Tehran, Iran
November 4, 1979
Charlie Harper was still five or six hundred yards from the compound, but he was alone; even if he could fight his way through the rapidly growing mob, he still had no plan to rescue those trapped inside.
He could hear gunfire. He could taste the acrid stench of thick, black smoke rising into the crisp, early morning air. He could feel the searing heat of the bonfires as American flags and tires and someone’s overturned car were being torched all around him. He could see the rage in the eyes of the young men-thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, bearded, shouting, screaming, out of control-surrounding the embassy and threatening to overrun its grounds. He just had no idea what to do.
It was the twenty-six-year-old’s first assignment with the State Department. He was the most junior political officer in the country and had no field experience. He and his beautiful, spirited young bride, Claire, had been married only a year. They’d been in Tehran since September 1-barely two months. He didn’t even know the names of most of his colleagues behind the compound walls. But though he increasingly feared for their safety, he still refused to believe that he was personally in mortal danger.
How could he be? Charles David Harper loved Iran in a way that made little sense to him, much less to his bride. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he hadn’t known anyone from Iran. He’d never been here before. He’d never even been close. But inexplicably he had fallen in love with the Persian people somewhere along the way. He loved the complexity of this ancient, exotic culture. He loved the mysterious rhythm of modern Tehran, even filled as it was with religious extremists and militant secularists. And he especially loved the food-khoroshte fesenjoon was his latest favorite, a savory stew of roast lamb, pomegranates, and walnuts, which the Shirazis, their next-door neighbors-God bless them-had already made for him and Claire twice since they had arrived at this post.
The language of Iran had been a joy for Charlie to absorb and master. He’d picked up Farsi quickly as an undergraduate at Stanford. He’d sharpened it carefully in graduate school at Harvard. When he joined the State Department upon graduation, he’d been placed immediately on the fast track to become a Foreign Service officer, was rushed through basic diplomatic training, and was sent to Tehran for his first assignment. He’d been thrilled every step along the way. Thrilled with using Farsi every day. Thrilled with being thrown into a highly volatile political cauldron. Thrilled with trying to understand the dynamic of Khomeini’s revolution from the inside. And convinced that the sooner he could get his sea legs, the sooner he could truly help Washington understand and navigate the enormous social and cultural upheaval under way inside Iran.
The violent outbursts of the students, Charlie was convinced, were spasmodic. This one would pass like a summer thunderstorm, as all the others had. The dark clouds would pass. The sun would come out again. They just needed to be patient. As a couple. As a country.
Charlie glanced at his watch. It was barely six thirty in the morning. Since hearing on the radio back at his apartment the initial reports of trouble, he’d been running flat out for nearly nine blocks, but that was no longer possible-too many people and too little space. As he inched his way forward, he could see the top floors of the chancery, not far from Roosevelt Gate, the embassy’s main entrance, but he knew he’d never make it there from this side. He’d have to find another way inside-perhaps through the consulate offices in the compound’s northwest corner.
Winded, his soaked shirt sticking to his back, Charlie shifted gears. He began trying to move laterally through the mob. His relative youth, dark hair, and dark brown eyes-a gift from his mother’s Italian heritage-seemed to help him blend in somewhat, though he suddenly wished he had a beard. And a gun.
He could feel the situation steadily deteriorating. The Marines were nowhere to be seen. They were no longer guarding the main gate or even patrolling the fence, so far as he could tell. He assumed they had pulled back to defend the buildings on the compound-the chancery, the ambassador’s house, the house of the deputy chief of mission, the consulate, and the warehouse (aka, “Mushroom Inn”), along with various other offices and the motor pool. Charlie wasn’t a military man, but he figured that decision was probably wise tactically. He could feel the mass of bodies surging forward, again and again. It wouldn’t be long before these wild-eyed students burst through the gate.
Would the Marines open fire when that finally happened? How could they? It would be a bloodbath. And yet how could they not? Many of the young men around him had pistols. Some had rifles. Some of them were already firing into the air. What if the students actually opened fire on American diplomats? The Marines would be compelled to return fire. Events could quickly spin out of control.
The roar of the crowd was deafening. Some fool, perched atop the perimeter wall, was shouting, “Death to America!” through a bullhorn. The frenetic, feverish crowd lapped up every word and chanted it back again and again, louder every time.
Charlie was finally making progress, and as he elbowed his way through the horde, he couldn’t help but think how ugly the embassy’s squat brick buildings were. The entire campus, in fact, looked like some cookie-cutter American public high school from the forties or fifties. It had even been dubbed “Henderson High” after Loy Wesley Henderson, the U.S. ambassador to Iran from 1951 to 1954. It was hardly a prize architecturally. But there was no question it would be a gold mine of intelligence for the radicals loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini if they actually got inside before his fellow FSOs burned and shredded all their documents.
Someone grabbed Charlie from behind. He spun around and found himself staring into the bloodshot eyes of an unshaven zealot probably five years younger but five inches taller than him.
“You-you’re an American!” the student screamed in Farsi.
Heads turned. Charlie felt himself suddenly surrounded. He noticed the kid’s right hand balling up into a fist. He saw into the kid’s vacant eyes, and for the first time, Charlie Harper feared for his life.
“Vous êtes fou. Je suis de Marseille!” he screamed back in flawless French, calling the kid crazy and claiming to be from France’s largest commercial seaport.
The vehemence of Charlie’s response and the fact that he wasn’t speaking English caught the student off guard. The kid went blank for a moment. He obviously didn’t speak French and for a split second seemed unsure how to proceed.
Charlie’s mind raced. He suddenly realized how quickly he’d be a dead man if these radicals discovered he was an American. He was tempted to kick the kid in the groin and dash off into the crowd. But there were now at least six or seven others just as large and every bit as angry.
One of them began to move against him, but just then a pickup truck filled with other young men-masked and screaming-hopped a curb and came barreling through the crowd. The driver laid on the horn and people went diving for cover. The truck screeched to a halt just to Charlie’s right. The young men in the back began firing machine guns in the air, and then, as the crowd finally cleared a direct path, the driver gunned the engine and drove headlong into Roosevelt Gate. The wrought-iron barricade crumpled in a twisted heap, and thousands of enraged students cheered and screamed and poured onto the embassy grounds as if they’d been shot from a cannon.
As quickly as he’d been grabbed, Charlie now found himself set free as his would-be attackers abandoned him and followed the crowd through the hole in the gates. His heart racing, adrenaline coursing through his veins, Charlie realized he’d been given an opportunity to escape. He seized the moment and began moving in the opposite direction, away from the main gate and toward a side street. He was still having trouble maneuvering through the rampaging mob, but moments later, he rounded the corner and caught a glimpse of the entrance to the consulate.
It was shut tight. He hesitated for a moment. Should he head there still? Should he try to get inside and help whoever was trapped there? The staff inside was mostly comprised of women who handled visa issues eight hours a day, day after day, year after year. They weren’t trained to handle revolutions. They had to be terrified. But could he really help them, or would he more likely be caught and brutalized instead?
Just then, he saw two consular employees quickly exit a side door. Elated, he was about to call out to them when a group of masked students armed with rifles came racing around the corner and surrounded the two young women. They jumped on them and began beating them mercilessly.
Charlie’s anger boiled. But there was nothing he could do. He was alone. He was unarmed. And again he thought of Claire back in their apartment-alone, terrified, and three and a half months pregnant.
The twenty-minute journey home took two hours.
Cautiously working his way through the clogged streets-and purposefully taking a circuitous route, checking constantly to see if anyone was following him-Charlie eventually made it back to apartment 902 in the upscale high-rise with the spectacular views of the Tehran skyline. He burst through the door, quickly locked it behind him, and hearing the AM radio still on in the bedroom, headed there to find his wife.
“Charlie, are you okay?” Claire said breathlessly, jumping up to embrace him.
“Yes,” he whispered, holding her close. “But what about you?”
“I’ve been terrified about you,” she whispered back, beginning to cry. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he said as quietly and lovingly as he could. “But I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m all right, just a little shaken up.”
It was a lie. He wasn’t fine. He was scared and unsure what to do next. But as guilty as he felt about lying to the woman he loved, he worried for her and the precious life growing within her.
“Are you still bleeding?” he asked.
“A little,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”
It was Claire’s first pregnancy, and it hadn’t been easy. She’d suffered with violent morning sickness for the first couple of months and had lost nearly twenty pounds from an already-slight frame. More stress wasn’t exactly what the doctor had ordered for her or the baby.
Claire took a few deep breaths and tried to steady herself. Then pressed harder against him and spoke into his ear. “They’re saying a firefight has erupted outside the compound; they’re saying several people are dead and that dozens more are wounded. Is that true?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Everything’s so chaotic. I wouldn’t know what to believe at this point.”
No sooner had the words left his lips than came a special bulletin over Radio Tehran.
“We have a woman on the line who claims to have important news on the student uprising downtown,” the announcer said. “Okay, you’re on the air. What is your name?”
“I am one of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line.”
“Yes, I understand, but what’s your name?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is our movement.”
“Fine,” the announcer said. “Where exactly are you calling from, and what is it that you want to say?”
“I am calling you from inside the American Embassy.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. The announcer seemed flustered. “What? Inside the… That doesn’t make any… Repeat what you just said. Is this a joke?”
“It is not a joke. We have occupied the American Embassy, the den of espionage. We have occupied every building. Every floor. I am presently standing behind the desk of the ambassador.”
“Come now,” the announcer said, incredulous. “We know the students have penetrated the outer walls and are protesting on the grounds of the compound. We’ve been reporting this for several hours. But we have no reports of any students getting inside one of the buildings.”
“Now you do.”
“But you cannot be in the ambassador’s office. You must be kidding.”
“I am not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can prove it.”
“How?”
“Look in the telephone directory and find the embassy number,” the woman directed. “Then dial extension 8209 for the ambassador’s office.”
There was a long pause. Charlie turned to Claire to see how she was doing. But she didn’t return his gaze. She was fixated on the radio, almost as if in a trance. A moment later, the radio announcer could be heard flipping through a directory, then dialing the phone. It rang. And then…
“You have reached the United States Embassy in Tehran,” a woman’s voice said, first in English, then in Farsi. “The embassy is presently closed. Our office hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday through Thursday. The consulate is open for visa requests from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Sunday through Thursday. If you know the number of the person you are trying to reach…”
A moment later, the announcer had dialed through to the ambassador’s office and got the same woman back on the line.
“So it is true,” he said, astonished.
“So it is.”
“This is serious news. Okay, what is your message?”
“I have a communiqué,” the young woman said calmly.
“Very well, proceed. Let us hear it.”
“Communiqué Number One: In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate…”
She then quoted from a statement Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini-the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran-had said just the day before. “… it is incumbent upon students to forcefully expand their attacks against America and Israel, so that America will be forced to return the criminal, deposed Shah.”
Then she read a lengthy statement prepared by the students. Several lines jumped out at Charlie.
“We Muslim students, followers of Imam Khomeini, have occupied the espionage embassy of America in protest against the ploys of the imperialists and the Zionists. We announce our protest to the world, a protest against America for granting asylum and employing the criminal Shah while it has on its hands the blood of tens of thousands of women and men in this country…”
When the propaganda piece was finished, Charlie asked, “Where’s the utility box?”
“Why?” Claire asked.
He asked again, ignoring her question.
“It’s in the closet,” Claire replied. “But what do you need it for?”
He gently pulled away from her, headed into the closet, fished out a steel case about the size of a carry-on piece of luggage, and began to leave the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” she asked, a bit too loudly, an edge of panic now in her voice.
Charlie turned quickly and motioned for Claire to lower her voice. Then he took her by the hand and proceeded to the kitchen. There, in the tiny, windowless room, he moved aside a pitcher of pomegranate juice and several glasses sitting in the center of their table for two and set down the utility box. He dialed in the lock combination and opened the case. It was the first time Claire had ever seen what was inside, and she gasped as Charlie pulled out a sidearm and ammunition.
“Charlie, what-?”
“It’s just a precaution,” he tried to reassure her. “I’m sure this will all be over soon.”
She didn’t look convinced. And why should she be? Claire Harper was no idiot. She held a master’s degree from Harvard and had graduated summa cum laude from the business school; Charlie had managed only cum laude honors from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Though Claire was presently on sick leave because of her challenging pregnancy, she had been assigned to serve as the embassy’s deputy economic attaché. Her Farsi wasn’t as fluent as Charlie’s, but everyone they knew at the embassy was impressed with how much progress she had made in such a short time. She wasn’t ready to give a speech yet, but she was certainly conversational. Indeed, she was already building a friendship with, swapping recipes with, and learning to cook from the wife of the Iranian cardiologist who lived in the apartment next door-the woman who made such mouthwatering Persian stew. Claire and Mrs. Shirazi had made a pact to speak only Farsi when they were together. It was challenging, but it was already paying off.
Charlie now removed from the utility chest a small box that looked like an alarm clock along with a set of simple headphones.
“What is that?” Claire whispered.
“It’s a radio.”
“We already have a radio.”
“This one’s different.”
“How?”
Charlie paused. There were secrets in his job he wasn’t authorized to share, even with his wife. But with events moving so rapidly, it was time to loosen the restrictions a little.
“This one lets me listen in on the frequency the Marines are using inside the embassy.”
Claire had no poker face, and her eyes betrayed the fears rising inside her. She wasn’t a fan of secrets. He wasn’t much of a fan either. But the simple fact was that his position in the Foreign Service was decidedly different from hers, and that difference just might keep them alive.
Charlie set up the specialized radio, plugged in the headphones, and began listening to the cross traffic. His pulse quickened instantly as he immediately heard gunfire, cursing, and shouting.
“Bravo Six, this is Tango Tango; what’s your twenty?”
“Main vault, Tango.”
“How many?”
“I’ve got nine with me-there’s ten of us total.”
“You guys okay?”
“Negative, Tango. I’ve got one with a bullet wound to the leg. Several with serious lacerations on their faces and hands from shattered glass.”
“Bogeys?”
“Dozens, sir.”
“What are they doing?”
“Pounding on the door with sledgehammers, sir. They’re demanding I let them in or-”
“Can you hold your position, Bravo Six?”
“I don’t know, sir. We have no food or water.”
“What about the documents?”
“Shredding them now, sir. But it’s going slow.”
Suddenly Charlie felt the color draining from his face.
Claire saw it. “What is it?”
He just stood there shaking his head in disbelief.
“What? What’s happening?” she pressed.
“There was just a massive explosion,” he whispered. “People are screaming. I’ve never…”
“Who? Where?”
“Rick, Phil, Cort-I’m not sure who else. They’re hiding in the main vault, in the chancery. But I think the students just blew the doors off.”
Charlie slowly took off the headphones and handed them to his wife, but she refused to put them on. She had neither the training nor the stomach for this.
“It’s all going to be okay, isn’t it, Charlie?” Claire asked. “Like February. It’s going to be like the Valentine’s Day thing-short and done, right?”
Charlie said nothing. He knew in his gut this wasn’t anything like the February 14 event, dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Open House by the other Foreign Service officers. Just nine months before, a much smaller group of students-a few hundred, perhaps-had briefly jumped the embassy’s fence, stormed into a few buildings, held them for a couple of hours, made a fuss, made their point, and then gone home after the Khomeini regime insisted that they do so.
Claire was right; the Valentine’s Day incident had been short-lived. It had all happened before they’d arrived, but it was obvious that the effect on the decision makers in Washington had been enormous. Rather than inserting more Marines and engineers to harden and defend the American Embassy-thus sending an unequivocal message that such an assault against American sovereign territory in the heart of Tehran would never be tolerated again-the bureaucrats back at the White House and State Department had panicked. They’d reduced the embassy’s staff from nearly a thousand to barely sixty. The Pentagon had shown a similar lack of resolve. The number of U.S. military forces in-country had been drawn down from about ten thousand active-duty troops to almost none.
The only reason Charlie had been sent in-especially as green as he was-was because he happened to be one of the few men in the entire U.S. diplomatic corps who was actually fluent in Farsi. None of the three CIA guys on site even spoke the language. How was that possible? The whole notion of State Department and CIA personnel being inside a country whose language they didn’t speak seemed ludicrous to Charlie. How could one government understand another-much less build a healthy, positive, long-lasting relationship-without at least being able to talk in the other’s heart language? It couldn’t, Charlie knew, and now Washington was about to pay the piper.
“Get the suitcases,” Charlie ordered.
Claire looked at him as if he’d just slapped her in the face.
“That’s crazy,” she shot back, barely in a whisper. “What for?”
“Pack one for me, one for you,” Charlie continued matter-of-factly. “Just essentials; keep it light.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, moving curtly to the sink and beginning to wash their breakfast dishes. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Ten minutes,” he said calmly. “I’ll gather our money and personal documents, get the car, and meet you at the back entrance.” Then he left the kitchen and headed to the bedroom.
“Charles David Harper, have you completely lost your mind?” she shouted after him, her voice taut with anger. “I’m not going out there, and neither are you. It’s not safe. We’re better off staying here.”
Charlie came back around the corner as Claire turned to the sink again, pulled her hair into a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, and continued washing their matching maroon U.S. Embassy in Tehran coffee mugs.
He turned her around sharply and put his hand over her mouth. “We are leaving now,” he said as quietly as he could but with an intensity he knew Claire had never heard before. “Don’t you get it, Claire? Khomeini’s thugs have the entire embassy. They have the vaults. They have the files. They know who I am, and they’re going to want information I can give them. Right now they’re taking a roll call of every employee. When they find we’re missing, they’re going to look up our address. If it’s been destroyed, they’re going to put a gun to the head of Liz Swift. If she doesn’t give us up, they’re going to kill her in front of everyone else. Then they’re going to ask Mike Metrinko. If he doesn’t give us up, they’re going to kill him. Then they’re going to turn to John Limbert. And they’re going to keep killing people until someone breaks. I don’t know who it will be. But someone’s going to give them our address, and then they’re coming for us. And what do you think is going to happen next, Claire? Do you think they’re going to torture me?”
Terrified, Claire shrugged, her big brown eyes filling rapidly with tears.
“They’re not. I’m a six-foot-two, hundred-and-seventy-pound, former all-American point guard who speaks Farsi and has a Colt.45 on the kitchen table. No, they’re not going to torture me. They’re going to torture you, my love,” he said, “until I start talking… And if they find out you’re pregnant…”
Claire was trembling.
“I would never let it get to that point,” Charlie assured her, his own eyes welling up with tears. “I couldn’t. I’d tell them everything. But honestly, I fear they’d still torture you anyway. That’s who we’re dealing with. I’m sorry, sweetheart. But there’s no way this ends well. Unless we leave-right now.”
He paused a moment, then let go of her mouth and wiped his eyes.
Claire immediately grabbed him and held him tightly. After a moment she stepped back and looked intently at her husband. She had been trembling, but now she seemed calm. “Ten minutes?” she asked.
Charlie nodded.
“I’ll be ready,” she promised.
Ten minutes later, Charlie eased their black Buick Skylark onto Ferdowsi Avenue, dubbed “Embassy Row” by local diplomats.
Were other Western missions under siege, he wondered, or just his own?
The boulevard was as congested as ever, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. No protests. No demonstrations. No presidents or prime ministers being burned in effigy here, even though hideous mock-ups of President Carter were being torched just a few blocks away. It was odd. They were so close to the student mob, but here he could detect no hostilities of any kind. Still, Charlie could tell Claire was getting anxious. If they were going to get out of this city, they needed to do it quickly.
“Where will we go?” she asked her husband.
“I’m not sure,” Charlie conceded. “Even if we could make it to the airport, they’d never let us out of the country. Especially not with U.S. diplomatic passports.”
“How about Turkey?” Claire asked hopefully.
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “The nearest border is hundreds of miles away. And again, even if we could get that far without being detected, the military would never let us pass.”
“Well, we can’t just hover here, Charlie. It’s too dangerous.”
“I know,” he said. “I just had to see…”
There was no point finishing his sentence. Claire knew as well as he did that he hadn’t really needed to come to Embassy Row. The Iranians weren’t angry at the rest of the Western powers. The British hadn’t welcomed the despised Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into their country, even if it was “just” for medical treatment of an old man on his deathbed. Nor had the Turks or the Germans. Only the U.S. government had done that. Was it worth it?
“Turn here,” Claire said without warning.
Charlie took the advice and made a hard right on Kushk e-Mesri. He maneuvered the roomy four-door sedan down the narrow side street, knowing she was trying to get them off a major thoroughfare, where they ran a much higher risk of being spotted by uniformed police or plainclothes intelligence agents. But what she’d just done instead was head them straight into the campus of Tehran Technical School. It was an innocent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.
Another hotbed of radicalism in the capital, the campus and its adjacent streets were jammed with students. Just finished with their midday prayers, they were now chanting and marching. Some were firing machine guns into the air. Charlie could feel the same violent spirit that had pervaded the scene around the embassy, and he immediately slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt. Jamming the car into reverse, he gunned the engine and began to back up but was cut off by a VW van filled with students that had come up behind them. The VW’s driver suddenly began screaming something about their American car, and six young men jumped out, carrying wooden sticks and metal pipes.
“Lock your doors, Claire,” Charlie ordered, doing the same on his side.
Wild-eyed, the students surrounded the Buick, taunting and cursing them.
“Charlie, do something,” Claire said, clutching her purse with her passport and valuables to her chest.
The students began rocking the car from side to side, trying to overturn it, but it was too heavy.
“Charlie, for heaven’s sake, do something!”
“Like what?” he shouted back, genuine fear in his voice. “If I drive this car forward or back, I’ll run over someone. Is that what you want?”
A young woman-no more than seventeen or eighteen-was pouring something all over their car.
“Of course not,” Claire said. “I’m just saying…”
Charlie smelled gasoline. He knew what was coming next.
At that moment, Claire cried out, doubled over, and grabbed her abdomen.
“Honey, what is it?” Charlie asked.
Claire didn’t look up. She was screaming in pain.
Just then one of the students took a steel pipe and smashed the passenger-side window. Glass flew everywhere. Blood streaked down Claire’s face. Then the student grabbed her and tried to pull her out of the car. Claire, tangled in her seat belt, screamed louder.
Charlie was screaming too. He grabbed Claire’s arm, the one closest to him, and tried to pull her back into the car. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young woman who had poured the gasoline light a match and toss it onto the now-soaked hood. Suddenly the car was engulfed in flames.
The heat was unbearable. Charlie feared the Buick’s full tank could explode at any moment. Seeing his briefcase on the floor by Claire’s feet, he reached for it, ripped it open, and pulled out the pistol.
He saw another student heave a brick through their back window. More flying glass filled the car.
Charlie pivoted, took aim, and fired at the attacker, dropping him with a single shot. Then he turned back to the student mauling his wife and double-tapped him to the head.
Three shots in three seconds-the crowd began to scatter. But the gasoline-fed flames had now reached the rear of the Skylark and were already consuming the backseat. Charlie knew he was out of time. He threw open the driver’s-side door, jumped out, moved quickly to the passenger side, and pulled his wife’s limp body out of the flames and laid her down on the sidewalk as far from the burning car as he could. She was covered in blood. It wasn’t just the cuts to her face. Something else was terribly wrong.
Charlie feared the worst.
He crouched beside the woman he loved, the woman who had swept him off his feet the moment they’d first met at a Harvard Crimson football game. She wasn’t moving.
Charlie’s eyes blurred as he carefully rolled her onto her back, wiped blood from her mouth, and pushed strands of her brown hair from her eyes. His hands trembled as he held his breath and checked her pulse. Finding one startled him and gave him a shot of adrenaline. She wasn’t dead. He scanned the suddenly deserted street. He could still see a huge crowd of students demonstrating on the campus. But that was a ways off. Everyone in the immediate vicinity was gone-except the bodies of the two he had shot. The gunfire had scared everyone away.
Then he saw the VW bus. It was still running.
He scooped his wife up in his arms, carried her to the VW, and set her carefully on the floor in the back. Then he jumped into the driver’s seat, locked the doors, slammed the vehicle into reverse, and gunned the engine just as the Skylark exploded into the sky.
Charlie knew fire trucks and ambulances would be there soon. So would the police.
Still driving backward, he got a safe-enough distance away from the raging wreckage of their Buick, then carefully slowed to a stop, did a three-point turn, jammed the VW into second gear, and sped away from the scene of the crime. He was now convinced that Claire was having a miscarriage. He needed a hospital and knew he was just blocks away from Sayeed-ash-Shohala hospital, one of the city’s best. But he couldn’t possibly take her there now. No hospital or medical clinic was safe. He couldn’t run the risk of being exposed and captured by forces loyal to Khomeini. Especially now that he’d just gunned down two student radicals. They’d hang him or put him in front of a firing squad, either of which would be merciful compared to what they’d do to his wife.
Panicked and helpless, Charlie drove aimlessly through the streets of Tehran. He had no idea what to do, where to turn. He passed Shahr Park, one of his favorites, where he and Claire had often strolled and taken picnic lunches. He passed the Golestan Palace, one of the oldest and most beautiful complexes of historical monuments in the capital, dating back to the sixteenth century. But all the joy of being in this exotic country was now gone.
As he drove, Charlie cursed Iran. He cursed the Ayatollah. He cursed the Revolution. His wife was dying. The fanatical followers of the imam were trying to kill him, too. Everything he believed about the efficacy of diplomacy and “building bridges of friendship among the nations of the world” had just gone up in the flames of his government-issued sedan.
But then the name Mohammad Shirazi came to mind.
Charlie immediately tried to banish it from his thoughts. It was crazy. The man might be his neighbor, but he was an Iranian. He was a Muslim. The man’s wife, Nasreen, might be a fantastic chef, and she seemed to have taken a real liking to Claire-even caring for Claire sacrificially on some of the worst days of her morning sickness-but the Shirazis were Shias. They were enemies now.
Still, Mohammad was a doctor-an impressive cardiologist. He was young, to be sure-no more than thirty, Charlie guessed-but highly regarded throughout the city. His practice was not far away. Charlie and Claire had actually been there just a few weeks earlier for a little party celebrating the grand opening of Mohammad’s new, state-of-the-art medical clinic. Perhaps he should head there and ask for help. It was risky, but what choice did he have? The Shirazis might be his only hope.
Charlie eased off the gas, downshifted, slowed to a safe speed, and did an illegal U-turn. Six blocks later, he pulled into the parking lot beside Dr. Shirazi’s clinic. He saw only three cars, one of which he knew to be his neighbor’s. Charlie glanced in his rearview mirror. A truck filled with soldiers was passing and slowed as it did. Charlie put his head down and held his breath. The truck stopped for a moment. Charlie wasn’t sure he even believed in God, but he said a silent prayer anyway, begging for mercy for himself, for his wife, and for the little life in her womb. A moment later, the soldiers sped away.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Charlie pulled the VW close to the clinic’s back door and turned off the engine. Then he slipped inside the clinic and found himself face-to-face with a woman receptionist who was veiled and clearly devout. In the waiting room, the TV was on. Regular programming had been interrupted by news of the latest developments at the American Embassy.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked in Farsi.
“I need to see Dr. Shirazi,” Charlie replied in kind.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” he stammered. “But I’m a friend-a neighbor, actually. And it’s a bit of an emergency.”
“What kind of an emergency?”
Charlie didn’t want to say. Not to this woman. Not now. But he didn’t know what else to do. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Charlie glanced at his watch. He had to move fast. Claire needed serious medical attention and quickly-before the secret police tracked down the VW. He glanced around the room. There was just one older man sitting in the waiting room to his left, watching the TV coverage and shaking his head. He didn’t look religious. He didn’t look angry. Perhaps Charlie could take a chance, he thought. Perhaps he could…
Just then Charlie heard Dr. Shirazi’s voice calling to his receptionist. “Who is my next patient?”
Charlie turned his head and saw his neighbor stepping out of his office, and surprise registered on the man’s face.
“Charlie Harper?” he said. “What a pleasure to see you, my friend.”
The doctor greeted Charlie with a traditional Persian hug and a kiss on both cheeks.
“Is everything all right, Charlie?” Dr. Shirazi asked, looking at the bloodstains on his shirt and pants.
“I must speak to you privately,” Charlie blurted out.
The office phone started ringing.
“Yes, of course. Is this blood? What happened?”
Charlie shook his head and lowered his voice, hoping neither the receptionist nor the old man in the waiting room would be able to hear him, though he couldn’t help but notice the receptionist’s intensifying curiosity. The phone kept ringing.
“It’s not me, Dr. Shirazi. It’s Claire.”
“What’s wrong? Where is she?”
“She’s in the car, right outside,” Charlie whispered. “Could you come for a moment and take a look at her?”
Dr. Shirazi readily agreed, telling his receptionist to go ahead and answer the phone and take a message, and he would be right back. She finally picked up the phone as the two men moved quickly to the door.
A moment later, Charlie watched the horrified expression on Dr. Shirazi’s face as he opened the side door of the VW bus and found Claire soaked in blood.
Charlie quickly explained what had happened.
“We need to get Claire to the hospital,” the doctor said.
“No,” Charlie said. “That’s not possible.”
“You have no choice,” Dr. Shirazi said.
“Haven’t you been watching the coverage of the embassy this morning?”
“No,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “I’ve been with patients all morning.”
“The embassy has been overrun. The staff is being held hostage. Some may have been killed. The rest of us are being hunted.”
Shirazi’s face paled. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. I had no idea. But your wife needs a blood transfusion or she’s going to die. She needs an ob-gyn. That’s not my specialty. I can’t help her.”
“You have to,” Charlie insisted. “And then we’re leaving the country.”
“That’s impossible. Even if you could get through security at the airport, your wife would never survive the flight.”
“Please, Dr. Shirazi, I need you to take care of her-privately, without anyone knowing. I’ll pay whatever it costs.”
“Charlie, you don’t understand. I’m a cardiologist. Your wife has a dying child in her womb. She is dying too. I can’t-”
Charlie grabbed the man by his shoulders and looked deeply into his eyes. “Dr. Shirazi, listen to me. I love your country. You know I do. It was once a paradise. But something evil has happened, something neither of us understands. I’m telling you, if Claire and I are caught by this regime, they will try us, and they will kill us on statewide television for the whole country and the whole world to see. That’s not going to happen. I don’t care about myself. But so help me God, I will never let one of them lay so much as a finger on Claire. Now please, I’m begging you as my friend, help me. I don’t have anywhere else to turn.”
The two men stared into each other’s eyes.
“You’re right,” the doctor finally conceded. “I’m sorry. You and Claire deserve better. So does your country. This is not the Iran I grew up in. I don’t even recognize this place anymore.”
The back door burst open. It was the receptionist, calling for her boss.
“I asked you to hold my calls,” Dr. Shirazi replied.
“Yes, sir, but it’s your wife, sir. She says it’s urgent.”
Charlie saw the conflict in his friend’s eyes. “Go,” he said. “Take the call.”
Charlie was fast losing hope, but what else could he say? He sensed a measure of warmth and compassion in Dr. Shirazi that he deeply appreciated. The doctor seemed genuinely to want to help him. Time was running out, but Charlie didn’t want to do anything that would make his friend upset.
A moment later, Dr. Shirazi came back to the VW. “Nasreen has been watching events on television. She says you’re right. You can’t go to a hospital. She says I should bring you there.”
“There?” Charlie asked, perplexed. “Where’s there?”
“The embassy.”
Charlie just stared at the man. Was he trying to make a joke? If so, it was cruel in the extreme, yet he looked earnest.
“Embassy?” Charlie finally asked. “What embassy?”
“The Canadians,” Shirazi replied. “They’re preparing to evacuate most of their staff. They’re worried they might be next.”
They heard sirens approaching.
“Your wife works for the Canadian Embassy?” Charlie asked, wondering why he’d never heard this before.
“Of course,” the doctor said. “I told you that.”
“No, you said she was a translator for the U.N.”
“Yes,” Dr. Shirazi said, “she used to work for the Foreign Ministry on U.N. issues. But she got a new job. Last month. I told you that. I’m sure I did. She began doing some contract work for the Canadians. She says there are a few more Americans who’ve just arrived. They’re hiding there now. She says if we can get there in the next fifteen minutes, she’ll have the medical unit on standby for Claire.”
“And then?” Charlie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What happens to us after that?”
“I don’t know, my friend,” Dr. Shirazi said. “One step at a time.”
With great care, Charlie and Dr. Shirazi lifted Claire and transferred her from the VW bus to the plush leather backseat of the doctor’s roomy Mercedes sedan. Charlie then got into the VW and followed Shirazi a few blocks away to an alley behind a small manufacturing plant that made women’s shoes. There, Charlie quickly wiped down both the interior and exterior of the vehicle to erase fingerprints and any other forensic evidence as best he could, then ditched the VW. He climbed into the backseat of the Mercedes and held his wife as Shirazi sped to the residence of the Canadian ambassador.
Nasreen, six Canadian security officers, and a team of medics met them at the rear gate. Charlie had to surrender his pistol, but they were all quickly let inside, and Claire was whisked into surgery. Charlie started to follow but was asked to wait in the residence. The Shirazis waited with him. They were offered food but couldn’t eat. They were offered drinks but had no interest.
As the tense and lonely hours passed with no word about Claire’s condition, four other American Embassy employees approached, introduced themselves, and said they were praying for the Harpers. Charlie, fighting a debilitating cocktail of fatigue and depression, couldn’t recall ever meeting any of them before. They all worked in the consular section, handling visa issues, and had been able to escape in the initial moments of the morning’s drama and find a safe haven with the Canadians. Charlie was grateful for their kindness.
As the sun began to set and long shadows filled the ambassador’s personal library, where they waited, the Canadian doctor in charge of the embassy’s medical unit came in and broke the news. Claire would recover, though it would take several weeks. The baby, however, had been lost.
Charlie was not usually a man prone to tears. He’d never seen his father cry, and today was, as far as he could remember, the first time he’d cried since he had met, courted, and married Claire. But now he slumped into the nearest chair and began to sob. At first he did his best to muffle the sound of his lamentations, but he couldn’t stop them. They emanated from somewhere so deep inside his soul, he was beyond embarrassment.
The Shirazis gathered at Charlie’s side, put their arms around him, and held him. They, too, had tears streaming down their faces.
Charlie awoke as if from a nightmare.
The room was pitch-black. With a brief flash of hope, he reached for Claire, but she was not there. He rubbed his eyes and checked his Timex. It was half past three in the morning. It was Wednesday, November 7, 1979. Then a cruel realization came over him. This wasn’t a dream. All of it was bitterly true.
Three days had passed since the nightmare had begun, and he had no earthly idea how long it would last. Claire remained in serious but stable condition. She’d been conscious for only a few hours a day, and for the rest of each dark and dismal day, Charlie had never felt so alone.
Feeling famished and realizing he had barely eaten since Sunday, Charlie got up, put on a robe someone had lent him, and padded out of his guest room and down several flights of stairs to the kitchen. There he was startled to find Ambassador Taylor and the Shirazis. A Filipino steward was preparing soup and some sandwiches. Apparently Charlie wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.
“It’s good to see you, Charlie,” Mohammad Shirazi said.
“Come,” Nasreen said, pulling up a chair, “sit here with us.”
Charlie nodded his thanks and sank into the chair.
The Canadian ambassador leaned toward Charlie. “You’ll be glad to know I’ve been in touch with your State Department. We’re working on plans to get you and Claire back to the States as soon as she’s healthy enough.”
“Thank you,” Charlie said. “That’s very kind.”
“We’re hoping, of course, that this whole thing blows over in the next few days,” the ambassador observed.
“That doesn’t seem likely, does it?” Charlie asked.
“Not at the moment, no. But you should hear the plan the CIA is cooking up in case this thing goes on for a while. It’s a bit… thin.”
“What do you mean?” Charlie asked.
For the next few minutes, the ambassador sketched out the craziest scheme Charlie had ever heard. From the looks on their faces, the Shirazis thought it was nuts too. Charlie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He hoped their situation wouldn’t require a solution as cockamamy as that. It would never work, he knew. The Iranians were fanatics. The secret police at the airport would never buy it. But once again, he realized he had no other choice. Clearly his fate was not in his own hands. Perhaps he ought to resign himself to that fact, he figured, for he was simply too tired to resist.
“I just have one request, Mr. Ambassador,” Charlie said at last.
“What’s that?”
“You must promise me the Shirazis can come too.”
The ambassador and the Shirazis looked stunned.
“Charlie, that’s very thoughtful of you,” Mohammad Shirazi said, “but I don’t really think that’s possible at this point.”
Charlie ignored him. “Mr. Ambassador, they saved the life of two Americans. The regime will kill them if we leave them here.”
“I understand,” the ambassador said. “But it’s out of my hands. Think about it, Charlie. It’s one thing for your government to extract two of its own diplomats out of harm’s way. It’s quite another thing to-”
But Charlie cut him off. “Put me on the phone with whomever you’re talking to at Langley,” he said firmly. “Claire and I aren’t leaving unless the Shirazis come with us. They saved our lives. The very least we can do is save theirs.”
Tehran, Iran
June 3, 1989
Hamid Hosseini had been at his master’s side for three decades.
He could not bear to see the man suffer. For the past week and a half, he had been one of only three clerics allowed to sit beside the hospital bed of Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini. For eleven straight days and nights, Hosseini had gone without food, begging Allah for his master’s recovery. But relief had not come. The cancer continued to consume the eighty-eight-year-old cleric. The doctors were unable to stanch the internal bleeding. The master’s time seemed to be at hand.
Hosseini’s eyes filled with tears. He and his master had been through so much together. They had accomplished so much. It couldn’t end now. Their mission was not yet complete.
Hosseini got up from his prayers and quietly stepped into the hallway to compose himself. He still vividly remembered the first time the two men had met.
The year was 1963. Khomeini’s popularity was soaring, and not just among theologians. The people of Iran were falling in love with this fiery, radical preacher, and so was Hosseini. At times Khomeini preached to crowds of a hundred thousand or more, and in June of that year, Khomeini invited Hosseini to be his guest as he delivered a major address. Hosseini eagerly accepted, sharing breakfast that morning with the master in his home, asking him a thousand questions, driving with him to the site of the speech, and sitting just a few yards away as the address began.
Hosseini could still recite the speech in full. He had been mesmerized as Khomeini blasted the Shah as a “miserable wretch” who had allied himself with the “parasites” of Israel. He’d been enthralled as Khomeini denounced apostate Islamic clerics throughout Iran-allies of the Shah-as “impure animals.” And he’d been shocked by hearing Khomeini predict that the Shah would be forced to leave the country.
Even so many years later, Hosseini could recall his electrification, the crowd’s swell of emotion. No one had ever spoken of the Shah that way. The masses went crazy. They were ready to overthrow the Pahlavi regime right there and then. But it was not time. Two days later, the Shah’s secret police forces decided to move, arresting Khomeini and everyone who had been on the platform. But that just generated more sympathy and support for Khomeini.
Uprisings of support quickly erupted in cities throughout Iran, including Tehran, the political capital of the country, and Qom, the country’s religious capital with its scores of seminaries and other Islamic institutes. Large crowds of Khomeini supporters took to the streets shouting, “Khomeini or death!” The Shah imposed martial law the following day, but his forces overreacted, opening fire against Khomeini’s supporters. The official count of dead and wounded protesters was fifteen thousand.
Hosseini had never been to prison before then. He’d never been tortured. He’d never even imagined such a scenario. But he was not sorry for his friendship with the man responsible for his new fate. To the contrary, he counted it a great honor to suffer together with the great man for the sake of Allah.
For the next ten months, the two remained imprisoned together, but they could not have scripted events better if they had tried. Khomeini was becoming a national symbol of the Shah’s oppression of devout Muslims. He was steadily emerging as the leader of the Islamist opposition to the Shah, a role that suited him perfectly. And Hamid Hosseini was universally identified as one of the Ayatollah’s most trusted aides.
On April 7, 1964, Khomeini and his supporters were released, and major celebrations were quickly organized, particularly in Qom, where seminaries closed for three days to hold parties in his honor.
But the Ayatollah was not interested in parties. He wanted a revolution. He wasted no time in using his newfound fame and popular support to launch new, even more strident broadsides against the Shah. And Hamid Hosseini was again at his master’s side on October 27, 1964, when the imam delivered a speech that accused the Shah and his secularized government of treason and urged Shia Muslims throughout Iran to “come to the aid of Islam” by attacking the apostate, infidel regime.
“O Allah, they have committed treason against this country,” Khomeini bellowed to a crowd of thousands. “O Allah, this government has committed treason against the Qur’an… They are not our representatives… I dismiss them… O Allah, destroy those individuals who are traitors to this land and traitors to Islam.”
On November 4, 1964, the Shah’s forces arrested Ayatollah Khomeini again and sent him into exile in Turkey. Hamid Hosseini, now a close friend and trusted aide to the imam, was exiled as well. But the two men could not have been happier. All the people of Iran saw Khomeini as the Shah’s leading opponent and Hosseini as his chief spokesman and confidant. And now they were free to make their case without fear of reprisals.
Turkey, at the time, was the epicenter of the reform movement within Islam. It was the place where Muslims adopted Western customs, dress, speech, and even democracy. It was hardly the appropriate base camp for the Ayatollah’s small band of Islamic radicals to plot the next steps of their revolution. They quickly made plans to leave Turkey for Iraq and arrived in Baghdad on October 6, 1965, accompanied by Khomeini’s son Mostafa.
Now, as Hamid Hosseini looked upon his dying master writhing in pain on a hospital bed, tears filled his eyes again, and he had to look away. He did not want to remember Khomeini like this, his life slowly fading.
In the fall of 1977, Hosseini had been at his master’s side when Mostafa had suddenly died under mysterious conditions. He had been in the room when the Iraqi medical examiner said his master’s forty-five-year-old son had died of a sudden and massive heart attack, but of this Hosseini had never been convinced. Far more likely, he was certain, was that Khomeini’s son had been assassinated by the agents of the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK.
Now Hosseini convinced himself Ayatollah Khomeini was dying as a result of an evil plan. The doctors said it was cancer, but was it really? Perhaps the CIA had poisoned him. Maybe it was the Mossad. It might even have been a joint operation. He had no idea how they had done it. But he had no doubt the Great Satan and the Little Satan were behind Khomeini’s death, and he silently vowed they would both pay for their treachery. The Americans and the Zionists were still trying to smother the Iranian Revolution. But they would fail. With blood and fire, Hosseini vowed, they would fail.
Just then, Hosseini heard choking, gasping.
He quickly turned and stepped back to his master’s side, then stood paralyzed with grief as he watched the convulsions and the feverish efforts of doctors and nurses trying to stop the inevitable. But as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The choking stopped. The gasping ended. The efforts to save him drew to a close.
Everyone in the room stood in horror, barely able to comprehend what they had just witnessed. The death angel had come, and Hamid Hosseini began to weep.
Hosseini faced Mecca, fell to his knees, and prayed silently.
But the prayer that entered his heart at that moment was one that surprised and terrified him. He had not planned to pray it. It just poured forth from his heart. It was a lament he had daily prayed as a child but one he never would have dared think-much less utter-within a thousand miles of the Ayatollah before now. It was a prayer that could have sent him to prison and the torture chambers had anyone close to his master ever guessed he was lifting it up to Allah. But he couldn’t help it. In his grief and despair, it simply became an involuntary plea.
O mighty Lord, he silently implored, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one who will fill this world with justice and peace. Make us worthy to prepare the way for his arrival, and lead us with your righteous hand. We long for the Lord of the Age. We long for the Awaited One. Without him-the Righteously Guided One-there can be no victory. With him, there can be no defeat. Show me your path, O mighty Lord, and use me to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi.
Samarra, Iraq
The news swept through the Iraqi city of Samarra.
As word of Ayatollah Khomeini’s death spread through the Shia Muslim stronghold, it eventually reached Najjar Malik and hit him like a thunderbolt.
Only ten years old, Najjar had long been sheltered from national and world events by his uncle and aunt, who had taken him in after his parents’ deaths in a tragic car accident several years earlier. They didn’t let him watch television or listen to the radio. They didn’t let him read anything but his schoolbooks. For little Najjar, incredibly bright but also small for his age, life consisted of mosque and school and nothing else. If he wasn’t memorizing the Qur’an, he was memorizing his textbooks.
But today was different. Suddenly it seemed as if every Shia in Samarra had heard what Najjar had just heard from a woman shrieking in the hallway.
“The imam has died! The imam has died!”
Najjar was too much in shock to cry.
It couldn’t be true. It had to be a vicious rumor, started by the Zionists or the Sunnis. Ayatollah Khomeini was larger than life. He simply could not be dead. Wasn’t he the long-awaited Mahdi? Wasn’t he the Twelfth Imam, the Hidden Imam? Wasn’t he supposed to establish justice and peace? How then could he be dead if he was, in fact, the savior of the Islamic world and all of mankind?
Every Friday night for years, Najjar’s aunt and uncle made him listen to the latest audiotaped sermon from Ayatollah Khomeini that had been smuggled out of Iran and into Iraq. Then his aunt would tuck him into bed, kiss him good night, turn out the light, and shut the bedroom door. When the apartment was quiet, Najjar would stare out the window into the moonlight, meditating on the Ayatollah’s words and on his fiery insistence that a Muslim’s duty was to perform jihad-holy war-against the infidels. It wasn’t exactly the stuff of childhood dreams, but it stirred something deep within Najjar’s heart.
“Surely those who believe, those who wage jihad in God’s cause-they are the ones who may hope for the mercy of God,” the Ayatollah would declare, citing Sura 2:218 from the Qur’an. Jews and Christians are the ones whom God has cursed, he would explain, saying the Qur’an taught that they “shall either be executed, or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off alternately, or be banished from the land.
“Kill them!” Khomeini would insist, pointing to Sura 9:5. “Wherever you may come upon them, and seize them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place.
“The Prophet and his followers are commanded to wage jihad against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and to be stern against them,” the Ayatollah argued year after year, “for their final refuge is hell.”
Infidels, he insisted-citing Sura 22-will spend eternity in a blazing fire, “with boiling water being poured down over their heads. All that is within their bodies, as well as their skins, will be melted away.
“Have nothing to do with them,” he argued. “Don’t befriend them. Don’t negotiate with them. Don’t do business with them.” After all, he loved to say-citing Sura 5:59-60-“Allah has cursed the Christians and the Jews, and those whom he has utterly condemned he has turned into apes, and swine, and servants of powers of evil.”
Najjar had been transfixed by Khomeini’s courage and conviction. Surely this man must be the Mahdi. Who else could it be? he had wondered. True, his aunt conceded when Najjar occasionally asked innocent questions, Khomeini had not yet brought justice and peace. Nor had he yet established an Islamic empire that would transform the globe. But all this, she said, was just a matter of time.
Now what? Najjar thought. If Khomeini had really died, who would lead the Revolution? Who was the real messiah, and when would he come?
No one else was home, and Najjar felt scared and alone. Desperate to learn more, he fled his aunt and uncle’s cramped high-rise flat and ran down all seventeen flights of stairs rather than wait for an elevator. He ran out into the dusty street in front of their dilapidated building, only to find huge crowds of fellow Shias pouring out of their apartments as well. Seeing a group of older men huddled on a nearby corner near a fruit stand, smoking cigarettes and listening to a small transistor radio, Najjar ran to their side and listened in.
“Radio Tehran can now confirm that the revered imam-peace be upon him-has died of a heart attack,” he heard the announcer say in Farsi, the man’s voice faltering as he relayed the news. “The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution has been in the hospital for the last eleven days. He was suffering from internal bleeding. But a government spokesman has confirmed what hospital officials indicated just a few minutes ago. Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini is dead at the age of eighty-eight.”
Najjar’s mind reeled. How can the Promised One be dead? It was not possible.
With few other hard facts to report, Radio Tehran broadcast excerpts from Khomeini’s speeches. In one from 1980, Khomeini declared to his fellow Shias, “We must strive to export our Revolution throughout the world.”
Najjar heard a thunderous roar erupt from whatever crowd had been listening to the imam. He closed his eyes and pictured the scene and suddenly wished his parents had never left Iran. Perhaps then they would still be alive. Perhaps Najjar could have actually seen the Ayatollah with his own eyes. Perhaps he could have heard the master’s words with his own ears. Perhaps he could have even served the Revolution in some small way.
“The governments of the world should know that… Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Qur’an will prevail all over the world,” Khomeini bellowed in another radio clip. Najjar knew that line by heart. It came from a sermon the Ayatollah had delivered just after returning to Tehran, where he was greeted by millions of faithful followers shouting, “The Holy One has come! The Holy One has come!”
Disoriented by this turn of events, Najjar backed away from the crowd of men and out of earshot of the radio broadcast. He had heard more than he had wanted. His slight body trembled. His filthy cotton shirt was drenched with sweat, and he suddenly felt parched. He had no idea where his uncle and aunt were. But he desperately didn’t want to be by himself.
Perhaps they were at the mosque. He decided that was where he should be as well. He took off in a dead run for six blocks, slowing only when he could see the side door of the al-Askari Mosque just a few hundred meters away.
But suddenly, without warning, three teenagers-much larger than Najjar-came rushing out of the bushes and tackled him from the side. Blindsided, Najjar crashed to the ground with the wind knocked out of him. Before he could catch his breath, the three began beating him mercilessly. Two balled up their fists and landed blow after blow upon Najjar’s stomach and face. The third kicked him repeatedly in the back and the groin. He shrieked in pain, begging them to stop. He knew who they were, and he knew what they wanted. They were friends of his cousin, who owed one of them a few dinars. His cousin had been late in paying.
Soon blood was pouring from little Najjar’s broken nose and from his left ear. His face began to swell. His vision blurred. All colors began to fade. He was sure he was going to black out. But then he heard a voice shout, “Stop!”
Suddenly the beatings stopped.
Najjar didn’t dare open his eyes. Bracing for the next blow, he remained in a fetal position. After a few moments, he heard the boys walking away. Why? Where were they going? Was it really over? Mustering just enough courage to crack open one eye, Najjar wiped away the blood and tears and saw the three bullies standing around someone, though he could not tell who. Was it a parent? a policeman? Najjar opened the other eye. He wiped more blood away and strained to hear what was being said.
“The Holy Qur’an says, ‘Whomever Allah guides, he is the rightly guided,’” a commanding voice declared. “But what does the Prophet-peace be upon him-say of those who go astray, of those rebels who go far from the teachings of Allah? He says, ‘We will gather them on the day of resurrection, fallen on their faces-blind, dumb, and deaf. Their refuge is hell. And every time it subsides, we will increase their blazing fire.’”
Najjar knew that verse. His aunt had made him memorize Sura 17:97 on his fifth birthday, and it haunted him to this day. He scanned the crowd that had gathered, hoping to see a friendly face or at least a familiar one. But he recognized no one, and he wondered whether the mob was there to see a fight or a punishment.
“You’re saying we are all going to hell?” one of the bullies asked.
Najjar was surprised to hear a trace of real fear in the boy’s faltering voice.
“It is not I who say it,” the stranger said with quiet authority. “The Qur’an says, ‘The weighing of deeds on that day of resurrection will be the truth. Those whose scales are heavy with truth and good deeds, it is they who will be the successful. As for those whose scales are light, because of evil deeds, those are the ones who have lost their souls, causing them to travel toward the fire, because they mistreated; they knowingly denied Our signs.’”
Najjar knew that one, too. It was Sura 7:8-9.
He watched the shoulders of the teenagers sag. Their heads hung low. It wasn’t clear the boys had ever heard those verses before, but they certainly seemed to grasp the stakes. Suddenly they weren’t so tough or so cruel. Indeed, horrified by the wrath that could be awaiting his tormentors, Najjar almost felt sorry for them.
Since his earliest childhood, Najjar had deeply feared the fires of hell. He was convinced that his parents’ deaths in a car crash on a weekend trip to Baghdad when he was only four was punishment from Allah upon him for his own sins. He had no idea what sins he could have committed at so young an age. But he was painfully aware of all he had committed since. He didn’t mean to be such a terrible person. He tried to be a pious and faithful servant of Allah. He prayed five times a day. He went to the mosque every chance he could, even if he had to go alone. He had already memorized much of the Qur’an. He was often praised by his teachers for his religious zeal. But he knew the wickedness in his own heart, and he feared that all his attempts to do what was right could end up being for naught. Was he really any better than these boys who had beaten him? No, he concluded. He was probably worse. Surely they had been sent by Allah to punish him, and he knew he deserved it.
The three boys began backing away from their accuser. A moment later, they turned quickly and ran away. It was then that Najjar saw the one who had come to his defense, and he could not believe his eyes. The stranger was not a man but a boy-one not much older than he. He certainly wasn’t more than eleven or twelve years old, and he was short, with a slight build. He had jet-black hair, light olive skin, a pointed, angular, almost royal nose, and a small black spot like a mole on his left cheek. He didn’t wear street clothes like others his size and age. Rather he wore a black robe and sandals. But what struck Najjar most was the boy’s piercing black eyes, which bored deep into his soul and forced him to look away in humiliation.
“Do not fear, Najjar,” the strange boy said. “You are safe now.”
Najjar’s heart sped. How did the boy know his name? They had certainly never seen each other before.
“You are curious how I know your name,” the boy said. “But I know all about you. You are Persian, not Arab. Your first language was Farsi, though you also speak Arabic and French fluently. You grew up here in Samarra, but you were born in Iran, as were your parents and grandparents. Your family lived in Esfahān, to be precise.”
Najjar was stunned. It was all true. He searched his memory. He must know this boy somehow. But he couldn’t imagine where or when they had met. He had a nearly photographic memory, yet neither this face nor this voice was registering in the slightest.
“You are a child of the Revolution,” the stranger continued. “Your mother, Jamila, bless her memory, was a true servant of Allah. She could trace her family lineage to the Prophet, peace be upon him. Your mother memorized large portions of the Qur’an by the age of seven. She was excited by the fall of the Shah and the return of the Ayatollah from exile in Paris to Tehran on the fateful first day of February 1979.”
This, too, was true, Najjar realized, but it frightened him.
“Though eight months pregnant with you,” the boy went on, “your mother insisted that she and your father join the millions of Iranians trying to catch a glimpse of the Ayatollah as his flight touched down at Mehrabad International Airport that morning. But they never made it, did they?”
Najjar shook his head.
“Just after sunrise, your mother went into premature labor,” the stranger continued. “She delivered you on a bus on the way to the hospital. Only four pounds, fourteen ounces, you were on life support for months. The doctors said you would not survive. But your mother prayed, and what happened?”
“Allah answered her prayers,” Najjar said quietly.
“Yes, he did,” the stranger confirmed. “And then what? Your parents brought you home from the hospital just days before the students seized the American Embassy. Your mother stayed at your side night and day from that point forward. She loved you dearly, didn’t she?”
Najjar’s eyes began to well up with tears, and then the stranger moved closer and spoke nearly in a whisper.
“Your father, rest his soul, was a risk taker.”
Najjar nodded reluctantly.
“Your mother pleaded with your father not to move you and her to Iraq,” the stranger went on. “But he would not listen. He meant well. Raised by merchants, he had a passion for business, but he lacked wisdom, discernment. He had failed at exporting Persian rugs to Europe and Canada. He had failed at exporting pistachios to Brazil and had to borrow money from your uncle. He always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then, convinced the rise of the Ayatollah in Iran would create a boom in business with the Shias in Iraq, he brought you all here to Samarra to build a business and make a fortune. Unfortunately, he did not see the Iran-Iraq War coming. His business never took off, and your parents were killed on the twelfth of December, 1983, in a car accident in Baghdad. And aside from your aunt and uncle, you have been all alone ever since.”
The hair on the back of Najjar’s neck stood erect. His face went pale. Forgetting about the extent of his injuries, he struggled to his feet and stared back at this boy. For several minutes, there was complete silence.
Then the stranger spoke his final revelation. “You are the brightest in your class, Najjar. You are secretly in love with Sheyda Saddaji, the girl who sits next to you. You will marry her before your twenty-fourth birthday.”
“How do you…?”
But Najjar could say no more. His mouth was as dry as the desert floor.
“Allah has chosen you, Najjar Hamid Malik. You will become a great scientist. You will help the Islamic world achieve ultimate power over the infidels and establish the Islamic caliphate. You will help usher in the era of the Promised One. But you must follow Allah without hesitation. You must give him your supreme allegiance. And then, if you are worthy, you shall live forever in paradise.”
Najjar hoped it was true.
“Yes, I will serve Allah with my whole heart,” he said with all the strength and sincerity he could muster. “I will devote myself to preparing for the Promised One. But who are you? Are you the One that-?”
The stranger raised his hand, and Najjar stopped talking.
“When the time is right, you will see me again.”
Najjar stared into those black eyes. And then, without warning, the stranger vanished into the crowd.
Syracuse, New York
Twelve years later
“Let’s go, David; we’re going to be late!”
David Shirazi heard his father calling up the stairs and moved faster. He’d been waiting for this trip as long as he could remember, and he had no intention of missing the flight.
Every fall, his father and some of his father’s doctor friends took their sons for a long weekend of camping and fishing on a remote island in Canada, accessible only by floatplane. The rule among the dads was that the boys had to be in high school or older. Both of David’s older brothers always came home brimming with stories and pictures of catching monster walleyes, roasting marshmallows by the campfire, hanging out under the stars, and eating seriously unhealthy quantities of Tim Hortons doughnuts along the way. Last year, David had finally been old enough but had come down with a brutal case of the flu at the last moment and was crushed that his parents wouldn’t let him go. Now he was almost sixteen, healthy, and completely jazzed not only to be going but to be missing a few days of physics and calculus as well.
David quickly rechecked the contents of his overstuffed backpack as he mentally reviewed their plans and checked his Timex. It was six minutes past eight in the morning. He knew they were scheduled on U.S. Air flight 4382, departing at 9:25 a.m. and arriving in Philadelphia at 10:45. From there, they’d transfer to U.S. Air flight 3940, departing at 11:25 and arriving in Montreal at exactly one that afternoon. The Montreal airport, his brothers told him, was where they loaded up on the Tim Hortons.
It seemed ridiculous to David to fly 228 miles south to Philly only to turn around and fly 400 miles north. But there weren’t any direct flights from Syracuse, so this was it. Crazier still was that once they got to Montreal, they still had a several-hour train ride farther north to a little town called Clova in upper Quebec. Only then came the floatplanes. But none of it mattered unless they made it to the airport on time.
At five feet, eleven inches tall and finally growing like a weed after being too small for too long, with jet-black curly hair, soulful brown eyes, and an always-tanned complexion, David might have looked Persian to his parents, but all he wanted was to be a normal American kid. David and his older brothers knew their parents’ colorful tales of growing up in Iran under the Shah. They could recite chapter and verse of their mom and dad’s saga of surviving the earliest days of the Revolution in ’79, taking refuge with the Harpers in the Canadian Embassy for nearly four months, and finally escaping with the help of some government guy named Zalinsky. Every year on January 28, the boys dutifully listened as their parents marked the anniversary of their harrowing journey through the Tehran airport and their nerve-racking Swissair flight out of Iranian airspace, the remarkable story of their exodus from Tehran to Geneva to Toronto, and why they had finally wound up in central New York and settled in the too-often frigid and snowbound city of Syracuse (which the boys liked to call “Zero-cuse,” “Siberacuse,” and “No-Excuse”).
The Shirazi boys knew their parents’ courageous decisions and remarkable journey had made their lives possible. But the truth was, none of it really mattered to David. He was certainly grateful for their freedom. But he didn’t want to think of himself as Iranian or a Muslim. He’d been born in the States. He’d grown up in the States. He dreamed in red, white, and blue. All he wanted to do now was fit in and excel, just like his brothers.
Azad, nineteen, was a straight-A sophomore in the premed program at Cornell. He planned to become a cardiologist like his father. He was also the best long-distance runner on the track team and could play the piano like no one David had ever heard. Not to be outdone, Saeed, seventeen, had graduated from high school a year early and was now a straight-A freshman at Harvard on a full swimming scholarship. If all went well, Saeed planned to go to Wharton or Stanford to get his MBA, unless the Harvard Business School gave him enough money to stay in Cambridge.
By comparison, David thought of himself as the black sheep of the family. While his brothers had twenty-twenty vision, he wore glasses. He was the only one of the three boys to get braces, which he still wore, embarrassing him to no end. His brothers hadn’t ever seemed to struggle with acne, but he had struggled with it for years, though it was finally beginning to clear somewhat. Girls seemed to fawn over his brothers, but David had never been on a single date, and though there were a few girls in his class he secretly liked, he dreaded the prospect of having to ask any of them to the junior prom the following year. What’s more, David hated chemistry and economics. He couldn’t imagine becoming a doctor or a high-powered businessman, and he certainly had no interest in playing the piano.
He had, however, acquired his parents’ brilliance and his brothers’ passion for athletics. A straight-A student at Nottingham High School near the Syracuse city limits, David had scored a 1570 on his SATs and was actually on track to graduate two years ahead of schedule. He was the starting catcher on the varsity baseball team, the assistant photo editor of the school paper, the assistant editor of the yearbook, and a genius with a Nikon 35mm camera and a telephoto lens. His dream amused his professionally-minded parents, but it was his dream nonetheless: to work for Sports Illustrated, starting out on the road shooting baseball in the spring and football in the fall, and eventually working his way up to editor-in-chief.
Which reminded him…
David heard his father laying on the horn but turned back and grabbed the latest copy of SI off the kitchen table. Then he kissed his mother good-bye in the front yard, joined his brothers in the backseat of their Mercedes SUV, buckled up, donned his Discman, cranked up the Boss, sat back, and dove into the cover story on Roger Clemens.
They were seriously behind schedule, but David had no doubt his father would make it. And sure enough, fifteen minutes later they were parking at Hancock Field. It was high fives and laughter all around when they finally cleared through security, made it breathlessly to the gate, and found the other fathers and sons who were going with them.
David buckled himself into seat 16A, leaned back, stared out the window at the gorgeously sunny morning that was unusual for a city so often “blessed” with overcast skies, and finally relaxed. They’d made the flight. He had no homework. He had no school until the following Wednesday. And he was finally “one of the guys.” He’d been dreaming about this trip for years, it was finally here, and nothing could ruin it.
Philadelphia International Airport
David’s father lit up the moment he saw them.
David, on the other hand, instantly went dark. What in the world are they doing here? he privately groaned.
“Hey, over here,” Charlie Harper yelled from across the lounge area, waving them through the crowd that was waiting for the next flight.
Dr. Shirazi raced right over and gave his old friend a bear hug. “You really made it!”
“Are you kidding?” Charlie laughed, slapping his old friend on the back. “Marseille and I wouldn’t have missed this for the world!”
“Yes, thanks for inviting us, Dr. Shirazi,” added the young woman standing beside Charlie.
“Well, you’re very welcome, young lady,” Dr. Shirazi replied. “But I’m sorry-you can’t possibly be Charlie Harper’s little girl.”
She smiled.
“Look at you-you’re lovely. How could you be related to this guy?” Dr. Shirazi joshed, slapping Charlie on the back.
“Obviously I take after my mother,” she quipped.
Dr. Shirazi laughed from his belly as David winced with embarrassment.
“Well, that would explain it,” the doctor chuckled, giving her a hug. “How old are you now?”
“I just turned fifteen in June.”
Azad elbowed David in the ribs and raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t nearly discreet enough for David.
Then Saeed leaned over to his brothers and whispered, “Don’t get ideas, Bro. I saw her first.”
David felt the blood rush to his ears, his neck, and his face. The young woman before them was certainly attractive in her faded blue jeans, cream fisherman knit sweater, and worn tennis shoes, her brown hair pulled back in a black scrunchie. But she was an interloper on a guys-only fishing weekend, and now these two morons were angling for something other than walleye and northern pike.
Dr. Shirazi shook his head. “How long has it been since I’ve seen you all? Five or six years?”
“As a whole family, that’s probably true,” Charlie replied. “I think this one was still in grammar school when you last came for Thanksgiving.”
Dr. Shirazi sighed. “Please, please forgive me for letting so much time go by.”
“Oh, my friend, there’s no need,” Charlie insisted. “Life has been busy for all of us. Besides, you and I got to see each other-what?-a year ago maybe, at that conference in New York, right?”
“That’s right, that’s right; but you’re too kind, Charlie, really. I should be coming to visit you and thank you every year, and bringing my family along too. You and Claire saved us, Charlie. Nasreen and I will never forget it.”
David’s father, lost in another time, suddenly became aware of the group of men and boys observing this whole interaction with confusion.
“Oh, forgive me, guys,” he said. “I need to make some introductions. I’m getting old, my friends. But being the founder and organizer of our illustrious group, I’ve taken the liberty of this surprise. It is a great honor to introduce you to one of my dearest friends in all of the world, Charlie Harper-the man who rescued Nasreen and me out of Iran-and his daughter, Marseille.”
As everyone said hello, shook hands with the two of them, and introduced themselves, David shrank to the back of the huddle. Mortified, he watched Azad and Saeed and the other boys chatting up Marseille-trying to look harmless and friendly but skating dangerously close to shameless flirting. David, meanwhile, found himself battling varying degrees of embarrassment, anger, annoyance, and betrayal, to name just a few of the emotions colliding within him. He’d just been blindsided. This was supposed to be a guys’ trip. It always had been. That’s the way it had always been billed to him. That’s what he had been so looking forward to. And now his father had gone and blown the whole thing.
Baghdad, Iraq
Najjar Malik heard the screeching tires and turned to look.
He was about to cross Al Rasheed Street in downtown Baghdad and fully expected to see a major car wreck. Instead, less than fifty yards away to his right, he saw a white Mercedes swerve and narrowly miss a delivery truck whose driver had just slammed on his brakes in the middle of rush-hour traffic for no apparent reason. Blocked from going forward, the driver of the Mercedes now tried to back up but suddenly found himself cut off by a green Citroën. Just then, a minivan screeched to a halt beside the Mercedes. The side door flew open. Three masked men armed with AK-47s jumped out and surrounded the car.
“Get out! Get out!” one of the gunmen screamed at the terrified man in the driver’s seat.
Najjar knew he should run for cover, but for some reason he just stood there and stared. He could see a veiled woman in the passenger seat, presumably the driver’s wife. He could also see a small child in the backseat, shrieking with fear.
Two of the gunmen started pounding on their windows, still demanding they get out. Terrified, the family complied, their hands held high in the air, the young child-a little girl not more than four or five years old-crying all the louder. The gunmen forced the woman and the child to lie facedown on the pavement while their husband and father was smashed over the back of the head, bound quickly around his hands and feet, and thrown in the back of the minivan.
Then one of the masked men aimed his machine gun at the child and fired. The girl’s cries immediately ceased, but now the mother began screaming for her dead child. At that, the gunman shot her in the back of the head as well.
The street suddenly grew quiet.
As the gunmen turned to get back in the vehicles and make their escape with their new hostage, one of them glanced toward Najjar, and Najjar found himself staring into the kidnapper’s eyes. The two of them just stood there for a moment, seemingly frozen in time and space. Najjar wanted to bolt but couldn’t move a muscle.
The masked man raised his weapon and pointed it at Najjar’s chest. Najjar tried to scream but couldn’t make a sound. The man pulled the trigger. Najjar shut his eyes. But he heard nothing. He felt nothing.
He opened his eyes and realized the gun hadn’t gone off. The man cleared the chamber and pulled the trigger again. Again, Najjar involuntarily shut his eyes. But again he heard nothing, felt nothing.
When he opened his eyes the second time, he found the man desperately fiddling with the magazine, then raising the weapon over his head and pulling the trigger. This time the weapon fired perfectly. Now, he lowered the machine gun, aimed it at Najjar’s face, and pulled the trigger for the third time. Najjar instantly shut his eyes and held his breath.
Nothing happened.
His eyes still shut and still holding his breath, his lungs about to explode, Najjar heard the gunman cursing. He also heard the other terrorists shouting at him to get in the car and get moving. A moment later, he heard screeching tires, and when he finally opened his eyes, the gunmen were gone.
Najjar collapsed into some bushes and began to vomit uncontrollably. He had never been so scared in all his life.
He lay on the pavement, holding his head in his hands and losing all track of time. He didn’t hear the ambulance sirens approaching, didn’t see the flashing lights of the police cars. He didn’t remember being taken to the hospital and treated for shock. He barely remembered being interrogated at length, not just by the local police but by agents of the Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s thirteen intelligence agencies, and certainly the most feared. “Who were the gunmen?” they demanded. “Have you seen them before? Could you identify them? What kind of vehicles were they driving? What were the license plate numbers?” The questions went on and on, but Najjar was of little help. He truly didn’t recall much, and later that afternoon, the police and doctors released him.
Exhausted and still somewhat disoriented, Najjar left the hospital and saw a row of taxicabs waiting out front. The first driver in the line rolled down his window and shouted, “Where are you going? Can I help you?”
Najjar stumbled down the front steps and got into the backseat of the cab, only to realize he had no wallet on him and thus no money. Worse, before Najjar could say anything, the driver pulled into traffic and Najjar realized he had no idea where he was going, either.
“You look like you’ve seen an evil spirit,” the driver said, staring at him in the rearview mirror.
“Just watch the road,” Najjar said, more gruffly than he had intended.
“Where to?”
Najjar couldn’t think. He felt foggy, drugged. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember where he lived-what street, what building. Where was his wallet? Had someone stolen it? Had he just left it at the hospital? It had his ID. It had his only picture of his mother and father. It had…
Without instruction, the driver began heading east, across the Tigris River toward Sadr City, a district of nearly a million Shia Muslims.
Where are we going? Najjar wondered. How does the driver know where to take me?
Ten minutes later, the driver pulled up in front of an apartment building that looked familiar. As did the neighborhood. As did the people.
“Najjar? Is that you?”
Najjar instantly recognized the voice of his aunt, calling to him from across a courtyard.
She ran up, pulled him out of the cab, and kissed him on both cheeks in greeting. Then she paid the driver and, sensing that Najjar was not well, led him up to their apartment.
“Are you okay, Najjar? Why did you take a cab home from the university? Why didn’t you take the bus as usual?”
As they stepped onto the elevator and his aunt pushed the button for their floor, Najjar was struck with the oddest thought. How had that driver just gotten him home, when he himself had not remembered where he lived?
Najjar’s aunt tucked him into bed, and he slept for the entire afternoon.
U.S. Air Flight 3940
A storm was brewing at twenty-eight thousand feet over Lake Ontario.
“David, would you mind switching seats with me?”
Startled, David Shirazi opened his eyes and found himself staring into the face of Mr. Harper. Biting his lip to keep himself from saying something he shouldn’t, he peeled off his headphones.
“Say again?” he asked, trying to get his bearings.
“I’m sorry-I didn’t mean to disturb you,” the older man said with a genuineness that only annoyed David more. “It’s just that now that we’re at cruising altitude, I was wondering if I could sit with your father and catch up a little. Would you mind?”
Of course I would mind, David thought. You’re not even supposed to be here, and now you want my seat?
But David Shirazi loved his father far too much to say it. Indeed, he felt guilty for thinking it.
“Sure, Mr. Harper, no problem,” he mumbled.
Harper shook his head and chuckled as David unbuckled himself and stepped into the aisle. “You and your brothers are all taller than your father now, aren’t you?”
David nodded. He didn’t want to disrespect his father by being rude. But he certainly had no interest in small talk at the moment. He scanned the rear section of the Boeing 737, looking for somewhere else to sit and finding nothing. The flight was packed. The rain was picking up and through the windows he could see flashes of lightning crackling through the thick gray thunderheads all around them. Then the seat belt sign came on and the copilot warned them they were heading into some rough weather and should take their seats immediately.
“What seat were you in, Mr. Harper?” David finally asked as the man buckled up beside his father.
“Oh, right, sorry-23B,” Harper replied. “Right next to Marseille.”
Great.
David put his headphones on, hit Play, and made his way toward the rear of the packed jet, carefully gripping the seatbacks along the way as the turbulence picked up. He spotted Marseille. She was curled up against the window with a red airline blanket over her, wearing her own set of earphones. David was glad her eyes were closed. He wasn’t up for small talk with her, either. He quietly took the seat beside her and buckled himself in, careful not to make a sound that might wake her. It didn’t work. Marseille turned, rubbed her eyes, and smiled.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
She took off her headphones. “Sorry I didn’t say hi before,” she said. “I just got chatting with everyone else. Everyone’s been really nice.”
He shrugged. What was he supposed to say?
“First time?” she asked.
There was a long pause.
“What, in a plane?” he asked, incredulous.
“No, up to Quebec-on this whole fishing thing,” she replied.
He nodded.
“Me too,” she said, then added, “obviously.”
There was another awkward pause. Thunder clapped just outside their window, startling everyone.
“Quite a storm, huh?” she asked, her hands gripping the armrest.
“Yep.”
The two were quiet for a while, and David slowly began to relax. Then, out of nowhere, Marseille asked, “Hey, do you remember coming to our house for Thanksgiving, a long time ago?”
He actually did have some memories of the rainy weekend of board games and hide-and-seek at the Harpers’ small Cape Cod house in Spring Lake, along the Jersey Shore. He even remembered a picture of Mr. Harper and Marseille carving the turkey together, which he had seen in one of the dozens of photo albums his mother kept organized and labeled on a shelf in their living room in Syracuse. But he didn’t feel like admitting any of that now.
“Not really,” he said lamely.
Marseille got the message. “Six years is a long time, I guess,” she said quietly, then turned back to watch the lightning flashes out the window.
David watched her pull up the blanket and try to get comfortable. Then he felt a sudden pang of guilt. This poor girl was only trying to be nice, and he was acting like an idiot. For crying out loud, even the Mariano and Calveto brothers had been nicer to her. They’d had different motives, to be sure, but he’d been brought up better than this. It wasn’t Marseille’s fault she was here. David’s own father had invited them. The least he could do was be civil.
“Whatcha listening to?” he asked, putting his own music on pause and taking off his headphones.
She turned back, her eyebrows raised. “First you ignore me; now you’re suddenly interested in my music?”
“I’m just asking. Conversation. Small talk. They have that down in New Jersey, don’t they?”
Marseille studied him for a moment as if sizing up his sincerity or lack thereof. He took the moment to study her as well. She really was quite good-looking, a sort of girl-next-door beautiful, he decided. Her summer tan hadn’t yet faded. She wore no makeup or fingernail polish. She had a barely noticeable scar on her upper lip. But it was her eyes-big and warm and expressive-that really caught his attention.
“Okay, guess,” she said at last.
“Guess?”
“Sure,” she prodded. “You know, conjecture, consider, reckon, suppose-they know how to do that up there in central New York, don’t they?”
Caught off guard, David suddenly smiled a real smile. “Sometimes,” he conceded. “All right, let me see-Madonna?”
She shook her head.
“J. Lo?”
Marseille rolled her eyes. “Pleeease.”
“Hmm,” David said, “so I’m thinking Lady Marmalade is out too?”
“Ugh,” she replied. “Do I look like I would listen to Christina Aguilera?”
“I don’t know,” David said. “It’s remotely possible, isn’t it?”
“No, it really isn’t.”
More thunder rumbled outside. As she turned away and began to pull the blanket over her again, her necklace shifted and glinted in the overhead light. A pair of drama masks, comedy and tragedy. Aha.
“Les Mis,” he said just as Marseille was putting her headphones back on.
She stopped cold and turned back to him again.
“What did you say?”
“You know-France, revolutionaries, ‘One Day More’…”
Marseille paused and stared at him for a moment.
“I’m right,” David said, seeing her surprise. “I got it, didn’t I?”
Marseille shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “But you’re shockingly close.”
Then, rather than turn away from him-back to her music, back to the storm, back to her dreams-she surprised him by putting her headphones over his ears and hitting Play.
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
David was startled. This was the sound track from The Fantasticks-the world’s longest-running musical… and his mother’s favorite.
Quebec, Canada
It was now late afternoon.
The sun was just beginning to set as the de Havilland floatplane steadily gained altitude and gently banked northeast. The line of thunderstorms they had encountered after leaving Philly had cleared by the time they landed in Montreal and caught the train to the tiny town of Clova. Here, over the province of Quebec, the skies were clear.
Dr. Shirazi sat in the copilot’s seat of the single-engine prop plane, nicknamed the “Beaver” by the Canadian-based de Havilland company. Azad and Saeed sat in the middle row. David was in the back row by himself, surrounded by backpacks and fishing gear. It was cold and cramped, and David knew he would be back there for nearly an hour, but the truth was, he was finally beginning to enjoy himself.
The de Havilland Beaver had just one serious design flaw, as David saw it. It was loud. Really loud. The view out the tiny window was amazing, but he could barely hear himself think. Yet as they reached a cruising altitude of eight thousand feet-soaring high above a seemingly endless carpet of blue rivers and lakes and lush green islands, moving farther and farther away from any sign of civilization-David couldn’t help but nudge Azad in front of him and say, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“What?” Azad yelled, barely able to hear over the roar of the Pratt & Whitney 450-horsepower engine.
“I said, she’s a beauty, isn’t she?” David yelled back, leaning closer.
Azad laughed.
“What’s so funny?” David asked, bracing himself for whatever sarcastic zinger was sure to come.
“You,” Azad said. “You’re a real comedian.”
“Why? I’m just saying…”
“I know what you’re saying. But forget about her. You haven’t got a prayer.”
“What?”
“With Marcy.”
“Who?”
“The girl-Marcy.”
“You mean Marseille?”
“Whatever-she’s not your type.”
David just stared at him for a moment. “I was talking about the plane, you idiot.”
“Whatever. Just steer clear. You’re way out of your league, Charlie Brown.”
Their twilight water landing was picture-perfect.
Moments later, the other two de Havillands bringing the rest of their party landed and taxied over to join them by two wooden docks; four small, flat motorboats were moored alongside. A cluster of small, weathered, rustic cabins stood nearby. The only problem was they were running behind schedule and were quickly losing the light they needed to set up their base camp.
Larry McKenzie, the gruff, scruffy, ponytailed, chain-smoking pilot of the plane David had been on-and the owner of McKenzie Air Expeditions, the charter service his father’s fishing group had used for years-helped them unload their gear. The other two pilots did the same and carried several large coolers and cardboard boxes into the cabins as well. These were filled with food for the long weekend. There was nothing gourmet, just basic fruits and vegetables, milk, juice, coffee, butter, bread, eggs, and bacon, all of which would supplement the main dish each night, which would be, of course, fresh fish.
When they were done, McKenzie gathered the group together by the shore and reminded them of the rules. “Don’t drown,” he barked. “Don’t get bit by a snake. Don’t get eaten by a bear. Any questions?”
Most were veterans of this trip. None of them seemed bothered. Only Marseille appeared a bit unnerved, whispering something to her father David couldn’t quite hear.
“No questions?” McKenzie confirmed. “Good. We’re out.”
A moment later, he and the other two pilots were back in their cockpits, hightailing back to the real world. These guys were making $750 a head to drop “clients” off in the middle of nowhere. That and a “don’t drown” pep talk and poof, they were gone. Nice work if you can get it, David thought. Not that he really cared. It wasn’t his money. It was his father’s, and his father always said this was why he’d escaped from Iran-to be free. Free to think. Free to work. Free to play. Free to travel. Free to do whatever he pleased, without a tyrant controlling his every move. Amen, David thought. He took in a deep breath of cool Canadian night air. The temperature was under fifty and dropping fast. But they were finally here.
Dr. Shirazi turned to the group and encouraged them all to grab their gear and set up the cabins. Meanwhile, he asked David and Marseille to go gather as much firewood as they could. Internally, David resisted. He hadn’t come on this trip to be treated like a kid. But he felt better when he saw his brothers’ faces, just visible in the final traces of the sunset-why should David get time alone with the girl?
Marseille’s reaction brought him back to reality. “Out there?” she asked. “With the bears?”
“Don’t listen to Old Man McKenzie,” Dr. Shirazi laughed. “He’s not even Canadian. He’s from Poughkeepsie.”
“Poughkeepsie?”
“He got hooked on drugs and dodged the draft in the Vietnam War. Moved up here to get away from Nixon and get free health care. I met him when he desperately needed triple bypass surgery faster than the system up here could get him scheduled. Nice guy, but one taco short of a combo platter, if you know what I mean.”
David looked at Marseille as Marseille stared at his father.
“What does that have to do with bears?” she asked.
David grinned at the perplexed look on her face. “Nothing,” he said, handing her a small flashlight and shaking his head. “That’s just the way my dad answers a question. Come on. Let’s go.”
David headed into the woods, a more powerful flashlight in his hands. Marseille clearly didn’t want to be left behind. She zipped up her North Face fleece jacket and caught up to him quickly.
“So my dad tells me you read and write Farsi fluently,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“And German.”
No reply.
“And you’re working on Arabic.”
Still no reply.
“Of course,” she said, glancing at him as they walked, “you might want to work on your English a bit.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m just saying…”
“Yes, I speak all those languages.”
“What are you, a genius?” she asked.
“No.”
“That’s what my dad says.”
“How would your dad know? He hasn’t seen me in six years.”
“He says you were almost fluent in all those then.”
David said nothing. They walked quietly for several minutes.
“So where in the world are we, anyway?” Marseille finally asked, trying again to break the ice.
“You really can’t stand silence, can you?” David replied.
“Shut up,” she laughed, punching him in the arm, “and answer my question.”
David feigned pain but finally answered. “The Gouin Reservoir.”
“The what?”
“The Gouin Reservoir-or in French, Réservoir Gouin.”
“Ooh la la, I’m impressed,” she said. “Parlez-vous français, aussi?”
David shook his head. “Je ne remember much pas.”
Marseille laughed. “Je le doute. Anyway, that’s too bad.”
“Why?”
“’Cause we’re in Quebec, and they speak French up here.”
“So you do know where we are.”
“I can read the ticket stub. But Le Réservoir Gouin-what the heck is that?”
“You really want to know?”
“I’d just like to hear you put two or three sentences together in English… you know, just to know that you can!”
“Fine,” David said. “It’s a collection of hundreds of small lakes containing innumerable islands and peninsulas with highly irregular shapes, located in the central portion of the Canadian province of Quebec, roughly equidistant from Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City. Its shoreline stretches over 5,600 kilometers, excluding islands. The reservoir was created in 1918 at the upper reaches of the Saint Maurice River and is named after Jean-Lomer Gouin, who was premier of Quebec at the time. Construction was done by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company to facilitate hydroelectric development by controlling the flow of water for the stations downstream.”
Marseille had stopped walking and was staring at David. “How do you know all that?”
“I read a lot.”
“What did you do, memorize an encyclopedia article or something?”
David shrugged and quickly changed the subject. “Hey, over there, grab those old branches and I’ll grab these,” he said. “That’ll be a start.”
For much of the next hour, they gathered firewood, hauled it back to the camp, dropped it off, and went back out for more, avoiding the older boys. In their gathering, they passed by a few cabins farther inland, unoccupied and clearly out of use. They were unlocked and seemed to have been left to the elements. One of them displayed plenty of bear claw scratchings around the door and windows, but another A-frame style cabin was in pretty good shape, just a little dusty. They didn’t have time then to explore, but this little island ghost town fascinated them both.
It had been a long day, and once the gear had been set up or stowed for later, the whole group was sleeping by 9 p.m. The next four days stretched out in front of them with the promise of endless pike and walleye. But the fish would wait till morning.
Sadr City, Iraq
Najjar Malik was exhausted.
Even after a long nap and a simple, home-cooked meal, the morning’s violence, the malfunctioning machine gun, and the strange encounter with the mysterious taxi driver still rattled him.
After dinner, in spite of his weary protests, Najjar’s aunt and uncle took him shopping in the bazaar. At one point, his aunt was haggling with a grocer over the quality of some pistachios while his uncle sat across the street in the shade, smoking a water pipe and chatting with the older men. Najjar looked over a collection of leather boots and wished he had enough to buy himself a pair. But he still hadn’t found his wallet, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to be buying anything that day, the shoe seller told him to go away.
Najjar nervously inched his way through the market, still wondering who the man was who had been kidnapped, still wondering who had kidnapped him and why, and why they had killed his wife and child. The gruesome images were indelibly etched in his mind’s eye. He wanted to forget it all, but he could not. Was it political? Was it for money? He didn’t want to think about any of it, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
Just then he nearly tripped over a beggar sitting cross-legged against a cement wall.
“Forgive me,” Najjar said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“It is not mine to forgive,” said the beggar, a surprisingly young man-hardly older than Najjar himself-covered in a dirty brown robe and wearing no sandals or shoes. His filthy black feet were covered with oozing blisters. “Only Allah can do that, if he so chooses.”
Najjar shrugged. The religious fervor of his youth was dying. What had Allah really given him? Sadness. Loneliness. Poverty. Despair. Were these the gifts Allah gave to his children?
“Come, my friend,” the beggar said, “you look downtrodden. Let me tell you about your future.”
Najjar shook his head, then scanned the crowd to find his aunt and uncle.
“You don’t want to know your future?” the beggar asked. “Or you don’t think I can see it?”
“Both,” Najjar half lied. He desperately wanted to know his future. But he hadn’t time for back-alley charlatans.
“I think you are lying,” the beggar said, his tone suddenly low and sober. “I think you desperately want to know your future. But you think you haven’t time to spare for some back-alley charlatan.”
Startled, Najjar whipped his head around and stared at the young homeless man in disbelief.
“You are troubled by the violence you saw in the street this morning,” the beggar said, his face smudged with dirt. “But all your questions will be answered in due course.”
Najjar was scared. Who is this person? How can he know my most intimate thoughts?
“May I ask you a question?” the beggar said.
Najjar nodded.
“If you could go anywhere in the world, if you could travel anywhere and money was no object, where would you go?”
“I don’t know,” Najjar said blankly.
“Again you are lying,” the beggar said. “You don’t trust me. Fair enough. You don’t know me. But the moment I asked you, you instantly thought of where you would like to go, true?”
Najjar was embarrassed and confused. He nodded again.
“Write it down,” the beggar said.
“Where?”
“On a piece of paper. Don’t let me see it. But I will tell you what you write.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.”
Najjar didn’t have a piece of paper on him, much less a pen or pencil, but he turned back to the hustle and bustle of the bazaar and found a grocer nearby. From him, he secured a small pencil, then spotted an empty cigarette pack on the ground. Najjar ripped open the pack and scribbled down a location inside, carefully shielding it from the beggar and any other prying eyes that might be around. When he was finished, he stuffed the pack in his jeans pocket and stared back at the young man who now captivated his attention.
“Bless you,” the beggar said.
“Why do you say that?” Najjar asked.
“Because you just wrote down the Jamkaran Mosque near Qom, Iran.”
Najjar’s eyes went wide. “How did you do that?” he asked, his pulse pounding. “How did you know?”
The beggar didn’t respond. His face revealed no expression whatsoever. Instead, he simply said, “Now write down the name of a world leader.”
Unnerved, Najjar hesitated. “Living or dead?” he asked.
“You choose,” the beggar said.
Najjar pulled out the cigarette pack, scratched out Jamkaran Mosque, and wrote, Saddam Hussein. Then, realizing that would be too obvious, he thought for a few moments, crossed out Saddam, and wrote instead, Fulgencio Batista. Batista, Najjar had recently learned, had been the president of Cuba in the late 1950s. He crumpled up the cigarette pack and put it back into his pocket.
“You have chosen well, my friend,” the beggar said.
“How so?”
“I am touched.”
“Why?”
“For you are truly a spiritual young man. Allah can do great things with one such as you.”
Najjar had no idea what the man meant, but it was obvious he didn’t know what Najjar had written down. Then Najjar heard his aunt calling for him.
“I have to go.”
“But I have not given you the answer,” the beggar said.
“I don’t think you know.”
“But I do.”
“Then whose name did I write down?”
“Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali,” the beggar said.
“Ha!” Najjar said, somewhat disappointed but determined not to be perceived as nearly having fallen for this man’s trickery. “Not even close. You think that just because I’ve always wanted to visit the wishing well in Iran where the Twelfth Imam once appeared that I would actually be so stupid as to write down the name of the Mahdi, peace be upon him?”
“Actually,” the beggar said, “first you wrote down Saddam Hussein’s name. Only then did you choose the Promised One.”
Najjar again was stunned. The man was half right. But this, too, was strange. How could the beggar know that Najjar had written down Saddam’s name at first but not know that he had replaced it with Batista’s name? None of it made sense.
Uneasy, Najjar decided it was time to go. His aunt was calling him again and sounded quite annoyed. He pulled the cigarette packet from his pocket and tossed it to the beggar.
“See for yourself,” he said, then turned to his aunt and yelled, “I’m coming!”
The beggar caught the rumpled pack but did not open it. Rather, he tossed it right back at Najjar, seeming to dare Najjar to reconsider. A bit annoyed himself now, Najjar walked over to the beggar, leaned down, opened the cigarette pack, and prepared to read the name Fulgencio Batista.
But to his shock, the words were not there.
Rather, next to the scratched-out name of Saddam Hussein was the name Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali-in his own handwriting, no less.
Dumbfounded, Najjar looked back at the beggar. He tried to say something, but no words formed.
The young beggar spoke instead. “You will serve the Promised One when the time is right. You are not yet ready. But do not fear. The time has not yet come.”
Najjar suddenly felt icy cold. His fingers went numb. Now his uncle was demanding he come home with them. He looked up to ask his uncle for another few minutes. He had questions. He needed answers. But when he looked back, the beggar was gone.
Gouin Reservoir, Quebec, Canada
For David, it was even better than the stories he’d been told.
His older brothers had told him about their adventures, but they weren’t capable of describing the color of the sky in the dawn or the feeling of being so far removed from any other human beings. David felt like a pioneer and imagined that their group was as far as human society had ever gone. He spent the first full day glued to his dad’s side, getting an introduction to the walleye up close and by the dozen. He’d never seen a place so thick with fish, as if no one had ever fished here except the black bears. He and his father skimmed around the edges of the island in low, flat, jigging boats, and David began to learn how to work the sonar and how to feel a strike as he held the rod. The fish were low and deep in the lake, but they hauled them up and into their boat all day, stopping only to drift in a little bay as they munched PB &J and the last of the doughnuts the boys had bought at the airport in Montreal. The water was clear, the sky was deep blue, and even the simplest of sandwiches tasted wonderful. Of course, there would be plenty of fish for dinner.
David wondered how Marseille and Mr. Harper were getting on. The two had decided to spend the morning on a hike with the promise to rejoin the fishermen in midafternoon. David found himself looking forward to seeing her and even tried to prethink some better conversation than he’d been able to summon up thus far. He wondered if she even liked fishing, seeing as she and her dad were the only ones who hadn’t plunged in first thing. Either way, though he was a bit embarrassed to think it, he was actually glad she was here. Maybe his father hadn’t done such a bad thing after all.
David wasn’t disappointed, therefore, to see Marseille sitting by the shore when his father’s boat came to rest at the dock. As the two dads took the opportunity to grab a cold drink together and catch up on old times, David shyly asked Marseille if she was up for a walk. “Want to show me what you guys discovered all morning?” He hoped he didn’t sound too eager.
Smiling, she said, “Sure. We just walked along the shore for a long time and tried to see if we could make it around the whole circumference of the island. We weren’t even close. This place is huge!”
David grabbed a thermos of water, and the two wandered off together. After a few minutes, he realized they were heading straight for their “ghost town.”
Marseille pointed out the clawed screens of the cabins, and David decided it might be better not to make any more bear jokes. The A-frame seemed almost tidy among the group of shabby cabins, and with both of them exerting their full weight at the same moment, they were able to force open the front door. Inside they found a few sling-back chairs and a very basic bed frame supporting an ancient, thin mattress. David used his sweatshirt to dust off the chairs and dragged them over to the open doorway. They both plopped into them, feeling quite at home.
“Any good fish stories from your morning on the reservoir?” Marseille asked.
He liked the question, liked the way she asked it, liked the way she looked at him with real interest.
“It was great to be out with my dad. I’m a walleye rookie, but I caught more than I thought I would.”
David asked about her school and found out her favorite classes were English, creative writing, history, and drama. He asked about her hobbies and learned she played the piano, only because her mother wanted her to, but also the saxophone because she loved it. She ran cross-country but not terribly well; she loved poetry, Shakespeare, singing in the choir, and especially acting in school plays. She was looking forward to the spring, when she planned to try out for the part of Nellie Forbush in the production of South Pacific at her school. Her real dream was someday to play the role of Cosette in Les Mis on Broadway, or better yet, in London or Paris.
“What about politics?” he asked her.
“What about it?”
“Are you a Democrat or a Republican?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
“No idea?” he asked, incredulous.
“No, why should I?”
“Weren’t your parents Foreign Service officers in France, Italy, and Switzerland after getting out of Iran?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So doesn’t your father teach history and U.S. foreign policy at Princeton?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So wasn’t your mom a consultant for the Treasury Department for a few years before getting a job with some big investment bank in Manhattan?”
“She was, but how do you know all that?” Marseille asked.
David shrugged. “I don’t know-I hear things; I remember them. The point is, your parents are so interested in the world and in government. Didn’t any of that rub off on you?”
“I guess not,” Marseille said. “I can’t stand politics. It’s just a bunch of old men arguing and spending all of our money.”
David laughed. She was feisty and sure of herself, and he liked that. “Do you think it’s all going to get better if young people like us tune out the world’s problems and do nothing?”
“No,” she conceded.
“Well, shouldn’t you pick a team and root for it?”
“Maybe,” she said at last, pulling a box of Junior Mints from her knapsack and eating a few without offering him any. “All right, which party should I sign up for-Republicans or Democrats?”
David laughed again. “Well, it’s really not for me to say,” he said, sure she was going to prove to be a liberal Democrat like him but wanting her to come to her own conclusion lest he look too pushy. “How about this? I’ll give you a little test to see if you’re a liberal or a conservative. Then you decide which party is best for you. Deal?”
Marseille thought about that for a moment and liked it. “Deal.”
“Okay, let’s see. Are taxes too low or too high?”
“Too high.”
“Should government spend more or less on education, health care, the environment, and other important necessities?”
“Government spends too much as it is,” she said. “I think they should let people keep more of what they earn.”
David continued cautiously, surprised by her answers. “Should the government protect a woman’s right to choose?”
“You mean abortion? No way! It’s a baby, David. You can’t kill a baby in her mother’s womb.”
David gulped.
“Don’t you agree?” she pressed.
“Well…”
“Isn’t government supposed to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” she continued. “Life-it’s the first one, for crying out loud. Life comes first, then choice. If you switch that around, you’ve got chaos. Right?”
David was stumped and decided to move on. “What about gay rights?” he asked.
“Well, you shouldn’t be mean to gay people, but they shouldn’t have special rights. After all, marriage is a beautiful, sacred thing, between one man and one woman, don’t you think?”
David nodded weakly.
“Don’t you think?” she pressed a bit stronger, popping a few more Junior Mints into her mouth and smiling.
“Absolutely,” he insisted. “Beautiful, sacred-absolutely.”
He asked her some foreign policy questions, then a few about trade policy and immigration. When he was done, he just sat there for a few minutes, trying to process all that he’d just heard.
“Well?” she asked, practically glowing in the fiery rays of the sun beaming through the window. “What am I?”
David shook his head. “You’re a 99.967-percent rock-solid conservative.”
“Really?” she said, seeming happy with the sound of that. “So that’s the Republicans, right?”
David nodded but was crestfallen. He liked this girl. But he couldn’t fall for a Republican, could he?
“So are you a Republican too, David?”
At that, he shook his head, almost imperceptibly.
Marseille was aghast. “What do you mean? Don’t you agree with me on all those things?”
They talked and argued-civilly, but passionately-as the afternoon slipped away unnoticed. For someone not interested in politics, she certainly had strong opinions! Before they realized it, the sun had fully set, and they were arguing by the light of their flashlights. David suggested they’d better put their political feud on hold and get back before their fathers sent out a search party for them. Reluctantly, Marseille agreed.
“Maybe we should change the subject,” David said as they bushwhacked their way to the camp.
“Maybe.” They picked their way around a fallen tree in the darkness. “So what about you? What do you dream of doing someday, aside from running for president as a lunatic Democrat?”
“Very funny,” David said. He stopped walking for a moment. “You really want to know what my dream is?”
She nodded, expectantly.
“I dream-” he hesitated, and her eyes widened-“of having some of those Junior Mints.”
Marseille laughed. “Dream on. These are my own special treat.”
“You’re really not going to offer me one?” he said. “Not even one?”
“Maybe if you really tell me your dream.”
He smiled. “All right, it’s a deal.”
“Go ahead,” Marseille said. “I’m listening.”
“Actually, I’ve never told anyone this…”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You can tell me.”
He took a deep breath.
“My dream…”
She leaned in. “Is…?”
He paused again, letting the suspense build further. “… to get back to camp without being eaten by a bear.”
With that, he took off in a sprint for their camp, laughing, with Marseille running after him, yelling and trying to catch up.
Sadr City, Iraq
Najjar lay in bed and closed his eyes, but he could not sleep.
His mind raced as he pored over every detail of the kidnapping and his encounters with the taxi driver and later with the beggar. Then he thought of the little boy who had rescued him from a beating by those bullies when he was just ten years old. Was Allah calling him? Najjar wondered. Had he sent angels to protect him, to speak to him? Was he truly being chosen to know and serve the Promised One? It couldn’t possibly be. He had no parents, no money, no religious clerics in his family, no political power, no influential friends, no reason of any kind to attract the attention of the Mahdi, peace be upon him. Yet how could he deny this bizarre chain of events?
He dared not ask his aunt or his uncle about any of this. He couldn’t confide in anyone he knew. They would think he had gone mad. And maybe he had. But maybe not. Maybe Khomeini really hadn’t been the one the Islamic world was waiting for but rather just a forerunner. Perhaps the end of days was truly approaching. Perhaps the messiah was coming after all-and soon.
As the sun began to rise in the eastern sky, a weary Najjar slipped out of bed, quietly opened his bedroom door, scanned the hallway for any signs of movement, and then carefully crept to the living room, hoping he wouldn’t wake anyone. On the shelf beside the television, there were a handful of books-the family Qur’an, of course, and then a series of Shia histories and theological textbooks. His uncle, a devoutly religious man, had wanted to be a mullah before abandoning his studies to join the family business. But even to this day, whenever he had a little spare change, he bought another of the religious books he loved to study, and Najjar loved him for it.
One particular book on the highest shelf was by an Iranian man named Dr. Alireza Birjandi, one of the most renowned Shia scholars in the world and an expert on Shia eschatology, or End Times theology. His book, The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah, was a classic, arguably the definitive book on the subject. It told the stories and legends and controversies surrounding all twelve of the Imams, but the stories of the last-the Twelfth Imam-had always intrigued Najjar most.
The Twelfth Imam, Dr. Birjandi explained, was not a mythical character or a fictional construct. He was a real, flesh-and-blood person who had lived in the ninth century and would someday reemerge to change the course of history. Born in Samarra, Iraq, in or around the year 868, his name was Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali. Like the eleven Shia Muslim leaders who went before him, Muhammad was a direct descendant of the founder of Islam and was thought to have been divinely chosen to be the spiritual guide and ultimate human authority of the Muslim people.
But before he reached an age of maturity when he could teach and counsel the Muslim world as was believed to be his destiny, the Twelfth Imam had vanished from human society. Some said he was four years old. Others said five or six. Some believed he fell into a well in Samarra, though his body was never recovered. Others believed his mother placed him in the well to prevent the evil rulers of the time from finding him, capturing him, and killing him-and that little Muhammad subsequently became supernaturally invisible. That’s why some called him the “Hidden Imam,” believing that Ali was not dead but simply hidden from the sight of mankind until the end of days, when Allah would once again reveal him.
Najjar carefully turned the pages of the dog-eared book. When he found the page he was looking for, his pulse quickened.
“‘The Mahdi will return when the last pages of history are being written in blood and fire,’” he read under his breath. “‘It will be a time of chaos, carnage, and confusion, a time when Muslims need to have faith and courage like never before. Some say all the infidels-especially the Christians and the Jews-must be converted or destroyed before he is revealed and ushers in a reign characterized by righteousness, justice, and peace. Others say Muslims must prepare the conditions for the destruction of the Christians and the Jews, but that the Mahdi will finish the job himself. But know this, O ye faithful: when he comes, the Promised One will bring Jesus with him as his lieutenant. Jesus will command all the infidels who are still standing to bow down to the Mahdi or die.’”
Najjar could hardly breathe, he was so excited.
“‘The ancient texts do not tell us exactly how and when he will come,’” Najjar continued reading. “‘Some believe he will first appear in Mecca and conquer all the lands of the Persian and Babylonian empires, then establish the headquarters of his global caliphate in the Mesopotamian city of Kufa. Others believe he will emerge from the well at the Jamkaran Mosque in Iran and then travel to Mecca by way of Mesopotamia. Some say that he will conquer Jerusalem before establishing his caliphate. Others believe Jerusalem must be conquered as a prerequisite to his return. Yet while much is unknown, the ancient texts make one thing abundantly clear: every Muslim must be ready for his return, for he is coming with great power and glory and with the terrible judgment of hellfire for all those who disobey or stand in his way.’”
Najjar closed the book and shuddered. He had followed the Promised One fervently for the first few years after he had met that little boy at the age of ten. But over time, he had let himself drift away from the teachings of the Qur’an and the responsibility to be ready. Now he wondered. What if the Promised One really did come soon? Would he be cast into hell? Would he suffer forever, with boiling water being poured over his head until his flesh melted away? He had to change his ways. He had to submit. He had to work-and work hard-to win back Allah’s approval.
His encounter with the beggar, Najjar concluded, was a hopeful sign. Allah was not finished with him yet. Perhaps there was still time to become a good and righteous young man and to earn Allah’s eternal favor.
But how?
Gouin Reservoir, Quebec, Canada
It was Monday morning, and they had just one day left.
The glorious aroma of strong, black coffee and thick Canadian bacon lured David from his slumber. He put on his glasses, stepped out of his cabin into the brisk fall morning, and inhaled the smoke drifting his way. He looked around the campsite but saw no one, save Marseille. Wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt with pink lettering that read Jersey Girl, she stood over the fire, scrambling some eggs.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Famished,” he said. “Where is everyone?”
“The First Church of the Walleye.”
“They’re fishing already?”
“It’s almost ten.”
David couldn’t believe it. He rubbed dirt off the face of his watch. She was right. He must have been more tired than he’d realized. The day before, David had spent another day with his dad, this time going farther up a river they’d found and discovering a small lake full of pike. They had caught far more than they could possibly eat, thrown most of them back, and broiled the rest over the fire for dinner.
“How come you didn’t go fishing?” David asked.
Marseille laughed. “I needed my beauty sleep.”
David doubted that but said nothing as she served him runny eggs and burnt bacon on a cold tin plate.
“Hope you like ’em,” she said, turning back to the fire to pour him some coffee.
David choked down the food and a cup of coffee so bitter he had to add four cubes of sugar to it. Cooking evidently was not one of Marseille’s strengths. When she suggested they hike back to the A-frame they had made their own, David readily agreed. He gratefully set down the mug, helped her douse the fire, and led her into the woods.
“My dad says your mom is the best cook in the world,” Marseille said as they began.
“Really?” David said, genuinely surprised.
“Apparently your mom makes some kind of Persian stew that is out of this world,” Marseille continued. “My mom has tried to make it I don’t know how many times. It’s horrible.”
“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” David said.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Marseille said. “She’s a great mom. The best. And she’s brilliant. My dream is to become a smidgen as smart and successful as she is. But cooking is not exactly one of her gifts. Let’s just say, we eat out a lot.”
“Really?” David said, restraining a smile. Like mother, like daughter. “So what else do your parents say about my parents?”
Marseille shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“Well, they went through quite an ordeal together,” David said. “They must have told you some interesting stories-maybe some I can use to, you know, blackmail my folks next time I want something good.”
David expected her to laugh. Instead, Marseille suddenly grew quiet. Her smile faded. “I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
David was confused.
“What just happened? Did I miss something here?”
“Really, it’s nothing.”
“Marseille, I can see I’ve offended you. I just don’t know how.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause, and then she said, “It’s just that… my parents don’t talk about their time in Iran… ever.”
“Why not?” David asked as they came over a ridge and spotted the old cabin.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you must have a guess.”
“Maybe it was just too painful.”
“I don’t understand. What was so painful? They were only there for a few months, and they were heroes.”
“That’s not how they see it.”
“Why not?”
“You’d have to ask them, David. I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you,” David said.
“You’re calling me a liar?”
“No, I’m just…” David didn’t finish the sentence. There wasn’t any point.
They were silent until they got to the cabin and flopped on their chairs, side by side.
“Do you know the story?” Marseille finally asked.
“What story?”
“You know, how our parents escaped.”
“From Iran?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course-don’t you?” David asked.
Marseille shook her head, then turned and looked him in the eyes. “I’ve stopped asking,” she explained. “I asked them for years, but they always changed the subject.” There was another long pause, and then she said, “It’s not fair. It’s a part of my life, too, not just theirs. It’s part of who we are as a family. Don’t I have a right to know?”
David was moved by her desire to figure out a piece of the puzzle of her family’s past. At the same time, he felt deeply uncomfortable. He couldn’t imagine why the Harpers weren’t proud of what they had done. Their story was amazing. It was certainly worth sharing with their only child. But if-for whatever reason-they didn’t want to tell her what had happened, was it really his place to do so?
He looked into her eyes and saw pain he hadn’t seen before. “That’s really between you and your parents.”
She took his hand, pulling him toward her, to the edge of his chair. “I can’t talk to them,” she said. “Not about this. Not about Iran.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t.” Then she whispered, “Please, David, tell me the story.”
He said nothing but felt strangely electrified to be so close to her.
“Please,” she whispered. “It would really mean the world to me.”
David swallowed hard. He didn’t trust himself alone with her just then. A storm of emotions was erupting inside him. He needed space-a walk, a swim, some kind of change of pace and setting.
“I can’t, Marseille,” he said. “I wish I could. But it’s not my place.”
There was a long, painful silence.
“Fine,” she said, letting go of him and looking away. “Never mind.”
“Marseille, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be hurtful to you; it’s just-”
“Forget it. It’s no big deal.”
He reached for her hand again, but she drew it away. He was hoping desperately that the chemistry in the room would change back. But it did not.
For the rest of Monday, Marseille was distant and aloof.
She spent most of her time alone, while David hung out with his father.
That evening as the sun began to set over the glassy waters, David looked up from a book to see Mike Calveto, one of Saeed’s friends, sidling up to Marseille as she was standing by the shore. David couldn’t hear what Mike said, but he saw him try to grab her from behind and kiss her on the ear. What was he doing? Was he crazy? Marseille looked shocked and a little scared. David was on his feet instantly, sprinting to her side. Mike was embarrassed by the rebuff but tried to laugh it off. No one else saw the incident, and none of them wanted to escalate the matter by getting their fathers involved. But when Mike finally went his way, Marseille asked David to stay with her.
“You’re not mad at me anymore?” David asked.
“I am still mad at you, but I don’t have any choice,” she replied. “At least you’re trying to be a gentleman.”
When it was clear that they were alone, she slipped her arm through his and they began to walk. Her touch was intoxicating.
“He means well,” David sputtered.
“No, he doesn’t,” Marseille said.
David thought about that, then conceded, “No, you’re right. He doesn’t.” At least the friction between them seemed to have disappeared.
They walked to the end of the dock, dangled their feet over the edge, and talked until after sundown.
It was nearly dark when they heard Marseille’s father calling them for supper. Reluctantly, they stood and turned to head back toward the camp. Abruptly Marseille leaned forward and kissed him. It lasted only a moment, but it was a first for David, and for the rest of the evening he could still feel her soft lips on his and the warmth of her body nestled up against his own.
“Rise and shine, buddy.”
David heard his father’s kind voice and felt his father’s hands gently shaking him awake. But it was early. Way too early-and still dark and cold. A quick glance at his watch told David it was barely six in the morning. He rolled over in his sleeping bag and put his pillow over his head.
“Just let me sleep,” he moaned.
“Sorry, young man,” his father replied, “but we’ve got to pack up, break camp, and get moving so we’re ready before the planes get here.”
Two hours later, they were ready.
The cabins had been swept. The dishes had been cleaned. The sleeping bags had been rolled up. The fire had been covered with sand. They were all down by the dock, bags packed, awaiting the floatplanes. There had been little talking. Most were too groggy for that. But when they were sure no one was looking, David and Marseille would occasionally steal a glance at one another and smile, savoring their moment on the dock the night before.
And yet, a sadness was beginning to creep into David’s spirit. It was born of the sudden realization that their time together over the past four days was destined to burn away forever like the fog as the sun came up. He lived in Syracuse. She lived in Spring Lake, a little town on the Jersey Shore, hundreds of miles away. Neither of them could drive. How, then, could they date? These, David realized, were likely to be their last minutes together for quite some time.
The still, brisk midmorning air was quiet. Too quiet. The planes should have been there by now. David looked at his watch again-10:15. He couldn’t believe how quickly time was slipping away from them. This wasn’t good. Their train would be pulling out of Clova at 11:20. But where were the floatplanes?
The dads were growing anxious. There was a low hum about the camp as the murmuring against Larry McKenzie and his fellow pilots grew. David’s father, he remembered, had to perform an open-heart surgery at ten in the morning the following day. But if they missed the train to Montreal, they’d never make their flight to Philadelphia or their connection to Syracuse.
Finally one of the fathers asked what everyone else was thinking. “So if we miss this train, when’s the next one?”
“I don’t know,” another father confessed. “We’ve been doing this for, what, six years, and we’ve never missed the train yet.”
All eyes turned to Dr. Shirazi.
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” he insisted.
“Absolutely,” Charlie Harper chimed in.
“But what if it’s not?” one of the dads asked. “What if McKenzie doesn’t show in the next two minutes? What then?”
“I’m sure they’ll be here any second,” Dr. Shirazi insisted as David strained to see any sign of the de Havillands on the horizon. But there were none to be found.
David whispered to his father, “Dad, when is the next train?”
His father said nothing. Several minutes went by. David wondered if his father had actually heard him, but David saw his clenched jaw and knew that he had.
Then his father whispered back, “Thursday.”
“Thursday?”
David hadn’t meant to say it so loud-or at all. It had been an involuntary reaction, and the flash of anger in his father’s eyes didn’t help any.
“Tell me he’s kidding,” one of the fathers insisted.
“I’m afraid he’s not,” Dr. Shirazi conceded.
“Thursday?” another demanded, cursing. “How is that possible? I’ve got patients waiting for me. I can’t be here until Thursday!”
Panic and anger were a volatile cocktail, and these men swallowed it whole. The fathers gathered around Dr. Shirazi, all angrily explaining their highly important and finely crafted schedules to him-as though there was anything he could do. David shrank back from the group. He felt terrible for his father. It wasn’t his fault. It was McKenzie’s.
Where were the pilots? How could they just strand them all there? Was it engine trouble? Why didn’t they send other planes? And what exactly were they supposed to do? They had no cell phone coverage up here, no radios, no satellite phone. They had no way to contact civilization at all.
Most of the men-with the exception of Charlie Harper-were now threatening to sue McKenzie Air Expeditions for every red Canadian cent they had. “We’re going to own that company!” one of them vowed.
But the threats did little good. As the hours passed, there were still no floatplanes. By two that afternoon, everyone was not only anxious but hungry as well. They were sick of fish by now, and there wasn’t a lot of extra food. They snacked on leftover candy bars and some unfinished bags of gorp and tried to figure out what to do. Should they just sit tight and keep waiting or unpack and set up their camp again?
For the rest of the day, they hung out together, playing hearts, reading novels, or trying to nap and forget their troubles. But when the sun began to set and the temperature began to drop and still no floatplanes had come, they realized they had no choice. The men and older boys unpacked again, and David and Marseille were sent out to gather more firewood.
“What do you think is going to happen, David?” Marseille asked as they headed back into the woods.
“It’ll be okay,” David reassured her. “Old Man McKenzie will come for us.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
“Then why hasn’t he?”
David stopped, turned to her, took her hands. “We paid a lot of money for this trip. McKenzie has every incentive to make us happy. There’s just some mechanical problem or something. But he’ll be here.”
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I promise.”
Thunder began to rumble and boom above them. Confident they were alone, David stepped close to Marseille and put his arms around her small frame. She stepped in closer and held him tight. Suddenly they were kissing again, and for those few moments, all other thoughts melted away. Despite the chill, he felt warm all over. He wondered if she could feel his heart pounding so intensely. And then it began to pour.
Wednesday passed, and still no planes.
The rain didn’t stop. The card games inside the damp cabins were getting old fast. It was now Thursday, still gray and growing colder, and no planes. For most, anger had turned to fear. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere. Their provisions were nearly gone. The men debated whether they should use the fishing boats to try to find help, but the truth was, they were hundreds of miles from the nearest human being. They had no maps. They had no compasses. They had little fuel, and the thought of running out of diesel somewhere on the reservoir finally ruled out that possibility.
Everyone was on edge, and David could tell his dad was feeling worse by the hour. How had they misjudged McKenzie’s ability to fulfill his obligations so badly? What could possibly be keeping him? In six years, nothing like this had ever happened. Surely their wives and secretaries would be calling the outfitter’s offices in Clova or the police or someone. Send in the Mounties for goodness’ sake!
But for David and Marseille, the days were a gift. They brought their blankets, music, and books to the A-frame and let go of the rest of the world. They covered every imaginable topic, amazed that their conversations never seemed to become tired.
“Do you believe in God?” Marseille asked at one point.
“I don’t know,” he said. No one had ever asked him that before.
“Aren’t you a Muslim?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Okay, yeah, I’m a Muslim-a Shia, actually.”
“A what?”
“That’s a kind of Muslim,” he explained. “The kind from Iran.”
“So you believe in God,” she clarified.
“I don’t know what I believe,” David admitted.
“Why not?”
“Because my father’s an atheist,” he explained, “and my mom’s an agnostic.”
“Aren’t they Muslims too?”
“Technically,” David said. “But after all they saw during the Revolution, they decided Islam couldn’t be true.”
“Why not?”
“They didn’t know how to believe in a god who would command people to kill and maim and torture so many innocent people.”
Marseille said nothing for several long minutes. Then she asked, “What do you think about Jesus?”
David shrugged. “I believe he existed. Muslims say he was a prophet. But I don’t know.”
“Do you believe if we pray, God will answer us and get us out of here?”
He shrugged and said he didn’t know, but he didn’t think so.
“It couldn’t hurt, though, could it?” she asked.
“Praying?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I guess not,” he said, unconvinced.
But she didn’t pray. Instead, she lay down on the bed and stared out the window. Within a few minutes, she was sleeping. David covered her with a blanket to keep her warm. He lay down beside her and slept too.
Several hours later, David woke up. Marseille turned over and faced him. Her eyes held a sudden purpose as she stared into his, and her request was irresistible.
“David, I need you to tell me the story of our parents,” she whispered. “Please. Don’t say no.”
He couldn’t refuse her now.
So with mesmerizing detail, he explained how Marseille’s mother had vetoed at least three plans the CIA and the State Department had drawn up, schemes-in her view-ranging from impracticable to suicidal. Then he explained how Marseille’s father had devised the plan that was finally accepted and executed. The Harpers, the Shirazis, and the other American FSOs would be given false Canadian passports. This, however, would take a special, secret act of the parliament in Ottawa, since the use of false passports for espionage was expressly forbidden by Canadian law. They would also be given false papers that identified them as film producers from Toronto working on a new big-budget motion picture titled Argo, set in the Middle East, in conjunction with a major Hollywood studio. Their cover story would be that they were in Iran scouting locations. The CIA would set up a front company in Los Angeles called Studio Six, complete with fully operational offices, working phone lines, and notices in the trade papers announcing casting calls and other elements of preproduction. The Americans and the Shirazis would then further develop and refine all the details of their cover stories, commit them to memory, and rehearse them continually. Eventually, the CIA would send in an operative named Jack Zalinsky to go over the final details and to see if they were ready for any interrogation they might encounter. When the time was right, Zalinsky would take the team to the airport and try to get them through passport control without getting caught-and hanged.
“You’re saying my father came up with this idea?” Marseille asked when David was finished.
“Actually, your mom helped quite a bit,” David replied.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “How would my parents even know…?”
Her voice trailed off. The wind rustled through the pines. Once again, dark clouds were gathering overhead. Another storm front seemed to be brewing, and it was getting colder. David glanced at his watch. They needed to get back to the camp before people got worried about them.
But Marseille urged him not to leave. “Just a few minutes more,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it gently. “I want to know the rest of the story.”
“Marseille, it’s getting late.”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” she smiled.
“How?”
She reached into her knapsack and pulled out a box of Junior Mints.
“I can’t believe you have any left,” David said.
“This is the last one.”
“And you’re actually going to share them with me?”
“Only if you finish the story.”
David’s stomach growled. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse, so he didn’t.
“Okay, now we’re talking,” he said, as one of the mints melted on his tongue. “D-day was set for January 28, 1980. There were a bunch of regional elections going on. Ayatollah Khomeini’s people were trying to maintain control. The secret police had their hands full murdering dissidents and killing the opposition, so this Zalinsky guy believed they might have a window where the police might be distracted somewhat. It was a long shot, but it was the best they could do. So Zalinsky got the team to the main airport in Tehran. They were going through passport control, and my parents were absolutely terrified. Your parents were cool as cucumbers, but my parents-not so much. They don’t exactly look Canadian, after all, and they were never convinced your parents’ plan was going to work. But your father and Mr. Zalinsky kept insisting that if the tickets and passports said they were Canadians, then the guards at the airport would accept it. And they did.”
“That’s amazing,” Marseille said.
“So before Khomeini’s thugs knew what was happening, your parents, mine, and the others were taking their seats on board Swissair flight 363, heading for Toronto via Geneva. As soon as they cleared out of Iranian airspace, Mr. Zalinsky ordered champagne for the whole team.”
“But my parents don’t drink,” Marseille said.
“Neither do mine!” David said. “But believe me, they did that day. From what I hear, they finished off two bottles while Mr. Zalinsky toasted them and asked what they were going to do with their newfound freedom.”
“And?” Marseille pressed, hanging on every word. “What did they say?”
“Well,” David said, “your folks said they were going to work for the State Department for a few more years, move to New Jersey, and buy a little house near the beach. Your dad said he wanted to teach. Your mom said she wanted to work in the city and make a boatload of money. And that’s just what they did, right?”
Marseille nodded, her eyes misting. “What did your parents want?” she asked.
“They just had one question,” David said.
“What’s that?”
“When they finally got to America, would they really be let in?”
Just as he said it, the alarm on David’s watch went off.
“It’s almost time for dinner,” he said, turning the alarm off. “We really need to get back.”
But Marseille wasn’t hungry for dinner. She squeezed his hand and pulled him closer. She stared deep into his eyes with a look of gratitude and desire, which he returned with equal intensity. She kissed him with a passion unlike anything he had ever imagined. She kissed him on the neck and the lips and wouldn’t stop. She was holding him tighter and gasping for air, and David felt himself losing control. He knew where they were going was wrong, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop.
He felt intoxicated by her presence and her touch, and the room began to spin. Ignoring all of his cautions, all of his fears, and everything he’d been brought up to believe, he willingly, eagerly let Marseille take him from one world into another, savoring every moment along the way.
Dawn broke on Friday morning.
David awoke in his own cabin, all alone. His father and brothers were nowhere to be seen, but he didn’t mind. He’d been dreaming about the previous night with Marseille, dreaming about where it all would lead next. But suddenly he heard the sound of a floatplane coming across the lake.
David jumped out of his sleeping bag, threw on a sweatshirt, and stepped out into the frosty morning air. Everyone else, it turned out-including Marseille-was already awake and down by the docks as Old Man McKenzie landed his de Havilland first, followed by the others. David ran down to meet them, half-fearing the men might lynch the pilots when they finally taxied over to them.
But before any of them could say a word, McKenzie climbed out of his cockpit and apologized profusely, promising to refund all of their money just as soon as they got back to Clova. It worked. The men were grateful and surprisingly forgiving. What they really wanted to know was what in the world had happened and why McKenzie and the others hadn’t shown up on Tuesday morning, as planned. But no one was prepared for McKenzie’s answer.
“Believe me, gentlemen, we were all suited up and ready to come get you guys when we got word that morning that the Canadian government had just issued a no-fly order for the entire country. And it wasn’t just Canada. All commercial and civilian flights throughout North America were grounded. No one could take off, and everyone in the air had to land immediately.”
“Why? What happened?” David’s father asked.
“A group of terrorists hijacked four commercial jetliners-two from Boston’s Logan Airport, one from Newark International, and one from Washington Dulles,” MacKenzie explained.
David gasped.
“Two of the planes plowed into the World Trade Center,” McKenzie went on. “Another flew right into the Pentagon. The fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania. Everyone on the planes was lost. No one knew if there were more hijackers on more planes out there, so the entire air transportation system was simply shut down. Believe me, we wanted to come get you guys. But the Air Force was threatening to shoot down any unauthorized plane in the sky. The only planes in the air were F-15s and F-16s, all armed with air-to-air missiles and ready for action. I’ve never seen anything like it. But again, I apologize for what you’ve been through. If there had been any way to get you-or get word to you-please know we would have done it.”
The group stood there in stunned silence. And then it got worse.
“Was anyone in the towers hurt?” Marseille asked.
David noticed that she was ashen, and her hands shook.
“I’m afraid the towers don’t exist anymore, young lady,” McKenzie replied.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean the towers collapsed not long after the planes hit them.”
“Both of them?”
“I’m afraid so,” McKenzie said.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Are you kidding?” McKenzie asked. “At this point, they’re saying almost three thousand people have died, but there may be more.”
“Three thousand?” David’s father asked.
McKenzie nodded. “There’s a big gap in the middle of Manhattan where the towers used to stand. There’s smoke rising as far as the eye can see. Whole thing took less than two hours, and whoosh, they were gone, both of them.”
Marseille collapsed to the ground and began to sob uncontrollably. David looked to Mr. Harper, expecting him to comfort her. But Marseille’s father just stood there, the blood draining from his face.
Scared and confused, David cautiously knelt by Marseille’s side and gingerly put his arm around her shoulder. “It’s okay, Marseille. You’re safe. We’re all safe, right? Really, it’s going to be okay.”
But Marseille didn’t respond. She couldn’t speak. Neither could her father. They tried, but the words would not form. She was disintegrating, and her father was standing there like a zombie.
“David,” Dr. Shirazi said softly, his voice faltering.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Marseille’s mother.”
“Mrs. Harper?” David asked. “What about her?”
His father’s eyes welled up with tears. He took a deep breath and said, “She works for a bank, David. She works in the South Tower.”
David couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Mrs. Harper works in the World Trade Center?” he finally asked.
Reluctantly his father nodded.
David sank to the ground and sat for a long while, not knowing what to say.
“Maybe she got out,” he finally said, his lower lip trembling.
Spring Lake, New Jersey
The last time David saw Marseille was the day of the funeral.
Charlie Harper simply couldn’t bear the loss of Claire, his beloved wife of twenty-three years. He had no idea how to take care of himself, much less his only daughter, under these circumstances. He wasn’t eating. He was losing weight. He rarely spoke. He was clinically depressed and failing to take his medication. So he resigned his job, put the family house on the market, packed up their belongings, and-unable to bear the thought of boarding a plane-drove Marseille across the country from New Jersey to Oregon, where his folks had a farm near Portland.
And just like that, Marseille Harper disappeared from David’s life.
She accepted a hug from David at the funeral home. But she was so overcome with emotion that she couldn’t talk. She could barely even look him in the eye at the memorial service. After she moved, he wrote her letters. They went unanswered. He called and left her messages. She never called back. Once, her grandfather answered the phone and said Marseille was out and that she’d call back. She never did. He even sent her a box of Junior Mints. There was still no reply. David finally got the message and stopped trying.
Marseille Harper had been his first love. He had given her his body, heart, and soul, and she had given him hers. But in an instant of time, it had all been torn away. The feelings she’d stirred in him had changed him forever, but it was all for nothing. Marseille was lost to him now, and he had no idea how to get her back. He grieved for her but did his best not to blame her. He had no idea how he would have reacted if his mother had been murdered by terrorists and his father had lost his will to function-and perhaps to live. And while he and Marseille had spent an amazing week together, the truth-painful though it was-was it had been only a week. He had no real claim on her. He had no right to expect that she would stay in touch with him, and clearly, wishing wouldn’t make it so.
Quietly, privately, alone in his room-or on the bus, or alone with his thoughts during a study hall or at his locker-he would pray for Marseille and her father. He begged Allah to comfort them and heal them-and him, too. He beseeched Allah to let Marseille somehow find a measure of peace and some good friends who would stand by her and encourage and protect her. He asked Allah to let Marseille remember him and to move her to write back to him.
But as fall turned to winter, David began to lose hope. It was as though his words echoed back from the ceiling of his room, useless and ridiculous. He might as well be praying to the rug on his floor or the lamp on his desk, he concluded, and this only accelerated the tailspin.
His grades plummeted from straight A’s to straight D’s. His parents were worried about him. So were his teachers. But nothing they suggested seemed to help. The only good news was that both of his brothers were off at college and not there to tease him.
If all that weren’t enough, David began getting into fights at school. A group of seniors on the varsity football team kept calling him a “camel jockey,” and “the son of a Muslim whore.” He went ballistic every time. It didn’t matter that he was Persian, not Arab. Or that his family was from Iran, not Afghanistan or Pakistan, where the 9/11 attacks originated. It didn’t matter that he and his family were Shia Muslims, not Wahhabis like Osama bin Laden or Sunnis like Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers. Or that David himself had been born and raised in America and was rooting for the American forces battling al Qaeda and the Taliban more than anyone else in his school. None of it mattered to the losers who baited him, and he unleashed every time.
Though David was younger than his tormentors, he was at least as tall and possessed a killer right jab and an increasingly volcanic temper. In January 2002, he was put into detention six times and twice briefly suspended for fighting in the halls. When he broke the nose of the school’s star quarterback and broke the arm of the state’s leading wide receiver in the same fight, however, the principal called the police, and David Shirazi was arrested, fingerprinted, and locked up overnight, pending arraignment and a bail hearing.
It was a quiet night in the Onondaga County juvenile detention center, and David was put in a cell by himself. His parents stayed with him for as long as the rules allowed, and though they were loving, they were firm. David’s father said he hoped a night in this place might bring David to his senses, and then they left.
For more than an hour, David paced the floor and cursed anyone within earshot. At one point he punched the cinder block wall so hard, he feared he had broken his hand but refused to call out for help. He collapsed on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and began to grow scared. He knew he was rapidly losing altitude emotionally, spiritually, even physically.
How had he slipped so far, so fast? And what was he supposed to do now? The prospect of actually going to jail for several months made him physically ill. But even if he could plead his way out of jail time, he was still going to be expelled from school. He was going to have a criminal record. How was he going to get into college? How was he ever going to get a decent job?
Lying there in the cell, he thought back to the anticipation he’d had about going up to Canada with his father and brothers for that fishing weekend. He tried to recall just how much he had looked forward to that weekend and how his life had been dangerously unraveling ever since. He’d fallen for a girl who wasn’t even supposed to be there, a girl whose mother had been killed in the towers, a girl who now lived on the other side of the country, a girl who didn’t love him and wouldn’t talk to him and apparently couldn’t care less that he even existed.
How had it come to this? He’d gone to Canada to go fishing. But in those few short days, the whole world had come crashing down. One day, no one he knew cared that his family was from the Middle East. Now they treated him like a murderer and a terrorist. One day, no one cared that he was Muslim. Now they treated him like he was part of some sleeper cell, with suicide bomber belts hanging in his closet, ready to be activated by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and sent into a mall on Christmas to blow himself to smithereens and take as many people as he could with him. It wasn’t true. It had never been true. But no one seemed to care.
David closed his eyes and tried to forget the last few months. He tried to remember Marseille’s face. He tried to recall her eyes, her smile, the feel of her body against his. He tried to imagine himself back on that island, back in that cabin, before this nightmare had begun. But every time he tried to conjure up such images, all he could see was the twisted, demented face of Osama bin Laden staring back at him. Sickened by the connection, he’d shake it off and try again to dream of Marseille. But he couldn’t. It was bin Laden’s vacant eyes on which he found himself fixated again and again.
David seethed with a toxic level of anger he had never before experienced and didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Marseille’s fault all this had happened, he reminded himself. Nor was it her father’s. This was all the doing of Osama bin Laden, period. It was bin Laden who was the leader of al Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind the 9/11 attacks. It was bin Laden who had recruited the nineteen hijackers, facilitated their training, funded them, and deployed them to seize the four American jetliners and turn them into missiles. It was bin Laden who had murdered Mrs. Harper.
The irony was palpable, David thought. Here he lay in prison, while Osama bin Laden roamed free through the mountains of Kandahar or the streets of Islamabad.
Tehran, Iran
January 2002
Hamid Hosseini still couldn’t believe his good fortune.
The world was fixated elsewhere. On the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the war in Afghanistan. On a possible war in Iraq. On the North Koreans’ effort to build nuclear weapons. On soaring oil prices and a weakening global economy. And all this was good, for it kept the world distracted from developments in Iran, developments very near and dear to his heart.
In the wake of the death of one of their dear colleagues, the Assembly of Experts-the ruling council of eighty-six religious clerics-had earlier that day unanimously named Hamid Hosseini… Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was an honor he had never sought or expected. But it had come nonetheless, and now he of all people was the highest religious and political authority in the country.
The world would little note nor long remember his transition to the role, he was sure. Few people knew who he was or cared. Hosseini had carefully maintained a somewhat-moderate public image, at least on the international stage. But he knew without a shadow of a doubt why Allah had chosen him. It was his calling-indeed, it was his destiny-to avenge the death of his master and prepare the way for the coming of the Twelfth Imam. This, he knew, required him to bring about the annihilation of the United States and Israel, the Great and Little Satans, respectively. It would take time. It would take careful planning. He would have to recruit the right people and groom them for key positions of leadership. But it was possible. And he couldn’t wait to get started.
After a long day of ceremonies, speeches, and meetings, he arrived home late and collapsed into bed next to his wife, who was already asleep. He was exhausted, but his mind swirled with the plans he was making to confront the arrogant powers of the West. Then suddenly, he realized what day it was, what anniversary it was, and he found himself thinking back eighteen years earlier to the day when he’d knelt down with his three sons and prayed a final prayer with them.
“O mighty Lord. I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one who will fill this world with justice and peace. Make us worthy to prepare the way for his arrival, and lead us with your righteous hand. We long for the Lord of the Age. We long for the Awaited One. Without him-the Righteously Guided One-there can be no victory. With him, there can be no defeat. Show me your path, O mighty Lord, and use me to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi.”
He recalled opening his eyes and gazing upon those three beautiful and innocent gifts, the pride of his life.
“Come, boys,” he said, opening the car door for them. “It is time.”
“Where are we going?” asked Bahadur, who at the age of twelve was his oldest, and certainly the tallest, and whose name meant “courageous and bold.”
“We’re going on a mission,” he replied.
“A mission!” said Firuz, his eleven-year-old. “What kind of mission?”
“It is a secret mission,” Hosseini said. “Come quickly, and you will see.”
As the two older boys scrambled into the backseat, he lifted up his youngest, Qubad, and held him even longer. Kissing him three times, and receiving three joyful kisses back, he finally put Qubad in the back with his brothers, shut the door, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.
It was a beautiful winter day, sunny, cool but not cold, with a slight breeze blowing from the east. The boys waved good-bye to their mother, whose eyes were filled with tears, and soon they were off.
“Why is Madar crying?” Qubad asked.
Hosseini glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that the two youngest also had tears in their eyes. They were sensitive boys, and he loved them even more for it.
“She misses you already,” he said as calmly as he could. “You know her.”
“She loves us,” Qubad said quietly.
“Yes, very much,” his father replied.
“She tucks us in every night and sings us the songs of Persia,” the little boy said.
“She buys us pomegranates-the sweetest in the world,” Firuz chimed in.
Then Bahadur spoke up as well. “She knows the Qur’an almost as well as you do, Pedar.”
“Better,” Hosseini said, glad he had not brought her, for she would never have survived this trip.
After an hour on the road, the boys were getting antsy, poking each other, quarreling, and whining to stop and get something to eat. They still had another thirty or forty minutes to go, and Hosseini wasn’t yet ready to pull over for food.
“Who wants to play a game?” Hosseini asked.
“We do! We do!” they all yelled.
“Wonderful,” he said. “Here’s how it works. I’ll say a Sura from the Qur’an, and you must recite it to me precisely. For this you will receive a point. Whoever gets the most points, Madar will make a special cake just for him.”
The boys cheered with glee. They had all been memorizing the words of the Prophet since before they could read, in school and with the help of their mother. They each had to recite a whole chapter of the Qur’an to their mother before they could go out to play every afternoon. And once, when they had been invited to meet the Ayatollah at the palace, their father had made them memorize all of Sura 86 and the story of the Nightcomer so they could recite it to Khomeini.
“Let me go first; please, please, let me go first,” Firuz shouted.
“No, no. We will go in order, oldest to youngest. Are you ready?”
They all were. The pokings were finished. The quarreling was over. Hosseini had their rapt attention now.
“Okay, Bahadur, you’re first. Sura 4:52.”
“Thank you, Pedar,” the boy replied. “That is an easy one. ‘Jews and Christians are the ones whom God has cursed, and he whom God excludes from His mercy, you shall never find one to help and save him.’”
“Excellent, Bahadur. You get one point. Now, Firuz.”
“I’m ready.”
“Good. Can you tell me Sura 5:33?”
Firuz’s face darkened. For a moment, he looked as though he might panic. Then suddenly his face brightened. “Yes, Pedar, I remember that one. ‘The recompense of those who fight against God and His Messenger, they shall either be executed, or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off alternately, or be banished from the land.’”
“Very good, my son,” Hosseini said. “I was worried there for a moment.”
“So was I, but Madar taught that one, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.”
“She would be very proud. I will be sure to tell her you remembered.”
“Do I get a point?” Firuz asked.
“Absolutely. It’s one to one. And now it’s Qubad’s turn.”
“I am ready!” Qubad yelled with such enthusiasm they all burst into laughter.
“Okay, here’s one I taught you myself, Qubad-Sura 60:9.”
“Oh, oh, I know that!” Qubad shouted. “‘For those who disbelieve, garments of fire are certain to be cut out for them, with boiling water being poured down over their heads, with which all that is within their bodies, as well as their skins, is melted away.’”
“No, my son, I’m sorry,” Hosseini said. “What Sura is that, Firuz?”
“That’s 22:19-20.”
“Correct,” Hosseini said, beaming with pride. “That’s another point for you.”
“Hey, that’s not fair!” Bahadur said.
“Yeah, that’s not fair!” little Qubad squealed.
“My game, my rules,” their father replied. “But I’ll tell you what, Qubad. I will give you another chance. What is Sura 60:9?”
Qubad closed his eyes and scrunched up his face. He thought and thought, but it was not coming. Finally he said, “‘Fight against those among the People of the Book who do not believe God and the Last Day’?”
“Good try, Qubad,” Hosseini said. “Who knows where that verse is found?”
This time Bahadur shouted out the answer first. “That is Sura 9:29, Pedar!”
“Very good, my son; another point for you.”
Bahadur beamed. Qubad looked like he was about to burst out in tears. They were all very competitive boys, and none of them liked to lose, least of all Qubad.
Firuz now spoke up. “I know Sura 60:9. May I recite it, Pedar?”
“Of course.”
“It’s regarding our enemies-Jews and Christians and those who call themselves Muslims but are not faithful to the Qur’an-isn’t that right?”
“It is,” Hosseini said. “But to get the point, you must say the verse.”
There was a long silence.
“Are you sure you know it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“‘God forbids you…,’” Firuz began.
“Forbids you to what?” Hosseini asked.
“‘… forbids you to take them… for friends and guardians…’”
“Go on.”
There was another long pause.
“I can’t,” Firuz said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” his father said. “Bahadur, can you finish it?”
“Yes, Pedar. ‘God forbids you to take them for friends and guardians. Whoever takes them for friends and guardians, those are the wrongdoers.’”
“Very impressive, Bahadur,” Hosseini exclaimed. “Okay, you get half a point, and Firuz gets half a point.”
Both boys cheered, but Qubad began to sniffle and wipe his nose.
“And what do I get, Pedar?” he asked, his eyes red and watery.
“A chance for redemption,” Hosseini said.
“What does that mean?” Qubad asked, fighting hard not to cry in front of his brothers but about to lose the fight.
“It means I will ask you three questions, and if you get them all right, you will be ahead of your brothers.”
Qubad’s face brightened. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay, I’m ready, Pedar! I’m ready!”
“Good. Here we go,” Hosseini said. “What does the Ayatollah say is the ‘purest joy in Islam’?”
“I know that! I know that!” Qubad shouted. “‘The purest joy in Islam is to kill and be killed for Allah!’”
“Very good, Qubad,” his father said. “One point for you!”
Qubad was ecstatic.
“Next question.”
“Yes, yes, I’m ready, Pedar!”
“What happens to those who become martyrs in the cause of jihad?”
“I know that one too! Sura 47:4-6 says, ‘As for those who are killed in Allah’s cause, He will never render their deeds vain. He will guide them. He will admit them into paradise that He has made known to them.’”
Hosseini and the older boys cheered. Qubad was radiant now, his tears gone. He was on top of the world.
“Final question. Are you ready, Qubad?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
“Very well. Does a martyr feel pain when he dies?”
“No, he does not, Pedar! A martyr will not feel the pain of death except like how you feel when you are pinched.”
Seeing his father’s pride, Qubad beamed. But he was not finished. “I know more! I know more!” he shouted.
“Go ahead, my son.”
“The shedding of the martyr’s blood will forgive all of his sins! And he will go directly to paradise! And he will be decorated with jewels! And he will be in the arms of seventy-two beautiful virgins! And he will…”
Qubad stopped. The cheering died down. A puzzled look came over the little boy’s face. He cocked his head to the side.
“What is it, Qubad?” his father asked.
There was a long pause.
Then Qubad asked, “What is a virgin, father?”
Hosseini smiled. “That, little man, is a lesson for another day. Who is ready to eat?”
“We are! We are!” they yelled.
They were now far from the city limits of Tehran, heading southwest along Highway 9 toward the holy city of Qom. Hosseini pulled over at a roadside stand and bought the boys some bread and fruit, along with some candy bars as special treats. Then they kept driving, talking and singing along the way.
When they pulled off onto a side road on the outskirts of Qom, Bahadur asked, “Where are we going, Father?”
“To an army base, boys,” Hosseini replied.
“Really?” Qubad asked, his eyes wide, chocolate all over his face. “Why?”
“You will see.”
Soon they came to a military checkpoint. Two heavily armed guards ordered the car to a halt. Hosseini showed them his papers. They looked in, saw the boys, and waved them all through.
As the boys began to see tanks and armored personnel carriers and soldiers carrying weapons and doing drills, they became more excited. Helicopters passed overhead. Nearby they could hear soldiers training at the firing range. A moment later, they parked by a field where hundreds of children were assembling and forming into lines.
“We’re here,” Hosseini said.
Hosseini got the boys out of the car, walked them over to a folding table where he wrote their names on a registry, kissed them each on both cheeks, and told them to join the others on the field and do as they were told.
Dutifully, they obeyed their father and ran out to the field, eager to learn what this exciting mystery was all about. It was then that the soldiers began passing out red plastic keys, each dangling on a string-one per child until everyone had his own. Then the commanding officer of the base introduced himself and told the children to put the keys around their necks.
“This, dear children of Persia,” he bellowed over the loudspeakers, “is your key to paradise.”
Hosseini suddenly woke from his dream.
Beside him in their bed, his wife was weeping. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost two in the morning.
Every year, for eighteen years, he had endured the same ritual. Every year he dreamed about that special day with his boys and savored the memories. Every year he awoke in the middle of the night to comfort the wife of his youth and hold her in his arms. And every year he resented her for it.
“They were good boys,” she sobbed. “They didn’t deserve to die.”
“Yes, they were good boys,” he replied softly. “That’s why they deserved the honor of death.”
“You had no right to send them.”
“I had every right. Indeed, I had a responsibility. I had no choice.”
“You did.”
“I did not, and neither did you.”
“How can you say that every year?”
“How can you?” he demanded, his patience wearing thin. “Do you want to burn in the fires of hell?”
She shook her head as the tears continued to pour down her cheeks.
“Then stop being so foolish,” he said, holding her more tightly. “They were not ours to keep. They were Allah’s. He gave them to us. We gave them back.”
At that she pulled away and jumped out of bed, screaming hysterically. “Gave them back? Gave them back? You sent them into the minefields, Hamid! They were children! Bahadur. Firuz. Qubad. They were my children, not just yours. You sent them to walk across minefields! You sent them to blow themselves into a thousand pieces. For what? To clear the path for our tanks and our soldiers to kill Iraqis. That is not the job of a child. Shame on you! Shame!”
Hosseini leaped out of bed. His heart was racing. His face was red. He stormed over to his wife and slapped her to the ground.
“You wicked woman!” he roared. “I am proud of my sons. They are martyrs. They are shaheeds. I honor their memory. But you disgrace them. You disgrace them by this weeping. To mourn them is to disbelieve. You are an infidel!”
Hosseini began beating her mercilessly, but she would not relent.
“Infidel?” she screamed as his blows rained down upon her. “I am an infidel? You sent little Qubad to Iraq to step on a land mine! Curse you, Hamid. He was ten. All I have left of him is a piece of that plastic key and a tuft of his hair. And what do I have of Bahadur? or Firuz? If this is Islam, I don’t want any part of it. You and the Ayatollah bought a half-million keys. You are sick, all of you. This is your religion, not mine. I hate you. I hate all of you who practice this evil!”
Hosseini’s eyes went wide. Stunned momentarily by his wife’s words, he suddenly stopped beating her. He just stared at her, trying to comprehend the turn of events. She had never supported him in this decision. Not from day one. Every year, she wept. Every year, he comforted her. But it had been eighteen years. It was enough. Now she had gone too far.
As she sobbed on the floor, her face bloodied and bruised, Hosseini walked over to his dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled out the nickel-plated revolver his father had given him on his thirteenth birthday. He knew it was loaded. It was always loaded. He cocked the hammer and turned toward his wife. Hearing the hammer, his wife turned her head and looked into his eyes. She was quivering. He didn’t care. She was no longer a Muslim. She was no longer his wife. He raised the pistol, aimed it at her face, and pulled the trigger.
The sound echoed through their modest home, and soon several bodyguards rushed in, guns drawn, ready to protect their master with their lives. They were stunned to see the Supreme Leader’s wife on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Hosseini had no need to explain himself. Certainly not to his own guards. He simply instructed them to clean up the mess and bury the body. Then he set the pistol back in his dresser drawer, washed his hands and face, walked down the hall to one of their guest rooms, and lay down on the bed, where he fell fast asleep.
Never had he slept so peacefully, and as he slept, he dreamed of the day when the Twelfth Imam would finally come and reunite him with his sons.
Baghdad, Iraq
February 2002
“Excuse me, are you Najjar Malik?”
Surprised to hear his name whispered in the central reading room of the University of Baghdad library, Najjar looked up from one of his books and found himself staring into the eyes of a swarthy older man in a dark suit. Najjar could not place the face or the voice. Cautiously, he acknowledged that he was, in fact, Najjar Malik.
“You have a visitor,” the man whispered.
He was attracting the attention of several students reading nearby, and Najjar was suddenly uncomfortable.
“Who?”
“I cannot say,” the man said. “But come with me. I will take you to him.”
Najjar glanced at his watch. He had his next class in fifteen minutes.
“Do not worry,” the man said. “This will only take a moment. He is right outside.”
“What is this about?”
“I cannot say. But he told me to tell you, ‘It will be worth your while.’”
Najjar sincerely doubted that. He had neither time for nor interest in a wild-goose chase. He was on pace to complete his doctoral dissertation a full fourteen months ahead of his colleagues of the same age. He didn’t go to the movies. He didn’t hang out with friends. He didn’t date. Aside from the library, the lab, and his apartment, the only other place he ever went was the mosque every morning for predawn prayer.
Yet something about this person compelled Najjar to agree. Curious, he gathered his books, slid them quietly into his backpack, and slipped out the back door of the library, following the man to a black sedan in the parking lot. The strange man hurriedly opened the rear door and nodded for Najjar to enter. The contrast between the dimly lit library and the dazzling sunshine of a gorgeous mid-February day caused Najjar momentary blindness. Squinting as his eyes adjusted, he couldn’t immediately see anyone in the backseat of the sedan, and something within him urged caution. Yet again, for some reason he could not explain, he felt strangely driven to follow the man’s instructions. Once inside, the door closed behind him and he heard a voice he recognized, a voice from the past.
“Najjar, good afternoon,” the voice said. “What a joy to see you again.”
“Dr. Saddaji?” Najjar replied, hardly believing his eyes. “Is that really you?”
“It has been too long, has it not?”
“A long time indeed, sir.”
Najjar’s heart raced, as much with terror as with excitement. Was this really Mohammed Saddaji, famous scientist and father of Najjar’s childhood sweetheart, Sheyda? But the Saddajis had moved away from Iraq years ago; how could he be back after so long? Was Sheyda with him? Was Mrs. Saddaji? How could they be? Wouldn’t they all be killed?
“To what do I owe the honor, sir? I have not heard from your family since you moved to Iran.”
“No one can know that I am here-no one,” Dr. Saddaji whispered. “I don’t have to tell you that I am in grave danger and that now you are too, do I? There are many who would like to see me hang… or worse.”
Najjar swallowed hard. “I understand.”
“You will be killed if anyone learns that you and I have so much as been in contact,” Dr. Saddaji said quietly. “You do understand this, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Najjar replied. “I will tell no one. You have my word.”
“That is good enough for me,” Dr. Saddaji said. “Sheyda has always spoken highly of you, Najjar. Her mother and I always found you to be a good boy-trustworthy and sincere.”
“Thank you, sir,” Najjar said, hardly believing he was hearing her name again after so long.
“Your parents raised you well. I was heartbroken by their deaths.”
“Thank you, again, sir. That is very kind.”
“I don’t have much time. I have come back for one purpose and one purpose only.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am a Persian, Najjar. You know that.”
“Yes.”
“I am not an Arab-Allah forbid.”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“I am a Shia and proud of it. You know this, yes?”
“I do.”
“You know why I left Iraq, don’t you?”
The young man thought he did but felt it best to say nothing.
“It was because I could not bear to see the gifts Allah has given me be used to help… certain people in this town.”
Najjar knew Dr. Saddaji didn’t dare speak ill of Saddam. Not directly. Not even here, in the privacy of his car. Not now. No one dared to speak ill of Saddam, but especially not one of Iraq’s top nuclear scientists. Or rather, ex-nuclear scientists. Najjar’s heart beat faster, and despite the air-conditioning pouring out of the vents of the sedan, he could feel perspiration beginning to run down his back.
It was still stunning to Najjar that the government had ever let Dr. Saddaji study nuclear physics at the University of Baghdad, much less graduate, much less teach and do research, given his Iranian heritage and the intense historic hatred between the Persians and the Arabs. Yet Saddam and his bloodthirsty sons had desperately wanted to build the first Islamic Bomb. Their reasons were simple. They wanted to destroy the Zionists. They wanted to blackmail their neighbors. They wanted to keep the Americans at bay, dominate the Middle East, and in time, rebuild the Babylonian Empire. Saddam had wanted the Bomb so badly that he had been willing to give this man a degree of freedom and latitude he would never have given any other Iranian during the 1980s as the deadly Iran-Iraq War raged on for nearly eight brutal years.
Dr. Saddaji was, without question, the most brilliant nuclear scientist Iraq had ever produced. His success had provided the inspiration for Najjar to follow in his footsteps and pursue his master’s and doctorate in nuclear physics. The man had almost single-handedly rebuilt Iraq’s nuclear program after the Israelis had wiped out the Osirak reactor during the air strikes of 1981.
But ten years later, when the first Gulf War had broken out in January of 1991 and the Americans had invaded southern Iraq and crushed the forces of Saddam’s prized Republican Guard, Dr. Saddaji had seized on the opportunity provided by the chaos and confusion of the American air strikes on Baghdad. He and his family had fled the capital, slipped across the border into Iran, and asked for political asylum in Tehran. Rumor had it that when Saddam learned that the Saddajis had defected-to Iran of all places-he issued orders for every person named Saddaji in the country to be killed, on the off chance that they were related to “the traitor.”
Now the legendary nuclear scientist was back in Baghdad, despite the enormous risk to his life. But why? Najjar stared into the older man’s eyes, looking for clues. He saw no fear in those eyes. Just wisdom. Experience. And something else. There was a long pause. And then…
“I am here because Sheyda asked me to come,” Dr. Saddaji said at last. “Every day since we left Iraq, she has prayed faithfully for Allah to keep you safe and pure and well. And in recent years she has prayed that Allah would grant her favor and let her marry you.”
Najjar was stunned. A lump formed in his throat. His hands trembled. “This is why you have risked your life to come back to Baghdad?”
“Yes.”
“To get me?”
“Yes.”
“To take me to Iran?”
“Nothing else could have persuaded me,” Dr. Saddaji said. “I am here to ask you to marry my only daughter-and join me on a project that will truly bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East and the entire world.”
Najjar suddenly remembered the words of the mysterious boy back in Samarra when he was a child. “You are secretly in love with Sheyda Saddaji… You will marry her before your twenty-fourth birthday.” Was this real? Could this really be happening?
“I want you to work as my assistant,” Dr. Saddaji said, seeing Najjar’s hesitation. “I am now the deputy director of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran. We are building the most impressive civilian nuclear power system in the world. We will be the world’s first truly energy-independent country. We won’t have to rely on oil or gasoline. We will lead the world in energy efficiency and innovation. We will change the course of history. And in so doing, we will prepare the way for the coming of the Promised One. I would value your help enormously, Najjar. I understand that you have become a first-rate physicist. This would be a huge blessing to me and my work. But most importantly, my daughter loves you and simply wouldn’t stop pestering me until I promised to find you and ask you to be part of our family. So there it is. But you must decide quickly. For I am not safe here, and now neither are you.”
The driver gunned the engine, and at that moment, Najjar realized Dr. Saddaji wanted an answer immediately. Not tomorrow. Not a week or a month later. Right then. Dr. Saddaji wanted Najjar to leave behind all that he knew. His aunt and uncle. His dissertation and the honors that would come with completing his degree. All prospects for a good job and a secure future inside the nascent and highly clandestine Iraqi nuclear program. All for a woman and the chance to “change the course of history,” whatever that meant exactly.
“Yes,” Najjar said finally, surprising himself with the force of his conviction. “I can’t imagine anything I would love more than to marry Sheyda and work for you.”
Dr. Saddaji beamed. “Then what are we waiting for?” he said. “Let the adventure begin.”
Syracuse, New York
March 2002
“Rise and shine, Shirazi-you’ve got a visitor!”
David heard the words but had no desire to open his eyes, much less get out of bed. He had caught a stomach flu. He’d spent much of the last few nights puking his guts out. But the guard kept rapping his nightstick on the steel bars, and just to make him stop, David leaned over, put his glasses on, set his feet on the cold tile floor, and ran his hands through hair in desperate need of a trim. It was day thirteen of a fourteen-day sentence in juvie hall.
One more day in hell, he told himself.
His parents visited every day, looking older and grayer each time he saw them. His father said he was working on getting him admitted into a private, all-boys academy in Alabama where he could try to salvage his education and get his life back on track. David knew he should be grateful, but he wasn’t.
David quickly threw on his standard orange jumpsuit over his boxer shorts and slipped into the white tennis shoes he’d been given. When the guard ordered his cell to be electronically unlocked, David was led down a series of hallways to a small meeting room not far from the director’s office. He had expected to see his parents or his lawyer or both. Instead, he found an older gentleman in his late fifties or early sixties flipping through a magazine and fidgeting as if he badly needed a cigarette. As David entered the room, the man stood and smiled warmly. Sporting a gray beard, black-rimmed glasses, and an ill-fitting green suit, he was not anyone David had ever seen before, but David immediately had the impression that the man knew him from somewhere.
“Fifteen minutes,” the guard said.
When the guard then stepped out of the room and closed the door, the man shook David’s hand firmly and suggested that they both sit down.
“I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again for a long time, David,” he began.
“Have we met before?” David asked.
“We’ll get to that in a minute. I’ve heard you’re a pretty sharp kid.”
“And yet… here I am,” David said, looking down at his shoes.
“You made a mistake, David. You’re not the first kid to beat the crap out of a couple of morons who deserved it. I don’t suspect you’ll be the last.”
David looked up again. Who was this guy?
“Actually, they didn’t deserve it,” David confessed, suspecting that this might be someone from the DA’s office checking up on him.
“Sure they did,” the man said. “Didn’t one call you a raghead?”
“I still shouldn’t have hit them,” David answered, remembering that all their conversations were being monitored and recorded.
“Fair enough,” the man continued. “But you clearly know how to handle yourself. I’ve seen your file. You won every fight you were in at Nottingham, even when you were outnumbered.”
“Not exactly something you can put on your résumé.”
“Well, that depends, son.”
“On what?”
“On what kind of job you’re applying for.”
Then the man slid a magazine across the table to David. It was a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report. He pointed to a headline that read, “Not Your Father’s CIA.” Puzzled, David looked at the headline, then into the man’s eyes. The man nodded for David to begin reading.
Cautiously, David took the magazine and scanned it quickly.
The CIA is growing-and fast. To fend off America’s enemies and take on terrorists and other bad guys worldwide, the nation’s premier spy agency is undergoing the most rapid growth since its inception almost sixty years ago… The CIA has embarked on a nationwide ad campaign, hoping to attract a new generation of spies. For a look at its new pitch to young people, check out the agency’s online rock-and-roll recruiting ads… Trailers at movie theaters and posters at airports have tempted the adventurous with positions in the National Clandestine Service-the latest name for the agency’s fabled directorate of operations, which recruits spies, steals secrets, and runs covert operations.
Suddenly, the man grabbed the magazine back from David.
“Hey, what the…?”
But the man quickly cut David off before he could complete his sentence.
“Finish it,” he said.
“Finish what?”
“Finish the article.”
“You’re crazy! I didn’t have time.”
“You’re lying. Now, give me the rest of the article. Word for word. I know you can do it. I know all about you, David. I know you’ve tested at genius levels. I know you had a straight 4.0 average before Claire Harper died and her only daughter, Marseille, moved to Portland with her dad.”
The hair on David’s arms stood up.
“You have a photographic memory,” the man continued. “You’re only sixteen but you’re supposed to graduate early-two years early-this June. You scored a 1570 on the SATs. The Ivy Leagues were in your future before you began to implode. That’s actually where you and I were supposed to meet, a few years from now. But your little departure into self-destruction made me intervene sooner than I’d planned. Now cut the bull and recite the rest of the article for me, son. Before I walk out of here a very disappointed man.”
The room was silent for at least a minute, save the buzz from the fluorescent lamps above them. David stared at the man for a while, then at the magazine, crumpled in the man’s hand. Then he closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and began reciting from memory.
“‘It was an impressive group, among the most diverse, most experienced ever hired by the CIA. Ages ranged from twenty to over sixty-five. More than half have spent significant time overseas, and one in six is a military veteran. They bring backgrounds as diverse as forestry, finance, and industrial engineering. And they’re a well-educated bunch. They represent schools ranging from Oregon State, UCLA, and the University of Denver to the U.S. Naval Academy, Princeton, and Duquesne. Half the new recruits sport a master’s or PhD. And if you want to work for the CIA’s analytic corps, the directorate of intelligence, you’d better keep your grades up-the average grade-point average is a respectable 3.7.’”
“So why am I here?” the man asked. “Simple-to recruit you.”
“You want me to work for the CIA?” David asked.
“Exactly.”
“And you’re looking for a few good ex-cons?” David quipped.
“Don’t flatter yourself, son. Two weeks in this Holiday Inn hardly qualifies as hard time. For most people, a criminal record-even a juvenile record-would disqualify them. But not in your particular case.”
“My particular case?”
“You’re fluent in Farsi, German, and French. You’re conversational in Arabic, and I suspect you’ll master that pretty quickly once you put your mind to it. You’re already five-foot-eleven. In a few more years, you’ll be six-two or six-three. You know how to handle yourself. You could be valuable.”
“Valuable for what?” David asked.
“You really want to know?”
David shrugged.
The man shrugged too and stood up to leave.
“No, wait,” David said, jumping to his feet. “I really do want to know. What would I be valuable for?”
The man looked back at David. “I have no use for pretenders.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Then I’ll tell you-hunting bin Laden.”
David stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“You want me to help hunt down Osama bin Laden?”
“Actually,” the man said, “I want you to bring us his head in a box.”
David was stunned.
He had to admit, he was electrified at the prospect. He hated bin Laden. The man had destroyed Marseille’s life and as a result had come close to destroying David’s. He wanted revenge so badly he could taste it. But as appealing as it was, this whole conversation still made no sense.
“Why me?” David asked. “I’m only sixteen.”
“That will make things a little more complicated.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning usually I recruit college students. But with your behavior in recent months, I was concerned you might not make it to college. And I’ve been following your story too closely to have it end with disappointment for both of us. So like I said, I had to intervene earlier than I’d planned. The good news is that no one really knows who you are. You’re not on the grid. You have no identity. You’ve just been kicked out of school. Your parents love you, but they don’t know what to do with you. They’re about to ship you off to boarding school for the rest of the semester. Your friends don’t expect to see you again. It’s a perfect time to get you on board, to begin building you a cover story, and in a few years, you’ll be ready-”
“Wait a minute,” David interrupted. “I have to ask-how exactly do you know so much about me?”
“I’m friends with your parents.”
“Since when?”
“Since before you were born.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Jack,” the man said, finally putting his cards on the table.
“Jack?” David said. “As in Jack Zalinsky?”
Zalinsky nodded.
“As in the Jack Zalinsky who rescued my parents from Tehran?”
Zalinsky nodded again.
“So my parents sent you here?”
Zalinsky laughed as the guard electronically unlocked the door. “Not a chance. In fact, they would kill me if they knew I was here. And this will never work if they know, David. You can’t ever tell them we’ve met or what I’m about to take you into. Not if you want us to infiltrate you into the al Qaeda network and bag yourself a high-value target. It would be too risky for you and too risky for them. This has to be hush-hush, or it’s over. Understood?”
The room was quiet again for a moment.
Then David finally said, “I’m in.”
“Good,” Zalinsky said.
“So what do I do next?”
“Let your parents get you out of here tomorrow. Go home with them. Be a good boy. Let them put you in the boys’ school in Alabama. I’ll make sure you get accepted. Then finish the year with straight A’s without getting into any more fights. Get yourself in shape. And when it’s time, I’ll come get you.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll see if you’ve got what we need.”
And with that, Jack Zalinsky was gone.
David buckled down and studied hard.
But physics and trigonometry weren’t his passion. Nor was making new friends. With every spare moment, David locked himself away in his dorm room and studied the life of Osama bin Laden. He ordered books from Amazon. He pored over every magazine and newspaper story he could find in the school library. He began watching C-SPAN and the History Channel in what little spare time his new school afforded him, and in time a profile began to emerge.
What surprised him most was to find that bin Laden didn’t fit the standard image of a terrorist. He wasn’t particularly young. He wasn’t poor or dispossessed or stupid or uneducated. Nor did he come from a violent or criminal family, much less one particularly bent on jihad, or “holy war.” Born in late 1957 or early 1958-no one seemed to know for sure-Osama, David discovered, was the seventeenth of at least fifty-four children. His father, Mohammed bin Laden, was a wealthy Saudi who had founded one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East. His mother, Alia Ghanem, was a Syrian woman of Palestinian origin who met Mohammed in Jerusalem while he was doing renovation work on the Dome of the Rock. David was shocked to learn that Alia was only fourteen years old when she married Mohammed, and she wasn’t his only wife-or one of three, or even ten. She was one of twenty-two wives the man had at various times through the years.
When Osama was only four or five years old, his parents divorced, and the little boy and his mother were forced to move out. Young Osama was now effectively an only child being raised by a single mother in the rigid, misogynist, fundamentalist culture of Saudi Arabia.
And then tragedy struck. Not long after the divorce, Osama’s father died in a plane crash. Years later, Osama’s brother Salem would also die in a horrific plane crash. David wondered if this was when the idea of planes and death and the psychological torment they could cause had been planted in Osama’s heart.
In June 1967, as he approached his tenth birthday, Osama watched along with the rest of the Arab world as the tiny Jewish State of Israel devastated the military forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in just six days. Emotionally rocked, Osama wondered whether Allah was turning his back on the Arab forces.
As best David could determine based on his in-depth studies, the first time Osama bin Laden heard an answer that made sense to him was in 1972. During his freshman year of high school, Osama met a gym teacher who happened to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic jihadist group founded in Egypt in the 1920s by a charismatic radical Sunni cleric named Hassan al-Banna. The gym teacher explained to bin Laden that the Muslims had turned their back on Allah by embracing the godless Soviets. In turn, Allah was turning his back on the Muslims. Apostasy was crippling the Muslim people. Only if they purified themselves, turned wholly and completely to following the teachings of the Qur’an, and launched a true jihad against the Jews and the Christians could they ever regain Allah’s favor and the glory that was once theirs.
As bin Laden approached his sixteenth birthday in 1973-and underwent a massive growth spurt that left him six feet six inches tall and 160 pounds-the young jihadist-to-be was again stunned and horrified to see the Muslims of Egypt and Syria decisively defeated by the Jews of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Now the Muslim Brotherhood argument made even more sense: Muslims were being humiliated by the Israelis because they had lost their way. They had forgotten the path of the prophets. How could they ever regain the glory that had once been theirs unless they returned to the teachings of the Qur’an with all that they were?
Often, David lay awake at night, poring over the pieces of bin Laden’s life. He wanted to know this man inside and out. He wanted to be able to pick out his voice in a crowd. He wanted to be able to recognize him at a glance. He wanted to be able to think like him, talk like him, move like him. It was the only possible way, David decided, of penetrating al Qaeda and being drawn into the inner circle, which in turn was the only way of bringing this monster to justice. And what struck David again and again was how young bin Laden had been when he had begun to make his choices.
Bin Laden was just sixteen, David realized, when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and began reading the collected works of radical Sunni author Sayyid Qutb. He was only seventeen when he got married for the first time, to a devout fourteen-year-old Muslim girl who was a cousin of his from Syria. What’s more, bin Laden was only in his young twenties when Ayatollah Khomeini led his Islamic Revolution to victory in Iran in 1979, an event that electrified Sunni radicals who disagreed with Khomeini’s Shia theology but loved his tactics and envied his accomplishments.
During these formative years, David noticed, bin Laden had wrestled with hard questions. Why had he been born? What was the meaning of life? Was his father right-was life about building empires, making billions, and marrying as many women as he possibly could? Or was there something more? What if man was born not to please himself, but to please Allah? What if the path to eternal life and happiness was not in a comfortable life but in a life of jihad?
David despised every choice bin Laden had made. But at the tender age of sixteen, David was beginning to understand why those choices had been made. And it began to make his own choices that much easier.
Montgomery, Alabama
June 2002
Zalinsky pulled up alongside David as he was walking down Main Street.
“Get in,” he told his young protégé.
Glad to see Zalinsky, David complied immediately. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
David knew Zalinsky had been tracking him closely. Just days after David had enrolled in the private boys’ academy in Alabama to finish his high school diploma, he’d found a program installed on his laptop that allowed Zalinsky to read all of his incoming and outgoing e-mails and instant message conversations and to track all Internet usage. He knew the agent had tapped his cell phone and undoubtedly had someone recording his calls and listening to many of them, especially those with his parents and his brothers. He was even aware of a young operative enrolling at the same academy, posing as a transfer student, going to all of the same classes as David, talking to many of the same people.
David didn’t mind the scrutiny. Zalinsky wasn’t just watching David’s back and making sure he didn’t get in trouble again. He was carefully monitoring David’s ability to keep a secret. Would he confide in someone-anyone-his plans with Zalinsky? Was he bragging to anyone that he might join the CIA? Was he a security risk in any other way? The fact that the veteran Agency man was finally making contact had to mean that he was sufficiently convinced that David Shirazi could keep his mouth shut.
Soon they were pulling into Montgomery Regional Airport, a joint-use facility for military, commercial, and private aviation. David had been in and out of the airfield several times, usually on a U.S. Airways Express flight. But Zalinsky wasn’t headed for the commercial side. Rather, he pulled his silver Audi alongside a Cessna 560 Citation V, a sleek business jet that seated eight passengers more than comfortably. Minutes later, they were in the air, just the two of them and their two CIA pilots. David still had no idea where they were going, but he didn’t really care. He was relieved to see that Jack Zalinsky was a man of his word and eager to get started.
“First of all, happy graduation,” Zalinsky said when the pilot turned off the seat belt sign.
“Thanks.”
“You’re the youngest prospective candidate in the history of the Agency. You still want in?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. Your security check is complete. It was a little challenging to get it done without letting your family and friends know what we were up to. I told my team to ask questions as if you were applying to work at SunTrust Bank.”
“And that worked?”
“Like a charm.” Zalinsky pulled a black file folder from his briefcase, opened it, and set it on a small conference table in the back of the plane. Inside was a stack of false documents.
David picked up the first one on the pile-a birth certificate. “Reza Tabrizi?”
“That will be your alias,” Zalinsky explained. “In Farsi, reza means ‘to consent or accept.’”
“I know what it means,” David replied.
“Of course you do. Well, anyway, you’ll be a German citizen. Your parents moved from Tehran to Munich in 1975 and became citizens. In 1984, they moved to Edmonton, Alberta. You were born and raised in Canada. Your dad worked in the oil sands industry, but he and your mom were killed in a small plane crash just before you graduated from high school. You have no siblings. Your grandparents died when you were young. You never felt like you fit into life in Canada. So after your parents died, you moved to Germany. You bounced around a bit-Bonn, Berlin, and finally to Munich, where your parents were from.”
David studied the dossier that Zalinsky had prepared on his new life.
“My team created a German passport for you. As you get a little older, we’ll help you get a German driver’s license, European credit cards, an apartment, a car, and so forth.”
“What kind?” David asked.
“What kind of what?”
“What kind of car?”
“As we like to say in the Middle East, we’ll blow up that bridge when we get to it,” Zalinsky replied. “But listen, you’ve already been accepted into a college in Germany with this cover. We want you to pursue a degree in computer science from the University of Munich-they call it Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich there, or LMU. You’ll need to finish becoming fluent in Arabic. When you’re done, we want you to get an MBA to finish the cover. We’ll pay for everything, so don’t worry about the cost.”
“But that will take years,” David protested.
“Exactly,” Zalinsky agreed. “When you get to Munich, you’ll join a mosque-a Shia one, obviously, given your background. We want you to become part of the Shia community there. You need to appear to be a practicing Muslim, fluent in the customs and traditions of Shia Islam. Meanwhile, you’ll also start getting martial arts training through the college. In the summers, we’ll have you doing an ‘internship’ overseas. That’s what your friends and professors will hear. You’ll actually be training with us at one of several facilities. When you’re all done and we think you’re ready, we’ll place you in a job with a company doing business in Pakistan and Afghanistan. You’ll have a perfect cover to be traveling in and out of central Asia. Then, if he hasn’t been caught, you’ll begin hunting Osama bin Laden. There’s just one catch.”
“What’s that?” David asked.
“You cannot, under any circumstances, tell your parents, your brothers-anyone-about any of this. I cannot stress this point enough.”
“And if I do?” David wondered aloud.
“You’ll go straight to prison,” Zalinsky explained matter-of-factly. “You’ve already signed about a dozen nondisclosure forms. Believe me, we take this stuff very seriously.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” David assured him. “But what do I tell my parents I’m doing?”
“You tell them you’re going to college in Paris,” Zalinsky said. “You’ve already applied and been accepted. You got a full scholarship. We’ve already rented you an apartment near campus and got you a post office box and a cell phone from a French company. Everything’s been thought of. It’s all in that folder. There are even brochures and other materials you can give your parents.”
David glanced through page after page of details.
“What about the job with SunTrust in Montgomery?” David smiled. “The one I supposedly applied for and am getting a background check for? What do I tell my parents and brothers about that?”
“Tell them you didn’t get it.”
“Why didn’t I get it?”
Zalinsky raised his eyebrows. “They don’t give bank jobs to kids with criminal records.”
The man had thought of everything, and for this David was profoundly grateful. For the first time, he realized just how close his life had come to going off the rails, and it scared him. But for Zalinsky’s intervention, who knew where he would have ended up? Now, however, he had a mission. He had a purpose. He finally knew why he had been born. He had a cause to live for-and to die for.
And yet, at the very moment he should have felt reassured, he couldn’t help but think of Marseille. Where was she? What was she going to do that summer? She still had two years of high school to go. Was she okay? He still missed her terribly. Did she miss him?