The Last Days (17 page)

McCoy was grateful to be alone.

She locked the door to Ziegler's quarters, locked herself in the bathroom, turned on the shower and cranked up the steam. She thanked God for protecting her, for keeping her and Bennett and Galishnikov and Sa'id alive. She asked Him to have mercy on the agents that might still be out there, and to comfort the families of those who'd fallen in the line of duty. She tried to push away all the faces of all her friends who'd died over the last few hours. But she couldn't. The emotions overpowered her, and she began to cry, quietly at first, and then in sobs she couldn't control.

 

Bennett left Galishnikov and Sa'id and headed back down the hall.

He needed a shower and something to eat. But first he needed to call his mom.

Now sixty-seven and alone, Ruth Bennett was still an early riser, usually up by six, rarely later than six-thirty. She had her routine and it didn't include radio or television or reading the
New York Times.
Not anymore, at least. After her husband's death, she'd said no, finally, to the steady assault of information that for so long defined her life.

He could still hear his mother's shaky voice over a scratchy satellite phone connection to his hospital room in Germany, breaking the news to him that he'd missed his own father's funeral. It wasn't really his fault, of course. But the hesitancy in her voice made it clear to him that forgiveness was coming slowly.

When they'd finally reconnected, she described to him the quiet, private ceremony, held in Queens, not far from where Solomon Jonathan Bennett was born on December 6, 1941. The hearse had moved quietly down simple tree-lined streets where Sol once played stickball. They had driven by the row houses to which he once had delivered
The New York Times,
the great “Gray Lady” to which he would go on to devote his life, from New York to Moscow to Washington, until a frustrated, bitter retirement exiled him to a condo village outside of Orlando. They arrived at a small cemetery where she and the casket were greeted by a small group of crusty old men, former colleagues from the
Times,
and by an angel she had never met.

Erin McCoy had arrived from Washington unannounced. She brought with her an American flag as a gift from the White House, and a handwritten note of condolence from the president of the United States. It was a warm and thoughtful gesture, Mrs. Bennett told her son, unexpected and in such contrast with the rest of the day.

She described the flat, emotionless words of the hastily chosen minister they had never met before, from a church they had never attended before, about a “better place” they had never believed in before. She described how she and Erin had shared a quiet, lingering lunch together and a pot of tea after the service. And, with the permission of the president, Erin had begun to explain where Jon was, what he was doing, and why. It was a story his mother found hard to digest. Though she occasionally asked for more details, she was not the reporter her late husband had been. But in Erin's soft smile she said she'd found a small measure of hope that everything would be OK after all.

They spent a long afternoon together. Then Erin had driven her back into Manhattan, got her settled for a few days in a room at the Waldorf. The room was compliments of the president, until she was finished with the estate lawyers and paperwork and was ready to go back to Florida. Mrs. Bennett had a key to her son's place in Greenwich Village and Jon had insisted she stay there. But she said she didn't want to be a bother, didn't want to be in the way.
In the way?
argued Bennett.
Mom, I'm in the hospital on the other side of the world. Whose way are you going to be in?
But Ruth Bennett was in no mood to argue. She simply didn't want to be an imposition.

McCoy handled it all graciously, Bennett recalled. She gave his mom a private cell phone number to call if she needed anything. A car and driver. A shoulder to cry on. Erin would be in town for a few days on business, and she'd make herself available for whatever Mrs. Bennett needed. That night, a bellhop arrived at the widow's hotel room door with a dozen white roses, and a note that read simply, “Don't worry, Mrs. Bennett. Jon will be home soon. I'm praying for you, and for him. God bless you, Erin.” It was another thoughtful touch, and it had won her a friend for life.

Bennett turned the corner and arrived back at Ziegler's room. He entered the security code, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. A moment later, he slumped down into one of the couches and stared at the phone. The shower suddenly shut off and McCoy called out from the bathroom.

“Jon, that you?”

“Yeah, I'm about to call my mom—
president's orders.
”

“Say hi to her for me, OK?”

“All right,” he said, his voice heavy with fatigue.

Bennett began dialing, then glanced at his watch.

The president would be speaking in less than ten minutes. Bennett felt nauseous. The back of his neck was perspiring. He needed sleep. He needed a drink.

The phone began ringing. He dreaded this call. The poor woman had been through so much already. He didn't want to worry her further. The phone kept ringing. He wondered if McCoy would be willing to talk with her for a few minutes, as soon as she was done with her shower. His mother had obviously fallen in love with Erin McCoy. Maybe he should, too.

No one was answering. He cursed himself. Why hadn't he insisted she get an answering machine after his dad died? Why hadn't he simply bought one for her?

 

The bathroom door clicked open.

McCoy didn't want to interrupt Bennett's conversation. But she did want to catch the president's address. She poked her head in and looked around the room. The television was on. Tim Russert was just finishing his analysis from NBC's Washington bureau and the image now switched to the Oval Office.

The president began to explain the events of the last few hours, adding that he was asking the Israelis not to get involved.

But Ziegler's room was quiet. Where was Bennett? Had he gone to the main control room to watch the speech? Had he gone back to Sa'id and Galishnikov's room? He couldn't be missing this, could he? The president had just taken
his
advice, against the counsel of his own National Security Advisor and CIA director.

In sweats and a T-shirt, a towel wrapped around her head, McCoy turned off the light and fan in the bathroom, and tiptoed through the walk-in closet, around the bunk beds, to the couch by the TV. She found Bennett there sleeping like a baby, still holding the satellite phone in his right hand. He looked so quiet, so peaceful. She didn't have the heart to wake him, even for this. She pulled a wool blanket over him, sat down beside him and watched the rest of the president's remarks. Then she gently brushed some strands of hair from Bennett's eyes, leaned down and gave him a little kiss on the cheek.

“Good night, Point Man,” she whispered. “Sleep well.”

No one in the White House had ever heard of Akiva Ben David.

Born in Brooklyn in 1958, he'd been a straight A student, graduated with honors from Yeshiva University, and spent summers studying the Torah in Jerusalem from the time he was fifteen. He'd never served in the U.S. military. He'd only briefly held an American driver's license.

The CIA had no file on him. Neither did the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. He had never popped up on any American or international terrorist watch list. He had no outstanding warrants in the United States or on the Interpol system. To the analysts at Langley who prepared the daily “threat matrix” for the director of Central Intelligence and the president of the United States, he would hardly be classified as a low-level risk. He simply didn't exist.

Nor did he seem to exist in his adopted country of Israel. He'd emigrated there in June of 1980 and obtained dual citizenship at the tender young age of twenty-two. But for most of his adult life, he'd largely kept to himself, politically speaking. The Mossad had no file on him. His name popped up in a Shin Bet report or two for joining the mailing lists of several far right, ultra-Orthodox organizations of some concern. But he'd never done anything more than subscribe to their literature.

He hadn't shown up at, much less organized or led, any political demonstrations, so far as the authorities could tell. He wasn't particularly vocal. He hadn't signed any provocative petitions or staged sit-ins at the Knesset or sent angry or threatening letters to the prime minister or any of his Cabinet officials. Thus, he simply wasn't perceived as a threat of any kind, which is exactly the way he wanted it. He was a nonentity, free to fly under the radar, as it were, where it was quiet and comfortable and safe. And up until now, that had suited him just fine. But soon, all that would change.

Akiva Ben David was no longer a young man. But he was in excellent physical condition, especially for a graying, middle-aged rabbi from Bed-Stuy. For the past six years he'd been working with a physical trainer, burning fat and bulking up. He was a disciplined man, of that there could be no doubt. Not to his wife, at least. He was up every morning at four, and headed straight to the gym on the settlement where he and his family now lived, nestled along the Jordan River. By six-thirty every morning, he was home, showered, dressed, and hidden away in his private study, reading the Torah and saying his morning prayers. By eight, he was having breakfast with his wife and four children, one son and three daughters, all under the ages of thirteen. By nine he was in his home office where he served as the founder and executive director of an obscure little nonprofit group known as the Temple Mount Battalion. Except that it wasn't so little anymore.

Officially, the Temple Mount Battalion existed to promote a better understanding of the importance of building the Third Temple on the ancient, holy site of the first two, in the heart of Jerusalem. Ben David and his group of volunteers (no employees, just his wife, Dalia, who did the bookkeeping) had no land, no schools, no factories or fancy offices. They had no logo, no letterhead, no whiff of creativity or originality at all. They simply ran a nondescript little Web site explaining the importance of the Temple in Jewish history and religious teachings, its history and origins, its dimensions and specifications as laid out in the Hebrew Scriptures, and its role in the end times.

It wasn't a flashy Web site—no music, no pictures, no graphics of any kind. The site didn't take much time or effort to maintain, which was good because Ben David had absolutely no training, formal or otherwise, in Web site design, construction, or maintenance. Nor did the site require much money to run, which was also good because when he'd launched the site it averaged only a few dozen hits a week.

By contrast, the Web site run by the Temple Institute in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City was far better funded and more impressive. In large measure, this was because the Temple Institute was not simply an educational organization. It was more like an architectural firm, general contractor, and interior decorating shop all rolled into one. Its leaders weren't just talking about a future Temple. They were already in the process of building it.

Since 1987, they'd been actually re-creating authentic sacred vessels and musical instruments and priestly garments for use in the coming Temple, using the precise materials and following the precise specifications laid out in the Bible. When Exodus Chapter Twenty-seven said that one type of Temple altar should be made of “acacia wood, five cubits long, and five cubits wide,” that it should be “square, and its height should be three cubits,” and that “you shall overlay it with bronze,” that's exactly how these modern-day artisans were building it. When Exodus Chapter Thirty said another type of Temple altar—the Altar of Incense—should be made of acacia wood but “you shall overlay it with pure gold,” and “you shall make a gold molding all around it,” that is precisely how it was being done.

These Temple implements weren't models. They were the real thing, and they were being handcrafted by the hundreds. When the time was right, the Jews would be ready to erect and furnish a rudimentary version of the Third Temple with less than twenty-four hours' notice. And that, a Yiddish Martha Stewart might say, was a good thing.

But to Akiva Ben David, it wasn't good enough. Something had been stirring inside him for nearly a decade. He wanted to go beyond just
educating
Jews about the Temple, or merely
preparing
the vessels and implements for a future Temple, as noble and useful as those roles were. The Temple Institute was doing an excellent job at that, as was another well-funded Jerusalem-based organization known as The Temple Mount Faithful. This group had already crafted a four-ton cornerstone for the Third Temple that was ready to be laid in place on a moment's notice. In the quarries in the Negev Desert and elsewhere, kindred spirits like these were patiently, steadfastly carving and stockpiling tens of thousands of stones to be used to reconstruct the Temple. Plans were already completed to build massive parking lots in Jerusalem for all the pilgrims and tourists who would come to see the Holy Temple.

Detailed, painstaking preparations were being made day after day, year after year. Nothing was being left to chance. Nothing was being overlooked. This, too, was a group entirely committed to rebuilding the Temple, and were preparing for that moment. They, too, believed that the Hebrew prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel foretold of an even more dazzling Holy Temple to be built in the last days. And this, too, was good.

But in his heart, Akiva Ben David refused to accept that simply educating and preparing were good enough. They weren't good enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted to
force
the hand of God.

It was time to rebuild the Temple now, not a hundred or a thousand years from now. So under the radar—unseen by the Israeli authorities—he'd begun secretly recruiting a political movement who agreed. As time passed, his patience grew thinner and his convictions grew stronger. Somewhere, somehow, the dream of seeing ancient prophecies fulfilled became an obsession. He would take matters into his own hands, and he began scanning the horizon for anyone that might be willing to help.

Through his own modest Web site, Ben David gathered names of people who signed up to receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter. It was an e-mail he personally researched, wrote, and edited. They were short, punchy. They were provocative and chock-full of the latest news and information from the Promised Land regarding war, peace, religion and the preparations for building the Third Temple.

But what made these e-mails different from his religious competitors was their nuance, their sense of urgency and edge of militancy. They didn't quite call on Jews to storm the Temple Mount and seize it by force, not overtly. But over time, people who read them got the message. Muslims were desecrating Judaism's holiest site, he argued. They were destroying the religious and archeological artifacts on the site. They were weakening its physical base, threatening to cause the Temple Mount to collapse under the weight of a quarter million Muslims praying each week at the Al Aqsa mosque. They were also preventing Jews from even entering the site. But their time was running out.

Originally, Ben David hoped he could sign up a few hundred interested souls. He hoped to find some kindred spirits who might, in time, be willing to help him with the funding necessary to go on an international speaking tour to spread the word about the Temple's importance in human history, and the need to reclaim the Temple's rightful place on earth. And then something happened.

A fellow rabbi back in Akiva Ben David's native Brooklyn became one of the first subscribers. He loved the weekly reports, and began a little e-mail correspondence. He affectionately dubbed Ben David's electronic missives “the kosher equivalent of Chinese water torture,” slowly persuading the world—“week by week, drip by drip”—of the need to rebuild the Temple.

Soon, the rabbi began forwarding Ben David's e-mails to members of his congregation. They hit a nerve. They tapped into a deeply held but seldom articulated sense that modern Orthodox Judaism was so focused on other issues they were indeed neglecting the centrality of the Temple in Jewish life.

Without the Temple, there was no Holy of Holies. There was no place for the Almighty to reside on earth. Nor was there a gathering point for Jews to worship and pray the way they had in the days of King Solomon or even the Roman occupation.

Sure, there was the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, for all the tears that had been shed there after the destruction of Herod's Temple by the Romans. But whatever you called it, wasn't it still just a wall? Wasn't it just a remnant of something greater and far more profound? How could modern Judaism have gotten so distracted that it sent millions of people to pray at a mere
wall,
as though this was the pinnacle of the Jewish experience? Didn't the Prophets speak of something more important than a
wall
? Hadn't Jewish heroes fought and died for something more eternal than a
wall
? Didn't the Jewish people deserve something better? Of course they did.

But even more important, the readers of Ben David's e-mails began to consider another fundamental premise. Without the Temple, there was no place for animal sacrifices. The Torah—the Hebrew Scriptures—was emphatic on that point. No sacrifices could be done anywhere but in the Holy Temple, and without such sacrifices, there could be no ritual shedding of blood. Without the shedding of blood, there could be no forgiveness of sin. Without the forgiveness of sin, how could one truly become holy? How could one truly be spiritually pure enough to enter the presence of a pure and perfect and holy God? How could one enter heaven at all without the Temple? How could one truly be saved from the fires of hell? These were no trifling little theological questions. They were matters of eternal security or damnation. Why were so few people wrestling with them? So much was at stake.

Ben David had never thought of himself as a particularly persuasive speaker or writer. Nevertheless, the passion of his heart came through loud and clear. People began forwarding his e-mails to family and friends and business associates throughout the United States, and then in the U.K., across the European continent, to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Soon people were getting the e-mails forwarded back to themselves from people they'd never heard of. And in just a few months, the little Temple Mount Battalion list grew to more than fifteen thousand names.

Speaking invitations came in by the hundreds. Then financial donations began pouring in through a secure, on-line credit card program he had installed on the Web site. The average monthly tax-deductible gift per person was a mere $39 U.S. But multiplied by fifteen thousand people over the course of an entire year, Akiva Ben David was raking in serious cash. Something was happening, something he needed to figure out and get ahead of, and fast. So much money was going to attract government attention soon, if it hadn't already. He needed a plan, something to invest the funds in, or spend it on. And then a plan was conceived. Over the past few months it had quickly grown and taken shape. It was a plan about to be baptized by fire.

Bennett tossed and turned.

It was hard to believe that only seventy-two hours earlier he'd been driving his forest green Jaguar XJR through the streets of Georgetown on Christmas Eve, actually feeling relaxed for the first time in a long time.

Traffic was light. He pulled under the portico of the Four Seasons Hotel and stopped in front of the main doors. A bellhop agreed to watch his car for a moment, and he went into the lobby, picked up a phone, and dialed. There was no answer. Perhaps she was already on her way down. Normally, he'd be anxious. Typically, he'd be pacing. He hated to be late, almost as much as the president did. But tonight, for some reason, he wasn't worried at all. He was going to the White House staff Christmas party, and he was going with the prettiest girl in Washington.