The Sinai Secret

TWO

The White House

Washington, D.C.

0423 EST

The ringing of the telephone beside the bed brought Phillip Hansler, the president of the United States, to groggy awareness. He groaned softly as his eyes took in the time on the digital clock next to the phone. As he fumbled the receiver to his ear, he thought the obvious: He was through with sleep for the night. Only his chief of staff had access to this line, and no one called at this hour with good news.

Rather than wake his wife beside him, he sat up without turning on a light. "Yeah?"

"Good morning, Mr. President. The Iranian situation has gotten out of hand. The Joint Chiefs are on their way, should be in the situation room within the next ten minutes."

The president hung up without reply before he slipped from beneath the covers, feet groping for the slippers he had left beside the bed.

"Shall I order up some coffee?" The question came from the mound in the covers beside where he had been.

There was at least a skeleton crew manning the White House kitchen twenty-four hours a day.

The president was shuffling toward the bathroom. "No need. There'll be plenty where I'm headed."

The very mention of the place gave him chills. Far below the White House, the situation room was actually a series of rooms, including bath and kitchen facilities, that had been constructed as an emergency bunker during the Cold War in case an imminent nuclear attack did not allow enough time for the president to evacuate Washington. Equipped with the most advanced communications, it still served as a command post in times of national emergency.

Minutes later the president stood in front of the elevator just outside his private living quarters. He could already hear a cacophony of sirens growing louder. He checked his watch. The military cavalcade and its escorts would be right on time.

As the president entered the conference room, the three commanding generals and one admiral snapped to attention. The president imagined he could hear the jangle of medals. How did these guys get all that brass and ribbon on so quick, anyway? They must have multiple sets, each already pinned to fresh uniforms.

The president gave a cursory nod. "Be seated, gentlemen, please."

Four sets of pressed and starched rear ends plopped into chairs. A white-jacketed orderly appeared with a carafe of coffee and a stack of cups just as the White House chief of staff, the secretaries of state and defense, and the director of intelligence slid into their places.

"Shall we wait until we can find the vice president?" the chief of staff asked.

Not unless you intend to search every single woman's apartment in Washington, the president thought. A widower of two years, the vice president had become difficult to reach on short notice at night and on weekends, behavior that would have to be modified if the man's obvious ambitions were to be realized.

The president shook his head. "Have someone continue to try to reach him. In the meantime let's not keep everyone waiting."

The president gave a grateful nod to the coffee server and took a steaming cup from the tray. "Okay, I know you didn't get me up at this hour for the pleasure of my company." He nodded to Jack Allen, a black navy admiral in his late fifties, the first member of his race to reach that rank and only the second to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"What's up, Jack?"

The admiral pointed to a huge flat-screen monitor displaying the Near East from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. A red dot was moving east to west.

The admiral spoke in a bass so deep the president had remarked that it sounded like it came from somewhere beneath his feet, the voice of an Old Testament prophet. "The picture, Mr. President, is a real-time satellite relay, and represents six K-twelve or SUMA missiles, each capable of carrying ten or more separate warheads, possibly nukes. They were launched from three different sites in the Iranian desert, sites our satellites never picked up. Probably underground."

"Target?"

"Israel. There's nobody else within the K-twelve's range that has a beef with Iran."

The chief of staff leaned forward to look down the table at his boss. "Mr. President, you'll recall last week the Israelis threatened a preemptive strike if Tehran didn't begin destroying its nuclear-capable missiles. Looks like the Iranians have launched first."

"Mr. President?"

A tall, rangy woman of indeterminate age was leaning forward to be seen. With her prominent nose and long, masculine walk, Susan Faulk, secretary of state, often reminded the president of a stork striding through the marsh in pursuit of a juicy frog. Avian or not, the woman was both brilliant and intuitive in recognizing the national interests of both her country and others'. She had predicted that Iran's recent war games had not been an empty show but were fully intended to prepare for offensive action against its enemy, Israel.

The president admired her clarity of thought. "Yes, Susan?"

"We can be certain Prime Minister Konic of Israel is watching, too, already preparing Israel's reply, probably a strike not only at Iran's military installations but oil fields as well. With Russia and China as Iran's biggest customers, we can expect them to jump into this if their supply of fuel is threatened."

"Both Russia and China know we stand firmly behind Israel. They know they act at their peril," the president said. With the millions of Jewish voters and hundreds of millions of their political contributions, no president could do otherwise. He turned back to the military. "How long until those things hit?"

A silver-haired man in air-force blue answered, "Seventeen minutes, ten seconds, Mr. President."

"Anything we can do to shoot 'em down?"

The air force man shook his head. "Not enough time. We'll have to rely on the Israelis for that. We sold them the hardware. Still, I'd anticipate about fifty percent of the intruders will get through."

The president didn't want to even think about the damage thirty nuclear devices could do to the United States, let alone a country as small as Israel.

"Let me make sure I have your consensus here," he said. "We've got an attack, likely nuclear, against Israel.

There's little doubt of retaliation, which will likely bring in China and Russia. Suggestions?"

The secretary of state raised her hand. "Only one choice, Mr. President. You have to contact Prime Minister Konic immediately."

"I'd guess he's sort of busy right now."

"Nonetheless, you have to speak to him, convince him not to strike back, at least not until we can speak to the Russians and Chinese."

It would be easier to convince the hotheaded Israeli to convert to Islam. But, as president, Hansler had to try.

Why the hell had he wanted this job in the first place?

As though someone had read his mind, a warrant officer appeared at the president's side. "Telephone, sir. It's Prime Minister Konic."

A pin dropping would have sounded like an explosion.

"Did you say Prime Minister Konic?"

"Yes, sir."

Skeptically, the president picked up the receiver. "Moshe?"

"Phil!" boomed a voice that sounded like it came from the same room rather than from halfway around the world.

Since becoming president, Hansler had become fast friends with the head of the Israeli nation. The two had enjoyed fly-fishing for trout on the president's Montana ranch as much as socializing at international gatherings. It had been difficult not to lose sight of the fact that all Israeli leaders made a business of getting as close to their American counterparts as possible. Israel's survival depended on it.

"How's Nancy? Your boy about through college this year? Send him over here for a graduation trip!"

The president glanced around the room, aware that Konic's voice was spilling out of the receiver. "Er, Moshe, I take it this isn't a social call?" "Right you are," blared over the connection. "I expected to hear from you-a little matter of those pesky Iranians."

The president would have used another adjective, but he said, "We have the missiles on satellite. Hope the defenses we sent you work."

"Oh, never mind the antimissiles." The man's voice was downright jovial, as though he were telling a favorite story. "We'll be just fine. The reason I called you was to tell you just that-that we'll be okay. No need to go to alert status."

"You mean you don't intend to retaliate, to bomb Iran into the Stone Age?"

"Far as we're concerned, Iran's been in the Stone Age for decades. You checked out their politics? No, no retaliation will be necessary. Go back to sleep."

The president removed the receiver from his ear long enough to glance at it as though he might assay the sanity of the speaker. "No retaliation?"

"For what?"

"For…"

The four-star marine general on his left tugged gently at the president's cuff. "Mr. President…"

The president gave him an annoyed look until he followed where the man was pointing.

There was no longer a dot on the screen.

"See what I mean?" the Israeli statesman asked with a triumphant cackle. "Hang in there!"

"Moshe! What… How did…?"

"Jehovah's will, Phil. Your Bible says faith can move mountains. All we did was make a few missiles go away."

The line went dead.

The air force general was speaking earnestly into a cell phone.

"What the hell happened?" the president asked.

"What did not happen, Mr. President, was a malfunction of the visual equipment. The missiles really disappeared." "You mean the defensive system functioned better than predicted."

"No, Mr. President. The satellite showed no launch of countermissiles. The Iranian hardware just evaporated."

The president slumped deeply back into his chair. "And just how the hell did they do that?"

Silence was his only answer.

"Okay, okay," the president said. "I want to know exactly what took place, why those missiles disappeared, vanished, or whatever. And in the meantime I want a total lid on this. I hear so much as a whisper about tonight, somebody's gonna finish their career counting caribou in Alaska."