something was wrong.
It was just after 2:00 p.m. Gibraltar time, just after 9:00 a.m. in D.C. FBI director Scott Harris stepped back into his office after briefing the president at the White House with Homeland Security Secretary Lee James. Harris's chief of staff, Larry Kirstoff, was waiting for him.
"What is it now?" Harris asked, seeing the anxiety in his colleague's face.
"We just got a hit."
"On what?"
"Ruth Bennett's ATM card," said Kirstoff.
Harris swallowed hard.
"Where? Just now?"
"Eighteen minutes ago. At a bank near Radio City Music Hall."
"New York? You're sure?"
"I just got the call from the ELINT unit a few seconds ago. They're sure."
"You think it was her?"
"We've got no idea. Not yet. But the cops aren't taking any chances, especially if we're dealing with suicide bombers."
"Oh my God. Eighteen minutes — why'd it take so long?"
"Some glitch in the system. Can't say for sure yet. We're checking on that. But for now NYPD is flooding the area — uniformed officers, SWAT teams, helicopters, the works. They're shutting down a twenty-square-block radius and all points in and out of the city. We've got our own units on the way. We'd like to put the Hostage Rescue Team on standby in New York, just in case."
"Do it — whatever you need. And get me the president—now."
Bennett had no idea what was unfolding back home.
The entire country was glued to breaking television news coverage of the manhunt in Manhattan. It wasn't just cable. All four major broadcast networks broke into regular programming with a story in their own backyard.
The images were riveting. Every car, every taxicab, every truck and bus was being stopped at gunpoint. Local and federal agents dressed in black and armed with automatic weapons were taking people out of vehicles and searching them one by one. But who or what were they looking for? Ruth Bennett? Was she still alive? Had someone forced her PIN number out of her before…
Before what? No one wanted to say out loud the worst-case scenario. Especially not network anchors. But the thought was on everyone's mind.
If Ruth Bennett were dead — or held hostage somewhere in New York, or anywhere on the eastern seaboard, for that matter — how exactly were they going to find her? And who else might they be looking for? Faces on the federal terrorist watch list, to be sure. Anyone of Arab or Middle East descent or looks? Anyone some law enforcement official deemed "suspicious"? It had the potential to be a civil liberties nightmare. But in the adrenaline of the moment, that wasn't the first worry on most people's minds.
Additional security was rushed to protect the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. The Empire State Building was shut down. Heavily armed police officers stood watch outside city hall, One Police Plaza, and all local, state, and federal government buildings. Every tunnel was sealed by the Port Authority. All bridges were being shut down. Scott Harris briefed the mayor while Lee James briefed the president. On top of everything else, there was another question to decide. It was New Year's Eve. A quarter of a million people were expected to descend upon Times Square as night fell. It would be the perfect target for a suicide bomber — high profile, high security, but almost impossible to fully defend. Should everything be canceled?
Bennett turned on a Power Point projector and continued.
"When they first secured exploration licenses from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority and began doing some preliminary test wells off the coast of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ashkelon, Medexco and PPG thought they were getting themselves into a natural gas deal. So did we, to be honest. And, as our friend Dmitri might say, dayenu—that alone would have been enough. But that, it turned out, was just the beginning."
Bennett clicked to the first slide, revealing a satellite photograph of the coast of Israel and Gaza.
"Tracts of natural gas were actually discovered back in 1999, by accident. A marine geologist working for National Geographic—the same one who'd actually located the sunken Titanic in the North Atlantic — was trolling the floor of the Mediterranean with high-tech sonar equipment near Ashdod, just north of Gaza. He was looking for the shipwrecks of ancient Phoenician vessels, and he'd found them — two of them — dating back to seven hundred and fifty years before the time of Christ."
The next slide showed underwater images of both vessels.