The Mark of the Assassin Page 9

  “Where’s your husband?” Braxton asked loudly. “I wanted to show off Ashley.”

  The Oracle stopped speaking, and his audience turned to hear her answer.

  “He was called out of town suddenly on business,” Elizabeth said. She felt her face flush, despite her lawyerly effort at courtroom composure. The lying was the hardest part. It would be so much easier if she could tell the truth just once: The President is about to order air strikes against the Sword of Gaza, and my husband works for the CIA, and he couldn’t exactly leave work this minute to come to this ridiculous dinner party.

  Braxton made a show of looking around the garden at the other guests. “Well, Elizabeth, you do seem to be in the minority here tonight. If I’m not mistaken, you’re the only card-carrying member of the Democratic Party in the room.”

  Elizabeth managed a careful smile. “Believe it or not, Samuel, I’m one of the few people who actually likes Republicans.”

  But Braxton didn’t hear the crack because he was already looking past her at Mitchell Elliott, who had just entered the garden. Braxton jettisoned Ashley and floated through the guests toward his most lucrative client. For the next half hour, Ashley and Elizabeth discussed horses and the benefits of personal trainers. Elizabeth listened politely while she finished her first glass of wine and quickly drank another.

  Shortly before nine o’clock, Elliott asked for everyone’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, the President is about to address the nation. Why don’t we hear what he has to say before dinner?”

  Elizabeth followed the crowd into the large living room. Two giant-screen television sets had been wheeled in. The dinner guests clustered around them. Tom Brokaw was chatting on one, Peter Jennings on the other. Finally, the shots dissolved and a grim-faced James Beckwith was staring into the camera.

  Paul Vandenberg didn’t believe in public displays of stress, but tonight he was nervous and it showed. This one had to be perfect. He sat with Beckwith in makeup and reviewed the address one last time. He stared at the television monitors to make sure the shot was perfect. He ordered a run-through on the TelePrompTer to make sure it was working properly. The last thing he needed was a dead prompter and James Beckwith staring into the camera like a deer in the headlights.

  The speech was scheduled to begin at precisely 9:01:30 p.m. Eastern. That gave the networks ninety seconds to preview the speech with their White House correspondents. Vandenberg had carefully chummed the waters. He had told reporters—on background, of course—that the President would discuss a military response to the attack on Flight 002 and a major new defense initiative. He did not go into specifics. As a result, a sense of urgency hung over Washington as the President strode into the Oval Office.

  It was two minutes to air, but Beckwith calmly shook hands with every member of the network pool crew, from the executive producer to the floor director. He finally sat down at his desk. A production assistant clipped the microphone to his crimson tie. The floor director shouted, “Thirty seconds!”

  Beckwith adjusted his jacket and folded his hands on the desk. A look of determined composure settled over his handsome, restrained features. Vandenberg permitted himself a brief smile. The old man was going to be just fine.

  “Five seconds!” the floor director shouted. She silently pointed to James Beckwith, and the President began to speak.

  Michael Osbourne intended to watch the President’s speech from his desk, but shortly before nine o’clock Adrian Carter came into the bull pen and gestured for Osbourne to follow him. Five minutes later they strode through the entrance of the Operations Center.

  DCI Ronald Clark reclined in a black leather executive chair, smoking a cigarette. Monica Tyler sat next to him. Tweedledee and Tweedledum drifted in an uneasy orbit.

  Beckwith’s face appeared suddenly on a wall of television monitors: CNN, the broadcast networks, the BBC. Ghostly infrared images flickered on three larger monitors, live satellite images of the Sword of Gaza training camps in Libya, Syria, and Iran.

  Carter said, “Welcome to the best seat in town, Michael.”

  “Good evening, my fellow Americans,” Beckwith began, pausing a beat for dramatic effect. “Two nights ago TransAtlantic Airlines Flight Double-oh-two was shot down off Long Island by a terrorist armed with a stolen Stinger missile, killing everyone on board. It was an act of cowardice and barbarism with no possible justification. The animals that carried it out apparently believed there would be no consequences for their action. They were wrong.”

  Again, the President paused, allowing the line to sink in. Vandenberg had gone down the hall to his office to watch the address on television. A chill ran down the back of his neck as Beckwith delivered the line perfectly.

  “The law enforcement and intelligence agencies of this nation have concluded that the Palestinian terror group known as the Sword of Gaza is responsible for the attack. They will now pay the price. At this moment, the men and women of the U.S. armed forces are launching a careful and measured strike against Sword of Gaza training camps in several countries in the Middle East. This is not about vengeance. This is about justice.”

  Beckwith paused, breaking script. The TelePrompTer operator stayed with him. “Let me repeat that: This is not about vengeance. This is about justice. This is about sending a message to the terrorists of the world. The United States will not and cannot stand idly by and watch its citizens be slaughtered. To do nothing would be immoral. To do nothing would be an act of cowardice.

  “I have one thing to say to the Sword of Gaza and the governments that provide them with the tools of their terrorist trade.” Beckwith narrowed his eyes. “Do nothing more, and it ends here. Kill another American, just one, and there will be a very heavy price to pay. On that you have my solemn word.

  “I ask for your prayers for the safe return of all those taking part in tonight’s action. I also ask you to join with me in praying for the victims of this barbaric act and for their families. They are the real heroes.”

  Beckwith paused and shuffled the papers of his script, a sign that he was changing the subject.

  “I want to be brutally honest with you for a moment. We can take steps to make certain that an attack like this is never repeated. We can keep a more careful watch on our shores. Our intelligence agencies can increase their levels of vigilance. But we can never be one hundred percent certain that something like this could never happen again. If I sat here before you tonight and told you that was the case, I would be lying to you, and I have never lied to you. But there is something this government can do to protect its citizens from terrorists and terrorist nations, and I want to talk to you about that tonight.

  “The United States now possesses the technology and the ability to build a defensive shield over this country, a shield that would protect it against an accidental or deliberate missile attack. Some of the same nations that provide support to groups of savages like the Sword of Gaza are also actively trying to acquire ballistic missile technology. In short, they want missiles that are capable of striking American soil, and slowly but surely they are getting them. If just one missile, armed with a nuclear warhead, fell on a city like New York, or Washington, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, the death toll might be two million instead of two hundred and fifty.

  “Together with our allies, we are trying to prevent nations such as Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea from obtaining ballistic missile technology. Unfortunately, too many countries and too many companies are willing to help these rogue nations out of greed, pure and simple. If they succeed and we are unprepared, our nation, our foreign policy, could be held hostage. We must never allow that to happen.

  “Therefore, I call on the Congress to rapidly approve the funds necessary to begin construction of a national missile defense. I challenge the Congress and the Department of Defense to have the system in place by the end of my second term in office, should you grant me another chance to serve you. It won’t be easy. It won’t be inexpensive. It will requi
re discipline. It will require sacrifice from all of us. But to do nothing, to give the terrorists a victory, would be unforgivable. God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America.”

  The camera dissolved, and James Beckwith disappeared from the screen.

  Senator Andrew Sterling watched Beckwith’s speech from a Ramada Inn in Fresno, California. He was alone except for his longtime friend and campaign manager, Bill Rogers. The sliding glass window was open to the pleasant evening air and the sound of traffic rushing along Highway 99. When Beckwith appeared on the screen, Sterling said, “Close that, will you, Bill? I can’t hear the sonofabitch.”

  Sterling was an avowed liberal, a Humphrey-McGovern-Mondale-Dukakis tax-and-spend bleeding-heart liberal. He believed the federal government spent too much on guns it didn’t need and too little on the poor and children. He wanted to restore cuts in welfare and Medicare. He wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. He opposed free trade. His party agreed, and it had anointed Sterling as its nominee after a long and bitter primary fight. To the surprise of the political chattering class, Sterling roared out of the Democratic National Convention five points ahead and stayed there.

  He knew his lead was fragile. He knew everything depended on holding California, where Beckwith had the home court advantage. Which explained why he was spending the night at a Ramada Inn in Fresno.

  Sterling’s face turned red, then something approaching purple, as Beckwith spoke. He had consistently voted against the national missile defense program. Beckwith had put him in a box and nailed down the lid. If Sterling supported Beckwith, it would look like a flip-flop. If he opposed him, the Republican attack machine would wheel out the “soft on defense” ads. There was a more important factor: California’s defense industry would be rejuvenated if the missile defense system was built. If Sterling opposed it, Beckwith would jump all over him. California would slide back into the GOP’s column. The election would be lost.

  “Now, that’s what I call an October fucking surprise,” Sterling said, when Beckwith finished speaking.

  Rogers rose and shut off the television. “We’ll need to issue a statement, Senator.”

  “Fucking Vandenberg. He’s one smart sonofabitch.”

  “We can support Beckwith on the air strikes against the Sword of Gaza. Politics stop at the water’s edge and all that happy horseshit. But we’ll have to oppose him on missile defense. We have no other choice.”

  “Yes, we do, Bill,” Sterling said, staring at the blank television screen. “Why don’t you go downstairs and get us a twelve-pack? Because we just lost the fucking election.”

  Michael Osbourne watched the first cruise missiles strike their targets while the President was still speaking. In Iran, at Shahr Kord, they must have been listening to the speech on shortwave radio, because a dozen men burst from the largest building of the compound as Beckwith announced imminent action. “Too late, boys and girls,” murmured Clark. A few seconds later ten cruise missiles, fired by the Aegis cruiser Ticonderoga in the Persian Gulf, struck the camp simultaneously, igniting a spectacular fireball.

  A similar scene played out in Syria, at Al Burei, with the same results.

  The Libyan camp was the largest and most important. For that target the Pentagon chose Stealth fighters armed with laser-guided bombs, so-called SMART weapons. The aircraft had actually penetrated Libyan airspace before the President’s speech began. They were over their targets when Beckwith delivered the key line of the speech. Seconds later the Libyan desert was aflame.

  Ronald Clark rose and strode silently from the room, Tyler and her acolytes trailing after him. Carter looked at Osbourne, who was gazing at the monitors.

  “Well,” Carter said, “so much for peace in the Middle East.”

  Those were the very same sentiments of the trim gray-haired man seated on the top floor of a modern office block in Tel Aviv. The building served as headquarters of the Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, better known as the Mossad or, simply, the Institute. The gray-haired man was Ari Shamron, the Mossad’s deputy director for operations. When Beckwith finished speaking, Shamron switched off the television.

  An aide knocked and entered the room. “We have reports from Syrian radio, sir. Al Burei has been attacked. The camp is ablaze.”

  Shamron nodded silently, and the aide went out. Shamron pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and tried to rub away the fatigue. It was 4:15 a.m. He had been at his desk for nearly twenty-four hours straight. The way things were going, he would probably be there for another twenty-four.

  He lit a cigarette, poured black tea from a thermos, and went to the window. Rain rattled against the thick window. Tel Aviv slept peacefully below him. Shamron could take some personal credit. He had spent his entire career in the secret services, destroying those who would destroy Israel.

  Raised in the Galilee, Ari Shamron entered the Israeli Defense Force at eighteen and immediately transferred to the Sayeret, the elite special forces. After three years of active duty he moved to the Mossad. In 1972 his fluent French and proficient killing skills landed him a new assignment. He was sent to Europe to assassinate the members of the Palestinian terror group Black September who took part in the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. The assignment was simple. No arrests, just blood. Revenge, pure and simple. Terrorize the terrorists. Under the command of Mike Harari, the Mossad team assassinated twelve Palestinian terrorists, some with silenced guns, some by remote-detonated bombs. Shamron, deadly with a handgun, killed four himself. Then, in April 1973, he led a team of crack Israeli troops into Beirut and assassinated two more members of Black September and a PLO spokesman.

  Shamron had no qualms about his work. Palestinian guerrillas broke into his family home in 1964 and murdered his parents as they slept. His hatred of Palestinians and their leaders was limitless. But now his hatred had turned to those Israelis who would make peace with killers like Arafat and Assad.

  He had spent his life defending Israel; he dreamed of a Greater Israel stretching from the Sinai to the West Bank. Now the peacemakers wanted to give it all away. The prime minister was talking openly about giving back the Golan to entice Assad to the peace table. Shamron remembered the dark days before 1967, when Syrian shells rained down on the northern Galilee from the Heights. Arafat was running Gaza and the West Bank. He wanted a separate Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Jerusalem! Shamron would never allow that to happen.

  He had sworn to use whatever means necessary to stop the so-called peace process dead in its tracks. If everything continued according to plan, he might very well have his wish. Assad would never come to the peace table now. Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank would boil over with rage when they awoke to news of the American strikes. The army would have to go in. There would be another round of terror and revenge. The peace process would be put on hold. Ari Shamron finished his tea and crushed out his cigarette.

  It was the best million dollars he ever spent.

  Three thousand miles to the north, in Moscow, a similar vigil was being kept at the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the successor to the KGB. The man in the window was General Constantin Kalnikov. It was just after dawn and bitter for October, even by Moscow’s standards. Snow, driven by Siberian winds, swirled in the square below. Business was taking him to the Caribbean island of St. Maarten in a few weeks. He would enjoy a break from the never-ending cold.

  Kalnikov shuddered and drew the heavy curtains. He sat down at his desk and began working his way through a stack of papers. A committed communist, Constantin Kalnikov was recruited by the KGB in 1968. He rose to the top of the Second Chief Directorate, the KGB section responsible for counterintelligence and crushing internal subversion. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the KGB, Kalnikov kept a senior post in the new service, the SVR. Kalnikov now ran Russia’s intelligence operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The
job was a joke. His budget was so small he had no money to pay agents or informers. He was powerless, just like the rest of Russia.

  Kalnikov had watched Boris Yeltsin and his successor run the Russian economy into the ground. He had watched the once-feared Red Army humiliated in Chechnya, watched her tanks rusting for lack of spare parts and fuel, watched her troops go hungry. He had seen the vaunted KGB turned into the laughingstock of the intelligence world.

  He knew there was nothing he could do to reverse Russia’s course. Russia was like a vast ship casting about on a rough sea. She took a long time to change course, a long time to stop. Kalnikov had given up on his Russia, but he had not given up on himself. He had a family, after all—a wife, Katya, and three fine sons. Their photographs were the only personal touches in his otherwise cold and sterile office.

  Kalnikov had decided to use his position to enrich himself. He was the leader of a group of men—army officers, intelligence officers, members of the mafiya—who were selling Russia’s military hardware on the open market to the highest bidder. Kalnikov and his men had sold nuclear technology, weapons-grade uranium, and missile technology to Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan. They had made tens of millions of dollars in the process.

  He switched on CNN and listened to a panel of experts discussing President Beckwith’s speech. Beckwith wanted to build a missile defense system, a shield to protect the United States from international madmen. Those madmen would be beating down Kalnikov’s door soon. They would want to grab as much hardware as they could, and quickly. President James Beckwith had just started an international arms race, a race that would make Kalnikov and his cohorts even richer. Constantin Kalnikov smiled to himself.