The Last Jihad

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Iverson pondered that a moment, then set his knife and fork down.

  “Bob, look. It was a rough time after the Twin Towers went down. The markets struggled for quite some time. But they eventually got back on their feet. People finally got their confidence back. They started flying again. They began to take vacations again. Companies began to hire again. OK? Now, they wake up after all these new attacks—fearful more is on the way—and you’ve got a serious confidence problem on your hands. Companies around the world lost trillions of dollars of market value yesterday, Bob. Trillions. In one day.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s going to get worse. People aren’t going to spend—again.”

  “And?”

  “You’ve got huge layoffs coming—again.”

  “And?”

  “And what, Bob? That’s it. Econ 101. Nobody buys. Nobody produces. People get laid off. They spend less. They produce less. It’s a vicious cycle—and it’s tough to get out.”

  “Worst-case scenario?”

  “Look, Bob, I don’t want to…”

  “Recession?”

  Iverson shook his head.

  “Bob, a recession is the least of your troubles right now.”

  “Spell it out for me, Stu.”

  Iverson set his coffee down and took a deep breath.

  “Look, the only thing that matters right now is what the president does this weekend. That’s it. Period. You screw this up, and you’ve got a global economic meltdown on your hands. And I’ve got to tell you, Bob. Arresting somebody isn’t going to help. You can arrest a thousand terrorists—a million—and no one’s going to care. No one. Even if they’re all guilty. Hell, especially if they’re all guilty. People don’t want arrests. They don’t want to hear about frozen assets and economic sanctions and funding the Iraqi National Congress and pinpricks and surgical strikes and all that.”

  “You’re saying we screwed up?”

  Corsetti was getting a little defensive.

  “Apparently.”

  “We did the best we could, Stu. This hasn’t exactly been easy.”

  “I know,” said Iverson. “I’m just saying, it wasn’t enough, Bob. It just wasn’t.”

  “You think we should have gone harder after Iraq—taken out Saddam somehow. Regime change?”

  “Isn’t that what CIA recommended?”

  “You think we backed off from a full court press against Saddam because we were scoring big against other terrorist groups, smaller groups?”

  “It was a good show. And we certainly vacuumed up a lot of bad guys, but…”

  “But not enough?”

  “Obviously not. Bob, this isn’t a criminal investigation. It’s a war.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means fight it like a war, not an episode of Cops.”

  “Well, aren’t you Mr. Sound Bite,” Corsetti sniffed. “What about all those Delta Force raids? The SAS raids? All that video of our forces wiping out terrorist training camps—forty-three of them, to be exact?”

  “What about it?”

  Corsetti’s voice dripped with cynicism. “Well, that’s easy for you to say, Stu—sorry your portfolio might take a beating this year.”

  “Bob, this isn’t about me and you know it. If all that Rambo stuff had worked, you and I wouldn’t be sitting in a missileproof mountain eating Thanksgiving dinner from a cafeteria. You’d better wake up and smell the Starbucks, son. People aren’t going to sit back and let the president and the queen of England get attacked and have the White House tell everybody, ‘Hey, we’re handling it.’”

  “They want someone to pay.”

  “Damn right they do—big time.”

  “And if they don’t get the vengeance they’re looking for?”

  “It’s not vengeance, it’s…”

  “Yeah, whatever—if people don’t get the Hollywood ending they’re looking for?”

  “Bob, look, you asked me what the markets were going to do. I’m just saying that’s what markets are for. They’re one giant fortune cookie. They’re a giant daily tracking poll. They tell us what people think about the future of the world. Are they waking up filled with fear, or faith? Do they think things are going to get better, or worse? They’re tea leaves, Bob. They’re oracles. And they’re sending a pretty powerful message to the president right now, whether you guys want to listen or not.”

  “Action.”

  “Big action—or a big meltdown—come Monday.”

  Corsetti said nothing. He wasn’t a CEO, a business and economic strategist like MacPherson. He wasn’t a Wall Street wizard, an investment strategist like Bennett. He wasn’t an ambassador or diplomat, a global affairs strategist like Iverson.

  He was a political operative, a savvy tactician more than a big picture guy. He took polls and counted votes. He greased squeaky wheels before they made too much noise, and put out brush fires before they became raging forest fires. He didn’t think in ten-or twenty-or fifty-year increments of history. He thought in terms of twenty-four-hour news cycles and two-year election cycles. Iverson respected him for it. But it also made him nervous. For this was no longer about red states and blue states on some electoral college map.

  “Bob, someone’s going to pay the piper,” Iverson concluded. “It’s either going to be the good guys, or the bad guys. And it’s your call. And you guys had better make it right, or a lot of innocent people are going to suffer.”

  Corsetti just stared at the turkey sitting uneaten on his plate and growing cold. Black kept his head down and quietly played with the mashed potatoes on his plate with his fork. The phone rang and Corsetti answered it. A moment later he had excused himself to go meet with the president. Iverson and Black were left to eat alone.

  FBI Director Scott Harris wasn’t alone.

  He was sitting at a small conference table in his office having lunch with a couple of deputies when the phone rang. He’d just taken a huge bite of a Jersey Mike’s sub number nine—the “Club Supreme” with roast beef, turkey, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo and bacon—brought in fresh by a field agent who’d just flown down from Trenton for a meeting. But Harris answered anyway, on the second ring.

  “Harris,” he mumbled, trying to chew at the same time.

  “Scott? That you? It’s the president.”

  Harris eyes went wide. His deputies watched him freeze for a moment, his eyes darting every which way.

  “Scott? You there?” the president asked again.

  Harris had no place to go—and no choice. He grabbed the trash basket by his desk and spit out the entire mouthful of the mouth-watering sub.

  “Yes, Mr. President. What can I do for you, sir? And how are you, sir?”

  “Under the circumstances, I was pretty lucky. You OK?”

  “Yes, sir. Fine, sir.”

  Harris’s deputies were now laughing their butts off as their director turned his back on them and looked out his window at Pennsylvania Avenue and the brightly lit Capitol Building down the street.

  “What’ve you got so far, Scott?”

  “Sir, we’ve got a full court press on. We’ve got some interesting leads. But nothing I can really give you yet. Soon. Hang in there.”

  “That’s fine. I appreciate it. But look, here’s my concern. How many people could possibly have known which limousine I’d be in.”

  “Sixty-three, not including your wife and daughters. We just nailed that number down, sir.”

  “You know where I’m going with this then.”

  “I think so, sir. A mole in our ranks. Perhaps even a sleeper agent.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Honestly, sir, I wouldn’t have thought so. But there’s too much circumstantial evidence in terms of the precision of the attack against you. The problem is, there’s not a lot of people I can talk to about this. If there is someone—or several people—inside the U.S. government working with terrorists on the outside, or with a terrorist state like I
raq or Iran or North Korea or whomever, then it’s going to be very tough to find them without letting them know we’re hunting them down.”

  “That’s precisely what worries me, Scott. So you do whatever it takes. Within the law, obviously. But pull out all the stops. Redo background checks. Do surveillance. Tap phones. Intercept emails. I don’t care. I want to know who’s been leaking, and I want to know why. If you need an executive order from me, draft it and I’ll sign it. Just get your best people on it—fast. And don’t breathe a word to anyone on my team that you’re doing it. You got it?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Scott, I’m counting on you. These people aren’t sending me a message. They want me dead. And they’re not going to take no for an answer. And if they’ve got someone working with them on the inside, then I’m in a race for my life. We’ve got to hunt them down and take them out before they do the same to me.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  Stuart Iverson thought back to Election Night two years back.

  It was MacPherson’s first presidential campaign. He remembered the black-and-red digital countdown clock hanging over the reception desk, the one that read 00:00:00. Election Day—the zero hour—had arrived. It was all over but the counting.

  The campaign headquarters had been located on the fifth and sixth floors of a huge, renovated warehouse in downtown Denver, overlooking Coors Field. Table after table of phones and computers and fax machines and copiers on both floors were manned by dozens of paid staffers, volunteers, and interns.

  Phones rang constantly, and though everyone seemed to have at least one, if not two, phones to his or her ears, the ringing never seemed to stop. The amazing thing was that any of the senior staff on the sixth floor could get any work done with the sound of a Ricky Martin CD—belting out the World Cup theme song—rising from the “bullpen” of college interns on the fifth floor.

  The tattered, coffee-stained carpet was littered with old newspapers, empty pizza and Chinese food boxes, and used pink phone-message slips. Massive red, white, and blue banners covered the walls, along with scores of editorial cartoons and campaign fact sheets and internal phone lists. Five televisions—each tuned to a different network—hung overhead.

  Young kids—barely out of adolescence—scurried about in ripped jeans and college sweatshirts, each on some urgent task or another. The whole place was surreal, a cross between a big-city TV news-room and a college fraternity house on a Saturday morning.

  It wasn’t pretty, but it was here that the campaign’s “get-out-the-vote” operation had been in overdrive throughout the day.

  Iverson, the campaign’s national chairman, had watched as Bob Corsetti—immaculately dressed in a charcoal gray pin-striped Italian suit, with his jet-black hair slicked back like a Wall Street tycoon—moved quietly through the rows of twenty-somethings manning the phone banks, like a panther moving through a jungle.

  As his right hand obsessively twirled an unlit cigar, Corsetti’s eyes scanned every computer screen, every open notebook. His ears tuned into every conversation, while tracking all five networks above him. He said nothing, but you could actually see people stiffen as he walked by them—each suddenly, perceptibly, working a little harder, talking a little faster. Corsetti was the mastermind behind the MacPherson miracle, and everyone in the room knew it.

  Back in the ’90s, when Clinton was in office, it was Corsetti—then the executive director of the Colorado State Republican Party—who quietly approached MacPherson about running for governor.

  It was eventually Corsetti who—upon being hired as MacPherson’s campaign manager—persuaded this never-elected-before CEO to partially finance his own campaign, and shake down his venture capitalist buddies to raise another $15 million.

  It was Corsetti who mapped out the game plan for MacPherson to win not only the Governor’s Residence but also a majority of the state legislature that year. It was Corsetti—now the newly elected governor’s chief political strategist—who helped the novice push through an aggressive, conservative agenda of tax cuts, welfare reform, and abolishing parole for repeat violent thugs. This set up MacPherson to win a landslide reelection, and positioned him beautifully to run for the GOP nomination and the presidency.

  Indeed, it was Corsetti—not MacPherson—to whom everyone looked to make the math work, to put their man in the White House, to redeem all the eighteen-hour days they’d put in over the past eighteen months when they could’ve been making real money or going to the bars every night.

  The odd thing about a presidential campaign is that staffers often get more attached to the campaign manager than to the candidate. The candidate, after all, is an illusion, a fantasy, a projection of everything you hope for in the next leader of the country. But you never see him. He’s never in the headquarters. You’re never in a meeting with him. You never get to ask him questions, or hang out with him, or ride in the motorcade or travel on the bus with him. He’s simply a face on a campaign poster, a name on a flyer, a position, a poll number, a sound bite on the evening news.

  The manager, on the other hand, is real. He’s the one who hires you. He holds the staff meetings. He approves the requisition orders. He signs the checks. He chews you out one minute and decides you’re “staffer of the week” the next, rewarding you with a little jar of thermonuclear Southwestern salsa as a present. If you work harder, fight harder, stay longer, sacrifice more of your personal time for the sake of the campaign, odds are you’re more likely doing it for the manager than the candidate. Because he’s your leader. In a way, the candidate is just a slogan.

  Corsetti intuitively seemed to understand the psychology and rhythms and moods of a campaign. He seemed to know when to strike and when to be silent. He seemed to know when to let his money ride and when to cut his losses. He certainly preferred to be feared than liked, but to his own team he was both.

  At forty-nine, he was more of a father to these kids than boss, and more godfather than father. The New York Times once described him as the “the Colorado consigliere.” Newsweek dubbed him “the Denver Don.” The Democratic National Committee once called him “Don Corleone in a Donald Trump suit.” But no one inside the campaign dared repeat such monikers, not in his presence, at least. Bob Corsetti suffered no fools and brooked no foolishness. He was all business, all of the time, and his business was winning.

  Iverson remembered that as Corsetti finished his final rounds for that election night, he gave no reminders to his team of California’s importance. He didn’t tell them the California polls were only open for one more hour. He didn’t give anyone a pat on the back or rip anyone’s head off.

  He simply walked through the room, surveyed the battlefield, and left the building without saying a word. He didn’t need to. Everyone knew what they needed to do, and everyone knew the stakes. And no victory ever tasted sweeter than the one they got that night.

  If they had only known what lay ahead.

  At precisely 4:00 P.M. Bennett entered the conference room.

  Corsetti, now done with his meeting with the president, glanced up from a phone call and nodded, as did Iverson. Black stood up and greeted him, shaking his hand and asking him if he’d like something to eat. But they all could tell Bennett’s mind was elsewhere. Then Agent Sanchez popped her head in again and pointed at Bennett.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “The president would like to see you now.”

  Bennett took a quick swig of orange juice from the place setting marked for him, and wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin waiting on his empty plate. “Hey, Stu,” he said as he slid past his old boss.

  “Hey, Jon,” Iverson said, still numb from the whole experience.

  Bennett followed Sanchez and closed the door behind him. He was now standing in the dimly lit private study of the NORAD commander, its walls lined with bookshelves sagging from the weight of great tomes by Churchill and Clausewitz, Kissinger and Kearns-Goodwin. It was a long room, somewhat
narrow, and permeated with a sweet smell of pipe smoke that reminded him of visiting his grandfather’s office as a little boy when his grandfather was a law professor at Georgetown University.

  At the far end of the room was a roaring fire in a stone fireplace—where the smoke went in this mountain, he had no idea—and a beautiful working grandfather clock that had to be at least a hundred years old, and a huge wooden desk with a banker’s lamp and a big green leather chair. In it sat the President of the United States with two Secret Service agents standing nearby.

  “Come in, Jon—come, have a seat,” said the president, his voice soft but sincere.

  It was only as Bennett got closer that he realized how much worse the president’s condition really was than had been reported in the press. Yes, the president had briefly addressed the nation last night. But he had done so by audio—not by video—Bennett learned from Black upon landing at Peterson. Yes, the president had given several interviews to AP and major newspapers for Thanksgiving-morning editions. But they had been done by telephone, not in person, citing “security concerns.” Security, indeed. If the country could see what Bennett now saw, whatever the Dow was about to lose Monday morning would be three times as bad.

  Bennett couldn’t believe how frail his friend and mentor looked.

  Already a trim man, it seemed like he’d lost twenty or thirty pounds in the past twenty-four hours. The president’s face was bruised and scarred. His eyes were black and blue. His head was wrapped in bandages. His left arm was broken and in a cast. His right arm was fractured and in a sling. He was on two IVs, and Bennett now noticed he was sitting in a wheelchair. Could both of his legs be broken as well?

  Bennett didn’t have the heart to ask. He eyes darted from the long scratches on the president’s hands and face to the quiet confidence in his eyes.

  “Mr. President…”

  “Jon, I’m OK.”

  “But I…”

  “Really, I’m OK. I lived. Don’t worry about me. I want to talk about you. Please have a seat.”