Arlington, Virginia
A black sedan pulled up just before dawn.
“Let’s go.”
Good morning to you, too, Jack.
“What about some coffee?” David asked instead, still jet-lagged after a sleepless night on the red-eye from Munich.
“We don’t have time,” Zalinsky replied with uncharacteristic impatience.
David shrugged, sighed into the frigid February morning air, and did as he was told. Zalinsky was old and tired and was supposed to have retired long before now. He was not a man to be trifled with. Certainly not today. David stared at the rapidly shrinking Starbucks in the side mirror as the two left Arlington for the George Washington Memorial Parkway, en route to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia.
The car was quiet for a few minutes. David looked out at the snowcapped spires of the Georgetown University campus and the ice on the Potomac River and thought about all that had happened in the years since he had been sent to Germany and Pakistan, and some of the bizarre events that had been occurring in the Middle East even in recent days.
“Did you see that story about the slaughter of all those Christians in Yemen?” David asked.
Zalinsky did not respond.
“Some cult leader just walked into a church in Aden, pulled out a machine gun, and killed, like, forty people,” David said, looking across the frozen Potomac. “Guy claimed he was preparing the way for the coming of the Islamic messiah or something.”
After driving awhile in more silence, David added, “Weren’t a bunch of priests and bishops assassinated in Yemen just before Christmas?”
Zalinsky still said nothing.
“That’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, I know it’s not my country of focus, but I’m just saying, you know?”
Zalinsky wasn’t interested. Instead, he dropped a bomb. “Look, David, I’m pulling you out.”
“I beg your pardon?” David replied, caught off guard.
“You heard me,” Zalinsky replied. “I’m reassigning you.”
David waited for the punch line. It never came.
“To what?” he asked.
“You’ll find out in a moment.”
“Why?”
“I can’t say.”
“Well, for how long?”
“I really can’t say.”
David briefly considered the possibility that his handler and mentor was kidding. But that was impossible. The man had never told a joke. Not once in all the years since their first meeting. Not once while David was in college. Not once while David was attending the Agency’s top-secret training facility in rural Virginia known as “the Farm.” Not once-according to six different sources David had “interviewed”-in the thirty-nine years that Zalinsky had worked for the CIA. The man was a walking Bergman film.
“What about Karachi?” David asked.
“Forget Karachi.”
“Jack, you can’t be serious. We’re making progress. We’re getting results.”
“I know.”
“Karachi’s working. Somebody’s got to go back.”
“Somebody will. Just not you.”
David’s pulse quickened. Zalinsky was off his rocker. If the man wasn’t driving, David would have been severely tempted to grab him by the lapels and make him start talking sense. For the past few years since getting out in the field, David had been given some of the lamest assignments he could possibly have imagined. Assistant to the assistant to the deputy assistant of whatever for an entire year at the new American Embassy in Baghdad. Coffee fetcher for the economic attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Communications and intelligence liaison in Bahrain for a SEAL team assigned to protect U.S. Navy ships entering and exiting the Persian Gulf. That, at least, had sounded cool on paper, but it was mostly long hours of boredom mixed with still-longer hours of trivia and minutia. David had complained to Zalinsky that this wasn’t what he’d been recruited to do. He was supposed to be hunting Osama bin Laden, not babysitting destroyers and minesweepers.
Finally Zalinsky had relented and assigned him to a project hunting down al Qaeda operatives. So for the past six months, David had been stationed in Karachi, Pakistan, recruiting young technicians inside Mobilink-Pakistan’s leading cellular telecom-to do a little “side business” with Munich Digital Systems, or MDS, the tech company for which David now ostensibly worked. He paid these kids well. Very well. And discreetly. From time to time he threw little parties in his hotel room. Bought them alcohol. Introduced them to “friendly” women. The kind they were unlikely to meet in their neighborhood mosque. He added a little buzz, a little color, to their otherwise drab lives.
In return, David asked them to poke around inside Mobilink’s mainframes and ferret out phone numbers and account information of potentially lucrative future clients for his consulting work. The more information they provided, the more business MDS would get, and the more kickbacks he could pay these guys. Or so he told them. Unwittingly, these kids were actually giving him phone numbers and billing data for al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists, couriers, and financiers operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Pak technicians had no idea David was an American. They thought he was German. They had no idea he was working for MDS as a cover for his true identity as a CIA operative. They had no idea they were engaged in espionage. They just knew David was a twentysomething, like them. They thought he was a technogeek, like them. And they knew he had access to a lot of cash and was happy to dole it out generously to his friends.
And so far, so good. Over the last few months, David’s efforts had led to the capture or killing of nine high-value targets. Day by day, David was certain, they were getting closer to bin Laden. The whole operation had been Zalinsky’s idea, and until now, Zalinsky had given David every reason to believe he was thrilled by the results. Why, then, pull the plug now, especially when they were getting so close to their ultimate objective?
Ten minutes later, the two men arrived at CIA headquarters.
They cleared perimeter security, parked underground, cleared internal security, and got on the elevator. Zalinsky had still said little-barely even a “good morning” to the guards-and David was getting annoyed. The two were supposed to be having breakfast together, catching up on the news, dishing a little gossip from the field, and gearing up for a grueling day of budget meetings and mind-numbing paperwork. Instead, Zalinsky was threatening to pull David off a project he loved for no apparent reason and then giving him the silent treatment. It seemed unprofessional and unfair.
But when Zalinsky hit the button for the seventh floor instead of the sixth, David tensed. The Near East Division-their division-was a suite of offices on the sixth floor. The director of central intelligence and the senior staff worked one flight up. David had never been, but he was headed there now.
The elevator door opened. Zalinsky turned left. David followed close behind. Down the hall, they stepped into a high-tech conference room and were greeted by a balding man in his mid to late fifties who introduced himself as Tom Murray.
David had never met Murray before, but he had certainly heard of the man. Everyone in the Agency had. The deputy director for operations was a legend in the clandestine services. In March 2003, he masterminded the capture in Pakistan of KSM-Khalid Sheikh Mohammed-the right-hand man to Osama bin Laden and the architect of the 9/11 attacks. It was Murray, working closely with the British secret services in the summer of 2006, who planned the penetration and dismemberment of an al Qaeda cell in England that was about to hijack ten transatlantic jumbo jets en route from London to the U.S. and commit what one Scotland Yard official had publicly described as “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” And as far as David could tell, it was Murray who convinced President William Jackson to begin using Predator drones to take out key al Qaeda and Taliban leaders hiding in villages along the Pakistan-Afghan border when intelligence derived from David’s own penetration of Mobilink’s databases proved actionable.
“Good to finally meet you, Agent Shirazi,” Murray said, shaking David’s hand warmly. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you. Jack here speaks very highly of you. Please, have a seat.”
David smiled, thanked the DDO, and took his seat next to an expressionless Zalinsky. There was a knock on the door. Murray hit a button on the arm of his chair, which electronically unlocked the secure entrance. In came an attractive blonde in her late twenties or early thirties, wearing a conservative black suit, a robin’s egg blue silk blouse, black pumps, and a pearl necklace obscured somewhat by the Agency ID dangling from her neck.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” she said with a slight European accent David pegged from northern Germany or perhaps Poland. “My flight just got in.”
“That’s fine, Agent Fischer,” Murray replied. “We’re just getting started. You know Jack Zalinsky.”
“Yes, good to see you again, Jack,” she said, her smile warm and genuine.
As the two shook hands, David couldn’t help but notice she was wearing a pale shade of pink nail polish but not a wedding or engagement ring.
“And this is Agent David Shirazi,” Murray said, “a fellow NOC.”
The last phrase caught David off guard. He hadn’t taken this woman as a nonofficial cover operative. An analyst, maybe, but undercover work? She was hardly the type to blend into the woodwork. David tried not to show his surprise as he shook her hand and caught for the first time just how blue her eyes were behind her designer glasses.
“Reza Tabrizi, it’s great to meet you in person,” she said with a friendly wink.
David froze. Only a handful of people knew his alias. How did she?
“It’s okay, David,” Murray assured him. “Eva’s a first-rate agent and actually helped develop your cover story with Jack several years ago. She’s been keeping an eye on you ever since.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” she said confidently, setting her leather organizer on the desk, then looking David in the eye and recounting his alias from memory. “Reza Tabrizi. Twenty-five. Your parents were Iranian nationals, both born in Tehran. You, on the other hand, were born and raised in Canada, in a little town just outside of Edmonton, Alberta. Your father worked in the oil sands industry. Your mother ran a little sewing shop. But your parents were killed in a small plane crash just before you graduated high school. No siblings. Few close friends. You’re a computer genius but a bit of a recluse. No Facebook page. No MySpace. No Twitter. After your parents died, you didn’t want to stay in Canada. You decided to come to Germany for college. Got a degree in computer science from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Now you work for a rapidly growing German company, Munich Digital Systems. They develop and install state-of-the-art software for mobile phones and satellite phone companies. You’re a relatively new but increasingly successful sales rep. The company executives have no idea you’re actually an American. They certainly don’t know you work for the CIA, and they’d fire you immediately if they ever found out.”
Eva stopped for a moment and asked, “How am I doing?”
“I’m impressed,” David conceded. “Please, go on.”
She smiled. “You carry a German passport. You’ve got a Swiss numbered account where we send you funds. You’ve got a storage facility in Munich where you keep weapons, false documents, communications gear, and other essentials. Since August you’ve been working mostly with Mobilink in Pakistan, building up your field experience, working your contacts, establishing your cover, racking up some frequent-flier miles, taking down quite a few bad guys, and probably having a little fun along the way.”
She paused and raised her eyebrows. “Am I wrong?”
David suppressed a smile. “No comment.”
“That’s plenty,” the DDO said. “Please, take a seat, all of you.”
David wondered when he was going to learn even a fraction as much about Eva Fischer as she’d just rattled off about him, but he guessed this was not exactly the right moment to ask. There were more important issues on the table, like somebody’s crazy idea of taking him off the Karachi initiative just when it was actually bearing fruit. Was that Zalinsky’s doing or Murray’s? And what on earth for?
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
“You’re going to Iran,” Murray said.
The sentence just hung in the air for a few moments.
David Shirazi stared at Murray in disbelief, then at Zalinsky, and back to Murray. “When?”
“Seventy-two hours,” Murray said. “Your code name is Zephyr.”
God of the west wind? They had to be kidding.
“What’s the mission?”
“Jack and Eva here will walk you through the specifics,” Murray explained. “But the short version is this: we need you to penetrate the highest levels of the Iranian regime, recruit assets, and deliver solid, actionable intelligence that can help us sink or at least slow down Iran’s nuclear weapons program. We’re currently positioning NOC teams throughout the country ready to sabotage facilities, intercept shipments, you name it. What we don’t have is someone inside giving us hard targets.”
David tried to process what his boss was saying, but it was such a radical departure from what he had been doing that he couldn’t imagine it working. Sure, his family was Iranian, but he had never set foot in the country. Yes, he spoke Farsi, but so did eighty million other people in the world. What’s more, he’d just spent the last several years studying Pakistani, Afghani, and al Qaeda leaders, organizations, and cultures. He was increasingly an expert in such matters and thus increasingly valuable in an intelligence agency that still hadn’t caught bin Laden all these years after 9/11. As for Iran, he neither understood the first thing about Persian politics nor really much cared.
“I’m sorry, sir,” David said after a few more moments of reflection. “That’s not what I signed up for.”
“I beg your pardon?” Murray said, clearly in no mood for a discussion on the topic.
“Sir, with all due respect, I was recruited to hunt down Osama bin Laden and bring you proof of his death,” David told the Agency’s number-two official with a depth of conviction that surprised even him. “That’s what I was trained for. That’s what I’m finally getting the chance to do. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I was born to do. I’m sure you have your reasons, and I’m grateful that you would consider me, but I’m not interested in changing assignments. You’ve got the wrong guy. It’s just that simple.”
The look on Tom Murray’s face said it all. The man was not happy. “Agent Shirazi, I really couldn’t care less why you think you were recruited for this Agency,” he explained through gritted teeth. “We bought you. We trained you. We own you. Period. You got it?”
This was no time to argue, David concluded. “Yes, sir.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Murray got up, stretched his legs, and walked over to a window overlooking snow-covered woods. “Osama bin Laden is still a serious threat to this country and our allies. Don’t get me wrong-I do want his head on a platter, and this Agency is going to get it done on my watch. But while in public this administration is focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the director and I believe the most serious threat to our national security and that of our allies in the Middle East at the moment is Iran. We know the Iranians are rapidly enriching uranium. We know they are planning to use that uranium to build nuclear weapons. We know time is running out. And if we don’t stop the Iranians from building the Islamic Bomb, do you have any idea what’s going to happen?”
David took a deep breath and glanced at Zalinsky, who was still stone-faced; then he looked back at Murray.
“Well, Shirazi,” Murray pressed, “do you?”
David shifted in his seat. “Well, sir, I’d say the mullahs are probably going to try to rebuild the Persian Empire under the cover of a nuclear umbrella,” he ventured. “And I’d guess they’ll try to blackmail the Saudis and the Iraqis to do their bidding.”
“Or?” Murray asked.
“Or Iran will try to drive up the price of oil to unheard-of levels and try to bankrupt the West.”
“Or?”
“I guess that, uh, well… Iran could try to give a small, tactical nuke to al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or some other terrorist organization who could try to sneak it into Tel Aviv or Haifa and take out an Israeli city.”
“Or?”
David didn’t like where this was headed. “Worst-case scenario? Iran could try to launch a barrage of ballistic missiles-fitted with nuclear warheads-over Syria, over Iraq and Jordan, and into the major cities of Israel to ‘wipe the Zionist entity off the face of the earth,’ as they have promised to do for years.”
Murray nodded but asked one more time, “Or?”
This time, David drew a blank. “I’m sorry, sir, isn’t that all bad enough?”
“It is,” Murray said. “But aside from the fact that the creation of the Persian Bomb will force the Arab states into a nuclear arms race so they have the Bomb, too, you’re still missing one catastrophic scenario.”
“What is that, sir?”
Murray picked up a remote control off the conference table and pushed a button. “The most immediate-and arguably most likely-scenario is that Iran will never get the Bomb.” All eyes were riveted to the digital display. “Instead, the Israelis, hoping against hope that they can neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat before the ayatollahs are truly able to destroy their country, will launch a massive preemptive strike.” On the screen, missiles were suddenly flying in every direction throughout the Middle East as Israel struck first followed by the retaliation of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
Not a single country in the region remained unaffected. The simulated Iranian response to Israel’s first strike showed Persian missile strikes against every major Israeli city, but also against oil fields, refineries, and shipping facilities throughout Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab emirates in the Gulf. At the same time, Iranian missiles were hitting cities and military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel, meanwhile, was not simply being hit by hundreds of Iranian missiles, but also by tens of thousands of missiles, rockets, and mortars from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. With Israeli missiles and fighter jets firing back, it was clear the entire region was going to be set on fire.
Murray hit another button, enlarging the scope of the digital map, and David saw flashes in cities throughout Europe as well as the Middle East. These, the deputy director for operations explained, represented suicide bombers being unleashed en masse. Then David noticed a series of digital counters in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, estimating casualties from the entire conflict. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would die, David realized-Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Millions more would be wounded or left homeless by the devastation. And not only would the Middle East and Europe be affected, the United States would be as well. It was almost impossible to imagine sleeper cells not being activated, hitting Americans and Canadians with a blizzard of terrorist attacks.
While David was still focused on the casualty projections, Zalinsky evidently decided it was time to broaden the young man’s perspective. “As bad as the human toll would be, it would not be limited to death and injury,” he explained. “The economic analysts over in the directorate of intelligence tell me they would expect oil prices to skyrocket in this scenario.”
“How high?” David asked.
“No one really knows-two hundred dollars a barrel? three hundred dollars a barrel? Maybe more.”
Such a dramatic spike in oil prices-overnight but also sustained for months and possibly years on end-could sink an already-fragile global economy. Soaring energy prices could quickly trigger hyperinflation, David surmised. Skyrocketing prices would send the cost of many goods beyond the reach of the poor and lower middle class. Millions would be pushed into poverty. People would stop spending on almost anything but food and basic staples, triggering massive business failures. Tens of millions of people would soon be out of work. As the dominoes fell, a global depression could ensue. And this, of course, was assuming the conflict was simply a conventional war, not one that actually went nuclear. David wasn’t sure that was a safe assumption, but the point wasn’t lost on him.
He glanced at Eva. At the moment, she was looking down, jotting notes, but she clearly wasn’t reacting to all this with much emotion. Assuming she was a thinking, feeling, rational person, that could mean only one thing: she had heard this information before. She had already run the various scenarios and processed them at length.
Then another thought dawned on him. He wasn’t going into Iran alone; Eva was going with him. She wasn’t an Agency analyst. She was a NOC operative. Zalinsky said she had helped construct some of David’s cover stories in the past, but if she were simply helping design his new assignment going forward, why would Murray and Zalinsky have her in the room? There was no other reason than for the two of them to become acquainted prior to embarking on a mission that might cost both of them their lives.
David looked back at the images flickering on the display and knew in that instant that his dream of killing Osama bin Laden and avenging the death of Marseille Harper’s mom was evaporating in front of his eyes. But to his surprise, he wasn’t angry or depressed. Rather, he found himself unexpectedly exhilarated. His country needed him. He was one of the few Persian Americans in the CIA’s clandestine services. He spoke Farsi like a native. He would have an airtight cover story. He didn’t yet know exactly how Murray was going to use him, but he’d learn soon enough. The bottom line was clear. He was heading into Iran. His mission was to stop the ayatollahs before they got their hands on the Bomb. Before the Israelis took matters into their own hands. Before Armageddon. Better yet, he was going with a beautiful, intelligent girl he looked forward to getting to know. All that, and he was leaving in seventy-two hours.
The phone rang.
The DDO answered it, then turned to the others and said, “Another massacre in Yemen-I need to take this. Jack, I trust you and Eva can proceed from here.”
Zalinsky nodded and quietly signaled David and Eva to gather their papers and follow him back downstairs to the Near East Division.
Back on the sixth floor, they signed out a conference room.
Zalinsky ordered some Chinese food from the commissary, and the three of them locked themselves away for the rest of the day. Only then did Zalinsky hand David and Eva a thick briefing book on the mission ahead of them.
“Memorize it, both of you,” Zalinsky said when they had finally settled in. “I’m sure you’ve already figured this out, David, but Eva is going in too. Her cover will be the MDS project manager. In reality, she’ll also be running the Agency’s operation on the ground and reporting back directly to me. Her code name is Themis.”
The Greek goddess of divine law and order? She was going to be insufferable, David concluded.
Zalinsky, however, didn’t give David time to ponder the implications. He cut straight to the bottom line. “Time is of the essence. I can’t stress this enough. I’ve talked to all of the Agency’s best Iran analysts in the intelligence directorate. Most believe Tehran could have functional nuclear weapons in two to three years. Some say it will take them longer. But the problem is, the Israelis don’t trust our analysis. They’re worried we’re making another catastrophic error of judgment.”
“You mean 1998-India and Pakistan,” David said.
Zalinsky nodded. “We knew both countries had been racing to build the Bomb for decades, but we were caught completely off guard when they both tested nukes within days of each other. We had no idea they had crossed the nuclear finish line and built dozens of nuclear weapons until it was too late to do anything about it. And that’s just one example. The Agency had no idea the Soviets were so close to testing their first nuclear weapon in 1949 until the test actually occurred. And don’t forget Saddam Hussein in 1981; we didn’t realize just how close he was to building nuclear weapons until the Israelis took out the Osirak nuclear reactor just before it went hot.”
“And then there’s Iraq again in 2003,” Eva chimed in.
No kidding, David thought. Arguably the Agency’s most disastrous mistake to date was having convinced President George W. Bush that Iraq had large and dangerous stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction-and that the case for proving it to the international community was, in the now-infamous turn of phrase by the director of central intelligence at the time, “a slam dunk.” To be sure, some WMDs were found in Iraq after the liberation of the country by U.S. and coalition forces. But the weapons that were discovered were neither the types nor quantities of WMDs the U.S. and the world had expected to find. Nor were they the types and quantities the CIA had warned about. As a result, the credibility of the CIA and her sister agencies throughout the American government had been so badly damaged that they still had not fully recovered.
“So the problem,” Zalinsky concluded, “is that we now have to be very careful about assessing the WMD capabilities of enemy nations, Iran included. The analysts in the CIA’s intelligence directorate are terrified of making mistakes and of being accused of overstating what they know. So they hedge their written and oral assessments. No one wants to sound too concerned about Iran getting the Bomb for fear of looking like they’re goading the president into another war.”
“So let me get this straight,” David said. “The Israelis think we blew the call in the past by not realizing just how close Saddam and India and Pakistan and others were to getting the Bomb. And the Israelis think we blew the call a few years ago by thinking Saddam was closer to building the Bomb and stockpiling WMDs than he really was. So when our best analysts say Iran is still several years away from getting the Bomb, the Israelis think we’re smoking crack?”
“Let’s just say they’re not brimming with confidence,” Zalinsky said. “But it’s even worse than that.”
“How so?”
“A few weeks ago while you were in Karachi, David, and you, Eva, were in Dubai, I had lunch in Jerusalem with Israel’s top spook at the Mossad. He told me, look, the world already knows Iran is building nuclear facilities. The world already knows they’re training nuclear scientists and enriching uranium at a breakneck pace and building ballistic missiles that can reach not only Israel but Europe as well. The world has already heard the Iranian leadership repeatedly threaten to annihilate Judeo-Christian civilization and wipe Israel and the U.S. off the map. So why isn’t the world taking decisive action to stop Iran from getting the Bomb? Why isn’t the U.S. building a coalition to invade Iran and change this fanatical regime? The world, he noted, went to war with Iraq in 2003 with far less evidence. I told him there is simply no appetite-and no money-in the U.S. or Europe or anywhere for another war in the Middle East. So he asked, doesn’t Israel, then, have not only the legal right but the moral responsibility to go to war with Iran now, if the world is just going to sit on its hands and do nothing?”
“I hear his point,” David said. “But given the fact that a war between Israel and Iran could set the region on fire and seriously impact the global economy, do we really want Israel to be deciding the fate of the region and the world all by itself?”
“No, we don’t,” Zalinsky said. “And that’s what I told him. That’s why the secretary of defense is en route to Tel Aviv as we speak to warn the Israelis not to take matters into their own hands. That’s why President Jackson has had no less than three phone conversations with Prime Minister Naphtali in the past month urging him to let us ramp up covert efforts rather than drag the world into a war no one wants. Which brings the three of us to this room. Last week the president quietly signed a highly classified national intelligence directive. It authorizes the CIA ‘to use all means necessary to disrupt and, if necessary, destroy Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities in order to prevent the eruption of another cataclysmic war in the Middle East.’”
Zalinsky then reached into his briefcase, pulled out a copy of the directive, and slid it across the table for David and Eva to read for themselves.
As David read the one-page document, Eva asked, “How much time does the Mossad think they have before Iran has an operational nuclear weapon?”
Zalinsky took back the “eyes only” directive and returned it to his briefcase, then answered the question. “They’re convinced Iran will have the Bomb by the end of the year… and an operational warhead by the end of next year.”
David tensed. Even if the Israelis were wrong, even if they were being too pessimistic, their assessment could mean only one thing-if the U.S. did nothing, the Israelis were going to launch a massive strike against Iran, and soon.
It was just after midnight when Zalinsky let them go.
They had spent nearly fourteen hours poring over the briefing book and talking through various aspects of the mission. It was now February 12. They would meet again at a safe house in Dubai on the evening of Monday, February 14, he told them. There he would give them several more days of briefings before sending them in. In the meantime, Zalinsky suggested they get lost for the weekend-the Caribbean, Cancún, Cozumel, someplace that didn’t start with a C; he didn’t really care.
“Enjoy yourselves,” he ordered. “Clear your heads. Get some fresh air. It might be your last break for a while.”
Eva immediately started texting someone to make plans. David wondered if she had a boyfriend or a fiancé and surprised himself with the twinge of disappointment he felt. They had, after all, only just met. But he said good-bye and left the building without asking any questions. He didn’t want to seem too forward or too interested so quickly. He would find out in due time where she had gone and with whom, he figured. He and Eva were about to spend a lot of time together. There was no point stumbling at the starting gate.
As he stepped out of the CIA’s main building and headed to the parking garage to pick up his company loaner for the weekend-a Chevy Impala-he stared up at a million diamonds sparkling on the dazzling black canvas above him. He breathed in the brisk, still, cloudless night air and tried to enjoy the beauty and the silence. He was energized by the prospect of the mission ahead of him, but at the same time he suddenly felt alone in the world. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He didn’t have a best friend. He hardly had any friends to hang out with aside from Zalinsky and his Mobilink rent-a-friends in Karachi. He tried to think about the last time he was really happy, and it inevitably brought him back to thoughts of his time with Marseille in Canada. Before 9/11. Before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before joining the CIA. It was so long ago, and the memories were painful. He tried to think of something else.
There was, he realized, nowhere to go except home. He was rarely in the U.S. these days, and he hadn’t really kept in touch with anyone in the States aside from his parents. His brothers had little interest in his overseas life. They would have, of course, if he told them that he worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. That he’d been hunting down the upper echelons of al Qaeda’s leaders to have them assassinated. That he was now on a mission to penetrate the inner circle around Iranian president Ahmed Darazi and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Hamid Hosseini.
But he couldn’t tell them any of that without going to prison. So even with his family, he stuck with his cover-that he was running his own little computer consulting practice in Munich. And Azad and Saeed’s lack of caring did have an upside. It prevented David from having to lie so much to their faces.
His parents, on the other hand, were a different story. They cared a great deal about David’s work and personal life, and their curiosity had made things significantly more complex. For one thing, it produced twinges of guilt every time he told them anything other than the truth. His mother, in particular, constantly peppered him with questions. She wanted him to call more, to write more, to come home for Christmas (though they had never celebrated Christian holidays growing up). His father was almost as persistent, urging him at the minimum to come home for the annual fishing trip to Canada. But there was nothing David wanted less than to go back to that island and relive memories of Marseille.
So he always had a million excuses. Business trips, conferences, new clients, old clients, billing problems-the list went on and on. He hated the secrecy and the deceit and the distance, but he really didn’t see another way. Increasingly, however, he worried that if he didn’t go home soon, his parents would make good on their threats to just fly to Munich one day and “pop in.” Given that David didn’t actually even live in Munich-his apartment, phone, and mailbox there were all simply to maintain his cover story-that would be a disaster.
It was time to go home, he concluded. So he signed out the Impala and headed north.
He drove all night.
He arrived in Syracuse just under seven hours later, pulled into his parents’ driveway-tucked away in a little cul-de-sac off East Genesee Street-and finally turned off the engine. As a light snow fell, he stared at his childhood home. He knew he should go in. He could see lights beginning to come on inside. He could picture his mother padding about in her robe and slippers, making tea and toast for his father and softly singing Persian melodies with the Food Network on in the background.
But David wasn’t ready to go domestic just yet. His body might have come home, but his head was still back at Langley, swimming with numbers.
• 5,000-the number of miles of fiber-optic cable networks in Iran in the year 2000.
• 48,000-the number of miles of fiber-optic cable networks there in 2008.
• 4,000,000-the number of cell phones in Iran in 2004.
• 43,000,000-the number of cell phones there in 2008.
• 54,000,000-the number of cell phones there now.
• 70,000,000-the combined number of Iranians in country and in exile.
• 100,000,000-the number of SMS messages sent daily in Iran.
• 200,000,000-the number of text messages that would be sent daily in Iran in the next twelve to eighteen months.
• $9.2 billion-the revenue produced by the Telecommunication Company of Iran, or Iran Telecom, in 2009.
• $12.4 billion-the projected revenue for Iran Telecom in 2014.
Zalinsky believed such explosive growth in the Iranian telecommunications arena afforded the Agency a unique window of opportunity. The regime in Tehran was investing heavily in modernizing and expanding its civilian communications networks. Simultaneously, they were spending aggressively on a parallel track to create a secure and robust military communications system.
As Iran feverishly tried to become a regional nuclear power-and soon a world power-the Supreme Leader wanted his country to have state-of-the-art voice and data networks for all sectors of society, but especially for the military’s system of command and control. To get there as quickly as possible, the Iranians were reaching out in an unprecedented way to European technology companies, offering them contracts worth billions of dollars to upgrade Iran’s hardware and software and provide them with much-needed technical assistance.
Iran Telecom, Zalinsky had explained, had recently awarded a huge contract to Nokia Siemens Networks, requiring all manner of NSN engineers and other experts to enter Iran, make specific telecommunications upgrades, and train their Iranian counterparts. NSN, in turn, had contracted Munich Digital Systems to build much of the necessary infrastructure. Since the CIA already had agents, including David, embedded within MDS, this had created-virtually overnight-the opportunity to put boots on the ground, to place Farsi-speaking Agency operatives inside Iran Telecom, the mother ship of the modernization effort.
Zalinsky had shown David a story in the Wall Street Journal reporting that the Iranian regime was seeking, with NSN’s and MDS’s help, to develop “one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.” This effort went far beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections, enabling authorities not only to block communication but to gather-and sometimes alter-information about individuals.
David recalled another intriguing headline from the business section of the New York Times: “Revolutionary Guard Buys Majority Stake in Iran Telecom.” That story, he knew, had eventually made it into the president’s daily intelligence briefing. David’s heart still raced as he recalled the text of the article in his mind’s eye and considered its implications in light of the NSN/MDS deal.
The transaction essentially brought Iran’s telecommunications sector under the elite military force’s control. The article explained that the purchase would allow the Guard in times of crisis to “interrupt mobile phone networks” and “hinder the opposition’s organization.”
The last paragraph of the story intrigued David most. It noted that the IRGC was essentially “free from any state oversight” and was “accountable only to the Supreme Leader, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran.”
If the Times story was accurate, then Zalinsky was right. If the CIA could penetrate the inner circle running Iran Telecom, perhaps they really did have a shot at penetrating the inner circle running the Revolutionary Guard. Whether that trail could lead David into the Supreme Leader’s office, getting him hanged or shot in the face, was a question mark at best. But as David watched the snow sticking to his windshield, he imagined the prospect of actually being able to intercept the most private phone calls of Iran’s Supreme Leader and the calls of his closest staff and advisors. What if Langley could actually read the e-mail and text messages of Iran’s highest leaders? What if they could follow messages coming to and from computers and phones inside Iran’s clandestine nuclear facilities? The very notion made him want to get into Iran now. He could hardly wait. They had to move fast, before the Israelis struck.
Suddenly there was a knock on his passenger-side window. It was his father, standing there in the freezing cold in his pajamas, holding the Saturday morning edition of the Post-Standard newspaper in his hand and staring at him in disbelief.
“David? Is that you?”
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar Malik awoke to the sound of his baby daughter crying.
He groaned, rolled over, and whispered to his wife, “It’s okay, princess. I’ll get her and bring her to you.”
But as he opened his eyes and tried to rub the sleep out of them, Najjar realized that Sheyda was not beside him. He glanced at the alarm clock. It was only 4:39 a.m. He still had nearly an hour before he had to be up for morning prayers. Still, he slipped out of bed and went looking for the love of his life, only to find her nursing their baby daughter.
“You okay?” he asked through a yawn.
“Yes,” Sheyda replied, smiling at him with a warmth and genuineness of which he never tired. “Go back to bed. You need your rest.”
Najjar smiled back. He could have ten more children with her, he decided, even if they were all girls.
Suddenly there was heavy knocking on the door of their high-rise flat.
“Who could that be at this hour?” an annoyed Najjar said.
To his astonishment, two Revolutionary Guard soldiers brandishing machine guns were standing in the hallway.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a whisper, trying not to wake the entire floor.
“The director says you must come immediately,” said the larger of the two, apparently a colonel.
“Dr. Saddaji sent you?” Najjar asked. “Why didn’t he just call?” The man was, after all, not just the director of Iran’s atomic energy agency but his father-in-law.
“I don’t know,” the colonel said. “He just said it was urgent.”
“Fine, I’ll be there in an hour.”
“I’m sorry, sir. The director told us to take you with us. We have a car waiting downstairs.”
Najjar turned to Sheyda, who had covered herself with a blanket.
“Go,” she said. “You know Father would never send for you if it wasn’t important.”
She was right, and Najjar loved her all the more for her support. He closed the door, leaving the soldiers in the hallway. Then he threw on some clothes, brushed his teeth, splashed some water on his face, grabbed his briefcase, and ran out the door, stopping only to give Sheyda a kiss.
On the drive, they passed dozens of mosques, and Najjar felt a strong need to pray. He had no idea what the day held. But he had never been summoned so early in the morning, and his anxiety over what was coming grew minute by minute.
As sunrise approached, Najjar finally heard the call to the Fajr, or dawn prayer, coming from the speakers of one of the many minarets adorning the skyline of Hamadan. As had become a ritual five times a day since he was a small child back in Iraq, he dutifully faced Mecca, raised his hands to his ears, and recited the Shahada-the testimony of faith-declaring he bore witness that there was no one worthy of worship except Allah and he believed with all his heart that Muhammad was the servant and messenger of Allah. Then he placed one hand to his chest and his other hand on top of the first and prayed, “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. The Most Gracious. The Most Merciful. The Master of the Day of Judgment. You alone do we worship. You alone do we ask for help. Show us the straight path, the path of those whom you have favored, not of those who earn your anger nor of those who stray. Amen.”
As he continued reciting portions of the Qur’an, bowing toward Mecca as best he could from the backseat and continuing his morning prayers, Najjar found his anxieties multiplying, not dissipating. He desperately wanted to hear from Allah, to see him, to behold his beauty and come fully into his presence. He wanted Allah to grant him favor and wisdom and a calm reassurance that he was doing Allah’s will and pleasing him in every way. But he felt no peace. He felt no joy. When he finished, he felt further away from Allah than when he had begun.
An hour later, Najjar stood in the middle of a cavernous, empty warehouse. The concrete floor was cold and wet, as if it had been recently hosed down. Sitting several yards away was a man bound to a chair, his hands and feet shackled in iron chains. The man’s mouth was gagged, but he was not blindfolded, and Najjar could see the terror in his eyes. It was clear he had been beaten severely. His face was bruised and swollen, and blood trickled down his cheeks.
Najjar thought there was something vaguely familiar about him. “Who is he?”
“You were never supposed to meet him,” Dr. Saddaji replied not only to Najjar but to the two dozen other scientists standing around them. “But events beyond our control have forced the issue.”
Najjar watched his father-in-law staring at the man, who was silently pleading for his life. But there was nothing in Dr. Saddaji’s voice or body language that suggested mercy would be forthcoming. Indeed, Najjar had never seen him so cold, so dark, so filled with hatred.
“Gentlemen, take note of this man and remember him well,” Dr. Saddaji said. “He is an Arab-an Iraqi-and a traitor.”
Najjar was stunned. It was one thing to be from Iraq. He was, and so was Dr. Saddaji, along with several others. But they weren’t Arabs. They were all Persians.
How can there be an Arab in our midst? Who allowed it, and why?
This research facility was top secret, buried deep inside Alvand Mountain, the highest peak in the region. Of the half-million people in the surrounding area, including in Hamadan-one of the oldest cities in Iran-not a single one was Arab. Less than one-tenth of one percent of them knew this facility existed at all, much less that the future of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program was being designed and developed here. What on earth could have possessed someone to allow an enemy into the camp?
As if on cue, Dr. Saddaji took the responsibility upon himself.
“Gentlemen, I will be candid. I recruited this man. He was once a colleague at the University of Baghdad, one of the most brilliant minds of our generation, an absolute genius in the field of UD3. He was not one of us, true. But we needed his expertise. I thought I could trust him. With the blessing of the Supreme Leader, I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. But I made a mistake. He sold us out. Now he must pay.”
Saddaji’s response generated more questions than it answered, at least for Najjar. UD3? Why in the world would Saddaji need an expert in the use of uranium deuteride? Even a junior physicist like himself knew UD3 had no civilian uses. Had Dr. Saddaji completely lost his mind? What if the IAEA caught wind of a UD3 expert-one from Iraq, at that-inside a nuclear facility the IAEA didn’t even know existed? Why take such a risk with the eyes of the international community riveted so intently on the Iranian nuclear program?
Before Najjar could raise any of these questions, however, Dr. Saddaji continued, outlining what this man had done to betray them all. He explained that the man had been caught making two unauthorized calls to Europe.
“He claims he has a girlfriend in France,” Dr. Saddaji sniffed. “He claims he had no idea his girlfriend was an agent for the Mossad.”
Najjar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had never met a man as careful, as thorough, as meticulous about everything-and especially about security-as his father-in-law. Whoever this person sitting before them was, his treachery was appalling. But what did his father-in-law expect? Couldn’t he have seen this coming? Something didn’t make sense.
But this “trial”-if it could be called that-was suddenly over as quickly as it had begun. No one was being invited to ask questions of the accused or of Saddaji. An executioner now entered the warehouse, carrying an ornate sword that looked several centuries old. His face was covered by a black ski mask. A moment later, the traitor’s head was rolling across the warehouse floor. Najjar became violently ill, but the point had been made-all betrayals, real or imagined, would be punished severely.
Syracuse, New York
The weekend was bittersweet.
It began Saturday morning with a breakfast of pancakes and lies. David couldn’t tell his parents the truth about why he was in the country. Instead, he told them he had suffered through a series of mind-numbingly dull business meetings in Chicago. Then he lied about where he was heading next, telling them he was flying to Frankfurt, then driving to Wiesbaden for more meetings. He lied about whether he would be home for Mother’s Day, saying, “Absolutely,” then silently cursed himself for the rest of the day. He had no way of knowing where he would be or what he would be doing in three months. It wasn’t fair to lead his parents on. But he didn’t know what else to do, and he felt terrible.
Deception was central to his life in the CIA. But that didn’t make it any easier, and a brooding conscience, growing anxiety about the mission ahead, and a serious lack of sleep after driving all night from Washington proved a depressing cocktail. David tried to catch a few hours of sleep in his old room after breakfast but kept tossing and turning. Finally he gave up and joined his father for an afternoon of cross-country skiing across the back nine of the golf course at Drumlins Country Club.
That night, over dinner with his parents at their favorite Italian place on Erie Boulevard, David asked about his brothers. He was just trying to be polite, but the very question made his mother wince.
Azad, his father explained, was thriving as a cardiologist in Philadelphia, and yes, the rumors were true: he and his wife were expecting their first child. But no, they never visited; no, they never called; no, they hardly ever e-mailed. Once the baby was born, the Shirazis planned to drive down and visit Azad and his wife, but they honestly weren’t sure how long they’d be welcome.
Saeed, meanwhile, showed no signs of settling down. He was dating a dancer-or was it a cellist? At any rate, he was dating someone new-always someone new-in Manhattan. He still seemed to be married to his job with Merrill Lynch and was convinced he was well on his way to making his first million. But no, he hadn’t been home in ages, and no, he hadn’t gone fishing with his father in years. Not long before, the Shirazis had visited Saeed for a long weekend, but Saeed spent most of the weekend in the office and had made little time for his parents, who had returned to Syracuse brokenhearted.
After dinner, David tried to shift gears. Talking about family wasn’t doing them any good, so he suggested they rent one of the Lord of the Rings films and watch it together. His mother had never seen it and insisted on making popcorn, pulling out some afghans, and having her husband make a fire in the fireplace. They all got comfortable in the family room to watch The Return of the King, but within the first few minutes, David’s mother fell asleep. Within half an hour, so did his father. David didn’t bother to watch the rest, though it was one of his favorite films. Instead, he turned off the TV, went up to his room, and surfed the Web for the latest headlines from Iran and the Middle East.
Several caught his eye.
Israeli PM Naphtali at Dachau Says World Must Stop Iran, or He Will
Israeli Defense Minister Says Someone Must Hit Iran’s Nuclear Sites “Before It’s Too Late”
President Jackson Warns Against Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities
U.N. Security Council Considers New Round of Iran Sanctions
Iranian President Darazi Warns Israel “Doomed” If Zionists Attack
David’s stomach churned along with his thoughts. Exhausted, he eventually went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Around four in the morning, he got an e-mail from Eva, whose subject line read, “You up?” He eagerly opened it, hoping it might be personal. It wasn’t.
EF: Something’s afoot in Yemen
She was right, of course. He recalled the phone call DDO Murray had taken in his office. But why did it matter at 4 a.m.? Eva included a link to a recent Agence France-Presse story she had found on the Internet. David opened it and quickly scanned the article.
“Before the Twelfth Imam appears on earth to establish his global kingdom, we will see a series of signs,” said Dr. Alireza Birjandi, author of The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah, at a conference Friday in Qom sponsored by the Bright Future Institute. “The first sign is the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani. He will attack the enemies of Islam, and in so doing he will help pave the way for the end of days.”
Birjandi, widely considered the world’s leading expert on Shia eschatology, declined to comment on whether the recent attacks against Christians in Yemen represented the fulfillment of that sign. But other scholars gathered for this three-day conference speculated that this could, in fact, be the case.
The Bright Future Institute is a theological think tank established in the city of Qom in 2004 by Shia scholars to study Mahdism in depth and to prepare Shias for the return of the Islamic messiah, known as the Mahdi or the Hidden Imam or the Twelfth Imam.
Puzzled, David sent a text message to Eva’s phone.
DS: don’t know what 2 make of that
A moment later, Eva wrote back.
EF: i don’t know either
DS: ever hear of birjandi?
EF: can’t say i have
DS: me neither… on amazon now… ordering his book
EF: good idea… i’ll look into the bright future institute
DS: thnx-let’s compare notes on mon… how R U? where R U?
EF: i’m good… thnx 4 asking… hanging out w/ my parents and sisters in berlin… how about U? surfing in cancun? sunbathing in san juan?
David smiled as he replied.
DS: lol-i wish. actually visiting my folks in syracuse… but can’t wait 2 get started
EF: me 2… see you soon-looking fwd 2 it… how about *$ in DXB?
It took a moment for David’s sleep-deprived brain to decipher that last one, until he realized she was suggesting they go to Starbucks when they got to Dubai. He typed a final message.
DS: Yes-SYS-OAO
See you soon. Over and out.
He plugged his phone back into its charger and finished ordering Dr. Birjandi’s book online, directing it to be shipped to his apartment in Munich. Then he shut down his laptop, lay back down in the darkness, and stared out the window at the moonlight falling on the snow-covered backyard.
So, Eva wasn’t with a boyfriend for the weekend. Interesting. It didn’t mean she didn’t have one, of course. But if she did, she hadn’t chosen to spend the weekend with him. She was with her family, instead. And thinking of him. He liked that, and in the privacy of his childhood bedroom, he admitted-if only to himself-that he found Eva a little more than just interesting, against his better judgment.
He hadn’t dated much in college, and not at all since, in part because most of the German girls he knew were too brusque for his liking and because-his falsified passport notwithstanding-he wasn’t really German. He didn’t like sauerkraut. He couldn’t stand Wiener schnitzel. He could barely choke down German chocolate cake. But something about Eva was different. Maybe, he thought, it was finally time to let go of Marseille’s hold on him.
They all got up late and joined each other for Sunday brunch.
That was when his mother upped the ante. Over homemade Belgian waffles and fresh-squeezed orange juice, she implored David to give up all of his international travel, get a job with Carrier or Lockheed Martin or Bristol-Myers Squibb or some other solid company in central New York, find a nice Syracuse girl to marry, find a nice single-family home in Manlius or Fayetteville or DeWitt-not too far away-and finally make a real life for himself where they could see him and truly be a family.
“Please, Davood,” his mother pleaded. “You’re my youngest son, and I feel like I’m losing you.”
David hadn’t heard her use his Persian name-Davood-since childhood. Knowing he was leaving in a few hours and potentially never coming back made him feel even worse than before.
David’s father wasn’t quite so direct, but it was abundantly clear that he, too, wanted his son to slow down and settle down. David certainly understood why. His parents were rapidly approaching retirement age. The whirlwind of raising three high-octane sons was over. The house was empty. No one was around to break any lamps or hit any baseballs through the front windows-or the neighbors’ windows. No one needed to be rushed to the hospital for stitches anymore. A box of cereal in their house now lasted them a month, not a day. They only needed to buy a quart of milk a week, not four gallons. Everything was different. They were lonely. David promised to be in touch more and privately vowed to do better.
Just then, David’s phone vibrated. Waiting for him was a new text message. Eva Fischer was en route to Dubai. Zalinsky was as well. They had breaking news, so “DBL,” she wrote. Don’t be late.
David’s pulse quickened. It was time to get into the game. He apologized to his parents and excused himself to check his BlackBerry for the status of his flights. Despite a massive snowstorm heading across Lake Ontario from Canada by nightfall, all flights at the moment appeared to be running on time. He was booked on Delta flight 5447, leaving Syracuse’s Hancock Field at 5:33 p.m. and arriving in Atlanta at 8:06 p.m. That should get him out of central New York before the brunt of the storm hit, and for that leg, he would be traveling under his real name. Once in Atlanta, however, he planned to switch to his German passport and his alias-Reza Tabrizi-and catch Delta flight 8. That would depart at 11:20 p.m. and arrive in the largest city of the United Arab Emirates at 9:25 p.m. the following evening.
David checked his watch, then apologized to his parents again and told them it was time for him to go. That’s when his mother explained the driving force behind her request.
“Davood?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Honey, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I’ve been diagnosed with stage III stomach cancer. We didn’t want you boys to worry about me, but you showing up like this so unexpectedly seems like a gift. So I wanted you to know.”
The news stunned David. As he listened to her describe the symptoms she had been experiencing in recent weeks and the various tests the doctors were running and the aggressive treatment plan they were recommending and her fears of dying, all of David’s guilt came rushing to the fore. He desperately wanted to stay, to listen, to care for both his parents as they headed into this terrible storm. But he had to leave.
They begged him to reschedule his flight, to call his boss, to explain the situation. But he couldn’t. He could see the pain and deep disappointment in his mother’s eyes in particular, and he grieved for her. His excuse for having to leave sounded so lame under the circumstances, but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t tell them the truth.
As David stood on the front steps of his childhood home in an increasingly heavy snowfall and hugged his parents good-bye, Nasreen Shirazi began to cry.
“Mom, please, don’t,” David said, his suitcase in hand, the car running.
“I can’t help it,” she said in Farsi, sniffling. “I love you, Davood.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“Remember when I used to walk you by the hand to the bus stop when you were a little boy?”
“Mom, really.”
“Remember when you came racing home every day with a backpack filled with notes and papers and goodies for me? Remember when you couldn’t wait to tell me about everything you had done that day?”
“Mom, it’s going to be all right,” he assured her. “Dad knows the best doctors in the world. They’ll take great care of you. And I’ll find a way to come back soon to visit you and cheer you up. But if I don’t leave right this second, I’m going to miss my plane. And I really have to go.”
“Fine,” she said. “Go. Who am I to stand in your way?”
David felt worse than ever. He kissed her on the cheek, gave his father a hug, and was in his car when his mother suddenly began calling after him.
“David, David-wait! Before you go, I totally forgot-I have something for you!”
She turned and ran into the house. David looked to his father for help, but Dr. Shirazi simply shrugged off any knowledge of what his wife was up to. Two minutes passed. Then three. Then five. David checked his watch. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. He forced himself not to gun the engine or honk the horn, but inside he couldn’t take it anymore. Finally his mother came running back out to the car and breathlessly handed him a plastic Wegmans grocery bag.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just a little mail for you,” she said, giving him one last kiss through the open window as the snow began coming down even harder. “I keep forgetting to send it over to you.”
“Thanks, I guess,” he said, putting the Impala in reverse and easing out of the driveway. “Anything interesting?”
“Probably not,” she said. “Except maybe one.”
“Really? From who?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But the postmark said Portland.”
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
He couldn’t breathe, haunted for yet another night by the face of the man he had seen beheaded as a Zionist spy. His dear wife, Sheyda, held him, startled awake, no doubt, by his repeated nightmares and constant thrashing and moaning.
“What is it, my love?” she whispered with a tenderness that typically calmed and comforted him.
Now neither her soothing voice nor the gentle touch of her arms around him sufficed. Najjar had no idea what to say. He couldn’t tell her that her father was a butcher. He couldn’t fully believe it himself. What’s more, he had to remain quiet. Everything that happened in that facility-everything-was highly classified. He was not authorized to say anything to anyone about anything that happened there. To be found breaching security, even to the daughter of the director of the facility, would land him, he feared, in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. And that, he knew, would be a merciful sentence. Two unauthorized phone calls had already cost one man his life.
But it wasn’t simply the gruesome image of the executioner’s blade slicing the man’s head off and the massive flow of blood that threatened to prevent Najjar from ever sleeping peacefully or innocently again. It was the fact that the man hadn’t been given a fair trial in a court. It was the fact that neither Najjar nor his colleagues had seen a single shred of proof against the man. It was the fact that this man was a fellow Muslim, yet he had been shown no mercy. Worse, it was the fact that Najjar now knew why the man had looked so familiar.
For in his most recent nightmare, Najjar suddenly came to the realization that this was the man he had seen kidnapped back in Baghdad years before, the man whose family he had seen slaughtered execution-style on Al Rasheed Street.
Syracuse, New York
David parked at Hancock Field and raced into the terminal.
He was intrigued by the letter from Portland and its bizarre timing, but that would have to wait. David was devastated by news of his mother’s cancer. He couldn’t imagine his mother not being there for him. Nor could he imagine his father living all alone. He rued all the years he had missed spending time with them both-summers, birthdays, holidays. They were all gone now, and he could never get them back.
First things first, he called a local florist and ordered two dozen yellow roses-his mother’s favorite-to be sent to the house with a note asking for her forgiveness for not being able to stay longer. Next, he dashed off an e-mail to Zalinsky’s administrative assistant, informing her that he was leaving the Agency’s car at the Syracuse airport. Then he checked his bags, got his boarding pass, and cleared security just in time to catch the flight to Atlanta.
Finally, sitting on the plane, he steadied his breathing and reached for the letter in his briefcase. But fear got the better of him, and he put it back unopened. It might not even be from her, he realized. Even if it was, it might not be friendly. A thousand scenarios raced through his mind, and David wasn’t sure he was ready for any of them.
Once in Atlanta, he quickly identified the NOC waiting for him. With a lightning-fast “brush pass” near a newsstand in the domestic terminal, David was given a Nokia N95 smart phone. Moments later, he crushed the SIM card for his current phone and discarded it in a trash bin near the food court. A few minutes after that, he discarded his BlackBerry in a trash bin in the men’s room.
Now that his company, Munich Digital Systems, was working with Nokia Siemens Networks, he needed to play the part and carry the tools of the trade. The N95 was Nokia’s top-of-the-line 3G phone, functioning more like an iPhone than like a BlackBerry. Nevertheless, the N95 he now held in his hands was not a normal one. Rather, this was a special version that had several features embedded by the techies at Langley.
First, a proprietary GPS function allowed Zalinsky and the Agency to track David’s location in real time without anyone being able to detect that such tracking was going on.
Second, the phone was preloaded with the names and contact information of people David would be expected to know in his consulting role. More importantly, any new names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses he added to his contact directory would be instantly and clandestinely uploaded to Langley and the NSA’s mainframe computers. This would alert both agencies to hack in and begin monitoring those phone numbers and e-mail addresses as new high-priority targets.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, while the phone typically operated on standard frequencies, allowing foreign intelligence agencies to listen in on his calls and thus to be fed disinformation, a proprietary encryption system could be activated to enable the user to make secure calls to Langley or to other field agents. This was only for rare cases and extreme emergencies, because once the software was activated, those monitoring David’s calls would know immediately that he had “gone secure,” potentially risking his cover as a consultant for MDS.
As he headed for concourse T, David surfed the Web, trying to get familiar with the phone. As he did, he came across the latest diatribe by Ayatollah Hosseini, Iran’s Supreme Leader, given in a speech in Tehran at a conference of terrorist leaders from Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
“Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm. And this is just the beginning. Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to the annihilation of the empire of power and wealth has started. Get ready for a world minus the U.S.”
Maybe he should bring home this guy’s head in a box, David mused. At least they knew where to find him.
Upon reaching concourse T, David finally looked at his itinerary.
For the first time he realized that on this upcoming flight to Dubai, he had a middle seat in economy on a fourteen-hour flight. That wouldn’t do, he decided. He set his sights on an upgrade to business. Waiting until he could get a few moments alone with the attractive young woman at the Delta counter, Yasmeen, he asked if there was anything she could do to take pity on him. Anything would be better than a middle seat.
“Are you a SkyMiles member?” she asked.
“No-how can I sign up for that?” he replied.
“Well, Mr. Tabrizi, I can give you the form to fill out, but I’m afraid I’ve only got one seat left in business, and that’s typically reserved for members with Diamond Medallion status.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a no,” he whispered.
“Well, I really shouldn’t,” she said, her eyes darting around the lounge.
“Of course you shouldn’t,” David said, smiling and continuing to keep his voice low. “But I’d never tell.”
She bit her lip.
Then David had a thought. “Are you working this flight?” he asked.
“Yes, why?” she replied.
“In business?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Well, maybe I could return the favor when we’re in Dubai,” he offered.
“What do you mean?” She was intrigued.
“Ever been to the top of the Burj Khalifa?” David asked, referring to the world’s tallest building, the glamorous monument to man’s engineering genius that had recently opened in the heart of the business capital of the United Arab Emirates.
“To the observation deck?” she asked, looking disappointed. “Of course; everyone has.”
“No, no, above that,” he said. “There’s a private suite no one knows about. The owner uses it for exclusive dinners with his best clients.”
“Really?” Yasmeen asked, her beautiful brown eyes growing large. “I’ve never heard that.”
“Actually, I know the owner,” David said. “His son and I went to college together at Yale. He said I could use it the next time I’m in town, and I was thinking, how about we have dinner up there Wednesday night, just you and me?”
And that was that. David was suddenly holding a ticket for seat 5A, the last available seat in business. But his conscience was killing him. He didn’t know the owner of the Burj. He hadn’t gone to Yale. He had no intention of taking Yasmeen to dinner in Dubai. He’d simply done what they’d taught him at the Farm-win friends and influence people and use them for his own purposes. At the beginning, he’d been surprised at how easy it was for him, convincing people to do things they didn’t want to do. Now he was surprised at just how terrible he felt for lying to this woman. What was wrong with him?
He sat down in the business lounge and waited for the flight to be called. He was anxious about his mom. He was also anxious about what lay ahead in Iran. He had studied al Qaeda and the Taliban and the Pakistanis inside and out. He knew their history. He knew their culture. He knew the language and the protocols. But though he had Persian blood running through his veins, he had done precious little homework for this assignment. There hadn’t been time. He knew Zalinsky and Fischer would do their best for the rest of the week to get him ready, but he feared it wouldn’t be enough. He needed a month, not a week, and probably more.
Desperately needing to get his mind off his mother, Yasmeen, and Iran, David found his thoughts drifting to the letter from Portland and the rest of the mail he was carrying. He couldn’t exactly travel into Dubai-much less Iran-on a German passport bearing the name Reza Tabrizi while carrying U.S. mail for David Shirazi. Which meant he had a decision to make. Should he read all of the notes and letters-mostly Christmas and birthday cards from old friends in central New York-then throw them away here in the Hartfield-Jackson airport? Or should he find a post office or UPS store and ship them all to the flat in Munich that the CIA leased for him, the flat where his parents actually thought he lived?
Agonizing over the question a bit longer than he should have, David finally chose to ship the mail to Munich. He would keep only the letter from Portland with him. Was it really that much of a risk taking just one letter with him to Dubai? CIA protocols forbade it. But U.S. Homeland Security certainly wasn’t going to be looking for a Dear John letter on him. There weren’t going to be any security checks upon arriving in Dubai. And he would certainly ditch the letter, whomever it was from, before heading into Iran. So that was that. He had his plan.
Delta Flight 8
They were now at thirty-nine thousand feet, halfway over the Atlantic.
David skipped dinner and waited for the dishes to be cleared and the cabin lights to be dimmed. Once that happened, he looked around to make sure the flight attendants were busy and that the passengers around him were going to sleep, watching movies, listening to their iPods, or otherwise occupied. Then he removed the small, cream-colored envelope from his briefcase.
It was not a Christmas card. This was expensive stationery. Judging from the delicate cursive of his name and address, it was definitely a woman’s writing. Sure enough, the envelope bore a postmark from Portland, dated December 13, almost two months prior. There was no name or return address in the top left-hand corner or on the back. But given the city of origin, there was little doubt whom it was from. The only question was what it contained and why it was sent.
David couldn’t help but be struck by the timing. How long had it been-a day? not even?-since he’d begun to consider for the first time in nearly a decade actually letting his memories of Marseille go and wondering if anything might happen between him and Eva? And now, in all likelihood, he was holding a letter from Marseille Harper. What did it mean? It was a sign, he was certain, but what did it portend?
Despite all that had happened and all the time that had passed, the truth was, David had missed Marseille every day since the funeral. The realization embarrassed him, but it was the truth. He loved her, and no matter what happened, he guessed he always would. Every year on her birthday, June 20, he had tried to picture what she might look like one year older. He had wondered how she was celebrating, whom she was celebrating with. How was her father doing? Had he ever remarried? Did Marseille now have stepbrothers and -sisters? Were they one big happy family? He had wondered what growing up in Oregon was like for her without her mother, without the beloved Jersey Shore of her youth, without her childhood friends, and it always made him sad.
Spring Lake, New Jersey, he imagined, would have been an idyllic place to grow up. He had read about it at the library and researched it on the Internet and had even driven through the town one day last summer-without ever telling Zalinsky or his parents, of course. With fewer than four thousand year-round residents, the tiny but picturesque seaside village had more seagulls than citizens, though in the summer, tourists from Manhattan, Long Island, Philly, and points west and north caused the population to swell to seven or eight thousand.
She had told him with glee how much she loved to get up early and ride her bike to the beach before dawn, while it was still quiet and peaceful, and watch the sun rise over the crashing waves before the crowds came to sunbathe and build sand castles. On lazy, hazy Sunday summer afternoons, she loved to fish off the pier with her dad and then get chocolate-chocolate-chip ice cream cones at Hoffman’s on Church Street.
But in an instant, it had all been stolen away, and even though David tried not to, he couldn’t help but wonder what she had done instead. Did she and her father live close enough to the Pacific for her to ride her bike down to the shore at dusk to watch the sun set over the crashing waves? Did she still go fishing with her dad? Did they find an ice cream place to go to again?
Carefully, David opened the envelope and pulled out the small, handwritten note. He took a deep breath, braced himself for what was coming next, and began to read.
Dear David,
Hi, how are you? I hope you are well, and your parents and brothers, too. I realize this note may come as a bit of a shock. Please forgive me for not writing before now. I wanted to. I started to write several times but never finished or never sent them. Things have been difficult and complicated, and honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. But two things have prompted me to write now.
First, as it happens, I’m going to be a bridesmaid in a wedding near Syracuse on the first weekend of March. Why in the world my friend Lexi chose to get married in the bone-chilling snows of “Siberacuse”-isn’t that what you used to call it?-I have no idea. Maybe it will truly be beautiful and balmy and springlike by then, but with my luck, I seriously doubt it. That said, Lexi and I have been friends since our freshman year in college, and she really is head over heels in love with this guy, and she grew up out there in a town called Fayetteville (I hear it’s really nice), so I just couldn’t say no.
Of course, as soon as I learned the wedding would be out there, I couldn’t help but think of you. The only other time I was ever in Syracuse was when my family visited yours and we stayed at your house. I think I was seven or eight. Do you remember that?
The second thing that prompted this note is that my father recently passed away. It has been very hard and painful in ways that I would rather not write in a letter. I’d prefer to tell you in person.
So, anyway, the real reason I’m writing, I guess, is that I wondered if you might like to get a cup of coffee together, or something, when I’m out there. It’s been a long time, so much has happened, and there are things to say.
I arrive on Thursday, March 3, around dinnertime. I don’t have plans that night or on Friday morning until around 10 a.m., when all the bridesmaids are getting together for brunch with Lexi and her mom. The rehearsal is at the church at 4 p.m. There’s a dinner at 6, so the rest of that day is probably out. The wedding is at 2 p.m. on Saturday, so I’m probably not going to be free at all that day. Sunday morning might be another possibility if you’d like to come to church with me. Lexi says it’s an awesome church. I’d really love it if you came. After that, I’ve got to race to the airport to catch a 1 p.m. flight back to Portland.
If you can’t get together, or if you don’t want to, I’ll certainly understand. And I’m sorry for rambling on like this. I didn’t mean to. I just meant to say I’d like to see you again if possible. It would be good to catch up and tell you things I should have said earlier, if you’re okay with that. Thanks, and please say hi to your folks for me.
She closed the letter by including her mobile number and her e-mail address, then signed her name. No “Your friend, Marseille” nor “Sincerely yours, Marseille.” And there was certainly no “Love, Marseille.”
Just “Marseille.”
Still, she had written. And her letter was actually friendly. She didn’t seem to be trying to drive the knife deeper into his heart, which came as no small measure of relief. To the contrary, she wanted to see him again. David could hardly believe it.
He read the letter again and then a third time, though he had memorized it after the first pass. He was glad to hear she’d gone to college, glad she had a dear friend she cared so much about that she was willing to travel across the country to be with her on her special day. But he felt terrible for the loss of her father. Marseille and Mr. Harper had been so close for so long. Now she was all alone in the world. She didn’t sound bitter, though she did say her life had been “difficult” and “complicated” and “painful” in ways too hard to write about. David wondered what other sadnesses had befallen her in the years since he’d seen her last.
It was hard to describe his own emotions at that moment. He turned and looked out the window at the darkness below and felt a lump forming in his throat. He had missed Marseille for so long, and he had eventually given up hope of ever hearing from her, much less seeing her again. To suddenly know that she was alive, that she was as well as could be expected under the circumstances, that she thought of him fondly and even that she missed him meant the world to him.
It was all good, amazingly good, except for one problem: Marseille was coming to Syracuse in less than a month, and as far as she knew, he had completely blown her off. He hadn’t known about the letter or the invitation or the visit. But she didn’t know that. All she knew was that he hadn’t even had the decency to write or call or e-mail back and say, “Good to hear from you, but I’m afraid I’ll be in Iran that weekend.” Or “Thanks for the note, but I wouldn’t want to see you again if there was a gun to my head.” Or “You’ve got to be kidding me. You blow me off for how long, and now you want to have coffee?” Or “Thursday works for me, and by the way, are you seeing anyone?”
Something-anything-would have been better than nothing. But she hadn’t heard from him at all in nearly two months. He felt terrible. He had to fix this, and fast.
Negev Desert, Israel
Captain Avi Yaron muted his radio and closed his eyes.
“Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha olam,” he prayed, “she hehiyanu v’kiy’manu v’higi’anu la z’man ha ze.”
Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
With that, he throttled up his engines, carefully veered his F-15 out of its underground bunker, taxied onto the tarmac, and waited for clearance. Behind him, thirty-seven more F-15s and F-16s fueled up, revved up, and got in line. This was it. The night for which they had been waiting, preparing, and hoping over the past six months.
Yaron looked out at the beehive of activity across Hatzerim Air Force Base, not far from the ancient city of Beersheva, in the heart of the Negev Desert. Most people who knew anything about the place thought of Hatzerim as the home of the Israeli Air Force Museum. Only a handful of people even in Israel knew the IAF had been secretly retrofitting the facilities to house several new air attack wings.
Yaron’s hands were jittery. Were the intel guys right? Was there really a narrow window when neither Russian nor American spy satellites were in position to watch them? How could they really know precisely what time that window opened and shut?
He hated to wait. He was desperate to fly, desperate to engage the enemy, drop his ordnance, and save his people. But life in the Israeli Air Force these days seemed all about waiting. The pilots waited for the green light from the commanders. The commanders waited for the generals. The generals waited for the minister of defense. The defense minister waited for the prime minister. The prime minister waited for the president of the United States.
What if they waited too long? What if Iran got the Bomb and set into motion another holocaust?
The time for waiting was over, Yaron believed. It was time to strike first.
He checked his instruments. Everything was ready, as was he, and as he waited for permission to launch, his thoughts drifted to Yossi, his twin brother. He checked his watch. He could picture Yossi in his F-16 at that very moment, taxiing out to the tarmac at Ramat David Air Base in the north, not far from Har Megiddo, from whose name came the term Armageddon. He wished he could shout a shalom to him, but radio silence was the rule of the day, and it was inviolable.
Just then the ground crew gave him the signal. It was go time.
Yaron didn’t hesitate. He put the pedal to the metal and took his Strike Eagle to forty-eight thousand feet in less than a minute. Behind him, the skies filled with fighter jets, long-range bombers, and fuel tankers. A devastating armada had just been unleashed for the twelve-hundred-kilometer flight, the longest mission in which any of these young pilots, navigators, and weapons systems officers had ever been engaged.
Tehran, Iran
The Bell 214 Huey took off just after evening prayers.
As it gained altitude, the Iranian military helicopter gently banked north and headed for the Alborz Mountains, site of the Supreme Leader’s heavily guarded retreat complex on Mount Tochal. At 3,965 meters, Tochal was the second-highest peak in the range and was well away from the smog and the noise and the congestion of the capital and from all the palace intrigues and political machinations that increasingly vied for his attention and sapped his strength.
Haunted by growing fears of an imminent Israeli attack, the graying, bespectacled Hamid Hosseini, now seventy-six, looked out over the twinkling lights of Tehran, a city of eight and a half-million souls. He had never imagined rising to the heights of his master. He had never sought to be the nation’s Supreme Leader. But now a great burden rested on Hosseini’s shoulders. He wished he could sit with his master and pray and seek Allah’s counsel together, as they had done on so many occasions over the years. But it was not to be. There was a time in a man’s life when he no longer had the blessing of his mentor’s attention or wisdom or even his presence, a time when a man had to make fateful decisions on his own, come what may. This was one such moment, and Hosseini steeled himself for what lay ahead.
Upon landing at the retreat site, an aide slipped the Supreme Leader a note, informing him that his guests were waiting for him in the dining room. Hosseini read the note but would not be rushed. Flanked by his security detail, he headed first for his master bedroom, instructed the aide to give him some time alone, then closed the door and sat on the bed.
His mind was flooded with questions. They had all been asked and answered before, some of them dozens of times. But they had to be asked once more. Were they truly ready? How long would it take? Were they certain they would be successful? Could they guarantee complete secrecy? Moreover, if they were discovered before they were ready, could they survive the repercussions?
Hosseini’s top advisors were confident that victory was at hand. He was not. They believed the benefits far outweighed the risks. He feared they were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear, not the truth-at least not the whole truth. They had the luxury of being wrong. He did not. And that, he reasoned, made all the difference.
Hosseini slipped off the bed and onto his knees. He faced the windows, thus facing Mecca, and began to pray.
“O mighty Lord,” he 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.”
It was his standard prayer, the one he had prayed thousands of times over the years. It was also a secret-one he had carefully kept hidden, even from those closest to him. As a closet “Twelver,” he longed to see the Mahdi come in his lifetime. And now, he sensed, that time was drawing close.
Thirty minutes went by. Then an hour.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Hosseini did not answer but continued praying. A few moments later, there was another knock.
Annoyed, the Supreme Leader tried to ignore it and maintain his focus. When it happened a third time, however, he rose, stepped to his dresser, pulled out the top drawer, retrieved his nickel-plated revolver, and opened the bedroom door. He was so enraged he could barely breathe.
“Everyone is waiting for you, Your Excellency,” his young male aide said.
“Did I not ask to be left undisturbed?” Hosseini fumed.
The aide blanched and began to back away. “You did, but I thought…”
“You wicked son of a Jew!” Hosseini shouted. “How dare you disturb me as I enter the holy place!”
With that, Hosseini shot the man in the face.
The sound of the explosion echoed through the retreat facility. Hosseini stared at the dead man as a pool of blood formed on the hardwood floor of the hallway. Then he knelt down and dipped his hands in the blood and began to pray aloud.
“Allahu Akbar. Highly glorified are you, O Allah. The Prophet-peace be upon him-taught us that when we find those who are unfaithful and disobedient infidels, we must ‘kill them wherever you may come upon them,’ that we must ‘seize them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place.’ The Prophet-peace be upon him-taught us to ‘strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern against them’ for ‘their final refuge is hell.’ May this sacrifice, therefore, be acceptable in your sight.”
With that, Hosseini rose, his hands dripping with warm blood, and turned to the chief of his security detail, who stood stone-faced and trembling in the hallway.
“I will come out soon,” Hosseini said calmly. “Make certain my way is not obstructed.”
With that, the Supreme Leader entered the bedroom alone. The security chief shut the door behind him. Hosseini then returned to his prayer rug, knelt again facing Mecca, and bowed down.
Without warning, a blazing light as if from the sun itself filled the room. Hosseini was stunned, wondering what this could be. Then a voice, emanating from the center of the light, began to speak.
“Very good, my child. I am pleased with your sacrifice.”
The room grew cold.
“The hour of my appearance is close at hand. With blood and fire I shall be revealed to the world. It is time to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the infidels-Jews and Christians, young and old, men, women, and children.”
This was the moment Hosseini had been waiting for, he knew, the moment for which he had prayed all of his life. But he had never imagined it like this. He was hearing the actual voice of Sahab az-Zaman, the Lord of the Age. The Twelfth Imam himself was speaking directly to him, and every fiber of Hosseini’s being trembled in excitement and in fear.
“Now, listen closely to what I am about to tell you. Get ready; be prepared. And do not hesitate for a single moment to carry out my commands.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Hosseini cried. “Thank you, my Master.”
“You shall complete the weapons and test them immediately. When I finish roaming the earth and all is set into place, we will proceed to annihilate the Little Satan first and all the Zionists with it. This is your good and acceptable act of worship to me. You must bring to me the blood of the Jews on the altar of Islam. You must wipe the ugly, cancerous stain of Israel from the map and from the heart of the Islamic caliphate. This is right and just, but it is only the first step. Do not be distracted or confused. This is not the ultimate objective. I have chosen you above all others not simply to destroy the Little Satan, for this is too small a thing. The main objective is to destroy the Great Satan-and I mean destroy entirely. Annihilate. Extinguish. Obliterate. Vaporize. In the blink of an eye. Before they know what has hit them. The Americans are a crumbling tower. A dying empire. A sinking ship. And their time has come.”
The Twelfth Imam then instructed Hosseini to meet with his security cabinet, consisting of President Ahmed Darazi, Defense Minister Faridzadeh, and General Mohsen Jazini, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, already gathered and waiting for him in the retreat’s main dining room.
“Each of you must carefully select four deputies, forming a group of twenty. These must be men of honor and courage, like yourselves. They must be men willing to die for my sake, for the sake of Allah. The twenty of you will form my inner circle and be my most-trusted advisors. You will meet weekly. You will establish secure communications. You will then recruit 293 additional disciples-some mullahs you trust, but mostly military commanders and leaders of business and industry. You must find servants extraordinarily gifted in organization, administration, and warfare. You will recruit this group with haste, but never let the Group of 313 meet all together in one place. It is too dangerous. There is too much risk of infiltration or leaks. Create a cell structure. Do not let one cell know about another. Only you four can know all the details. Is this clear?”
“Yes, Master. I will do all that you say.”
“Very good, Hamid. Get ready; be prepared. Let there be no mistake-I am coming back soon.”
Mount Tochal, Iran
Hosseini pressed his face to the floor.
The words of the Twelfth Imam rang in his ears. He wanted to ask questions, to plead for wisdom, to say something, anything, but no words would form; no sound would come.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone. Hosseini lay prostrate, unable to move. It seemed like only a few minutes, but later, as his breathing calmed and his heart slowed, he realized that nearly an hour had gone by. None of his aides dared check on him, of course. Nor would his guests.
Slowly Hosseini began to compose himself. He washed his hands and face, changed into fresh clothes, and stepped out of his room. He walked down the freshly mopped hallway, then turned right and went down another long hallway, past several bodyguards stationed at strategic points, and entered the main dining room. There he was greeted by his security cabinet, all of whom instantly rose to their feet.
“Please, gentlemen, be seated,” the Supreme Leader said, taking a seat at the head of the table.
“I have known the three of you for many years,” he began. “I have sought your counsel and relied on you many times. Now I need your best assessment. Ali, we will begin with you.”
Hosseini paused. He knew he needed to explain to his colleagues what had just happened. But first he needed to gather his thoughts and process it for himself.
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh began. “Last month you asked me to go back to my team and ask many questions, to press the scientists for more clarity. This I have done.”
“And what have you found?”
“We are ready, Your Excellency.”
“You are certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“The uranium is sufficiently enriched?”
“Most of the last batch was 97.4 percent,” Faridzadeh said. “Some came in at 95.9 percent. Both are sufficient, and we continue to make improvements.”
“How many warheads could you build with that?”
“We have already finished nine.”
Hosseini was taken aback by the defense minister’s impressive report. “They are already built?”
“Yes, Your Excellency-thanks be to Allah-nine of them are ready to be detonated. My men should have another six done by the end of the month.”
“This is welcome news, indeed,” the Supreme Leader said. “Which design did you use? The one from Pyongyang?”
“No, Your Excellency. In the end, we chose A. Q. Khan’s design.”
“Why?”
“The data from the North Korean tests were disappointing, Your Excellency,” Faridzadeh explained. “The warheads the North Koreans tested certainly detonated. But the yields were not that impressive.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Pyongyang’s bomb could annihilate several city blocks, but we don’t believe they could take out a city. And this was one of your stated objectives, the capacity to take out all or most of a city with a single weapon.”
“Yes, we must achieve this,” Hosseini pressed. “You’re certain the North Korean plans are not sufficient?”
“I am not a physicist, as you know, Your Excellency,” the defense minister replied. “But my top man has pored over the data from every angle, and he is simply not convinced the North Korean design has been perfected to the point that we’d want to risk the future of our own country on it.”
“But we paid so much for it,” Hosseini said.
“We did, Your Excellency. But what the North Koreans sold us was effectively worthless in comparison to what we bought from A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.”
“But we hardly paid Dr. Khan anything.”
“Nevertheless,” the minister said, “Islamabad has built 162 warheads to date based on Khan’s design. They’ve tested their warheads multiple times. The yields are absolutely enormous. So we know the design works. Now we simply need to test what we have built and make sure we have followed his impressive design to the letter.”
“And you are ready to test?”
“Almost, Your Excellency,” the defense minister said.
“How soon?” Hosseini asked, leaning forward. “Could you be ready by summer?”
Faridzadeh could not suppress a smile. “Inshallah, we should be ready by next month.”
The Supreme Leader was ecstatic. He was tempted to drop to his knees and offer Allah a prayer of thanksgiving right there and then. But he did not smile. He did not visibly react. There were still too many risks, too many variables, too many unknowns, too many things that could go wrong. Still, they were almost there. After so many years and so many setbacks, they were almost ready. And just in time, for the coming of the Mahdi was at hand.
“Do I have authorization to proceed with the test?” the defense minister asked.
Hosseini did not answer immediately. He rose and walked to the window, where he stood looking down at the lights of Tehran. He wanted to say yes, of course. But the stakes could not be higher. The testing of an Iranian nuclear warhead would alert the world that they were ready. The charade that they were simply running a civilian nuclear power program would be over. Talks at the U.N. over the possibility of imposing new international sanctions were already under way. For now, their allies in Moscow and Beijing were standing firm against such sanctions. But a nuclear weapons test could radically change that dynamic. And what if the first warhead failed? Or what if it was less impressive than they wanted or needed? They would have lost the critical element of surprise. Yet in light of the vision he had just experienced, could he afford any delay? Had he not been commanded to “get ready; be prepared”?
“What would the Americans do in reaction to such a test?” he asked President Darazi as he continued to gaze at the twinkling lights in the valley.
“Nothing, Your Excellency,” the president replied.
Hosseini turned. “Are you really willing to bet your life on that, Ahmed?”
“I am, sir.”
“Why?”
“Your Excellency, the Americans are a paper tiger,” Darazi argued. “They are an empire beginning to implode. Their economy is bleeding. Their deficit is skyrocketing. They’re fighting two wars in the Middle East-at a cost of about $12 billion a month-two wars that most Americans don’t want. Their Congress is focused on jobs and health care and reenergizing their economy. President Jackson is committed to pulling U.S. forces out of the region as rapidly as possible. And he has signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. will never use nuclear weapons against any other nation-even if attacked first. Believe me, Your Excellency, regardless of what they are saying about keeping their military option ‘on the table’ with regard to ‘the Iran issue,’ we needn’t worry about a preemptive strike from the Americans. It is never going to happen. Not under this president. Not under this Congress.”
The Supreme Leader hoped Darazi’s analysis was accurate. It was certainly consistent with his own perspective and with the vision he had just received. But the Americans were not the only threat. He looked the president in the eye and asked, “What about the Zionists? What will they do?”
“Of that, Your Excellency, I’m not so sure,” Darazi conceded. “We all know Prime Minister Naphtali is a warmonger. He is oppressing the Palestinians. He is terrorizing Lebanon. He is humiliating the Egyptians and the Jordanians. He is playing the Syrians for fools. The good news is Naphtali’s government is headed for a train wreck with the White House. Relations between the two countries are souring rapidly.”
At that, however, the Supreme Leader pushed back. “How can you say that, Ahmed? Yes, Jackson and Naphtali have had a few spats. But so what? Naphtali still has Congress in his pocket, no? He still has the Jewish lobby, correct? Israel is still getting $3 billion a year in American military aid, true? A lovers’ quarrel is not a train wreck, Ahmed.”
“With all due respect, Your Excellency,” the president countered, “this is not a lovers’ quarrel. I believe we are witnessing a fundamental rupture between these two governments. Could it change? Yes. Could President Jackson be defeated in the next election? Of course. But for right now, the foreign policy of the United States is run by President William Jackson-a man who fundamentally believes he must negotiate with us, can negotiate with us, and will be successful in the process. He won’t attack us militarily while he’s trying to engage us diplomatically. What’s more, I believe he will do everything in his power to keep the Israelis from attacking us.”
The Supreme Leader considered that for a few moments. He liked Darazi. The president was a true Twelver, devoted in every respect to the coming of the Twelfth Imam, and thus useful in many ways. Still, Hosseini did not entirely trust the man’s geopolitical instincts.
Just then an aide to General Jazini rushed into the room and handed the commander a note.
“What is it?” the Supreme Leader asked, seeing Jazini’s face grow ashen.
“It is the Israelis, Your Excellency,” Jazini said.
Hosseini braced himself. “What have they done?”
“You’re not going to believe this.” Jazini proceeded to read the entire classified cable aloud.
“Russian intelligence indicates massive Israeli war game under way. Stop. Four hundred warplanes have been launched. Stop. Inbound for Greek isles for practice bombing, strafing runs. Stop. Repeat of their 2008 drill, but four times as large. Stop. FSB warns Jerusalem making final preparations for war. Stop. Please advise. Stop.”
Faridzadeh and Darazi gasped.
Hosseini was not surprised. Nor was he rattled like the others. It was time, he realized, to share with the men the vision he had just experienced and the message he had received.
“Gentlemen, we need not fear the Israelis, and let me tell you why,” the Ayatollah began. “Just before coming into this meeting, I received a message directly from the Twelfth Imam. In a vision not fifty yards from this room, he told me that the time for his appearance has come. The time of the extermination of the Israelis and the Americans has thus come as well. The Lord of the Age has chosen you and me to act, and we must be faithful. So get out your notebooks, and allow me to explain…”
Hamadan, Iran
It had rained most of the night.
But it wasn’t the storm that had kept Najjar awake, and even though the downpour had now stopped, he knew this would be another sleepless night.
He slipped out of bed, threw on some casual clothes and a jacket, and went out for a walk. The streets-abandoned and quiet-were slick, the air damp and brisk. A low fog had moved in across the city. Najjar zipped up his jacket and shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. As he walked, he tried to reconstruct all that had brought him to this point.
He had been recruited by Dr. Mohammed Saddaji to come to Iran with three specific goals in mind, his marriage to Sheyda notwithstanding.
First, he was to serve as his father-in-law’s right-hand man at the Hamadan research facility. It had been an honor to help one of the world’s most gifted physicists create a civilian nuclear power industry for Iran that would be the envy of the world and a rebuke to her critics, especially the Americans and the Zionists.
Second, he was to serve as the primary liaison between Dr. Saddaji and the team of physicists working in the city of Bushehr to bring Iran’s first nuclear power plant online safely and efficiently. A man of Saddaji’s intellect and importance could not be bothered, after all, with constant phone calls, e-mails, and other interruptions from the Bushehr reactor. He needed someone to manage all of that, and for this he trusted Najjar implicitly. It was the combination of these two roles that had been so attractive from the beginning and that gave Najjar a level of intellectual stimulation and professional satisfaction he deeply appreciated.
But there was a third role for Najjar, and Dr. Saddaji had strongly implied that over the long term this would be his most important mission: to help train up a new generation of Iranian nuclear scientists by eventually-within the next few years-teaching at one of the country’s premier research universities. This was Najjar’s true passion. He longed to move Sheyda and their newborn daughter away from Hamadan, buy a home, and carve out a more stable life for his family. He knew he had to pay his dues, and paying his dues meant serving his father-in-law faithfully, but now he was beginning to question everything.
A lone car drove past, splashing water onto the sidewalks. Najjar ducked out of the way just in time, then turned down a side street and picked up the pace. The more he thought about it, the more trouble he was having with the notion that a UD3 expert had been operating inside a civilian nuclear research compound. It wasn’t just that the man was an Arab, though that was bad enough. The real concern was that the Times of London had published a highly controversial story in December 2009 alleging that Iran was engaged in trying to build a trigger for a nuclear bomb. The top-secret memo exposed in that article had been partly responsible for an international firestorm of criticism against the Iranian regime. It had caused the United Nations Security Council to consider imposing new economic sanctions against Iran. Normally Najjar and his colleagues had limited access to Western newspapers and the Internet due to their sensitive positions. Yet copies of this particular article-“Discovery of UD3 Raises Fears over Iran’s Nuclear Intentions”-had been passed around by Dr. Saddaji himself as “proof,” he’d said at the time, of a “Zionist campaign of lies and slander” against Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program.
Najjar recalled a particular section from the article with crystal clarity. “Independent experts have confirmed that the only possible use for UD3 is as a neutron source, the trigger to the chain reaction for a nuclear explosion. Critically, while other neutron sources have possible civilian uses, UD3 has only one application-to be the metaphorical match that lights a nuclear bomb.”
That was true, Najjar knew. What’s more, any test explosion using UD3 would leave behind traces that would certainly be regarded as proof that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. There was no way, he was sure, his father-in-law would take such a risk.
At the time, Najjar had fumed that the entire article was built on lies. The Times reporter had quoted a “Western intelligence source”-someone who had to be from the Israeli Mossad, Najjar was convinced. It was all a plot by the Jews to subjugate the Persian people under Western colonialism and imperialism. He had passionately echoed his father-in-law, not because it was the party line but rather because Najjar believed it to be true. As Dr. Saddaji’s chief of staff, he personally knew-or knew of and controlled the personnel files for-every single nuclear scientist in the country. All 1,449 of them. He had pored over their files. He had pored over their security clearance dossiers. He knew all of their supervisors and was in direct contact with many of them. So he knew for a fact that not one of them-not a single one-was a specialist in uranium deuteride or titanium deuteride.
Now what was he to think? Dr. Saddaji had been keeping secret from him-his own son-in-law-the presence of an Iraqi UD3 expert in the Iranian nuclear program. The man had then proceeded to order the brutal execution of that expert without a trial, without even a hearing. Why?
What else was his father-in-law hiding? Was the man really running a civilian nuclear power program, as Najjar had thought from the beginning? Or was he actually spearheading a clandestine program to build a nuclear weapon, as the Americans and the Israelis claimed? It was beginning to look as if the latter was the case. If so, was this the real project for which Dr. Saddaji had recruited him, the one that would “change the course of history”? Was this actually the project that would “make way for the coming of the Promised One”?
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
It was late when “Reza Tabrizi” landed in Dubai.
He couldn’t wait to get to the hotel for a hot shower, a good meal, and a real bed. To maintain the fiction he had already set into motion, he traded phone numbers with Yasmeen, giving her his number in Munich, and headed toward passport control, reminding himself again and again that he was no longer David Shirazi. He was a successful German businessman of Iranian extraction. He wasn’t coming from Syracuse, but from a trade show in Chicago that had been a waste of time. He rarely went to the U.S., he reminded himself. Indeed, he disdained doing business with the Americans. They were too loud, too pushy, and too greedy, and there were far too many Jews. He repeated this to himself again and again. CIA protocols required him to have spent the transatlantic flight refreshing himself on his cover story and getting himself fully into his alias. But his mind had been elsewhere on the flight, and he was rapidly playing catch-up.
Fortunately, he cleared passport control without being asked any questions. At that moment, his first instinct was to call Marseille and explain the delay in getting back to her. But he couldn’t use his new Nokia cell phone. It was carefully monitored by his friends back at Langley, and this was not a call he wanted Jack Zalinsky or anyone else at NSA or the CIA to track. As he headed to baggage claim, he walked past banks of pay phones and was tempted to stop and use one of them. But this, he hoped, wasn’t going to be a quick call, and Eva was waiting for him beyond customs.
Eva Fischer.
The very name suddenly confused David. For starters, of course, Eva wasn’t even her real name. It was an alias. Neither she nor Zalinsky, he realized, had ever given him her real name. So who was she? Where was she really from? What was she really all about?
Twenty-four hours earlier, Eva had been consuming an awful lot of his thoughts. He’d been looking forward to going to Starbucks with her, to attending a week of briefings with her, to going into Tehran with her, to getting to know her better. He still was, but now it was complicated. How could he even consider a relationship with her if there was a possibility of reconnecting with Marseille? Then again, was that really a possibility? He hadn’t heard from Marseille in years. Who knew what she wanted to talk about? She could be engaged. She could be married. She could have children. And what was all that about church in her note? Had she become religious? Was that why she wanted him to go to church with her back in Syracuse? It made no sense, but then again…
“Mr. Tabrizi, Mr. Tabrizi, over here!”
It took a moment for David to hear the name and realize it was supposed to be his. He turned and saw Eva smiling and waving at him through the enormous crowd in the Dubai International terminal, all waiting for their loved ones just beyond the secure doors. His first thought was that despite being much more modestly dressed than back in Virginia, she looked great, sporting a beautiful green headscarf and a full-length brown dress that covered her legs and her arms. His second thought was that this looked like a woman preparing to head into Iran, not to Starbucks. Nevertheless, he smiled and waved back and was surprised to see her eyes light up with anticipation as they met his.
“Welcome to Dubai, Mr. Tabrizi,” she said, being careful not to shake his hand or have any physical contact whatsoever since they were neither married nor related.
“Thank you, Ms. Fischer. Please, call me Reza,” he replied.
“If you insist. And call me Eva,” she said. “How was your flight?”
He couldn’t begin to tell her. “Too long. But it’s good to finally be here. Do you have a car for me to go to the hotel?”
“Actually, I’m afraid we have a change of plans,” Eva explained, picking up her own suitcase and garment bag.
“What do you mean?”
“You got my text, right?” she asked, handing him his new itinerary. “We’re heading to Tehran.”
“When?”
“Next flight.”
Stunned, David read the paper in his hands. She wasn’t kidding. They were booked on Emirates Airlines flight 975, departing Dubai at 12:10 a.m. and landing in Tehran two hours and ten minutes later. He glanced at his watch. It was already 10:56 p.m. They had to move quickly.
“I don’t understand,” he said as he scooped up his own bags and followed Eva back into a security line. “What’s going on?”
“Last night, the Israelis launched more than four hundred warplanes at Greece in what looks like a massive test run for a strike against Iran,” Eva whispered.
“Four hundred?” David whispered back. “That’s almost half their fleet.”
“Exactly. The Iranians are freaked out.”
“And that’s why we’re going in?”
“Not entirely.”
“Then what?”
“Abdol Esfahani’s office called. He wants to meet us for breakfast.”
Esfahani was a key executive at Iran Telecom and the point man for operationalizing the new contract with Munich Digital Systems. It wasn’t a meeting they could easily blow off, but David wasn’t convinced he and Eva were ready to go into Iran quite yet. Where was Zalinsky? How could he have signed off on such a rapid departure? They were supposed to work here in Dubai for the week. They were supposed to refine their plan, set clear goals, and establish contingencies in case things went wrong, as too often they did. But how much planning could Jack and Eva have actually done without him, given that all weekend she had been with… whom?
“So,” he asked casually, “how was Berlin?”
“Uh, great,” she said, hesitating ever so slightly. “But not nearly long enough, you know?”
With that, David realized Eva hadn’t actually been in Berlin. She had come straight to Dubai with Zalinsky. That was fine, of course. She was the boss. She didn’t answer to him. But how and when exactly was she supposed to fill him in on the plan she and Jack had cooked up? They certainly wouldn’t be free to talk on the flight in, and they’d be trailed by intelligence operatives from the minute they hit the ground in Tehran. This was too big of an operation to rush. The stakes were too high. But they were rushing into it anyway. Why?
And then his thoughts shifted to Marseille and his anxiety spiked again. He couldn’t exactly call her from Tehran.
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar got home around 2 a.m. and found the lights on.
Sheyda was asleep on the couch with their tiny daughter snuggled beside her. He slipped off his shoes, quietly set his keys on the kitchen table, put a blanket over his wife and child, and stared at them for a while. They looked so peaceful, so innocent. Did they have any idea of the evil rising around them?
He turned off the lights in the living room and kitchen and stepped into the spare bedroom he used for a home office and library. Switching on his desk lamp, he cleared off his cluttered desk and found a stack of books his father-in-law had lent him several months before but that he had been too busy to read. The one on the top was titled The Awaited Saviour. It was written by Baqir al-Sadr and Murtada Mutahhari, both Shia ayatollahs. Taking the volume in hand, Najjar turned to the prologue and began to read.
A figure more legendary than that of the Mahdi, the Awaited Saviour, has not been seen in the history of mankind. The threads of the world events have woven many a fine design in human life, but the pattern of the Mahdi stands high above every other pattern. He has been the vision of the visionaries in history. He has been the dream of all the dreamers of the world. For the ultimate salvation of mankind he is the Pole Star of hope on which the gaze of humanity is fixed. The Qur’anic prophecy of the inevitable victory of Islam will be realized following the advent of the Mahdi, who will fight the wrong, remedy the evils, and establish a world order based on the Islamic teachings of justice and virtue. Thereafter there will be only one religion and one government in the world.
Najjar continued reading throughout the night. The more he read, the more convinced he became that the arrival of the Twelfth Imam and establishment of his caliphate, or kingdom, was imminent. Were not the signs, described by Shia sages throughout the centuries, coming to pass day by day? The world was becoming more and more corrupt. The global economy was in collapse. A great war was being fought between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The land of Taliqan-an ancient name for a region of Afghanistan-was consumed by war and poverty. Terrible earthquakes were occurring in ever-increasing number and intensity. Apostasy was spreading within Islam. Civil wars and uprisings were prevalent.
Najjar was electrified when he read, “The Mahdi is alive. He visits different places and takes an intelligent interest in world events. He often attends the assemblies of the faithful but does not disclose his true identity. He will reappear on the appointed day, and then he will fight against the forces of evil, lead a world revolution, and set up a new world order based on justice, righteousness, and virtue.”
To the very core of his being, Najjar believed these words to be true. He was absolutely convinced that he had seen the Promised One at least twice in his life, first as a child on the day Ayatollah Khomeini had died, and again in Baghdad the day he saw the Iraqi nuclear scientist kidnapped and his family gunned down in the streets. Najjar had prayed every day since that he would have the opportunity to see the Promised One again. But he had never dared tell anyone of his encounters, not even Sheyda, whom he loved more than life. He feared she would think he was boasting or lying or hallucinating or crazy.
But was it really necessary to prepare the way for the Twelfth Imam by building a nuclear weapon, by annihilating Israel and the United States and other enemies of Islam? Dr. Saddaji obviously believed it was. Najjar, too, had once believed that, but now he wasn’t so sure. Worse, he now feared that by authorizing the beheading of a man who had been forced into the Iranian nuclear program years earlier-a man whose wife and child Najjar himself had seen murdered-Sheyda’s father had become part of the “forces of evil” whom the Promised One was coming to judge. It saddened and sickened him, but what could he do? He couldn’t tell Sheyda. It would shatter her. To whom, then, could he turn?
Tehran, Iran
Abdol Esfahani was not a big fish.
In the grand scheme of Iran Telecom’s communications empire, he was a minnow. But at least he was nibbling.
As Iran Telecom’s deputy director of technical operations, Esfahani was in charge of the day-to-day mechanics of turning the company’s ambitious strategic overhaul from concept to reality. He hadn’t negotiated the massive contract between Iran Telecom and Nokia Siemens Networks. Nor had he been involved in the subcontract NSN had inked with Munich Digital Systems. But all of the consultants and technical support teams that NSN already had in Iran ultimately reported to him, as would the MDS teams that were about to arrive in force.
David had no idea what Esfahani wanted to discuss, nor did Eva. He guessed the man simply wanted to look them in the eye, take their measure, and establish clear lines of authority and responsibility before the MDS tech teams arrived. After all, MDS’s role was a critical one: installing state-of-the-art call routers and proprietary software systems capable of handling millions of calls per minute, all of which would also integrate voice, data, and video services through the new fiber-optic and wireless networks NSN was building. The scope of the work was staggering. It was going to be complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. Esfahani no doubt wanted to make sure he was on a first-name basis with the senior Farsi-speaking project managers on the MDS team.
The breakfast meeting was set for seven thirty in the penthouse conference room of Iran Telecom’s headquarters in downtown Tehran. By the time Eva and David-traveling as Reza Tabrizi-landed at Imam Khomeini International Airport, cleared an extensive passport control and customs process, checked into separate rooms at the Simorgh Hotel on Vali-Assr Avenue, showered, changed, and got back into their hired car-followed the entire time by Iranian intelligence agents-they were lucky to make it to the meeting on schedule. With less than five minutes to spare, they sprinted into the main lobby and presented their IDs and a faxed letter of invitation. Only then were they directed to the ninth floor. There they were greeted by a lovely but somewhat-timid young receptionist wearing a black, full-length traditional woman’s cloak known as a chador and a dark green headscarf that not only accented her shy, green eyes but nearly matched the color of Eva’s headscarf as well.
“Welcome to Iran Telecom,” she said, stammering somewhat and unable to make eye contact, even with Eva. “My name is Mina.”
“Thank you, Mina,” Eva said, taking the lead. “It’s good to be here, despite all that traffic.”
“Yes, it’s quite challenging,” Mina said, still not looking at them but rather at the letter of invitation. “Forgive me, but which one of you is Mr. Tabrizi?”
It was an odd question, David thought, given the fact that he was the only man standing there. “That would be me,” he replied.
Mina glanced at him, then looked away quickly. “Are we still waiting for Mr. Fischer?” she asked.
“Actually,” Eva said, “that appears to be a mistake on the invitation. It’s supposed to be Ms. Fischer, not Mr. And that would be me.”
She held out her hand to shake Mina’s. But Mina, startled, didn’t take it.
“Ms. Fischer?”
“That’s right,” Eva said, still holding out her hand.
“There’s no Mr. Fischer?”
“No, just me.” Eva awkwardly withdrew her unwelcome hand, now looking as perplexed as the receptionist.
“You are the project manager for MDS?” Mina asked.
Eva forced a smile. “Yes; is there a problem?”
Mina looked up, stared at Eva for a moment, then looked away again. “Please have a seat,” she said crisply, picking up her phone and dialing. “It will be a few minutes.”
A moment later, Mina hung up the phone, excused herself, and stepped into Mr. Esfahani’s office, leaving the door open a crack behind her. David could hear whispering for a few moments, and then came the explosion.
“What? Are you certain?” yelled a man David figured for Esfahani.
He could hear Mina talking, but she spoke so quietly he couldn’t make out what she was saying.
“A woman?” the man shouted. “They sent a woman? And you let them? Don’t you know how close we are, you fool? Don’t you know how pious we must be? He’s coming at any moment. We must be ready!” Something glass or ceramic crashed against the wall and shattered.
David turned to Eva. This was not good. Esfahani was screaming at the top of his lungs. They could hear the man’s fist slamming into his desk. They could hear his secretary quietly sobbing. They heard him curse her for daring to think that he would ever have a woman running such an important project. He threatened to fire her. “How could you make such a stupid mistake?” he roared. “How could you bring dishonor into this office at such a time as this?” He began cursing NSN and MDS for having the gall to think he would accept a woman as a project manager. And then Esfahani, a thin man-almost gaunt-balding, and red as a beet, stormed out of his office, not stopping to look at either David or Eva. He blew through the reception area and boarded the elevator, and before they knew it, he was gone.
David, barely believing what he had just witnessed, turned to his colleague. Eva was pale. She was so deeply shaken, he wanted to give her a hug. But he could not, of course. Touching a woman who was not his wife, and doing so in public, risked turning the crisis into a full-blown cultural catastrophe. He didn’t know what to do or say to Eva, much less to Mina. The secretary was crying and muttering to herself and trying to clean up whatever had been destroyed in Esfahani’s office. This wasn’t something they trained you for at Langley. But David knew he had to do something to salvage this situation. The stakes were higher than the feelings of these two women. This was the CIA’s only door into Iran Telecom, and it had just been slammed in their faces.
“Go to the car,” he whispered to Eva when he was certain Mina was not looking. “Have the driver take you back to the hotel. I’ll try to salvage this.”
“No, I’m fine,” Eva said curtly, clearly embarrassed but trying hard to regain control.
David didn’t have time to argue. He could tell from Eva’s tone and stiff body language that her shock was turning to anger. But he couldn’t take the risk that she would try to undo the damage and in so doing end up making things worse.
“This wasn’t your fault, Eva,” he whispered back. “But you can’t fix it. Not now. I don’t know if I can either, but for now you need to go back to the hotel.”
“And then what?”
“Just wait there. Don’t call anyone. Don’t do anything. I’ll call you as soon as I know something, and then we’ll regroup.”
Eva’s eyes said it all. She didn’t like being managed by a man, much less a younger one, especially when Zalinsky had put her in charge of this mission. They stared at each other for a moment. David didn’t back down, and Eva finally relented. She knew he was right. There was nothing she could do. But she wasn’t happy and wanted him to know it. Sixty seconds later, the elevator arrived. Fortunately, it was empty. Eva stepped in, her jaw set, her eyes down. She was still resolutely avoiding David’s gaze when the doors slid shut.
David checked his watch. It was nearly eight. At any moment, he expected the floor to be flooded with dozens of other secretaries and operations staff. In fact, he was surprised they weren’t there already. If there was any chance of making this right, it had to be now. He ducked his head into Esfahani’s spacious and impressive corner office. It was far larger and more ornate than he would have expected for a “deputy director of technical operations,” with an expansive view of the smog settling over the Tehran skyline. Mina was still sitting on the floor, wiping her eyes and picking up the pieces of what had been a lamp.
“May I help you?” David asked gently.
He didn’t wait for an answer but stooped and picked up some of the smaller pieces of glass and put them in the small trash bin beside Mina.
“I’ll be fine,” she said halfheartedly, continuing to avert her eyes from his. “It’s probably best for you to go.”
David continued picking up the smaller pieces. “Will Mr. Esfahani be back soon?” he asked, trying to buy time and goodwill.
Mina said nothing, but shook her head.
“Did he have another appointment?”
Again she shook her head.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “My colleague and I should have known better. I should have, at least. With a name like Reza Tabrizi, obviously my relatives were all originally from Tabriz. But my parents grew up here in Tehran. They actually met just a few blocks from here in 1975, not long after my dad finished medical school. But you probably guessed Ms. Fischer isn’t from here. I mean, she actually speaks Farsi really well for a foreigner, but she’s German, and she’s-”
“It’s okay,” Mina said. “You don’t have to say any more.”
“She meant no harm,” David added. “Neither of us did.”
“I know.”
“Living in Europe, well, it’s…”
“Different,” Mina offered.
“A lot different.”
Mina nodded but looked away again. They were quiet for a moment. David could see she was lowering her defenses ever so slightly. But just then the elevator bell rang, and several associates stepped off chatting and laughing. They were out of time. It was improper for them to be found together. David’s mind raced. Then he reached for another piece of glass and purposely cut his finger.
“Oh, my goodness,” Mina said, noticing him wince, “you’re bleeding.”
“It’s okay,” he said, stepping back into the reception area. “I’ll get something for it at the hotel.”
“No, no,” Mina said, rushing to her desk and pulling out a first aid kit. “You could get an infection. Here, use this.”
She handed him a tube of antibiotic ointment, and as she did, she actually looked him in the eye, if only for a moment. He smiled and thanked her. To his amazement, she smiled back. The poor woman looked like she never got out of the office. She was small and pale and somewhat frail, but she was sweet and he felt bad for her, trapped in a job she had to hate, verbally abused by a boss who was impossible to respect.
“Again, I’m so sorry for the trouble we caused you today,” he said, finishing with the tube of ointment and giving it back to her.
“The error was mine,” she said softly. “I should have called ahead and gotten all of the details. It’s just that the meeting came up so fast, and, well… anyway, it was my fault.”
She looked at him again, and when she did, David shook his head and whispered, “It wasn’t your fault, Mina. It was all mine. And I’m probably going to get fired for it.”
“No,” she whispered back, sounding pained at the prospect. “Would they really fire you?” She handed him an adhesive bandage.
“If I blow this contract, they will,” he said. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you could help me.”
Mina looked away, terrified of being caught doing something else wrong. David suspected she would be severely punished for her transgressions today, and his heart went out to her.
The elevator bell rang again. More staff stepped off and headed to their cubicles. Mina greeted several of them, backing away from David as she did. He slowly put on the bandage, trying to buy as much time as he could, but it didn’t seem to matter. They had passed the point of no return. He really had to go.
He nodded good-bye, then stepped to the elevator, pushed the button, and silently begged Allah for mercy. The wait seemed like an eternity. He tried to imagine the coming conversation with Zalinsky, trying to explain how he and Eva had blown a mission that offered the last shred of hope of averting an apocalyptic war between Israel, Iran, and the rest of the region. But it was too painful.
The bell rang. The door opened. Still more of Esfahani’s staff poured out, and David stepped in. He hit the button for the ground floor and smiled at Mina one last time. The elevator doors began to close, but just before they did, a woman’s hand came through and held the doors ajar for a moment. It was Mina’s hand, holding a business card. Startled, David took the card, and Mina withdrew her hand. The doors closed. The elevator began to descend to the ground floor.
David looked carefully at the card. It was Esfahani’s, showing two different mobile numbers, plus his direct office line, general office line, fax number, and telex number. On the back was a handwritten note.
Imam Khomeini Mosque, it read, Naser Khosrow Avenue.
David couldn’t believe it. He had one more shot.
Outside the Iran Telecom building, David tried to hail a taxi.
But in Tehran’s cacophonous morning rush hour traffic-bumper to bumper for blocks on end-that was nearly impossible. He suddenly understood why one of the city’s recent mayors had been elected after boasting of having a doctorate in traffic management.
Once again he found himself begging Allah for mercy. He was desperate and reasoned that this wasn’t a selfish prayer. This was a battle of good versus evil. He was trying to stop a catastrophic war and the deaths of millions, and he needed all the help he could get, divine or otherwise.
David had no idea how far away Naser Khosrow Avenue was, but he was determined to get to the mosque before Esfahani left. His heart raced. But he knew he had to look calm, for he was not alone. And the delay in finding an available cab, he concluded, was good in the grand scheme of things. It gave the Iranian surveillance detail assigned to trail him-half of whom had already been forced to follow Eva back to the Simorgh Hotel-enough time to prepare for his next move.
On this topic, Zalinsky had been crystal clear back at Langley: for the first few weeks in Iran, he and Eva-like all foreigners-would be suspected by the Iranian intelligence services as spies for the Mossad or the CIA or the BND, Germany’s federal intelligence service. They would be followed everywhere. Everywhere they went would be monitored and logged in a file by the secret police. Everyone they met with would be noted, and some would be interviewed or interrogated. Their hotel phones would be tapped. Their rooms would be bugged. Their cell phones would be monitored. They would be photographed surreptitiously and constantly. Their mission, therefore, was to act normal. To relax. Blend in. Play the part of an MDS consultant and nothing else. This was not the time to play James Bond or Jason Bourne. This was not the time to evade their tails and get their handlers curious, much less worried. They were already pushing the margins with Eva leaving early and David taking a cab rather than their hired car (whose driver surely worked for the secret police). They couldn’t afford any more irregularities.
By the time David was finally able to flag down a cab, he was certain that the driver worked for the secret police. He was too young and looked far too nervous to be a simple taxi driver.
“Hey, buddy, listen. I need your help,” David said in Farsi, tinged with a little more of a German accent than usual. “What’s your name?”
“Behrouz,” the young man said hesitantly.
“Behrouz?” David said. “That means lucky, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good; so listen, Behrouz-today is your lucky day.”
“Why’s that?”
“If I don’t get to the Imam Khomeini Mosque and find my client before he finishes praying, my company’s fifty-million-euro contract is going to be flushed down the toilet, you know what I’m saying?” David pulled out his wallet and tossed a crisp one-hundred-euro bill on the front seat.
The young man’s eyes went wide when he saw the money. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and David pleaded with him to help. Behrouz then glanced at his mobile phone sitting next to the euro note. David assumed the kid was supposed to call something like this in. But it wasn’t like his suspect was going to get away, right? He and Behrouz were going to be together for the entire ride.
“No problem,” the kid said, finally mustering up his courage. “But you might want to put on your seat belt.”
David did, and they were off. Behrouz gunned the engine and hopped the curb, terrifying pigeons and pedestrians alike and unleashing an avalanche of curses from several clerics trying to cross the street. Not seeming to care in the slightest, the kid ran a stoplight, barely missing an oncoming bus, and took a hard right at the next intersection. This kid was good, David thought, half-wondering if he should hire him as his driver full-time.
On a straightaway, David caught his breath, pulled out his phone, and did his homework. He dialed up a quick Internet search for the Imam Khomeini Mosque and immediately found a map, a satellite photo of the enormous compound, and a brief description of the site, courtesy of Google. The Imam Khomeini Grand Mosala Mosque was the largest mosque in the world. The two minarets stood at 136 meters, and the mosque compound covered 450,000 square meters.
Six minutes later, Behrouz raced by the Golestan Palace and finally screeched to a halt beside the mosque’s main entrance.
“Thanks, Behrouz,” David said, already out of the cab. “There’s another hundred in it for you if you give me your cell phone number and hang around until I need you again.”
The young man, breathless, readily accepted. He scratched out his mobile number on the back of a receipt and gave it to David, who thanked him, entered it into his phone, and dashed inside the gates of the mosque, hoping against hope to find Abdol Esfahani.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zalinsky’s phone chirped.
It was the watch officer from the Global Ops Center at Langley. Zalinsky, in the CIA safe house in Dubai where he had set up his base camp, was instantly on alert.
“Ops Center; go secure,” the watch officer said.
The grizzled old CIA veteran punched in his authorization code. “Secure; go.”
“Two minutes ago, Zephyr entered his first phone number,” the watch officer explained.
That was fast, Zalinsky thought.
“It’s a junior agent with the secret police in Tehran,” the watch officer continued. “He’s already making his first call.”
“Where to?” Zalinsky asked, now on his feet and pacing.
“It’s a local call… Secure, but we’re cracking it; hold on… NSA says it’s a direct line into VEVAK.”
Wow, Zalinsky thought, unexpectedly impressed. He didn’t speak Farsi, but he certainly knew that the Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar-known by its acronym, VEVAK-was Iran’s central intelligence service. Themis and Zephyr just might pay off after all.
The watch officer now patched Zalinsky through to a live feed from the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. A Farsi specialist translated the call in real time.
Caller: Base, this is Car 1902.
Receiver: What’s your status?
Caller: I’m at Imam Khomeini Mosque. Subject just entered.
Receiver: Do you have a visual?
Caller: Negative. This was my first chance to call it in.
Receiver: Why didn’t you follow him?
Caller: He paid me extra to wait here. Should I go after him?
Receiver: Negative. Wait as instructed. Did subject say what he’s doing there? The next call to prayer isn’t for another four hours.
Caller: Subject is meeting someone inside.
Receiver: Who?
Caller: Didn’t say. But it sounded urgent.
Receiver: Why?
Caller: Subject said some business deal would collapse if he didn’t find this guy in time. I think it’s an executive from Iran Telecom. That’s where I picked him up.
Receiver: Roger that. We think it’s Esfahani. We’re sending you additional agents.
Caller: Abdol Esfahani?
Receiver: Affirmative.
Caller: The nephew of the boss?
Receiver: Affirmative.
Caller: Is he in danger? Should I do something?
Receiver: Negative. It probably really is a business deal.
Caller: But you’re sure Esfahani’s going to be okay?
Receiver: Affirmative. We’ll have more agents arriving on scene any moment. Just stay where you are, and let us know when the subject returns to the cab.
Caller: Yes, sir.
With that, the call was over. But Zalinsky’s interest was piqued. Who exactly was Abdol Esfahani related to, and why did it matter so much to these intelligence operatives? It wasn’t possible that Esfahani was related to Ibrahim Asgari, the commander of VEVAK, was it? Zalinsky couldn’t imagine it. Surely he would have known that before now. He quickly logged on to Langley’s mainframe database and ran an extensive search.
After ten minutes, he couldn’t find a shred of information suggesting this was true. But it was clear to Zalinsky that the Iranian intelligence agents on the call he’d just heard believed Esfahani was connected to someone important. Zalinsky wasn’t sure what to make of that exactly. But he began to wonder if maybe Esfahani was a bigger fish than they had thought.
Tehran, Iran
It was worse than David had feared.
Hundreds of men were praying. Thousands more were milling about on the grounds of the mosque, talking softly, conducting business, trading gossip.
“Assalam Allaikum”-peace be upon you-he repeated again and again as he worked his way through the crowds, systematically ruling out small groups of individuals and intensifying his prayers that Allah would help him find this needle in the haystack. The good news was that no one seemed particularly interested in the fact that he was there. Nor did anyone seem to care or even sense that he had never been there before. The sheer number of people on the site provided him a measure of anonymity that helped him move about without drawing attention. But that wouldn’t last for long, he knew. Plainclothes agents would be there any moment, watching his every move.
He decided to shift gears. Rather than moving deeper into the mosque, he would withdraw and hide in plain sight. He would wait out front, where the secret police could see him and breathe easier as a result, and where he was least likely to miss Esfahani when he emerged from prayer.
Finding a bench in the courtyard, he sat down, pulled out his phone, and began reviewing his e-mails and scanning headlines on the Internet like any harried European businessman would do. Several headlines caught his attention.
Oil Hits Record Highs on War Fears in Mideast
Pentagon Moves Patriot Missile Batteries into Gulf States to Protect Oil Facilities from Possible Iranian Strike
Iranian Cleric Wants Creation of “Greater Iran”
The last one, an AP story out of Tehran, particularly intrigued him, and he scanned it quickly.
A radical cleric has called for the creation of a “Greater Iran” that would rule over the entire Middle East and Central Asia, in a move that he said would herald the coming of Islam’s expected messiah. Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi said the creation of what he calls an Islamic United States is a central aim of the political party he leads called Hezbollah, or Party of God, and that he hoped to make it a reality if they win the next presidential election.
Scrolling down a bit, another paragraph struck David as curious.
Kharrazi said this Greater Iran would stretch from Afghanistan to Israel, bringing about the destruction of the Jewish State. He also said its formation would be a prelude to the reappearance of the Mahdi, a revered ninth-century saint known as the Hidden Imam, whom Muslims believe will reappear before judgment day to end tyranny and promote justice in the world.
This was the second time in the last several days that David had seen the subject of the Mahdi, or Hidden Imam or Twelfth Imam, come up in a news report. Again he wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he made a mental note to discuss it with Eva the first chance they got.
Moments later, he was relieved to see several plainclothes agents quite obviously, and even a bit clumsily, taking up positions to monitor him. One even came up and asked for the time. David couldn’t resist pointing out that the man was wearing a wristwatch of his own. Embarrassed, the agent slunk off, but the point had been made. The secret police had made it clear they were observing Reza Tabrizi, and Reza Tabrizi, aka David Shirazi, had made it clear he didn’t mind and had nothing to hide. Both sides seemed to relax.
Seemed, however, was the operative word. Inside, David was a wreck. If he didn’t find Esfahani quickly, the entire operation would be over before it had even begun.
And then a new e-mail arrived in his box. It was a headline forwarded to him by Zalinsky through an AOL account under one of his many aliases. It indicated that Iran’s deputy defense minister had just met at the Kremlin with his Russian counterpart. Moscow was promising to install the S-300 system by summer, just six months away.
This wasn’t good. The S-300 was Russia’s highly advanced surface-to-air missile defense system. The Iranians had paid more than $1 billion for the system several years earlier, but Moscow had repeatedly delayed its delivery and deployment, citing technical challenges.
In truth, David knew, there were no glitches. The system worked perfectly. And once it was set up around all of Iran’s known nuclear research and power facilities, it would be able to protect them from a U.S. or Israeli first strike. But the very introduction of the S-300 into the Iranian theater could accelerate an Israeli preemptive strike by convincing the leaders in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that if they didn’t hit Iran before the S-300 became operational, their chances of success would suddenly be radically diminished. It was probably why the Israelis had just launched such a massive war game with Greece. Athens, after all, was about twelve hundred kilometers from Tel Aviv, almost the same distance as Tehran was in the opposite direction.
Put simply, the S-300 was a game changer. If this report was accurate and Russia really was planning to install the system by August, then what little time the U.S. had to stop Iran from getting the Bomb and to prevent a horrific regional war had suddenly been cut much shorter.
Just then, David caught the profile of a short, thin, balding man walking quickly out the front door of the mosque. The man was several hundred yards away, but he certainly looked like Abdol Esfahani. David jumped up and made the intercept not far from the front gate of the compound.
“Mr. Esfahani, sir, please-do you have a moment?” David said in perfect Farsi, sans the German accent.
It was clear from his befuddled expression that Esfahani had no idea who David was.
“Please forgive me for intruding on your pious thoughts, sir, but I just finished praying myself, and I looked up and couldn’t believe my good fortune,” David continued. “I was pleading with Allah to give me a second chance to meet you so I could have the opportunity to apologize for the dreadful faux pas my company made this morning. And here you are, a ready answer to my fervent prayers.”
Esfahani looked skeptical. “And you are…?”
“Sir, I am Reza Tabrizi,” David said, putting out his hand to shake Esfahani’s.
Esfahani said nothing and did not return the gesture.
“From MDS.”
That name finally registered. The man darkened. “I have nothing to say to you,” Esfahani said, walking away briskly.
David, however, ran a few steps ahead of the man and cut off his exit.
“Please, Mr. Esfahani, I beg of you. Hear me out. Just for a moment. My company, MDS, we’re very good at what we do. We can do the work you need. We can do it fast. And we’re discreet. We can help you in other ways, whatever you need. That’s why NSN turned to us. But the MDS executives are… well… how shall I put this? They’re imbeciles when it comes to Iran. They’re Germans. They’re Europeans. They don’t mean any harm, but they don’t understand our beautiful country. They don’t understand Islam. They try to, but they’re simply clueless. But I’m an Iranian. I’m a Muslim. I may not be as pure as others, but I try. So I begged them not to make Ms. Fischer the project manager. I told them it was an insult. I told them I was offended and you would be too. But they didn’t listen. They told me just to shut up and do my job and help Ms. Fischer with anything she needed. I knew it was going to be a disaster. But there was nothing I could do-then. Now there is.”
The mea culpa seemed to be working. Groveling had its advantages sometimes. Esfahani was listening.
“How so?” he asked, glancing at his watch.
“Now I can go back to the MDS board and tell them that putting a German woman over this project is going to cost our company fifty million euros and shut down this market to us forever,” David continued. “Now they’ll listen to me, because believe me, Mr. Esfahani, they can’t afford to lose this contract. The global economy is too weak. The telecom market is too soft. Our stock price is down. Our shareholders are edgy. We need your business, sir, and we’ll do everything we can to make this work. And with all due respect, you need us, too.”
“Why is that?” Esfahani asked.
“Because your bosses want this telecom overhaul to be done yesterday. Text traffic is exploding. Less than a decade ago, there were barely four million mobile phones in the entire country. Today, there are over fifty million. You’re trying to handle a hundred million text messages a day. Soon, it will be a billion. Your current software is going to crash unless we help you upgrade fast. You know that. That’s why your boss approved NSN’s deal with us. So please don’t let all that work go down the drain, Mr. Esfahani. We’re all yours. Whatever you need, we’ll do it for you. And you don’t have to work with Ms. Fischer. I’ll send her back to Dubai. Heck, I’ll send her back to Munich, if you’d like. Just, please-please-give us another chance. I promise you I’ll be here to make sure MDS does everything you want in a way that honors our faith and our traditions. Please, sir. We want to help. I want to help. I would consider it a great honor to help Iran become the leading power in the region. Our teams are on standby. You give the word, and they can start installing the software tomorrow.”
Esfahani seemed to relax a bit. “You really want this to happen, don’t you, Mr. Tabrizi?” he said, stroking his closely trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
“You cannot even begin to imagine,” David replied, worried he was laying it on a bit thick but certain he had no other options.
Esfahani looked him over for another moment. “I must say, I am impressed at your humility and tenacity, young man,” he said finally. “Give me a few days. I’ll think about it and get back to you. Does my secretary have your contact information?”
“She does,” David said. “But here’s my card and my personal mobile number in case you need it.”
He pulled out one of the freshly minted MDS business cards Eva had given him on the flight from Dubai. He scribbled his cell number and hotel information on the back and handed it to Esfahani.
“May Allah bless you, sir,” he said as Esfahani walked to the street. “You won’t regret this.”
He watched Esfahani get into a waiting black sedan and drive off. It was only then that he remembered Mina had given him Esfahani’s business card as well. He quickly fished it out of his wallet, entered the contact information into his Nokia, and smiled. But instead of calling Behrouz and heading straight to the hotel, he surprised his handlers by turning around and heading back into the mosque.
Maybe Allah really was listening to his prayers. Maybe David should thank him.
Back at the hotel, Eva opened her door wide on the first knock.
“Please tell me you found him,” she asked, the apprehension showing in her eyes.
“I found him.”
“What happened?”
“Meet me in the lobby in ten minutes,” David suggested. “I’ll tell you over tea.”
It wasn’t ideal. He knew they would be tailed. But he also knew full well he couldn’t be seen lingering in front of a woman’s room, much less going in. They couldn’t talk on hotel phones that were certain to be bugged. Somehow, they had to act normal. For the moment, therefore, tea in public in the restaurant next to the lobby would have to suffice.
As he headed back to the elevator, David again pulled out his phone and checked his e-mail. The first was another sent by Zalinsky. It had a link to a story on the Reuters newswire, datelined from Beijing, which described ongoing talks between Iran Telecom’s president, Daryush Rashidi, and the board of China Telecom, mainland China’s third-largest mobile phone service provider. As David scanned the story, he realized Zalinsky was providing a none-too-subtle reminder of just how critical it was to strengthen and deepen the relationship between Munich Digital Systems and Iran Telecom. The Iranians were now fishing in other waters. Should anything with the MDS deal go south, Iran Telecom was actively looking for other options. David winced at the thought of having to brief Zalinsky on the events of the last few hours. They were already hanging by a thread.
Soon he and Eva were sitting across from one another at a small table for two, sipping chai and careful to keep their voices low and professional but not conspiratorial.
“So where are we with Esfahani?” Eva asked.
“It’s not good,” David said. “We made a serious mistake. We both should have known better.”
“Can it be salvaged?”
“Honestly, it’s too soon to say.”
“What do you recommend?”
“We need to cut our losses.”
“Meaning what?”
David chose his words carefully. He liked Eva. He respected her. And he very much needed her help. But she had suddenly become a liability in Iran.
“You have to understand,” he began. “Abdol Esfahani is a very religious man.”
“Meaning he doesn’t think I should be in charge of this project.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What do you think?”
“That’s not my call.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Eva said. “Do you think I’m capable of this job?”
“Absolutely. But that’s not the point.”
“What is?”
“An awful lot is riding on this deal, Eva.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Of course you do. So why worry about it? Let’s just do what’s in the best interest of the project and the company, and go from there.”
“You’re saying you want me to go back to Dubai?”
David took a deep breath and another sip of chai. “I think we need to give Esfahani and Iran Telecom exactly what they want.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Eva said, incredulous.
“Look, you and I both know this is neither the time nor the place to challenge fourteen hundred years of culture and religion over a software upgrade.”
Eva held her tongue for a few moments, but David could see it wasn’t easy. If there hadn’t been at least two Iranian agents sitting at nearby tables, he suspected she really would have unloaded on him.
“If I go back to Dubai, Esfahani will let us keep the contract?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
There was another long pause.
“But if I stay here, he’s guaranteed to cut us loose,” she said.
David nodded.
“Then there’s not much to discuss, is there?” she asked, taking her napkin, wiping her mouth, and getting up from the table.
David leaned toward her and looked her in the eye. “Listen to me,” he said, speaking in character for the benefit of nearby listeners. “You and I are going to make a killing on this deal, okay? Then we’re going to go back to Europe and make boatloads of money there, too. Our bosses are going to love us. They’re going to give us big raises and bonuses. And then we’re going to come up with ways to blow all our money and really live it up. I promise. And just between you and me, I’m really looking forward to working with you every step of the way. So don’t let this throw you, okay? This, too, shall pass.”
Eva’s expression suddenly softened. David even thought he detected a modicum of gratitude in there somewhere.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Okay. I’m going to pack up, check out, and head to the airport.”
“Call me when you get to Dubai.”
“I will. And thank you, Reza. You’re an impressive young man. I hope Mr. Esfahani realizes what’s he got.”
And with that, she was gone.
David stayed, finished his chai, and caught up on a few more e-mails. That hadn’t gone as badly as he’d feared. But only time would tell, for he was fairly confident that the transcript of this conversation would likely be in Esfahani’s hands by the end of the day.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zalinsky was furious.
But he tried not to show it. It had been his decision to send Eva Fischer in as the project leader. He hadn’t had any indications that the senior executives at Iran Telecom were so religious. Clearly, he and his team knew far too little about Abdol Esfahani, for starters. Still, the trip wasn’t a complete loss, he told Eva over coffee in the Dubai safe house. Thanks to Zephyr, they now had Esfahani’s private cell phone number, and it was already bearing fruit.
He slid the laptop over to Eva so that she could look at the most interesting of several transcripts.
› › › › › ›000017-43-NSATXTREF: ZEPHYRINTERCEPT-EYES ONLY
CALL BEGAN AT 0209/21:53:06
ESFAHANI [98-21-2234-5684]: Hello?
CALLER [98-21-8876-5401]: You up?
ESFAHANI: I am now.
CALLER: Take this down.
ESFAHANI: This had better be important.
CALLER: It is.
ESFAHANI: Hold on.
CALLER: Hurry up. I’ve got to get back in.
ESFAHANI: Where are you?
CALLER: The Qaleh.
ESFAHANI: Still?
CALLER: Something happened.
ESFAHANI: What?
CALLER: I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. Not on an open line.
ESFAHANI: Give me a hint.
CALLER: I can’t… I…
ESFAHANI: What? What is it?
CALLER: You won’t believe it. It’s miraculous, but…
ESFAHANI: But what?
CALLER: I will tell you more when I see you. But I really have to go. Are you ready?
ESFAHANI: Yes, I’m ready.
CALLER: We need twenty SSPs.
ESFAHANI: Did you say twenty?
CALLER: Yes; two-zero. Twenty.
ESFAHANI: How soon?
CALLER: Yesterday.
ESFAHANI: Why? What’s happening?
CALLER: It’s big, but I can’t say right now. Will call you again when I can.
CALL ENDED AT 0209/21:56:23
“Interesting,” Eva said. “Not every day you read the word miraculous in an intercept.”
“My thought exactly,” Zalinsky said.
“What do you think it means?”
“I have no idea. So let’s start with the more mundane. What’s an SSP?”
“I thought you knew everything, Jack,” she teased.
Zalinsky was in no mood for jocularity. “Just answer the question.”
“I’m guessing they’re referring to secure satellite phones. But why twenty? They need thousands.”
Zalinsky took another sip of black coffee and mulled that for a bit. They both knew that the Iranians had recently bought thousands of satellite phones from a Russian company. The Iranian high command was building an alliance with Moscow and buying billions of dollars’ worth of arms and nuclear technology from the Russians. Why not communications equipment as well? There was just one problem. The Iranians eventually discovered the phones had been tampered with in a way that allowed the FSB, the Russian intelligence services, to monitor their calls. When the bugs were discovered, every Russian-made satellite phone in the country belonging to an Iranian military or intelligence commander had been recalled and destroyed.
The Iranians still had fairly secure landline communications for their military and intelligence organizations, but Iranian officials knew they were vulnerable due to the lack of secure, encrypted mobile communications. This was the very reason the NSA was having success intercepting calls from Esfahani’s cell phone and anyone else’s phone for which Zephyr was able to get a number. It wouldn’t last long. The Iranians had proven themselves incredibly resourceful in the past. But for the moment, the NSA and CIA had caught a break, and they were exploiting it as best they could.
Eva was right. The Iranians needed thousands of secure satellite phones, not twenty.
“Maybe they simply want to test a new supplier and see if they can get a phone the Russians can’t bug,” Zalinsky mused.
“Or maybe they’re setting up a new unit of some kind,” Eva said.
“What kind of unit?”
“Could be anything-suicide bombers, missile operators, something we should be worried about.”
“That’s encouraging,” Zalinsky said. “Okay, then, what’s the Qaleh?”
“It’s Farsi,” Eva said. “It means fortification or walled settlement. But the question is, what do they mean by it?”
“I have no idea,” Zalinsky conceded. “But you’d better find out.”
Tehran, Iran
Waiting for word from Esfahani, David had been going to prayer five times a day, often at the Imam Khomeini Mosque, though not always. He still wasn’t sure what he believed, but he wanted to believe in a God who would hear his prayers. So he prayed for his parents. He prayed for his brothers. He prayed for his country and Zalinsky and the president. He prayed most of all for Marseille. He asked Allah to bless her, to take care of her, to heal her heart and ease her pain. Yet he doubted any of it was getting through. Sometimes there were “coincidences” that seemed like answers to his prayers. But most of the time he still felt he was talking to the ceiling.
When he wasn’t at the mosque maintaining his cover, he went for long walks. He got to know the city. He visited shops that sold mobile phones, asked lots of questions, and then asked some more. Back in the hotel, he tracked business headlines on his laptop. He sent e-mails to colleagues at MDS. Mostly, he reviewed his cover story, again and again, meditating on every tiny fact until it had truly become a part of him.
But he was dying. For too much of the day, he was sitting in a hotel room in the capital of a country feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons. It was his mission to find a way to stop it, and he was stuck. Alone and out of ideas, he could only wait. He couldn’t talk to Zalinsky. He couldn’t talk to Eva.
The worst part, however, was not the isolation. Or the boredom. Or the feeling of helplessness and frustration at not being able to do more-do anything-to advance his mission, protect his country, and care for his family and friends. The worst part was trying to pretend he was a good Muslim. Deep in his heart, David Shirazi-aka Reza Tabrizi-knew he was not. He believed in God, or at least in some form of divine being in the universe known as “God,” or at least “a god.” He believed this God was a creator, that He had created the heavens and the earth and mankind and him personally. Beyond that, however, he wasn’t sure what he believed.
A shudder ran down his spine. To let such thoughts cross his mind-even if they remained unspoken-was tantamount to apostasy for a Muslim. They were an eternal death sentence, a fast pass to eternal damnation.
Yet how could Islam be true? The purest practitioners of the religion, he reasoned, be they Shia or Sunni, were the ayatollahs and the mullahs. His experiences in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere had taught him that these “holy men” were the most unholy men on the planet. Their minds were filled with thoughts of violence and corruption. The leaders of Iran were the worst of all. They actively denied the Holocaust while planning another. They were trying to obtain weapons capable of incinerating millions upon millions of people in the blink of an eye, and to do so in the name of their god. How could that be right? How could a religion that taught such things be true?
David sat up in bed in the dark.
It was 3:26 in the morning. He had not slept a wink. Three full days and nights had now gone by, and he had still heard nothing from Abdol Esfahani. But he couldn’t stop thinking about a particular line in his rant to his secretary the day David and Eva showed up for breakfast.
“Don’t you know how close we are, you fool?” Esfahani had shouted. “Don’t you know how pious we must be? He’s coming at any moment. We must be ready!”
What did Esfahani mean by that? Who was coming? When? And what did it matter? Why did they have to be ready? Why did they have to be more pious?
Could Esfahani be referring to the coming of the Islamic messiah? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely, David thought. Maybe Esfahani had been talking about an Iran Telecom executive or a board member, or perhaps a top official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-a possibility, given that they had just bought a major stake in the company.
Still, David had just gotten an e-mail from Amazon telling him that Dr. Alireza Birjandi’s book, The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah, had been shipped to his apartment in Germany. It reminded him of how little he knew about Islamic End Times theology, but he was getting the sense it was becoming a bigger deal in the dynamic of the region than anyone at Langley-Zalinsky included-was considering.
How many Muslims believed the end of the world was at hand? he wondered. How many Iranians did? How many Iranians at the highest levels of the regime believed it?
As David pondered that, it occurred to him that there was a growing sense in cultures around the world that the end of days just might be approaching and that with it was coming a final, momentous clash between good and evil. Preachers and rabbis and imams and even environmentalists were saying with increasing frequency and intensity that “the end is near.” But rather than laugh them all off as nuts, people seemed to be eating up the message. Even Hollywood was cashing in, making millions from apocalyptic movies.
What did it all mean? David had no idea. But in the privacy of his thoughts, he, too, feared the world was speeding recklessly toward the edge of the cliff. The longer he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the more classified information he gained access to, the deeper his fears became. And if Iran got the Bomb, or-God forbid-if Osama bin Laden did, something told him the implications would be far worse than even Langley’s most dire predictions.
Which prompted another thought.
He had always told himself that he had joined the CIA to destroy radical Islam, to avenge the death of nearly three thousand Americans on 9/11, to avenge the death of Claire Harper, and perhaps even to show Marseille Harper how much he loved her. It was all true, but it had become more than that. He had come to fear that the events of September 11, 2001, would pale in comparison to the death and destruction that would be wrought if the world’s most dangerous extremists gained possession of the world’s most dangerous weapons. He had to stop them. He had to try, anyway. Most Americans had no idea the threats their country faced. But he did, and he’d never be able to live with himself if he didn’t do everything in his power to save people’s lives.
David turned on the lights. He was covered with sweat. What he really needed was a good, stiff drink. But this was Tehran. The minibars weren’t exactly stocked with Smirnoff and Jack Daniel’s. Come to think of it, he realized, his room didn’t even have a minibar.
He got up, went into the bathroom, and opened a bottle of water. Then he turned on the shower-good and cold-stripped down, and stepped behind the plastic curtain.
As the water poured down his body, he half expected to be struck by lightning or felled by a massive heart attack. End of the world or not, if there was a God, and if it really was the God of the Qur’an, then he knew he was doomed. In college, David had faithfully attended a Shia mosque in Munich, studied the Qur’an, and become a part of the Muslim community, just as Zalinsky had required. He knew what he was supposed to believe. But he didn’t. Plain and simple.
Shivering, David finally turned off the ice-cold water, wiped himself down, wrapped up in a towel, and stepped in front of the mirror. His glasses had been replaced by contact lenses years ago. His braces were long gone. He was taller than his brothers now, taller even than his father. But all that was superficial. Who was he now, really? What was he becoming? Where was he going?
He left the bathroom and paced around the hotel room. He pulled the drapes back a bit and stared out at the quiet streets of Tehran. He wondered what Marseille was doing at that moment, what she was thinking. Was she upset that he had never responded? Was she angry with him? He hoped not. He wished he could call her right then. She’d had enough heartache in her life. He didn’t want to be the cause of any more.
He thought back to the note she’d sent him and reread a particular line in his mind’s eye.
I wondered if you might like to get a cup of coffee together, or something… It’s been a long time… and there are things to say.
He wondered what she meant by “there are things to say.” It was an interesting turn of phrase-old-fashioned, almost. She was right, of course, but it didn’t sound like a person casually suggesting coffee simply to catch up on old times. She had specific things to tell him or ask him. But what? As he thought about it further, he realized she hadn’t just used the phrase once. She had actually used it twice-or at least a variation of it.
If you can’t get together, or if you don’t want to, I’ll certainly understand. And I’m sorry for rambling on like this. I didn’t mean to. I just meant to say… it would be good to catch up and tell you things I should have said earlier, if you’re okay with that.
So she didn’t have questions for him. At least, that’s not what she was signaling. She had things on her heart she wanted-needed-to say directly to him, in person, not on paper. Why would he not be “okay with that”?
Was she talking about why she’d never written back to him? Maybe there was more to why she and her father had moved to Portland. Or was it something to do with religion? She had told him that her friend’s wedding was going to be held at an “awesome” church. She had even invited him to go with her to the church while she was in town, even though she must know he was an avowed agnostic. Maybe she thought he had changed. It sounded like she had. Was that what this was all about?
Trying to clear his head, David turned on the television and started flipping through the channels. State-run news. Football (soccer). More state-run news. More football. Some cleric teaching from the Qur’an. Some lame black-and-white movie from the 1950s. It was all mind-numbingly boring. He turned off the set and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan whirring above him.
He let his mind drift back to the little A-frame in Canada. All these years later, he could still feel her lips on his, the warmth of her body against his own. She’d been so nervous and yet so trusting, and she had held him so tightly. And what had she asked him? Whether he believed in God. Whether he believed in Jesus. Whether he thought God was real and loving and answered prayer. He hadn’t known what to say back then. And it depressed him to think he still didn’t. He had no answers, and given the risks he was taking-and the very real and growing possibility that he could be captured and killed for being an American spy in Tehran-the thought of not knowing the truth about God and the afterlife terrified him.
If there was one thing he knew from studying the Qur’an, it was that Islam was a works-based religion. If his good works didn’t outweigh his bad works when he died, then he was damned for eternity.
He recalled reading Sura 23:102-104 in college. The text was crystal clear in his memory: “Those whose scales of good deeds are heavy, they are prosperous, while those whose scales are light, they will be those who have ruined their own selves, in hell abiding. The fire will scorch their faces, their lips being displaced and their jaws protruding.”
The problem, as David saw it, was that Islam provided no way for a Muslim to assess how he or she was doing throughout his or her life. There was no Web site to log on to and check daily scores. There were no quarterly report cards. There were no annual performance reviews. How, then, could anyone know for certain whether he would spend eternity in paradise or in punishment? How could anyone find the assurance of salvation that every thoughtful soul seeks before death?
The brutal truth was, no one could. That was what terrified David most. He had lied to almost everyone he had ever known. He had been unkind to people he loved. He had been ungrateful to people who had treated him well. He didn’t stay in touch with his parents. He didn’t stay in touch with his brothers. His professional life required that he be a liar and, more recently, a hypocrite-playing the part of a religious man but denying Islam’s truth and power. And then there were his secret sins, the ones he dared not confess. The more he cataloged his bad deeds, the worse he felt, and he had no idea where to turn.
No wonder devout Muslims took the verses in the Qur’an about waging jihad so seriously. Why shouldn’t they? To disregard the command to jihad would be to disobey, and such disobedience could tip the scales of justice against them in the final reckoning.
Which brought him to martyrdom.
The mullahs and ayatollahs taught that the only true assurance or secure promise of eternal salvation for a Muslim was to die as a martyr, often as a suicide bomber, in the cause of jihad. Osama bin Laden himself had once said, “The call to jihad in God’s name… leads to eternal life in the end and is relief from your earthly chains.”
There was no way that was true, David was certain. But what was?
Shahrak-e Gharb, Iran
Little Roya was turning ten years old.
And she knew exactly what she wanted. For weeks, she had been writing her parents little notes to remind them, strategically placing them in her father’s briefcase, by her mother’s sewing basket, on their napkins at dinner, or in other places where they would invariably find them, read them, and consider her request one more time. She pleaded with them not to give her candy or a doll or a book or a pretty new scarf. All she wanted was one thing, and she’d been begging for it for each of the past three years. She wanted them to take her to the Jamkaran Mosque so she could write down her prayer, drop it into the well with all the others, and make her request of the Twelfth Imam.
Growing up in a well-to-do suburb of Tehran, Roya had almost everything she wanted. Her father was a senior translator for the Foreign Ministry and occasionally traveled abroad with high-ranking Iranian officials. Her mother was a renowned botanist in the biology department at Tehran University, who, with Roya’s eager help, was cultivating the most gorgeous rose garden in their backyard. Her grandparents were successful in business. She was even distantly related to Ayatollah Hosseini and had met him twice. But while Roya was sweet and devout and brilliant in every respect, she had also been mute from birth. She longed to be able to talk with her parents and sing with her friends. She hated to be thought of as “special.” She wanted to be normal. Was that too much to ask?
Maybe it was.
The Jamkaran Mosque, located about six kilometers outside the holy city of Qom, was at least a three-hour car ride each way, not counting however much time they might spend there in prayer. Taking a day off from work would be an enormous imposition on her parents. But Roya simply couldn’t help it. She’d seen on TV a news story about the well, and it had completely captured her imagination. One man interviewed said, “If you ask in the right way, your prayers will be answered.” Another said, “I don’t come here just to pray for myself. I also ask the Mahdi to take care of my family and their needs.”
Roya was particularly struck by an interview with a little boy who had brought his flashlight, convinced that the Twelfth Imam was hiding at the bottom of the well reading all the prayer requests people were dropping down there. “I was looking into the well with my flashlight, hoping to see the Mahdi,” the boy had said. “But not tonight.”
The reporter noted that according to Shia tradition, “if you come to Jamkaran forty weeks in a row, you will see the Mahdi.”
The morning of her birthday, Roya awoke early. The house was quiet-her parents must not yet be awake.
Suddenly Roya heard footsteps in the hall outside her bedroom. Maybe her parents were up after all. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It wasn’t quite six in the morning. Then the door opened slowly, and her parents came in and sat on her bed.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” her father whispered. “We’re leaving in five minutes. Think you can be ready by then?”
Ecstatic, Roya jumped up and threw her arms around her father, then her mother, kissing them both profusely.
The trip was more special than even she had pictured. They didn’t drive as a family to Qom. They flew-first-class. They didn’t race to the well and then back to the airport. They stayed overnight in a five-star hotel and went out for a fancy dinner. They took a thousand pictures of everything they saw and did, from Roya scribbling her prayer request on special stationery her mother had given her that day as a gift, to Roya pointing her own flashlight-another unexpected gift from her father-down into the well.
But as special as all that was, it did not prepare the little girl for what happened when they all got home the following night. Roya was upstairs brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed when she heard a knock at the door. It seemed a little late for company, and Roya was surprised when she overheard her father talking to a man and then inviting him to come inside. She didn’t recognize the man’s voice, and when she peeked downstairs, she could see only the back of his head, but she was fairly certain she had never seen him before.
“It would be an honor if you would allow me to pray a blessing on you and your home,” said the stranger, who was dressed as a cleric or a mullah.
Roya, hiding on the stairs and careful to remain unseen, heard her father agree, and the man prayed a very beautiful prayer, asking Allah to bring “peace and tranquility to this lovely home” and “bless all who live here now and all who will live here in the future, so long as they submit to you, O Lord.”
Not wanting to risk being discovered by her parents, Roya was about to go back to her room and climb into bed when she heard the man ask if he could see their little girl and pray for her as well. Roya froze. How did the man know about her?
“I’m sorry. How do you know we have a daughter?” her father asked. “There are no pictures of her in this room. I haven’t mentioned her, and we have never met.”
“Do not fear or be alarmed in any way,” the stranger said. “The answer is simple. Allah has sent me to your home to heal little Roya.”
Roya’s heart started racing, but she could see her father tense.
“How do you know her name?”
“I know all about your daughter,” the stranger said. “She was born with aphonia, preventing her ability to speak. In her case, it was caused by a genetic disorder that damaged her vocal cords. She has been to nine doctors in eight years and has had three surgeries. None of them have worked.”
Astonished, Roya waited for her father to respond, but he didn’t. Or couldn’t. The room was silent for a moment, and then the man continued.
“Yesterday you flew to Qom. You went to the Jamkaran Mosque, and together you wrote out a prayer and tossed it into the well.”
“Who are you?” her father finally blurted out. “And how do you know all this?”
“Roya asked for the Mahdi to heal her.”
“Yes… yes, she did, but…”
“Her request has been granted. That is why I am here.”
Roya feared that her father might throw the man out of the house. But what if the stranger really had been sent from Allah? What if he was…?
Suddenly she found herself walking down the stairs and into the living room, where she stood by her father and held his hand.
She pointed at the stranger, in awe of his striking good looks and piercing black eyes. She now thought she recognized him from a dream she’d had a few weeks before.
The man began praying in a language Roya didn’t know and had never heard before. When he stopped, Roya fell backward and began writhing on the floor. Her mother screamed. Her father was at her side but could not help her. Her body shook wildly. She felt like she was choking. For a moment she thought she was losing consciousness. Then the stranger began praying again, still in some unintelligible language. Immediately her convulsions ceased.
She opened her eyes again and stared at the ceiling. Her parents’ faces were pale. She saw the man come over and kneel beside her. He took her by the hand, pulling her gently to her feet. She felt a cold chill ripple through her body, and then to everyone’s astonishment she began to speak. Then she began to sing. Soon she began to shout praises to Allah. She was delirious with happiness. She spun and twirled and hugged her parents and wept with joy.
And then they all turned to thank the stranger, but he was gone.
Tehran, Iran
Five full days had gone by, and still nothing had happened.
Beside himself with frustration, David got up early. He showered but once again skipped shaving. He was trying to grow a beard to fit in better, and it was coming in quite well now. He headed to the mosque for morning prayer.
There was a message waiting for him at the front desk when he got back to the hotel. He took it upstairs, closed himself in his room, and opened the envelope, letting out a sigh of relief. It was an invitation for a dinner party at the home of Daryush Rashidi, the president of Iran Telecom. The note said a car would pick him up in front of his hotel at precisely seven o’clock that night, and a phone number was provided for his response. David immediately entered the number into his mobile directory and called to confirm his attendance. He just hoped the NSA system would enable Zalinsky and Fischer to compile a list of the others who would be there.
Fischer.
He hoped Zalinsky had gone easy on her. None of this had actually been her fault. It had been Zalinsky’s decision-not hers-to make her project manager and send her to Tehran. Doing so had put their entire mission in jeopardy. But all things considered, Eva had handled things quite well. David barely knew her, but what he knew, he liked. She was smart. She was tough. She was loyal to the Agency. Her Farsi was impeccable. She was not Marseille, but truth be told, she looked rather fetching in a headscarf.
At seven, a black sedan pulled up in front of the Simorgh Hotel. David got in and was driven to a swanky apartment building in an upscale section of Tehran, where he was led by a security guard to a suite on the top floor. But it wasn’t the kind of affair David had pictured. There were no servants in tuxedos bringing in trays of food. There were no flower centerpieces or music. There were no other guests at all. Just Daryush Rashidi and Abdol Esfahani.
“Mr. Tabrizi, welcome,” the tall, graying CEO said, shaking David’s hand. “It is an honor to finally meet you. Abdol has told me good things about you.”
“Please, Mr. Rashidi, call me Reza, and the honor is mine,” David replied, surprised and relieved. “You are most kind to meet with me at all given the events of the last days, let alone inviting me to your home. Thank you-both of you-very much. Your hospitality is most gracious.”
“Say nothing of it, Reza,” the CEO said. “Come in.”
Rashidi, who David guessed was around sixty, motioned for his guests to follow him from the foyer. As they moved deeper inside what turned out to be a gorgeous penthouse apartment, David realized it had to take up at least half the top floor of this high-rise. The view of the capital and the Alborz Mountains in the distance was absolutely breathtaking, and David said so.
“It is sometimes embarrassing to me to bring people up here, but the views are spectacular,” Rashidi said. “I must say, I grew up quite poor. I never imagined anything like this as a child, and I certainly don’t need it now. But Iran Telecom wants me to use it for entertaining clients, and who am I to say no?”
He laughed and snapped his fingers. A servant, a man probably about Rashidi’s age, smartly dressed but without a tuxedo, stepped out from the kitchen.
“Drinks,” the CEO said, “and some snacks.”
“Very good, sir,” the man said.
Rashidi sat down in an ornate, upholstered chair, evocative of a throne one of the shahs might have used in ancient times. Then he turned to David, who settled on the couch beside Esfahani.
“First of all, Reza, allow me to apologize for Abdol,” he began. “He is a dear friend and trusted advisor. But he is not always as diplomatic, perhaps, as a senior executive at Iran Telecom should be.”
David glanced at Esfahani, who was staring out at the Tehran skyline, stoic and unrepentant.
“I wanted you to hear it directly from me,” Rashidi continued. “I am grateful for your professional conduct through this whole matter. Personally, I would not have asked Ms. Fischer to leave the country. We are a free nation. We have great respect for all people, regardless of their race or gender or station in life. We don’t want to frighten off those who have come to genuinely help us. That is not our standard operating procedure and certainly not my heart. But I respect your decision and hope all this hasn’t dampened your desire to work with us.”
“Not at all, Mr. Rashidi,” David replied. “Ms. Fischer is very able. She is an asset to our company. But I believe she will be much more useful to MDS and Iran Telecom back in Dubai and Munich than here. We should have realized it sooner. Please forgive us.”
“All is forgiven,” Rashidi said, looking pleased. “Let us not think of it again. We have far more important matters to discuss.”
David breathed a sigh of relief and couldn’t wait to let Zalinsky know they were back in the game.
The servant stepped back into the room, pushing a cart carrying all kinds of treats, including a large ceramic bowl filled with a variety of fresh bananas, oranges, apples, strawberries, and blackberries, which he set on the large glass coffee table in front of them. He also set out a dish of small cucumbers and a saltshaker beside it, along with small dishes of pistachios, cashews, and walnuts. Then he retrieved a variety of freshly squeezed juices and steaming pots of tea and coffee from a small counter.
David immediately felt at home. His parents had held countless dinner parties over the years that had begun precisely the same way. In the summer, he would have expected sweet cherry juice, as well as grape, cantaloupe, sweetened blackberry, and watermelon. Given that it was only February, however, the options were a bit more limited.
“Apple, orange, or pomegranate, sir?” the servant asked.
Rashidi chose apple, as did Esfahani. David wondered if the protocol was to follow the boss’s lead, but he took a risk and asked for pomegranate juice. He hadn’t had any in years, and it brought back memories of his childhood.
“Three times more antioxidants than red wine,” David said with a smile as a glass was poured for him.
A glance between Rashidi and Esfahani made David immediately realize his faux pas.
“Which is good,” he quickly added, “since I don’t drink wine.”
“Good for you,” Rashidi said, visibly relieved. “You strike me as a very pious, earnest young man. Were your parents devout Shias?”
And so began the interrogation. It didn’t feel harsh. To the contrary, David found both men-but Rashidi in particular-more warm and engaging than he had expected. But it was clear that they wanted to know everything about him. It was a social ritual, to be sure, a rite of passage. It was also another test that David was determined to pass. Helping himself to a handful of pistachios, he launched into his cover story, suddenly grateful for all the time he’d had to practice over the past few days.
He told the story of growing up in Alberta, Canada, as his father worked in the oil sands industry and his mother begged him to take them back to Iran. His eyes grew moist as he shared how his parents died when their Cessna stalled out and crashed just outside of Victoria, British Columbia, when he was only seventeen, and how a policeman had come to his high school to tell him the news. It was, he realized, the first time he had actually spoken the cover story out loud, and he was struck by how much his pain over his mother’s cancer now helped him tap the emotions he needed to make his lies sound real.
Both men offered their condolences for David’s loss.
“It was a long time ago,” he replied, using a napkin from the coffee table as a tissue to wipe his eyes.
“It obviously still affects you a great deal,” Rashidi said with a tenderness David would not have expected. “I lost my parents when I was very young as well. It was a boating accident. I was only seven, but I know what you’re going through.”
David nodded with identification.
Esfahani then asked if he had any siblings. David looked down and said no. He was the “miracle” child in the family, he explained, the only one born after several miscarriages and multiple fertility treatments. When Rashidi asked why he went to college in Germany, David explained that he had never felt comfortable in Canada, that it was too influenced by the immorality and godlessness of the Americans. “What I really wanted to do was come to Iran.”
“Why didn’t you?” Rashidi asked.
“I didn’t know anyone,” David said. “All my grandparents passed away before I was born. And I was offered a scholarship to a school in Germany.”
“Your family, they were all from Tabriz?” Esfahani inquired.
“Yes,” David confirmed, “but I had never been here before. I had no money. It just seemed like first I ought to get some schooling, develop some skills, and make a little money. Then I hoped I could find a way to come back here and reconnect with the land of my fathers and see if there was something I could do to… you know, to help.”
Rashidi looked at Esfahani and then back at David. “I hope I’m not the first to say it, but welcome home, young man.”
“Actually, Mr. Rashidi, you are, and thank you,” David said. “I can’t explain what a joy it is to finally be here and what heartache it has been for me for the past few days to think that rather than being a blessing to you and your great company and this great country, somehow I might have brought dishonor.”
“No, no,” Rashidi said. “No more of that. It was a simple mistake, and it is all behind us now. We must move forward.”
“Thank you, sir,” David said. “I would like that very much.”
Before long, David’s mouth was beginning to water as the aromas of all kinds of dishes began emanating from the kitchen. Fortunately, within a few minutes, it was announced that dinner would be served. Rashidi guided David around the corner to a beautifully appointed dining room with a large table set for three with fine china and pressed linens. To one side of the room there was another table perhaps three or four meters long, covered with a variety of dishes, far more than they could possibly eat in one night. There was an entire roasted lamb on a silver tray in the center of the table, surrounded by pots of all kinds of stews-pomegranate, eggplant, herb, okra, and celery-and a fava bean rice dish with sheep shank.
But best of all, and much to David’s surprise, there was a large bowl of Shirin Polo, one of his favorites and his mother’s specialty. It was a beautiful, colorful dish of steaming basmati rice adorned with sweetened and slivered carrots, almonds, pistachios, orange rind, and saffron. David couldn’t wait to dive in.
Each man helped himself to a plate and sat down.
But just as David began to take a bite, the questions started coming faster and faster. The interrogation phase was over. Rashidi and Esfahani were growing comfortable with him, but they were by no means finished. Now they shifted to the delivery phase.
“How quickly can MDS have teams of technicians on the ground in Tehran?” Esfahani asked.
David reiterated what he had promised Esfahani outside the Imam Khomeini Mosque. The teams could be there within a day or two if he called soon and set them into motion. They were all on standby.
“How long will it take them to do their work?” Rashidi asked.
“For the first phase, with testing, I’d say about a month,” David said. “But as you know from our proposals, the second, third, and fourth phases will take the better part of a year, altogether.”
Was he aware that each technician would be assigned two translators, each working six-hour shifts, as well as a security team?
David said he was. But he added that several of them already spoke Farsi. What’s more, MDS was in the process of hiring and training another dozen Farsi-speaking technicians, though they probably wouldn’t be ready until late spring. Rashidi liked this very much.
Esfahani wanted to know how quickly the monitoring center could be up and running.
David knew the executive was referring to the high-tech operations center MDS had committed to outfitting that would allow Iran’s security services to intercept, monitor, trace, and record any call on their new wireless system. He replied that his teams needed to get the software installed on Iran Telecom’s mainframes first, and then they would focus on setting up the monitoring center.
“No,” Esfahani said, “that won’t do. We want the software to be installed and the center to be outfitted simultaneously.”
“That’s not part of the contract,” David said.
“We’ve changed our minds,” Rashidi said. “We like you. We trust you. We want you to do this for us. Will that be a problem?”
“It will cost more, and we’ll need three or four days to get that team assembled, but we can certainly do it, if you want.”
“Cost is no object,” Rashidi assured him. “Time is the issue. Can everything be done in a month?”
“That’s really Ms. Fischer’s call.”
Esfahani’s mood suddenly darkened at the mention of Fischer. “That’s not what we asked,” he said curtly. “Can the software and monitoring center all be installed and ready in one month’s time?”
“It can,” David said. “Again, I need Ms. Fischer’s approval, but I don’t see this being a problem.”
“I thought you were the new project manager,” Esfahani said.
“Here, yes, but I still report to Ms. Fischer in Dubai,” David explained. “Is that a problem? You won’t have any interaction with her whatsoever, I assure you.”
“I’m sure that is true,” Rashidi said. “But I think what my colleague means is that, given all that has happened, is there any reason for us to be concerned that this Ms. Fischer would refuse to move the project faster because perhaps she was offended by her time here?”
That wasn’t, of course, what Esfahani meant, David knew. The man was simply using religion as his cover to discriminate against a highly qualified colleague and new friend. But he was not about to point that out and blow this deal-not when it seemed to be going so well.
“Believe me, Mr. Rashidi and Mr. Esfahani, everyone in our company knows how important this project is,” David assured them. “Ms. Fischer knows this most of all. I can assure you that she is a consummate professional. She won’t let her personal feelings affect her performance. The only real issue is getting you a cost estimate, which I can have for you by the close of business tomorrow. Once you approve the estimate, all that remains will be to have Ms. Fischer pull together the equipment for the monitoring center and assemble a second crew that can arrive by the end of this week or early next.”
“Will you push for this to be done?” Esfahani asked.
“Absolutely.”
“We’re counting on you, Mr. Tabrizi,” Esfahani stressed.
“Thank you, sir,” he replied. “I appreciate your trust.”
Now Rashidi took the lead again. “You know that I just got back from Beijing, right?” the CEO said.
“Yes, sir,” David said. “I read that in the newspaper.”
“The Chinese are begging us to give them this contract.”
“I understand, sir. But believe me, we can take care of this for you, and we want to. We’ll get you the best price and the best people. You have my word.”
“That is good enough for me,” Rashidi said.
Esfahani nodded his agreement. “Now we have another request.”
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar got home late and exhausted.
The apartment was dark and quiet. On the kitchen table was a note that read, I’m at my parents’ for dinner. Will be home late. Don’t wait up. But have you heard the rumors? Someone has seen him. They say he’s coming soon. Isn’t this exciting? Love and kisses, Sheyda.
Najjar was furious. He was tempted to jump back in the car, drive over to his in-laws’, and have it out with his father-in-law right there and then. Of course he had heard the news. Dr. Saddaji had told his entire staff about Ayatollah Hosseini’s vision of the Twelfth Imam, and the news had exhilarated Najjar. He had been waiting for the Mahdi for most of his life. Finally there would be justice. Finally there would be peace. But he was increasingly convinced that his father-in-law believed a nuclear war against the U.S. and Israel had to precede the Mahdi’s arrival. Najjar resisted this notion with every fiber of his being. Yes, he had vowed to serve Allah with all that he was. Yes, he had vowed to devote himself to preparing for the coming of the Twelfth Imam. But he couldn’t be party to genocide. That couldn’t possibly be what the Mahdi really wanted for him and his family.
Yet it was becoming clear to Najjar that this was precisely what his father-in-law believed, that mankind in general-and the Iranian government in particular-was responsible for proactively and intentionally unleashing the “blood and fire” that would be the last sign before the Twelfth Imam’s arrival on earth. That was why he was secretly building the Islamic Bomb. Did Dr. Saddaji’s wife, Farah, know this? Did Sheyda? Did they know their husband and father was a cold-blooded murderer? Najjar couldn’t believe they did. And how could he tell them? What would they do if they learned the truth? Moreover, what should he do? Resign in protest? Move to another city? Move to another country?
To Najjar, overseeing Iran’s version of the Manhattan Project and lying to the world about it every day was morally repugnant. But to order a man killed-beheaded, no less-without the benefit of a trial or a judge, and to do so in the presence of other senior physicists working under his direction? This was beyond the pale. Yet this was the life his father-in-law was living, and the message to Najjar, to his team, and ultimately to his family as well was clear: Betray me, and you’re an infidel. Become an infidel, and you are dead.
The truth was slowly coming into focus for Najjar, but as it did, it became clear that he could not say anything to his wife. Or to his mother-in-law. Or to anyone else. He couldn’t move his family. He couldn’t take them out of the country. He was trapped in a family led by a man without conscience, a man who would commit any atrocity in the name of jihad.
Najjar collapsed in a chair in the living room and picked up the television remote. He desperately needed to escape, if only in his mind.
Satellite dishes were illegal in Iran, which was why everyone had one. Sheyda was actually the one who had begged Najjar to get one, so long as he promised not to tell her parents. Najjar, eager for news of the outside world, had happily agreed. They had saved for nearly a year to afford a good system, but a friend had installed it for them just the previous weekend.
Najjar turned on the TV and began searching through the hundreds of channels now available to him. He immediately skipped past any program produced by the government and past sporting events, of which he’d never been a big fan. Coming across the BBC, he paused for a moment to watch a breaking news story about two Israeli Dolphin-class submarines-each likely equipped with ballistic missiles capped with nuclear warheads-passing through the Suez Canal. A British intelligence analyst speculated the subs were most likely headed for the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, presumably to park off the coast of Iran and await orders from Jerusalem.
Further depressed by such a prospect, Najjar kept scanning. Suddenly he came across a network he had never heard of before and a character he had never seen. On screen was an elderly priest of some kind, wearing a black cassock, a black cap, and a large metal cross. But it was not the man’s looks that forced Najjar to stop and watch for a moment. It was what the man was saying.
“Children are brainwashed that Islam is the truth,” the priest declared, looking directly into the camera. “Children are brainwashed that Muhammad is the last prophet, that the Christians are infidels, and that the Jews are infidels. They repeat it constantly.”
Afraid of being overheard by his neighbors, Najjar instantly lowered the volume but didn’t turn the channel. He couldn’t look away. He was stunned by the intensity of the man’s voice and the brazenness of his words. This priest was speaking Egyptian Arabic, but Najjar could understand him quite well, given his own upbringing in Iraq.
“Islam, as portrayed in the Qur’an, in the Hadith, and in The Encyclopedia of Islam, was spread by means of the sword,” the priest explained. “The sword played a major role in spreading Islam in the past, and it is the sword that preserves Islam today. Islam relies upon jihad in spreading the religion. This is very clear in the encyclopedia. This appears in section 11, page 3,245. It says, ‘Spreading Islam by means of the sword is a duty incumbent upon all Muslims.’ Thus, Islam is spread by means of the sword.”
Now the priest leaned forward and spoke with great passion. “It’s time for the church to stand up with courage and conviction and say in the power of the Holy Spirit, ‘Islam is not the answer; jihad is not the way. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the life. And no man or woman can come to the Father except through faith in Jesus Christ.’ This is the message of John 14:6. This is the message of the entire New Testament. And this message of faith is filled with love, not with swords.”
It was as if electricity were coursing through Najjar’s system. He was no longer slumped in his chair. He was sitting up straight, at once furious at this man, wanting to throw his shoe at the television, yet simultaneously intrigued beyond anything he could imagine. How could the government allow such things to be on television? Wasn’t anyone trying to stop this man? Mesmerized, Najjar kept watching.
“Now is not the time to hide in fear from the Muslim world,” the priest declared. “Now is the time to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to every man, woman, and child on the planet and proclaim Him as the hope of mankind, the only hope for the troubled world. I have been doing this for most of my life, sharing the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ with the people of the Middle East. For this I was exiled from my home country of Egypt. For this I have been named ‘Islam’s public enemy number one.’ For this there is now a price on my head. But I love Jesus more than my life. And because Jesus loves Muslims, because He came and laid down His life to save them, I love them too. And I am willing to lay my life down if necessary to reach them for my beloved Jesus.”
Najjar had never heard anyone talk like this.
“The God of the Bible is moving powerfully in the Muslim world today,” the priest continued. “He is drawing Muslims out of Islam to faith in Jesus Christ in record numbers. Yes, there is much bad news in the Muslim world today. But there is also much good news; more Muslims have come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last three decades than in the last fourteen centuries of Islam put together. This is the greatness of our great God.”
Was that true? Najjar wondered. Were Muslims really leaving Islam and becoming followers of Jesus Christ? Was it happening in large numbers? He was suddenly afraid to watch anymore. He turned off the television, turned off the lights, and climbed into bed, trembling. He was grateful Sheyda wasn’t home. He was ashamed of what he had just watched. What if someone had heard him? He should be more careful, he told himself.
Yet alone in the darkness, he couldn’t shake what he had just seen and heard, and one phrase echoed in his heart again and again.
“Jesus is the way. Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the life. And no man or woman can come to the Father except through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Tehran, Iran
Rashidi’s mobile phone rang.
He excused himself and left the room. Then Esfahani leaned close to David and whispered, “What I say next needs to be kept very quiet. Are we understood? It must never be spoken of to anyone.”
“Of course,” David said.
“We need to buy twenty secure satellite phones,” Esfahani explained. “State-of-the-art. Encrypted. Absolutely impenetrable. You make them, right?”
“Well, we don’t make them ourselves,” David replied. “Nokia has a joint venture with someone who does. But they’re built for European government officials. They’re not for export.”
“The Saudis have them.”
“That I wouldn’t know.”
“The Pakistanis have them.”
“Again, that’s not my area.”
“The Moroccans have them. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“I think so.”
“Then can you get them for us?”
“I can ask Ms. Fischer.”
“No,” Esfahani said, “that’s not what I asked. I’m asking you-you personally-can you get them for us?”
“I don’t know. Ms. Fischer is the real expert on such things, sir, but I don’t think even she could get an export license for them, given all the international focus on… well, you know… the situation here. I don’t know how I would get the licenses, much less the phones.”
Esfahani said nothing. There was a long, awkward pause. It was quiet. Too quiet. All David could hear was a clock ticking in the living room and the faint sound of rattling dishes in the kitchen.
“I can try,” David finally said.
“Without involving Ms. Fischer?” Esfahani pressed.
David pretended to ponder that a while longer. He knew he could get the phones in a heartbeat. Zalinsky would happily build them by hand if he thought that would help the mission. But David knew he couldn’t seem too eager or too accommodating.
He looked back at Esfahani and assured the man he would do his best, and without Fischer’s involvement. It was a lie, of course. Fischer would be intimately involved. But it was what the man wanted to hear, and it seemed to work.
“Good, because you know there are more telecom infrastructure contracts coming in the next few months,” Esfahani reminded him. “Each one is worth hundreds of millions of euros, and Mr. Rashidi and I would certainly want to look favorably on your bids.”
“That’s what I want too,” David said. “MDS values your business a great deal.”
“Very well. How soon could you get them?”
“How soon do you need them?”
“Five business days.”
“Five? That’s pretty fast.”
“Perhaps we should go to the Chinese.”
“No, no, I’ll figure out a way,” David promised, suddenly fearful that he was playing too coy. “You need twenty of them?”
“Yes.”
“Done,” David said. “After all, we can’t let the Saudis or the Zionists have something you don’t have. I’ll get right on it.”
“See that you do,” Esfahani said. “I can assure you, success will be handsomely rewarded.”
“It will be my honor to bless Iran in every way I can,” David said. “Which reminds me. I need to call Dubai and tell our tech teams to get here tomorrow. Will your staff be able to pick them up at the airport, orient them, and show them where to get started? I’ll need to head back to Munich to fulfill this other request.”
“Yes, we will take care of everything,” Esfahani assured him. “Just tell my secretary who is coming and when.”
“I will do that, but could I just ask a question?”
“What is it?”
“If it’s inappropriate, please forgive me.”
“You needn’t hesitate. What’s your question?”
“Well, I’m just curious. Why such urgency?”
The moment the words left David’s lips, Rashidi reentered the room. David sensed he had finished his phone call some time before and had been listening to most of the conversation, presumably approving of its direction.
“That one I would like to answer,” the CEO said. “Mr. Tabrizi, have you ever heard of the Twelfth Imam?”
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
David landed at 11:40 a.m. and was greeted by Eva.
He was surprised by how happy she was to see him. She was professional, to be sure, but her smile was warm and she seemed genuinely relieved that he was out of Iran for the time being, safe and sound.
“So how’d it go?” she asked as they headed out of the parking garage.
“Better than I’d expected,” he said. “Is the tech team all set?”
“Absolutely. They’re booked on the first flight, tomorrow morning at six.”
“Good. Where are they now?”
“They’re all waiting for you at the office, as you requested.”
“Thanks,” David said. “Were you able to book me a room at Le Méridien?”
“I did.” Eva smirked a little. “Even got you an upgraded suite.”
“Wow, thanks. But that wasn’t necessary.”
“What are friends for?” she asked.
David laughed, getting it now. “Jack told you to make me look like a wealthy businessman.”
“He did indeed.”
David’s briefing lasted about an hour.
The irony was that while each of the members of the technical team worked for the CIA, none of them individually knew that the others did. Nor did they know that David was a NOC as well. Each of them had been hired as an independent contractor by Eva, and compartmentalization was the name of the game. The less they knew about the overall operation, and about each other, the better.
When they finished a lightning round of Q &A, Eva dismissed the team. Then, when the coast was clear, she led David out of the conference room and down several hallways to a small, quiet, private office in the back of the MDS regional headquarters. They slipped in quickly and closed the door behind them, and there they found Jack Zalinsky waiting for them.
“You survived,” he said upon laying eyes on his protégé.
“Better than that,” David replied. “I bear gifts from afar.”
“That’s my boy,” Zalinsky said, slapping him on the back and actually smiling for the first time in David couldn’t remember how long.
“Let me guess,” Eva began as they took their seats. “You need twenty secure satellite phones.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Well, mein freund, you may have been loafing around in your hotel room, watching TV, and going to prayer five times a day,” Eva teased, “but your phone has been working hard, and it’s been a gold mine.”
She explained the middle-of-the-night call from some senior Iranian official-yet unidentified-to Esfahani, requesting the satellite phones. What’s more, she assured him that all twenty would be ready for him to pick up in Munich in seventy-two hours. She also gave him a file with the transcripts of every call the NSA had intercepted thus far based on the new contacts he had entered into his phone.
Thanking them, David quickly shifted gears. “You guys have heard of the Twelfth Imam, right?” he asked.
“Of course,” Eva said. “I sent you that article about the cult leader in Yemen who says he’s preparing the way for him to return.”
“Exactly,” David said.
“You’re talking about the so-called Islamic messiah?” Zalinsky asked. “The one who is supposed to bring about the end of the world, that kind of thing?”
“Right.”
“What about him?”
“He may actually be on the ground, in Iran.”
There was dead silence for a moment.
“Come on,” Zalinsky said, “it’s a fanatic’s fantasy, a myth.”
“Jack, it’s not about what you and I are willing to believe,” David countered. “It’s about what the Iranian leaders believe, and I’m telling you, they think he’s here-some of them, anyway.”
“So what?” Zalinsky said. “That has nothing to do with our mission.”
“Actually, it does.”
“How so?”
“Everywhere I go, people are talking about him,” David said. “He’s popping up in news stories. Religious experts are having conferences about him. And I’m hearing all kinds of rumors that he is alive and well and appearing to people.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Zalinsky said. “It’s a bunch of religious superstition. Don’t get sidetracked.”
“No, no, you’re wrong, Jack,” David insisted. “Listen to me. Two nights ago, a mysterious cleric shows up at the home of a little girl who has been mute from birth. He knocks on the door and asks if he can pray a blessing on the home. He seems harmless enough, so the parents say yes. Then he asks if he can see their little girl and pray for her. They ask him how he knows they even have a little girl. Now get this-the stranger says Allah has sent him to their house to heal their child. At this point, the father thinks the man is a little, you know, out there. But just then, the little girl walks into the room. The man prays for her; she falls down and goes into convulsions. Her parents freak out. But a moment later the little girl gets up and begins to speak for the first time in her life.”
“So who was the man?” Eva asked.
“Well, that’s just it; no one’s ever seen him before,” David said. “They have no idea where he’s from or who he is, and in the commotion of the little girl’s healing, the man simply vanishes. But the girl is convinced it was the Twelfth Imam. The parents are too. They’re telling everyone what happened, and the story was on the front page of all the newspapers in Tehran this morning.”
“That’s crazy,” Zalinsky said.
“Maybe, but that’s not all,” David said. “I’m told that recently, Ayatollah Hosseini was up at some mountain retreat center of his called the Qaleh.”
“The Qaleh?” Eva asked, looking at Zalinsky.
“That’s right,” David said. “Why?”
“Nothing; go on,” she said.
“Well, apparently, Hosseini is praying when he suddenly sees a bright light and hears a voice speaking to him. The voice tells him that the Mahdi is going to be revealed soon and that Hosseini and his advisors are supposed to ‘get ready and be prepared’ for his arrival. Hosseini is telling people close to him that it was the Twelfth Imam who spoke to him. Rumors like these are spreading like wildfire throughout Tehran. People are saying that the Mahdi has come and that he’s about to reveal himself to the Islamic world-and all of humanity-and usher in the end of days.”
“You picked all this up on the street?” Zalinsky asked.
“Everyone’s talking about it. Even Rashidi,” David said.
“When?”
“Last night at his apartment.”
“Daryush Rashidi?” Zalinsky clarified. “The president of Iran Telecom talked to you about the Twelfth Imam?”
“Weird, I know. Turns out he’s a closet Twelver. Apparently his parents were really into Shia Islamic End Times prophecy when he was a kid, but they swore him to secrecy.”
“Of course they did. These people are lunatics. They’re nuts. Khomeini actually banned them in 1983 because he thought they were so dangerous.”
“Well, Jack, they’re running the country now. That’s my point.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Zalinsky said. “Hosseini doesn’t really believe all that. Neither does President Darazi. They just use it to rile up the masses.”
“I’m just telling you what I saw and heard. And I can guarantee you, Rashidi and Esfahani are true believers. They believe the Twelfth Imam is here. Rashidi told me he spoke personally to someone who was with Hosseini moments after the vision. They all think it’s real. You should have seen them, Jack. That’s why they want twenty secure satphones immediately. Someone from Hosseini’s office asked for them. But they’re not for Hosseini. They’re for people around the Twelfth Imam, and Rashidi said they’re eventually going to need 293 more.”
“Why do they need 293 satphones?” Eva asked.
“No, 293 more,” David corrected. “They need a total of 313. Apparently, it’s part of some Shia prophecy that the Twelfth Imam will have 313 followers.”
“How soon do they want the rest of the phones?” Zalinsky asked.
“Rashidi offered me a 200,000-euro bonus, wired to any account I want, if I can get them to him by the end of the month.”
“That’s like, what, a quarter of a million dollars?” Eva asked, incredulous.
“I know-it’s crazy. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you guys. These people are very serious and very excited.”
“Why are they telling you this much this fast?” Zalinsky asked.
“Because they’re also desperate,” David said. “They see events are moving fast now, and they’re scrambling to keep up.”
“No, no, I realize they’re all nuts; I accept that,” Zalinsky said. “But why you? Why are they taking you into their confidence so quickly?”
David thought about that for a moment. “Well, for starters, they think I’m one of them,” he replied. “They’re buying the cover story. They genuinely believe I want to bless my homeland as well as make a buck. They’ve been watching me go to the mosque five times a day. They saw me throw Eva out of the country. They think I’m sincere, earnest.”
“That can’t be all of it,” Zalinsky said.
“No, it’s not,” David agreed. “I think there’s another dynamic at work here.”
“What?”
“I think they’re trying to convert me.”
“From what to what?”
“From a regular Shia Muslim to a Twelver.”
“Why?”
“Why else?” David said. “Because that’s what they are. They genuinely believe the messiah has come. The end is here. And they want me to be a part of it. Plus, honestly, they need a bunch of satellite phones, and they think I just might be young enough and dumb enough and well-connected enough to get them. I think it’s that simple.”
“This is ridiculous,” Zalinsky said, standing up and going over to the window. “This whole ‘Twelfth Imam’ thing is a rabbit trail. It’s a distraction. We’ve known about it for years, and it’s just a bunch of religious dreaming. Your job is to help us identify nuclear sites so our teams can go in and sabotage them. That’s it. We don’t have time for you to do anything else.”
“With all due respect, sir, I think you’re missing the point,” David said. “This is the fastest way in. If I ask them questions about nukes, they’re going to be suspicious. Wouldn’t you be? But I’m telling you, I can ask them a million questions about the Mahdi and they’ll answer every one of them. Why? Because that’s what they’re interested in. That’s what Ayatollah Hosseini is focused on. That’s what President Darazi is focused on. That’s what Rashidi is focused on. Shouldn’t we be focused on it too?”
Zalinsky turned to Eva. “What do you think?”
“Honestly, Jack, I think David is onto something.”
“How so?”
“Look, I can’t say I know much about Shia eschatology. Nor can I find anyone at Langley who does either, and believe me, I’ve tried. But I’ve been tracking the press and blog coverage of this big conference held in Tehran last week on Mahdism. Two thousand people showed up. They had a dozen top Islamic scholars there talking about the imminence of the Twelfth Imam’s return. The keynote address was given by none other than President Darazi, who stated categorically that the Mahdi will appear this year and that his authenticity will be confirmed by the voice of the angel Gabriel, who will appear in the sky over the Mahdi’s head and call the faithful to gather around him. That’s not normal political discourse, Jack. This is a regime that believes the messiah is coming and is basing its actions on that belief. We can’t counter Iran effectively if we don’t know why its leaders are doing what they’re doing.”
It was a solid argument, David thought. The angel Gabriel thing intrigued him. He hadn’t heard that and wanted to talk to Eva more about it.
But Zalinsky wasn’t buying it. “Listen,” he said firmly, turning to David, “I want you on the next plane to Munich. Pick up the satphones. It’s going to take a few days. But once you have them, go right back into Iran. Show them you can deliver, ahead of schedule. Then get us nuke sites. That’s the mission. Nuclear weapons sites. Period. Don’t get sidetracked.”
David checked into Le Méridien.
The next direct, nonstop flight to Munich was on Lufthansa, but it didn’t depart until 7:35 the following morning. That meant he had to be at the airport by 4:30, which meant he had to leave for the airport at 4:00 and be up by 3:00, which meant he really should try to get some sleep now. But he couldn’t. He was too angry. So he threw on some shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of Nikes and went running instead.
Zalinsky, he was certain, was making a serious mistake. David knew his mentor had far more experience in the region than he did. But that made it all the more frustrating. Why wouldn’t Zalinsky take seriously the growing importance of Shia eschatology or consider its implications? David didn’t need anyone to tell him that he hadn’t a fraction of the training or wisdom Zalinsky had. But David trusted his gut, and his gut told him to follow the trail of the Twelfth Imam.
In the meantime, he owed Marseille Harper a call. He just wasn’t sure what to say. Heading north along Sheikh Rashid Road, David ran past the Dubai Creek Golf Club, turned east over the bridge, and wound through several businesses until he reached the football stadium between Tenth Street and Oud Metha Road. There he bought a bottle of water from a street vendor and found a pay phone on the stadium grounds. It wasn’t exactly the quietest place to make the call, but it was the least traceable phone he could find, and for now, that would have to do.
He was surprised by the butterflies in his stomach and the perspiration on his palms. It bothered him that this girl still had such a hold on him after so long, but she did. As he dialed-slowly-he tried to imagine the sound of her voice and wondered if he would still recognize it. Then the line began ringing, and he was tempted to hang up. It rang again with no answer. The longer it went, the more jittery he became. David wiped the sweat off his brow and took another swig of water. Still no answer. But just when he was about to hang up, the line connected, crackling with static.
“Hello?” David said. “Hello?”
“Hi,” a woman’s voice said. The voice was instantly familiar; David’s pulse quickened. “This is Marseille. I’m not in right now, but if you’ll leave me your name, number, and a brief message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.”
David faltered. “Uh, hi, this is, uh… hey, Marseille, this is Rez-sorry, there is some static on the line-anyway, this is David… David Shirazi… I’m calling you from overseas, so I’m sorry for the bad connection. Anyway, I was visiting my parents recently, and they actually just gave me your letter from December as I was leaving for another business trip, and I’m afraid this is the first chance I’ve had to call you back. I’m so sorry to hear about your father, I really am, but I’m glad to hear from you, and yes, I would love to see you in Syracuse in a few weeks. Dinner or coffee or whatever on that Thursday night would be great.”
He quickly gave her an e-mail address and said that was the best way to reach him for the next few weeks to make definite plans. And with that, he hung up, wondering why he was acting like a complete moron.
Tehran, Iran
“I am Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali, Lord of the Age.”
Everyone gathered in the office of the Supreme Leader-Hosseini himself, the president, the defense minister, and the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-froze. Was this actually the Twelfth Imam before them? They had expected to see him soon, but not this soon. Taking no chances, they immediately fell to the floor, bowing in reverence to the striking young man who had just walked into their meeting unannounced.
Hosseini sensed his advisors’ shock when he knelt before the newcomer. His advisors had never seen the Supreme Leader bow to anyone. But Hosseini had no doubt who this was. The flowing black robes. The black turban. The handsome, radiant face. The piercing eyes. The wide forehead. The broad chest. The aura of light that seemed to infuse the room. Above all, it was the voice that confirmed it for Hosseini. This was the voice he had heard at the Qaleh, the voice that resounded from the vision of light.
“Hamid,” said the man, who appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties at most and yet had such a commanding, even mesmerizing presence, “do you remember what happened on the mountain?”
Hosseini had never been referred to so casually by anyone, least of all by a man half his age. But it was an honor to be addressed directly by the Twelfth Imam.
“Yes, my Lord,” Hosseini said, his face still pressed to the ground. “You showed me the glories of the kingdoms of the world.”
“And what did I say to you?”
“You said, ‘All these things I will give you, if you fall down before me and do my will.’ And I have endeavored to do just that ever since, my Lord.”
“You have done well,” the Twelfth Imam said. “Now you and the others may rise and take your seats.”
The men did as they were told.
“Gentlemen, as I told your Supreme Leader when I appeared to him, the time to establish the global caliphate has come. You have longed for the world to be ruled by Muslims and for Allah. You have prayed faithfully for the reestablishment of the caliphate since coming to power. I am here today to tell you that you need not wait any longer. So long as you obey me without dissent, without questioning or hesitation, you will govern this earth, all of you, at my side.”
The Imam passed around four typed, single-spaced sheets of paper, one to each of the men sitting at the table. He asked each to read the document and then sign if his conscience would allow.
I, ____________________, pledge my full allegiance, devotion, and loyalty to Imam al-Mahdi. I will live for him. I will die for him. I shall carry out his orders quickly and completely and without complaint, so help me, Allah.
Hosseini took one look at the document and declared without hesitation, “Imam al-Mahdi, I will follow you to the ends of the earth and the end of time.” He took a steak knife from the place setting before him and slit his left palm. He dipped his right forefinger in the blood pouring down his arm and signed his name.
The others quickly followed Hosseini’s lead. They handed back their documents, then wrapped their bloody hands with white linen napkins.
“Well done, my servants,” the Mahdi said. “Now listen closely.”
As Hosseini and the others sat captivated, the Twelfth Imam took the men into his confidence and laid out his plans. He explained that once the Group of 313 was formed, they were to recruit an elite army of ten thousand mujahideen.
“They do not all have to be Shias,” the Mahdi said, “but they all have to be loyal to me and me alone. And fifty of them should be women.”
In short order, he said, he must be able to announce a successful Iranian nuclear weapons test. He must announce a military alliance between Iran and Pakistan. He must announce that Iran had pre-positioned nuclear weapons under Iranian control in Lebanon and Syria and make clear to the Jews that any attack on the Palestinians-or any neighbor of the Zionist entity-would result in a War of Annihilation. When this was accomplished, he explained, he would announce plans to establish the headquarters of his global Islamic government in the city of Kufa, in the heart of Iraq. They must work to make all these things happen just as he said.
Hamid Hosseini was disappointed at this last part, and he assumed the other men were too. He longed for the seat of the caliphate to be located in Iran, not Iraq, for obvious historic reasons. But he didn’t dare say a word. Indeed, he feared his very thoughts would be read by the Mahdi, exposing his doubts and dissensions. Fortunately, the Mahdi had more to say.
“Very soon, I will give you authorization to make a formal statement of my arrival to this dark world and to announce that I will travel to Mecca to make my first public appearance.”
“O Lord, do not be angered by my question, but must you go first to the Saudis?” President Darazi asked, astounding Hosseini with his audacity. “Could you not bless the Persian people first by appearing here in Tehran or in the holy city of Qom?”
“Do not forget, my children,” the Mahdi said, “I am an Arab, not a Persian. I am a direct descendant of the Prophet, the twelfth in his direct bloodline of succession. It is written that I must first appear publicly in Mecca, and so I must. But do not take this as a slight, my son. The leaders of the Sunni world are corrupt and face judgment. They have never believed in me. They do not believe I am coming or that I have already come. But soon they will see with their own eyes. They will hear with their own ears. And they will worship me, or they will face great judgment. And do not forget, too, that I came to you first. With the help of the Prince of Persia, I have appeared all over your country-in Jamkaran at the well, at the Qaleh last week, and here with you now. I have chosen you, not the Arabs, to form my ruling council, for while you have made many mistakes, you did not betray me. You did not sign a peace treaty with the Zionists, as the Egyptians and the Jordanians did. You did not invite the Americans to occupy your lands, as the Saudis did. You did not ask the Americans to help you form a demonic democracy, as the Iraqis did. The Arab leaders will face a day of reckoning for their crimes, but the Arab people are not the enemy. The Americans and the Israelis are the enemy. It is they who will pay the highest price. Their leaders do not understand what is coming, but they will experience the wrath of Allah soon enough. We must join together, Persian and Arab and Turk and African-all who submit to Allah-as one man.”
He explained that his appearance in Mecca had to be carefully planned, with his arrival and message broadcast live to the nations.
“When exactly are we going?” Hosseini asked.
“You are not going,” the Mahdi told them.
“None of us, or just not me, my Lord?” Hosseini asked, surprised and embarrassed in front of his colleagues.
“None of you,” the Mahdi said. “Your presence would be too provocative for the Saudis. It is enough that I go there. It is too soon for you all to come. To achieve the success we need, we must convince the king and the royal family-along with the leaders of the emirates-to attend my arrival.”
“O Lord, we will work on this immediately,” Hosseini said.
“Good,” the Mahdi replied. “I want you to work on it personally, Hamid. Call the Saudis directly, before we announce the news publicly. Be respectful and brotherly. Be discreet. But be clear. Tell them I would not look kindly on their refusal to greet me with all the honor worthy of their messiah.”
“I will do as you say, Imam al-Mahdi,” Hosseini said. “But what if they won’t listen? What if they do not believe me?”
“They will believe you, my son,” came the reply. “After they see my power and glory displayed, they will believe you. Of this you need have no doubt.”