The Last Day (4 page)

“Jon, I've got an idea!” Hunter exclaimed, not taking his eyes off the convoy, unconsciously pushing Feldman toward their vehicle.

“Wh—what?” Feldman sputtered as he staggered forward, ill-prepared to move in the precise direction Hunter had suddenly chosen for him.

“I'll drive and you just do exactly as I say…”

In the dust and difficulty of working their convoy through the milling spectators, the military detachment didn't notice another Land Rover slipping deftly into place behind them. Scrambling into his Desert Storm fatigue jacket as he drove, Hunter narrowly skirted a careless millenarian.

Swearing, the cameraman pulled a Gl-issue hat from his bag, plopped it on Feldman's head and pushed a clipboard of papers at him. “Now,” he said, “when we get to the gate, you look real assertive and official-like. I'm gonna blow by the guard and if he gives you any shit, you wave this clipboard at him and shout ‘Containment team!’ in Hebrew. Got it?’

Feldman grinned and nodded his head. “Sure, but I don't know any Hebrew.”

“What do you mean, you don't know any Hebrew?’ Hunter shouted. “You're half Jewish, aren't you? I've heard you speak it before!”

“All I know are a few Yiddish curse words.”

“Then just say it in English, for God's sake. There are plenty enough transplant Jewish consultants working around here. They'll just have to think we're a Jewish-American containment team.”

The vehicles ahead were slowing down. The guards looked each car over before waving them quickly through, preoccupied with holding the civilian onlookers at bay. Feldman was on the passenger side closest to the gate house. Not at all optimistic about this, he sure as hell didn't want to get detained or arrested out here in the middle of the desert on what was supposed to be a relaxing Christmas Day.

Hunter slowed the Rover, taking Feldman right up to the guard. Feldman looked stem and held up the papers while the guard narrowed his eyes at the meaningless forms. Hunter accelerated, the guard opened his mouth to object, Feldman shouted “Containment team!” and they roared off.

“Don't look back,” Hunter warned, watching a befuddled guard recede in the rearview mirror.

If Hunter was as surprised at their good fortune as Feldman, he didn't show it.

Feldman smiled to himself. While he preferred to do things by the book, he appreciated Hunter's brash but effective style. Now they could turn their attention to the direction of the billowing black smoke, the source of which was coming into view.

“Pull around the berm, up that hill,” Feldman pointed. “Let's get a look at this sucker.”

Taking the Rover to the top of a rise inside the grounds, they finally had a good view of the entire disaster. The devastation was massive. Typically, Israeli desert installations were basic and Spartan. But this facility had been impressive. Except for its shattered windows, the V arms of the laboratory were intact. The once enormous dome, however, was reduced to a fractured shell, still smoking and belching hot gas into the night sky.

Feldman turned to see Hunter already scanning the scene with his video camera.

“Let's do a quick take right here,” Hunter suggested, motioning Feldman into position in front of the ruins and running off some fast footage. “I want to stash at least a background tape in case we get noticed.” Finished, he shook the cassette loose from his camera and wedged it under the front seat.

As Hunter began shooting the second tape, an Israeli guard team caught sight of the camera, scrambled a vehicle up the hill and confronted them. The reporters were held at gunpoint for an hour and a half and passed back and forth between uncertain field officers while their press papers were checked and rechecked. Finally convinced the two were nothing more than media nuisances, the Israelis confiscated what they thought was the only videotape and escorted the newsmen in their Rover out of the compound, directing them to a point well beyond the fence.

“No problem.” Hunter grinned at Feldman once they were safely out of reach. “We'll just shoot your sequence from out here with the fire in the background and let the editing team cut back and forth to the footage we stashed.”

Creeping back as close to the perimeter fence as they dared, Hunter switched on his camera and lights, and rolled tape as Feldman, framed by the smoke and flames, delivered an overview of the devastation.

“This is Jon Feldman for WNN reporting from just outside the Israeli Negev Research Institute in southern Israel where a surprise, early Christmas morning missile strike has destroyed a reputed military research installation…”

They had the package to WNN's Jerusalem office in time to make the noon feed. And thanks to a slow news day, Feldman's ruffled, unshaven good looks and reflective, almost shy delivery were served up with Christmas dinner all across the globe.

7

The Vatican, Rome, Italy 4:37
A.M
., Saturday, December 25,1999

S
o far, it bad not been a good day for Pope Nicholas VI. Tired and alone in his chambers with his thoughts, the Holy Father had been up since well before midnight, roused from his sleep by a distressing nightmare of fire, death and destruction that had left him with severe heartburn.

Frowning, the paternal-looking, gray-haired pontiff drew aside the drapery of his balcony window to peer out once more at the multitudes gathering in vast St. Peter's Square. The unrelenting rain, he was certain, had significantly reduced the numbers of faithful come to receive his annual Christmas Day blessing. Unfortunately, this left him with a disproportionately larger crowd of the peculiar millenarian sects that, for weeks now, had been making the Vatican their personal Mecca.

The diminished number of faithful was a disturbing development. For this sacred holiday, Nicholas had been depending on a large turnout of supporters to deflect attention from the millenarians and to help obscure the provocative banners and chants of doomsdays and Second Comings.

Indeed, the media had encouraged the siege by giving the “Romillennians,” as the Roman contingent had come to be known, what they desired most—worldwide exposure. Each news service sought to upstage the other by ferreting out the most outlandish and heretical characters they could find. As a consequence, the media were attracting to Rome the oddest element of fringe-dwelling millenarians Europe had to offer.

Although Jerusalem was a vastly larger center of millennialist activity, most reporters preferred the comforts of Rome. Meaning the Romillennians enjoyed far better access to a far greater number of reporters. And to Nicholas's great chagrin, as he was the most prominent religious leader in the world, the media and the millenarians had carried this foolish, disruptive brouhaha directly to his doorstep.

After much soul-searching, the pontiff had reluctantly canceled a trip to the Middle East during which he was to hold a dramatic convocation on Mount Sinai with Jewish and Muslim hierarchs. Worse, he'd had to postpone the unveiling of his
Millennial Decree,
a condemnation of materialism that Nicholas hoped to make the defining achievement of his new papacy. This urgently prepared ecclesiastical document, with which Nicholas intended to fulfill a very sacred obligation and usher in a more promising new millennium, was to be unveiled January 1. Now it would have to wait for a more receptive climate, such were the frustrations posed by the strange current events.

The situation was only tolerable because the pope and his College of Cardinals were fully aware that this bizarre religious hysteria would be short-lived. Just like the very similar phenomenon that had occurred in
A.D.
999.

This time around, however, with the wisdom of hindsight, the Church was unconcerned about a lasting problem. When the second millennium turned into the third, and January 1 had passed, this current millenarian plague—these one-thousand-year locusts—would disappear as efficiently and completely as its predecessor.

The New Year could not come soon enough for the weary pontiff.

8

U.S. embassy, Tel Aviv, Israel 9:13
P.M
., Saturday, December 25,1999

T
he U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv was an impressive government building in the Roman style, with six large columns at the top of expansive sandstone steps. A spotlessly uniformed valet reluctantly accepted Feldman's Rover from him, put off by the dirt and sand that Feldman never noticed.

There were accolades awaiting inside where the two newsmen arrived unintentionally, but fashionably, late. Having slept through WNN's evening newscast, neither was aware that their Negev Institute report had made lead story. Their first major scoop.

Ascending the grand staircase to the main hall, Feldman and Hunter worked their way through warm greetings from familiar associates and new faces alike, who congratulated them on their freshly achieved stature. A genuinely renowned affair, the U.S. embassy Christmas celebration was originally held in appreciation of Christian consulate members and staff detained in the Jewish state over the holidays. But the Christmas party had grown to include Israeli politicians and government officials, as well as connected media, prominent businesspeople and many of the area well-to-do. A gathering of the elite. Even for the resourceful and persistent Hunter, obtaining two invitations had been no easy feat.

Feldman was not here to dispel any homesickness. Nor was he here for the outstanding cuisine and excellent news contacts. For both Feldman and Hunter, the sole appeal of this event was the prospect of meeting the available young women reputed to make their appearance here. And to the newsmen's complete gratification, the office scuttlebutt, for once, proved accurate. Among the hundreds of elect guests in attendance tonight were some of the most chic and beautiful women the two reporters had encountered since arriving in this foreign land. Hunter and Feldman exchanged pleased glances.

“A veritable trove of nubility,” Hunter quipped, mock-posturing like a sophisticate. Spotting a tempting quarry, the cameraman disengaged from Feldman with a self-announcing, “He's sexy, he's single, he's made to mingle!”

Feldman smiled and shook his head with a slight twinge of envy as he watched his friend assimilate himself promptly into the crowd. It was so much simpler for Hunter. Feldman's love life in the Middle East had been less than satisfactory. It was partly due to his hectic lifestyle, where spontaneous news opportunities and pressing deadlines allowed little time for sociable activities or meaningful encounters. But mostly, if truth be told, it was simply because he was far more discriminating than Hunter.

In leaving America, Feldman had left no special love interest behind. Not for lack of candidates—his honest, handsome features, affable nature and appealing wit having always attracted a fair amount of female interest. It was that he harbored a stubbornness about making serious personal commitments, a perspective he had acquired at a young age witnessing the turbulent unraveling of his parents’ marriage.

Consequently, while he very much enjoyed the company of bright and attractive women, he ultimately avoided lasting entanglements. Before he'd allow a promising new relationship to take off, he invariably did so himself. Not maliciously or to intentionally inflict pain, but as a form of self-protection. And tonight, Feldman was ready to start the empty cycle anew.

It should prove far easier for him this evening, now that he'd become an instant, if somewhat uncomfortable, celebrity. The Negev installation attack, of course, was the hot topic, and the young reporter was in constant demand. Speculations and rumors abounded that the installation was some secret military complex where strange and extraordinary research had been taking place. Everyone wanted more information and no one would accept the fact that Feldman was sharing all he knew.

But Feldman was currently more interested in some extraordinary research of his own. A quick visual survey of the crowd couldn't confirm if an interesting young woman he'd once met was here. It was a long shot. She was a graduate student in journalism, he presumed. This intriguing individual had come to Feldman's attention during a guest lecture he'd given at the University of Tel Aviv a month ago.

In his concluding question-and-answer session, Feldman had experienced a short but rather lively exchange with an attractive, dark-eyed woman with a slight French accent. It amounted to a difference of opinion regarding how much personal slant a reporter should reasonably interject into a story.

In her opinion, the West's “male-dominated club” of journalists was so obsessed with being objective in their reporting that they sanitized the truth out of stories. She had proposed that journalists not be afraid to take moral stands in their coverage of important issues, and that they play more active roles in promoting positive political and social change.

Feldman had responded with the standard line that facts must be allowed to speak for themselves, and that a reporter's job is merely to report, not to interpret. Unintentionally, he'd allowed this spirited woman the last word—an offhanded remark about “the fraternity of journalism not having enough collective testosterone to really get firm on any given issue.”

But there had been no venom in her delivery. Rather, there was a not-so-subtle flirtanousness to it, catching him off-balance and completely sidetracking his train of thought. In the pause before he could collect himself, audience laughter segued into applause, he was summarily thanked by the presiding professor, and his female counterpoint had dissolved into the dispersing crowd.

Feldman had not been embarrassed so much by the affront to his masculinity in front of a hundred students and professors. No, he'd been flustered mostly because this outspoken woman had playfully pinched him on his journalistic ass. To Feldman, that had made things considerably more personal. And challenging.

With one eye out for Mystery Woman, he basked in what he knew only too well would be a brief limelight. More talk about the attack. More rumors about what the Negev installation had really been. More opinions about who was responsible for the missile strike and how the Israeli Defense Force, which never let any aggression go unanswered, might retaliate. And on.