The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Al Jazeera and the Associated Press were reporting rumors of a major military operation not far from the Amman airport. Interviews with unnamed local residents suggested a heavy concentration of Jordanian ground and air forces and large explosions in an industrial park just off the intersection of Routes 15 and 35. So far, however, Sharif noted, neither story even hinted that this operation might have anything to do with the hunt for President Taylor.

  The big story, far and away, was the rumor—driven by the Drudge Report and my tweets—that the president of the United States was missing.

  Sharif checked the New York Times home page.

  “Your story is the lead,” he said. “It was posted twenty-two minutes ago.”

  “So they went with it after all,” I said, not sure if I was more surprised or angry.

  “How could they not?” Sharif said. “Once Drudge moved it, every news organization in the world picked it up.”

  “You don’t know Allen and the brass.”

  “What were they going to do?” Sharif asked as we showed our IDs to the MPs guarding the general headquarters building and ran our backpacks, camera gear, and other supplies through the X-ray machine, stepped through metal detectors, and were patted down for good measure. “Their top correspondent in the region broke the story. Sure, you did it on social media, but no one knows the difference anymore. Or cares. And once it was out there, of course the Times was going to ‘own’ it. You’re their man, and this is a sensational story. Terrible—don’t get me wrong. But from a journalist’s perspective, this is the mother of all news stories. I guarantee your editors are kicking themselves for letting Drudge get the jump on them. And look, no one but you and I and a handful of others even knew they weren’t going to run it in the first place.”

  “I guess,” I said. “What about the White House? Are they confirming the president is missing?”

  “Not quite,” said Sharif, quickly scanning the full story. “But they don’t actually deny it either.”

  “What are they saying exactly?”

  “The story says, ‘A senior administration official, who asked that his name be withheld as he was not authorized to speak on so sensitive a matter, insisted that Air Force One has landed safely at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport without damage and without casualties. The official went on to say that the White House is grieving the loss of several senior officials and numerous support staff but is withholding the names of those killed and wounded until their families can be properly notified.’”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all the White House says about the whereabouts of the president?”

  “That’s it,” Sharif said, gathering his things from the X-ray machine.

  “Talk about a nondenial denial,” I said. “They can’t shoot my story down because they know it’s true. But by not providing any other details, they’re creating a global firestorm of interest. Why don’t they just tell everyone the truth?”

  “Who’s going to say it?” asked Sharif. “The White House press secretary is dead. So is the chief of staff. So are the secretary of state and at least a dozen senior White House officials.”

  “Secretary Murray is dead?”

  “Sorry—I thought you’d heard.”

  “I hadn’t.”

  “He and his team got to the ceremony late,” Sharif explained. “Their plane landed about twenty minutes after the president’s, just in from Beijing.”

  “I didn’t even see him.”

  “He was meeting with a half-dozen other foreign ministers in the east wing of the palace. They were going to join up with the principals immediately after the ceremony.”

  A wave of nausea hit me with the news of the secretary of state’s death. Though I’d never interviewed him or developed him as a source, I had met him twice—once when he’d made a surprise visit to Baghdad to hold a press conference with a new Iraqi prime minister, and once with his lovely wife, Bernadette, and their three teenage girls at a Christmas party at the American embassy in Paris. I couldn’t imagine what this family was going through, and so many other families like theirs.

  There was no time to grieve, however. We headed down several flights of stairs, with soldiers flanking us both ahead and behind. I appreciated the colonel’s help. It occurred to me that beyond his name and rank, I really had no idea who he was. We’d had no time to get acquainted. What was his background? Where was he from? And why was he so trusted by the king? I was about to ask him to tell me a bit about himself, but he started talking first.

  “You know, your name isn’t the only one on the byline. There are three others.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Conyers from the White House, Baker at State, and Neeling at the Pentagon.”

  “They’re all backups, second-stringers,” I said. “What about Fisher, Thompson, and O’Malley?”

  “Says here they were all at the summit,” Sharif said. “They all died in the attacks.”

  “What about Alex?” I asked, referring to Alex Brunnell, the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief.

  “I’m afraid he was killed too.”

  We were approaching the vault door into the bunker. But I had to stop. I needed a moment. There was too much happening, too much death. I was sure some kind of emotional circuit breakers were going to blow at any second, and I didn’t want to see the king until I had gathered myself together. I stood there, just outside the bunker, eyes closed, inhaling and exhaling very deliberately. Just breathe, I told myself. Just breathe, in and out, in and out, in and out.

  What made it all worse was my complete inability to do my job properly. With no phone, I had no way to check my messages, no way to respond to e-mails, no way to track information or stay in touch with my family or my team in the States. And now I had a huge story that would rock the world. The Chevy Suburban carrying the president had been found bullet-ridden and abandoned in a facility swarming with terrorists. The president’s entire Secret Service detail was dead or gravely wounded. The backseat of the Suburban was covered with blood. There was a trail of blood leading to a side door. But the president was nowhere to be found. The Jordanians didn’t know where he was. Neither did the entirety of the American government.

  The door of the bunker opened. Sharif told me it was time to go see the king. I braced myself for the fight that was coming. I understood full well that there were national security implications here. But the American people needed to know. The world needed to know. These were no longer rumors. The president was gone, and the only logical conclusion that could be drawn from the facts at hand was that he was now in the custody of the Islamic State.

  13

  “You’re right,” said the king.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said, unprepared for his response. I’d just completed an extended and somewhat-heated treatise on the importance of being able to write and transmit back to the States a detailed article on the missing president and the failed rescue attempt, but apparently for no reason.

  “Why do you think I sent you out there, Collins?” the monarch asked. “Why do you think Colonel Sharif pulled you into the middle of the action rather than staying up in the helicopter? Write the story quickly. As soon as the colonel clears it, you can e-mail it to your editors. I just have two requirements.”

  “Requirements?” I asked, bracing myself.

  “Yes.”

  “And they are?”

  “First, I’m asking you not to speculate,” he said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning just report the facts. Nothing more. Nothing less. We don’t know where the president is. That’s a fact. The rescue attempt failed. That’s a fact. A massive manhunt for the president remains under way. Also a fact. But you can’t say the president is in the hands of ISIS. That’s speculation. I know you fear that. We all do. But that’s what I mean—don’t guess, don’t surmise, don’t provide commentary or analysis. Not now. Not in the middle of a fast-moving crisis. Let the pundits back in t
he States or wherever do the speculation. And obviously you can’t mention any sensitive military or intelligence information, either, like where I am, what base we’re at, and so forth. The colonel will make sure there’s nothing classified or sensitive in your piece.”

  I deeply rejected the very concept of a military censor. I’d fought it all over the world—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and wherever I went. But there was no time to fight it at the moment. And there was no point. The king understood what I was trying to do. He wasn’t asking for me to paint Jordan in a good light. He was just asking me to be a reporter, not a commentator, and under the circumstances that seemed fair enough.

  I nodded, then asked, “What’s the second requirement?”

  “Speed,” the king said. “Get some version of the story out fast. To write up the whole battle story will likely take you most of the night. But the American people can’t wait for the whole thing. Nor can anyone else. They need to know the most crucial facts right now. So don’t write it all up at once. Do a first draft. Get the basic details out there. We’ll let you transmit additional paragraphs with more details every thirty to forty-five minutes throughout the evening, if you’d like. It’s a world exclusive no matter what. No one else has the story. People will be hanging on every word. The Times web traffic will be off the charts. But at least everyone will know the lead right away. Agreed?”

  “Photos too?” I asked.

  “A few at a time, sure.”

  “Then agreed,” I said.

  “Good. Can you give the colonel a first draft in fifteen minutes?”

  “I can do it in ten.”

  “Even better.”

  With that I was dismissed. Sharif led me out of the bunker, through a vestibule, down the hall, and into a complex of offices where staff members were hard at work coordinating sorties of fighter jets against various ISIS targets and managing the air portion of the enormous manhunt for the president. We came to a small, unoccupied office that apparently had been set aside for the colonel and me. Everything had been cleared from the shelves. The desktop was cleared off as well. But there was a new laptop waiting for me and a laser printer, along with a Keurig machine and a supply of coffees and teas. There was also a small refrigerator, like the kind I’d had in my college dorm room a million years ago, stocked with water and soft drinks.

  I soon realized the phone on the desk was disconnected, and while there was Wi-Fi, the colonel said he wasn’t authorized to give me the password. Still, it was clean and quiet and far better than what Abu Khalif had provided me. So I sat down, took some more pain medication for my arm, and got to work.

  Ten minutes later, as promised, I was done with the first draft.

  * * *

  Four hours later, I slid the laptop across the desk.

  On the screen was the final draft. The colonel, as bleary-eyed as I was, carefully reviewed my copy, struck out only four sentences, and cleared it for publication. Then he plugged in a memory stick, downloaded the file, and took it to another room to e-mail it to Allen MacDonald.

  While he was gone, I pulled out my grandfather’s pocket watch and wound it up. It was now just after midnight. Over the past several hours, I had spoken to Allen three times, under the colonel’s supervision, on a borrowed satphone. After assuring Allen that I was physically okay, I’d explained the unique circumstances under which I was operating. I figured the king’s admonition against disclosing my location probably applied to phone calls as well as news stories, so I didn’t say exactly where I was. Allen didn’t exactly apologize for our dustup earlier in the day, but he was clearly glad I was alive and well and able to keep writing. With the pipeline cleared between us, he began posting my new material every hour or so. Thus far I’d written—and Sharif had cleared—three updates to my original ten-minute story on the ongoing hunt for the president, complete with additional details provided by the king and the prince themselves, including the fact that Egyptian and Israeli intelligence services were now working closely with the Americans and the Jordanians in the search. I’d also written a brief first-person account of being at the palace when the kamikaze attack took place. I’d wanted to write a story about helping to evacuate the king and his family, but the colonel had rejected this concept out of hand. Instead I wrote a detailed, blow-by-blow description of the battle at the SADAFCO warehouses north of the airport.

  Every muscle in my body ached. The pills the doctor had given me earlier in the day were dulling the intensity of my gunshot wound, but the pain was still there, still throbbing. My head was killing me as well. I was feeling dehydrated and chugged down two bottles of water before deciding finally to retire for the night and get some desperately needed sleep.

  Sharif requested pillows, an air mattress, and a few blankets for me, and they were all graciously delivered within the next ten minutes, along with basic toiletries, including a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some mouthwash. After Sharif said good-night, an armed MP led me to the restroom, where I washed up, then led me back to the cramped little office. As I lay down, the MP took up his position outside my door. I wasn’t going anywhere tonight. Nor was anyone coming in. For now, that was all I needed to know.

  I turned out the lights and lay down on the thin mattress. I pulled the blankets over me, trying to ignore the smell of the dirty carpet and trying equally not to think about the discomfort of not being able to fully stretch out my legs.

  Instead, staring up at the ceiling, I thought about my mom back in Bar Harbor, Maine. I knew she was worried sick. But I also knew she was praying for me. I wished I could have called her, but there hadn’t been time, and I knew she was tracking the story on the Times website. She could see my dispatches. She knew I was alive and kicking. She knew I was doing my job, and I knew she was proud of me. Indeed, I was writing each of my stories with her as my audience—not Vice President Holbrooke or the secretary of defense or King Abdullah or Abu Khalif or anyone else. I was trying to explain what I was seeing and hearing to my mom, in language clear and colorful enough to bring it all alive for her. Still, I wanted to talk to her, wanted to tell her personally that I was okay, wanted to hear her voice. Had she talked to Matt? I hoped he’d called her. I hoped he’d explained why he’d left Amman and reassured her that he and Annie and the kids were safe. Where exactly had they gone? I wondered. I had begged them to leave Jordan immediately. Abu Khalif had personally threatened them and our entire family. I was glad Matt had texted me to let me know they were now someplace safe. I could only hope that was really true.

  I was not, by any means, a religious man. That was Matt’s thing, not mine. My older brother was the pastor and theologian in the family. I was, you might say, the family’s black sheep. But I loved my brother. I truly wanted him and his wife and kids to be safe. I couldn’t bear the thought of ISIS getting to any of them. So it occurred to me it might be a good idea to pray for them right then, before I fell asleep.

  In the darkness, I closed my eyes and folded my hands like I’d done when I was a little kid, and rarely since.

  “So, hey, God . . . how’s it going?” I began, then felt foolish for sounding so ridiculous. “Look, I don’t really know if you’re there. But if you are, I’m asking you to please—you know—keep my mom safe. And Matt. And Annie. And the kids. I’m scared for them. They haven’t done anything wrong. But I feel like I’ve put their lives in danger. And I’m sorry about that. And I just ask that you, well, protect them, and make sure nothing happens to them. Okay? All right, well, thanks, and good night—or amen—or whatever. Anyway, that’s it. Okay. I’m done. Good-bye.”

  I felt like an idiot. That had to be the worst prayer in the history of prayer. If there was a God in heaven, I was sure he was laughing at me. Well, not sure. The truth was I had no idea what God might be thinking. But as intensely uncomfortable and deeply self-conscious as I felt at that moment, there was also, I had to admit—if only to myself—something vaguely comforting in having tried to have a meaningful conversation with God f
or once in my adult life. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t even really want to think about it, much less analyze it. But it was true. And that made me curious.

  14

  The next thing I knew, Colonel Sharif was trying to wake me up.

  “J. B.? J. B., can you hear me?”

  “What time is it?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes and trying to remember where exactly I was.

  “It’s just after four.”

  “A.m. or p.m.?”

  “A.m.,” he said. “Very a.m.”

  I groaned again, rolled over, and pulled the blanket over my eyes. In this windowless room, there was no evidence it was morning, but regardless, I still needed many more hours of sleep before I could function effectively again.

  “Sorry, J. B.,” the colonel said, not really sounding that apologetic. “I let you sleep as long as I could. But we have breaking news. You need to come into the bunker.”

  He handed me a cup of freshly brewed black coffee, a peace offering of sorts. It worked. The aroma alone helped get me to my feet. Given that I was bald, I didn’t need to worry about how my hair looked, though a shower and a good shave would have been nice before seeing the king and his brother again. But Sharif insisted there was no time. I needed to move quickly. So I threw on my shoes, gulped down some Sumatran Reserve Extra Bold, and followed the colonel to the war room, a fresh MP at our side.

  The bunker was a beehive of activity. The king didn’t look like he’d ever gone to bed, but he had changed out of the suit he’d been wearing at the summit into fatigues. He was in battle mode now, the warrior king, and he looked angry.

  “Collins, take a seat,” he said as he caught my eye and the vault door shut behind me. “Abu Khalif has just sent a new video to Al Jazeera. The network has been told to broadcast it precisely at 6 a.m. local time. But one of their producers contacted the colonel here and suggested we should watch it first.”