Munich, Germany
David arrived in Munich but was desperate to get back to Tehran.
He had no interest in watching TV, paying his bills, or reading all the Christmas cards and other assorted mail he’d FedEx’d to himself from the Atlanta airport, not to mention all the other junk mail and magazines that had piled up since he’d been here last. Time was too short. Iran was out of control. He couldn’t prove it yet, but he knew they were closing in on nuclear capability, and he was determined to get back into the action.
He wondered why the package from Amazon hadn’t arrived yet. He’d been looking forward to reading Dr. Alireza Birjandi’s book on Shia eschatology and had ordered it to be sent to Germany. But it was nowhere to be seen.
He called Zalinsky to check in but learned his boss was on a secure conference call with Langley. He called Eva to gripe but got her voice mail instead. He logged on to the CIA’s secure intranet system to review the latest transcripts of intercepted calls inside Iran. But of the dozens of calls, none provided any useful information. He cleaned his 9mm Beretta 92FS and wondered how to smuggle it into Tehran on his next trip. But it was all busywork, and it was killing him. He hadn’t joined the CIA to waste time in Germany. They had to get moving.
He checked his AOL account, hoping at least for word from Marseille, but found nothing. On a whim, he did a search on Facebook. He hoped to find a recent photo or some current information about her and wondered why he’d never thought of it before. But there was no Marseille Harper listed. Then again, neither was he. He checked MySpace and Classmates.com and Twitter but found no sign of her at all. When he simply typed her name into Google, however, he found one link: a story published September 12 of the previous year by the Oregonian, Portland’s daily newspaper, headlined, “Charles D. Harper Commits Suicide.”
Not believing it could be the same person, he clicked on the link and read the obituary.
Charles David Harper, an Iran expert who served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, served in various other embassy posts as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. State Department, and later served as a professor of Middle East history at Princeton University, was found dead Saturday afternoon in the woods near his farmhouse on Sauvie Island. Blake Morris of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said Mr. Harper died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He is survived by his only child, Marseille Harper, a schoolteacher in the Portland Public School District, who found his body; and by his mother, Mildred, who resides in a Portland-area nursing home. Sources close to the family say she is suffering from an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s. Mr. Harper’s wife, Claire, died in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.
Numb, David stared at the screen, wishing he could simply shut down the computer and make the story go away but unable to take his eyes off the words.
Why had he done it? The date of his death told part of the story, but not all of it. No matter how much pain the man was in, how could Mr. Harper have done that to Marseille? She needed him. She loved him. He was all she had in this world. How could he have abandoned her? And how would she ever erase the image of finding her father in those woods?
He hadn’t known Marseille was a teacher, but he had no doubt she was a great one, and he hoped somehow she could go on teaching despite all that had happened. He hadn’t known that the Harpers lived on Sauvie Island. He’d never even heard of Sauvie Island. A quick check of Wikipedia revealed that it was the largest island along the Columbia River and lay approximately ten miles northwest of downtown Portland. The island was made up mainly of farmland and boasted barely a thousand year-round residents. “Bicyclists flock to the island because its flat topography and lengthy low-volume roads make it ideal for cycling,” he read. It wasn’t the Jersey Shore, but it did sound like a beautiful place to live.
He had learned another thing from the article, something that had come out of left field. He had never known that Mr. Harper’s middle name was David. His father had never told him. Nor had his mother. Marseille had never said anything, and he’d never had more than a few brief conversations with Mr. Harper himself. He’d had to read it in an obituary, but in that moment it dawned on him that his parents had named him after the man who had saved their lives. There were no other Davids in the Shirazi family tree. He had been named after Charles David Harper, and now the man was dead.
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar Malik lay in bed, unable to move.
He had awoken with a fever of 104 and a head that felt like it was going to explode. Sheyda did her best to take care of him all morning. She brought him cold washcloths for his face, stomach, and chest. She fed him spoonfuls of ice chips and cold yogurt. She also contacted their doctor and asked him to come over to their apartment for a house call, which he promptly did. By noon, the doctor had already come and gone, having given Najjar antibiotics to fight off whatever infection was presently coursing through his body.
“Honey,” Sheyda said in a whisper, “I’m going to take the baby over to Mother’s so there’s no risk of her getting sick, okay?”
“You’re going to leave me?” Najjar groaned.
“Just for a little bit,” she promised. “Just to drop off the baby and have lunch with Daddy. Then I’ll be right back. Is there anything I can get you at the store?”
Najjar asked for some ice cream, then closed his eyes and drifted off again. He knew why this was happening but didn’t dare tell her. It was because he had watched that program by the Christians. Allah was punishing him, he knew, and he deserved it.
It had been too long since he’d had lunch with his daughter.
So despite the enormous responsibilities weighing on him and his team, Dr. Mohammed Saddaji took his precious Sheyda to his favorite restaurant in Hamadan. It was a cozy little place on Eshqi Street, best known for its savory chicken biryani and its intimate setting. It was the first restaurant he had taken his wife, Farah, to when they had moved to Hamadan years before, and Saddaji had loved it ever since.
“Thank you so much for having lunch with me, Daddy,” Sheyda said as they sat on thick cushions and sipped tea. “I know it isn’t easy for you, with your important schedule.”
“Come, come, sweetheart,” Saddaji replied. “I would do anything for you. You know that, right?”
“Of course, Daddy. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Saddaji said, and then his tired, haggard eyes lit up. “Now guess what?”
“What?”
“I have a surprise for you.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t simply tell you,” he insisted. “What would be the fun in that?”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“For you, of course.” He smiled broadly. “As you know, my work is going very well. The Leader is very happy with what I’m doing, and we’re about to reach a major breakthrough in the next week or so.”
He paused for a moment to let the anticipation build, and it worked. He could see it in his daughter’s eyes.
“When that breakthrough occurs,” he continued, “your father is going to be promoted, and when I am, I’m told I am going to have the honor of meeting someone you and I have always wanted to meet.”
Sheyda’s eyes went wide. “Daddy,” she whispered with tremendous excitement, “you don’t mean-”
But he cut her off before she could finish the sentence. “Yes, my dear, but you may not say it aloud, even in a whisper.”
“I promise,” she said, covering her mouth with her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s no need to be sorry, but you must be discreet. After all, you are coming with me.”
“I am?”
“Of course,” Saddaji said. “How could I keep this honor all to myself?”
“Can Mother come too? and Najjar?” Sheyda asked, barely able to contain herself.
“Yes, yes, I’ve cleared you all. But it will be just the four of us. I’m told it will be a private meeting. We won’t even know where it will be held until the last possible moment.”
Sheyda could barely contain herself. “He’s here?” she whispered. “He’s really here?”
“That’s what I’m told,” he replied. “Soon the whole world will know. But they must not learn it from us.”
“My lips are sealed; you have my word,” Sheyda promised. “And you must forgive me. I don’t even know what kind of project you’ve been working on. I hardly ever see you, and when I do, we just talk about the baby. So what is it, that you are being rewarded with such an incredible honor?”
“That I cannot tell you, my dear. Not just yet. But when he is revealed, all shall become clear. Now, how is motherhood treating you?”
Munich, Germany
David checked his phone messages.
Perhaps Marseille had called. He wanted to hear her voice again. He wanted to call her and tell her how grieved he was for her loss. But there was only one message on his voice mail, and it wasn’t from her.
“Hi, David, it’s Dad,” the message began. “I hope you’re doing well. I hope you’re not working too hard, though I realize that may be too much to ask. But listen, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your mother’s health has taken a turn for the worse. She’s been admitted to the hospital for tests. Could you call me? I’ll fill you in then. Love you, Son. Okay, then; bye.”
The message was already several days old. A wave of guilt washed over David as he speed-dialed his father’s cell phone. Dr. Shirazi answered on the first ring. He was still at the hospital but was glad to hear from David and quick to forgive his son for not returning the call sooner. He told David his mother was resting just then and that it would still be several days until they got the test results.
“They’re going to keep her here at Upstate Medical until we know more,” he said. “But it would mean a lot to her if you could take a break from all your work and all your travels to come back and see her.”
“Dad, I was just there.”
“I know, David, but…” Dr. Shirazi’s voice caught with emotion. “Your mother is a very strong woman, but…”
“But what, Dad?”
“You just never know,” Dr. Shirazi said. “Please, Son. We need you to come home for a few days. It’s important.”
David explained that he was leaving Munich the following day for Moscow, Budapest, and Yerevan. He said he was working on major deals and couldn’t cancel those trips on such short notice. When it became clear that his father was growing upset with him, David asked if Azad or Saeed could come home to visit her until he could break free of his commitments and get back to Syracuse.
“No,” his father said, sadder than David had ever heard him before.
“Why not?”
“They’re too busy,” he answered curtly. “And your mother isn’t asking for them. She’s asking for you.”
Grieving for his mother, David promised he would find a time to come home as soon as humanly possible. Then he told his father about Marseille’s letter and about the wedding she was going to be in.
“So I guess that’s a double incentive to get back here in the next few weeks,” his father said.
“Mom’s all the incentive I need, Dad,” David replied. “But yes, it would be good to see Marseille after all this time.”
“I’m sure it would,” his father said. “Did she happen to mention anything about her father? He’s never responded to my calls or letters. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
David hesitated. He hadn’t known Charlie Harper had cut off all communication with his father, just as Marseille had with him. That was disappointing news, and from the tone of his voice, it was clear his father had been hurt. And why wouldn’t he have been? The two men had been friends for far longer than he and Marseille had been. That said, he wasn’t entirely sure it was the right time to tell his father about Mr. Harper’s death. But the man had asked a direct question, and David figured he deserved an honest answer. He told his father as gently as he could that Mr. Harper had recently passed away. He didn’t mention how.
The news was an emotional blow. His father was silent for a long time.
“Besides your mother, Charlie was the best friend I ever had,” his father finally said, choking back tears. “I never understood why he stopped talking to me after the funeral for Claire. I guess I’ll never know.”
Hearing the pain in his father’s voice made David want to reconnect with Marseille even more urgently. He’d already had so many questions for her. Now he had some more.
Hamadan, Iran
Mohammed Saddaji finished eating and paid the bill.
He cherished every moment with his daughter, but it was time to get her home and get himself back to the office. His staff was waiting, and the moment of truth was rapidly approaching.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked, signing the credit card slip and taking one last sip of water.
“Do we have a second for me to freshen up?” Sheyda asked.
The answer was no, but Saddaji couldn’t refuse his daughter’s requests. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll go get the car and pull it around front.”
“Thanks, Daddy. I’ll meet you there in a moment.”
Saddaji nodded and sighed, then checked his watch the moment Sheyda headed into the ladies’ room. He pulled out his cell phone and checked his messages. There was one from his brother-in-law. That would have to wait, he decided as he speed-dialed his secretary instead. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said. “Tell everyone to be ready to meet me in the conference room. We’ll go over the final checklist and give out assignments.” Then he tossed a few extra coins on the table for a tip and headed outside.
For February, it was actually quite a lovely day. The sun was bright. Only a few stray clouds could be spotted. The air was warmer than usual for this time of year-about fifteen degrees Celsius, Saddaji guessed. But he didn’t care about the clouds or the sky or the temperature. He was fixated on the honors that were about to be bestowed upon him.
The irony, he mused as he headed for his car, was that Iran had actually launched its nuclear research program with the help of the United States of America in the 1950s. It wasn’t Ayatollah Khomeini who had first fostered the notion of a nuclear-powered Iran. It was President Eisenhower and his “Atoms for Peace” program. It was, however, Khomeini who later clandestinely authorized a military track to run parallel to the civilian track. Since then, Tehran had spent hundreds of billions of rials to buy the people, parts, and plans it needed from the French, the Germans, the Russians, the North Koreans, and Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan in an effort to establish a viable nuclear weapons program. Iran had spent an even greater fortune building research and production facilities all over the country. Many of them were buried deep underground or beneath mountains, in hopes of hiding them from the prying eyes of U.S. and Israeli spy satellites as well as protecting them from a first strike by either or both.
The crown jewel of the public version of the program-the one they allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect-was the civilian nuclear power reactor and research facility located in the city of Bushehr, not far from the eastern shoreline of the Persian Gulf. But there were scores of other facilities, from the ten uranium mines scattered across the country, to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran’s Center for Theoretical Physics and Mathematics in Tehran, to the uranium enrichment facility in the city of Natanz, to the plutonium enrichment facility in the city of Arak, to the newly built-but not yet operational-uranium enrichment facility on a military base near Qom, to the facility in Esfahān converting yellowcake uranium into uranium hexafluoride, a critical component in the nuclear fuel cycle, to name just a few.
Saddaji was in charge of them all, including the top-secret facility in Hamadan where the weapons were actually being built. He wasn’t doing it for money; they didn’t pay him that much. He wasn’t doing it for fame; almost no one in the country knew who he was. He was doing it, to be sure, for the intellectual challenge of it all; this was surely the most complex engineering program in which he had ever been involved. But most of all, he was doing it to help Persia once again become a great and mighty empire and to prepare the way for the Mahdi.
Still, despite all of his hard work and sacrifice, it was difficult to imagine that he was actually living in the generation that would see the messiah arrive, much less that he was about to be honored by a personal meeting with the Promised One. As he jangled his keys in his hand, he knew he shouldn’t have said anything to Sheyda, certainly not at a public restaurant, but he simply couldn’t help himself. He was walking on air. He was dying to tell more people, including his staff. He wouldn’t, of course. He knew the risks, and he was proud of himself for his restraint thus far. But he could trust Sheyda. He always had.
Saddaji rounded the corner and spotted his beloved black, two-door Mercedes-Benz CL63 AMG. He could never have afforded it on his director’s salary, of course. After all, the car retailed in Europe for more than 100,000 euros. He had never even dreamed of owning such a lavish treasure, but it had been a gift, and who was he to say no? It had been given to him personally the previous year by the Supreme Leader himself after Saddaji and his team had demonstrated that they had successfully brought fifty thousand centrifuges online. The faster the uranium was enriched and the purer it became, the happier and more generous the Ayatollah became, and Saddaji could still remember Hosseini putting the keys in his hands and encouraging him to take a test drive. He had trembled at the very thought and still shook his head in amazement every time he started the engine. The car was a symbol, in so many ways, of how right he had been to leave Iraq and come back home, and a symbol of how successful he had been ever since. And no one deserved such a gift more than he, Saddaji told himself.
He unlocked the car, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. As he sank into the soft leather seats and ran his hand across the dash, savoring the entire experience-the look, the feel, the smell of this Mercedes-he said a silent prayer, thanking Allah for giving him the great privilege and joy of helping his people, the Shias, build the Bomb.
He sat in the sunshine for a moment and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine the ceremony that was just another week or two away now. He tried to imagine what it would be like when his eyes saw his Mahdi. But when he put in the key and turned the ignition this time, nothing happened. The car neither started nor sputtered. That was odd, he thought. He pumped the accelerator a few times, and as he turned the key again, the car erupted in a massive explosion of fire and smoke that could be heard on the other side of Hamadan.
The phone rang and wouldn’t stop.
Najjar’s fever was still 102. His head was pounding. He was in severe pain, and he had no intention of getting out of bed to find a phone. But the constant ringing was driving him crazy. The phone would ring eight or ten times, pause for a moment, then ring another eight or ten times, pause again, and repeat the cycle. Someone was desperately trying to get him, but he could barely move. Finally summoning every ounce of energy in his body, Najjar sat up and inched himself to the edge of the bed. The phone kept ringing. He stood, wrapped himself in one of the blankets from the bed, and crawled across the room to the phone sitting on Sheyda’s dresser.
“Hello?” he groaned, doing everything he could to suppress a wave of vomiting.
“Is this Najjar Malik?” said a voice at the other end.
“Yes.”
“You’re the son-in-law of Dr. Mohammed Saddaji?”
“Yes. Why? Who is this?”
“You’ve been warned,” the voice said in Farsi but with a curious foreign accent. “You’re next.”
The phone went dead.
Suddenly Najjar heard pounding on the apartment door. His head felt like it was in a vise grip constantly being tightened. The pounding at the door wasn’t helping. He forced himself up, stumbled down the hallway past the living room, and checked the peephole. It was a police officer. Not security from the research center and not the secret police. It appeared to be a municipal police officer, so Najjar undid the several locks and opened the door.
“Dr. Malik?” the officer asked.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m afraid I have terrible news.”
“What?” Najjar asked, his knees growing weak.
“It’s about your father-in-law,” the officer said.
“Dr. Saddaji? What about him?”
“I’m afraid he has been killed.”
“What? How?”
“I know this will be hard to believe…”
“Tell me.”
“At this point, until we complete our investigation, this cannot be repeated,” the officer continued.
“Just tell me, please.”
“Dr. Malik, I’m very sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I’m afraid your father-in-law was killed by a car bomb.”
Najjar staggered backward and had to grab a chair to keep his balance. “My wife,” he cried. “She was with him. Is she okay? Dear Allah, please tell me she’s okay.”
“Physically, she’s fine,” the officer assured him.
“Where is she?”
“She was taken to the hospital to be treated for shock. If you’d like, I can take you to her.”
A surge of adrenaline coursed through Najjar’s frail body. Suddenly alert and significantly stronger than he had been a moment before, he hurried to his bedroom, dressed quickly, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and went out the door with the officer. Fifteen minutes later, the patrol car was taking a left on Mardom Street and pulling into Bouali Hospital. Najjar ran in and quickly found Sheyda and her mother, Farah, both looking small and lost.
A security detail from the research center was already there protecting the family and had set up a perimeter around the hospital.
The rest of the day was a blur of tears and police investigators and well-wishers and funeral details. According to tradition, the burial had to be completed by sundown, but there was no body, the officer told Najjar privately, away from Sheyda and Farah. Only a few parts had been found, along with some bits of clothing and shoes. Those, Najjar was told, would be gathered, put in a small box, and wrapped in a white shroud.
Soon Dr. Saddaji’s secretary arrived at the hospital and began helping Najjar e-mail and text family members, friends, and coworkers, informing them of the death and requesting their presence at the funeral. The head of Najjar’s protective detail had just one demand: for reasons of state security, there could be no mention of how Dr. Saddaji had died in any of their private conversations or public communications. Not now. Not at the funeral. Not unless the head of Iran’s nuclear power and research agency personally authorized it, and even then, Najjar was informed that Ali Faridzadeh would likely veto such an authorization.
The defense minister? Najjar thought. Until recently, a mention of someone so high up on the food chain would have struck him as bizarre and out of place. But now the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. Najjar no longer had any doubt that his father-in-law had been one of the top nuclear-weapons scientists in Iran, and he had given his life in his ghastly pursuit of killing millions.
Had the Israelis taken him out? Had the Americans or the Iraqis? He would probably never know. But while he mourned on the outside, inside he felt a great sense of relief. This solved a lot of problems, he realized. Maybe this would set back the entire weapons program and forestall a war that otherwise was surely coming soon.
Munich, Germany
While he waited for the phones, David threw himself back into his work.
He grieved for his parents and for Marseille. But there was nothing he could do for any of them at the moment. He had to stop being David and get back to being Reza Tabrizi. He had to get himself ready to go back inside Iran, and that, he was convinced, meant becoming an expert on the Twelfth Imam.
Zalinsky had told him not to get sidetracked. But David couldn’t help himself. He simply could not go back into Iran without understanding better who this so-called Islamic messiah was and why people at the highest levels of the Iranian government seemed so focused on his appearance. Something was happening. Something dramatic and historic. Zalinsky didn’t get it. But David’s instincts told him this was real.
He went hunting for every scholarly work and serious analysis he could possibly find on the Internet, since his search of the database at Langley had turned up little of value. On the third day, David found himself poring over a study published by a Washington think tank in January 2008. It was a bit out-of-date, but it gave him an important context he certainly wasn’t getting from anyone at Langley.
Apocalyptic politics in Iran originates from the failure of the Islamic Republic’s initial vision. The 1979 Islamic Revolution began with a utopian promise to create heaven on earth through Islamic law and a theocratic government, but in the past decade, these promises ceased to attract the masses. Faced with this failure, the Islamic government has turned to an apocalyptic vision that brings hope to the oppressed and portrays itself as an antidote to immoral and irreligious behavior. This vision, which is regarded as a cure for individual and social disintegration, appears in a period when the Islamic Republic does not satisfy any strata of society, whether religious or secular.
David was intrigued by the notion that “when the Iranian government failed to deliver its promises, many Iranians looked for alternatives and found the cult of the Mahdi-the Messiah or the Hidden Imam-and its promise to establish a world government.” The number of people who claimed to be in direct connection to the Twelfth Imam or even to be the Mahdi himself, the author noted, had increased remarkably in recent years in both urban and rural regions.
That certainly rang true to David. His parents had spoken for years about how desperate Iranians were for a rescue from the failure of the Islamic Revolution of ’79. His father had always stressed the medical angle. Suicides in Iran, he said, were at an all-time high, not just among the young but among people of all ages. Drug abuse was a national epidemic, as was alcoholism. Prostitution and sex trafficking were also skyrocketing, even among the religious clerics.
Given that David’s mother was an educator at heart, she found it both terribly sad and deeply ironic that Iran’s high literacy rates and increasing access to satellite television and the Internet seemed to exacerbate people’s despair. Why? Because now, for the first time in fourteen centuries-and certainly for the first time since Khomeini had come to power-Iranians could see and hear and practically taste the intellectual, economic, and spiritual freedom and opportunity that people elsewhere in the world were experiencing. Starved, Iranians were desperately seeking such freedom and opportunity for themselves. Indeed, they were so desperate for hope that they were opening themselves up to the deception of thinking it might come from a bottle or a pill or a needle. Was believing in a false messiah just another coping mechanism? David wondered.
The monograph was written by an exiled Iranian journalist by the name of Mehdi Khalaji, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. As David continued reading, he was intrigued by Khalaji’s assertion that “the return of the Hidden Imam means the end of the clerical establishment, because the clerics consider themselves as the representatives of the Imam in his absence. Hence, they do not propagate the idea that the Hidden Imam will come soon.”
By contrast, Khalaji wrote, “in the military forces… apocalypticism has a very strong following.” He wrote that an influential group within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with responsibility over Iran’s nuclear program seemed particularly drawn to this fervor for the coming messiah.
That was what worried David most-not that everyone in Iran believed the Twelfth Imam was coming but that the country’s top political and military leaders, including those running the country’s nuclear weapons program, did.
That said, there was something in Khalaji’s assessment that did not ring true. Implicit in the article was the notion that Iran’s Supreme Leader was not a true believer in the soon coming of the Twelfth Imam but rather a shrewd political operator seeking to manipulate public opinion. Yet this certainly didn’t square with Daryush Rashidi’s or Abdol Esfahani’s description of the Supreme Leader. Perhaps Hosseini had once been a skeptic, but no longer. As far as David could tell, Hosseini and his inner circle now seemed to see their role as preparing the hearts and minds of the people-and the military-for the coming of the Twelfth Imam.
These beliefs seemed to be driving Iran’s nuclear weapons development to a feverish pace, and David wondered how he could persuade Zalinsky they weren’t a sideshow. Washington’s entire approach toward Iran thus far had been built on trying to engage Ayatollah Hosseini and President Darazi and their regime in direct negotiations while applying escalating economic sanctions and international isolation. It had worked with the Soviets, the Jackson administration argued. Ronald Reagan had engaged Gorbachev in direct negotiations, and the Cold War had ended without a nuclear war, indeed without a shot being fired between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now the administration wanted to take the same approach with the regime in Tehran. But they were wrong. Dead wrong. They were following the wrong historical model, and the results could be disastrous.
David opened a new document on his laptop and began drafting a memo to Zalinsky. He noted that Gorbachev-like all Soviet leaders of his time-was an atheist. Atheists, by definition, believed neither in God nor in an afterlife. So Reagan sought to persuade Gorbachev that any nuclear attack on the U.S. would result in the Gorbachev family’s personal annihilation-that Mikhail, his wife, Raisa, and their daughter, Irina, would personally die a horrible, grisly death, that they would be snuffed out like a candle and cease to exist, unable to take their power and money and toys with them. Reagan’s theory was that if he could convince Gorbachev that the U.S. policy of “mutual assured destruction” was real and viable, then he could persuade Gorbachev and the Soviet politburo to back off of their nuclear ambitions and truly negotiate for peace. It worked. Realizing there was no way the USSR could win a nuclear war with the technologically advanced West, Gorbachev launched a policy of glasnost (openness and transparency) and perestroika (restructuring). Eventually the Berlin Wall fell, Eastern Europe was liberated, and the Soviet Union itself unraveled and disintegrated.
By contrast, Hamid Hosseini was not Mikhail Gorbachev, David noted, typing furiously. Hosseini was not a Communist. He was not an atheist. He was a Shia Muslim. He believed in an afterlife. He believed that when he died, he was going to wind up in the arms of seventy-two virgins-not exactly a disincentive for death. Moreover, Hosseini was a Twelver. He was a member of an apocalyptic cult. The man wanted the Mahdi to come. He believed he had been chosen to help usher in the era of the Islamic messiah. He was convinced he needed to build nuclear weapons either to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization himself or to be able to give the Twelfth Imam the capacity to do it. How could the U.S. successfully negotiate with such a man? How could the West successfully deter or contain him? What could the president of the United States possibly offer or threaten that would persuade Hosseini to give up his feverish pursuit of nuclear weapons? For the Supreme Leader to negotiate with the U.S. would, in his mind, be tantamount to disobeying his messiah and being sentenced to an eternity in the lake of fire. Why didn’t Washington understand that? Why were they so consumed and distracted by other issues? Didn’t they understand the stakes?
David finished the memo, tagged Eva with a blind copy, hit Send, and immediately wondered if he had done the right thing.
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar needed to see Dr. Saddaji’s files.
He was drained and exhausted from the funeral. He was also still quite ill. He took Sheyda, Farah, and the baby back to the apartment and got them settled in for the night. His mother-in-law was still nearly inconsolable, and Sheyda didn’t want her to be all alone that night. But Najjar explained that he could not stay. He had to get back to the office, where Dr. Saddaji’s papers and personal effects had to be attended to and secured.
“Can’t all that be done tomorrow, Najjar?” Sheyda asked, imploring him to stay with his family.
No, it could not wait, he told her. But the truth was also that he did not want to be home just then. He did not feel remorse for his father-in-law’s death, and he didn’t have the capacity to fake it for much longer, certainly not in front of two women he truly loved. More importantly, he knew he had to get to Dr. Saddaji’s computer, break into it, and find out as much as he could. But Najjar said none of these things to his fragile wife. He simply kissed her and promised to drive safely and get home as quickly as he could.
Reluctantly she let him go, though not without more tears.
To his shock, however, when he got all the way to Dr. Saddaji’s office, he found it already heavily guarded by plant security. Boxes full of files were being removed by armed guards. Dr. Saddaji’s desktop computer had already been removed, along with his external hard drive. Najjar insisted that he be allowed to review his father-in-law’s files and possessions to ensure that the family got what was theirs, but he was quickly introduced to the deputy director of Iranian internal security and told he would simply have to wait.
“Dr. Malik, as you know, your father-in-law was a very powerful, very influential man,” said the intelligence official, who explained he had come from Tehran on direct orders from Defense Minister Faridzadeh. “He held many state secrets that the Zionists, the Americans, the British, and frankly all of our enemies would love to get their hands upon. I know you and your family are grieving. But please, give us a few days, and we will send to you everything that is rightfully yours.”
Najjar was offended and angry, but he lacked the energy and the will to argue with anyone. Not there. Not then. He was still reeling from the day’s events and weak from a fever he hadn’t shaken. He had eaten nothing all day. He had barely been able to keep down water; the doctor had had to give him shots because he kept vomiting up the antibiotics he was on.
He excused himself from the intelligence official, went to the men’s room, washed the perspiration off his face, and tried to figure out what to do next. He needed to know what Dr. Saddaji had been up to-not in theory but in fact. He needed proof. But he had none, and whatever shred of motivation he’d had to make it through the day was now gone.
For more than an hour, Najjar had been suffering dry heaves.
Now, physically and emotionally spent, he exited the building, cleared security, got in his car, and began the forty-five-minute drive home.
Hamadan is a city of concentric circles. At the center is a one-way street running counterclockwise that encircles Imam Khomeini Square. Connecting to this street are six boulevards radiating outward like spokes of a wheel. Each connects to a road that rings the heart of the business and cultural district. Eventually, they connect to a highway that surrounds the entire city, much like the Boulevard Périphérique that encircles Paris or the Beltway around Washington, D.C.
Hamadan’s airport lies just beyond this outer highway, along the plains to the northeast. To the west lie the foothills of the Zagros mountain range, the largest and most rugged peaks in all of Iran.
Facility 278, the purposefully bland and unassuming name of the nuclear research center that Dr. Saddaji had run for so many years, was located about forty kilometers west of the city center. It was not in the foothills but rather deep in the mountains. Constructed in the early 1990s, the facility was built into the side of an 11,000-foot mountain known as Alvand Peak.
Najjar had always loved the remote location. He loved the long drive to and from work every day. It gave him time to himself, time to think, time to pray, time to enjoy the gorgeous views of the mountains and the valley below. Now, however, as he came down the snowy, ice-clogged service road and felt the winds picking up and a new snow squall beginning to descend on the mountain, he felt trapped. He had no friends, no family to whom he could turn and talk about the situation in which he now found himself. He needed wisdom. He needed someone to tell him what to do and how to do it.
Suddenly, as he came around a hairpin turn, he was practically blinded. It was as if a large truck with its high beams on were coming straight for him, yet something about the light did not seem normal. Najjar slammed on the brakes. His rear wheels began fishtailing. Turning the steering wheel furiously and pumping the brakes rather than locking them down, he tried desperately to regain control. Instead, his car slammed into the mountainside, then skidded toward the embankment and finally came to a halt by thudding hard into the guardrail.
Najjar’s heart pounded. He could barely breathe. The light was intense. He squinted behind him and then ahead, hoping there were no other vehicles coming or going. Cautiously, he stepped out of the car to assess the damage and gain his balance.
But just as his feet hit the icy pavement, he saw him. Someone was standing on the road ahead.
As his eyes began to adjust, Najjar saw the man more clearly.
Rather than winter clothes, the man was wearing a robe reaching to his feet. Across his chest was a gold sash. His hair was as white as the snow that surrounded them. His eyes were fiery. His face shone.
Najjar fell at his feet like a dead man, but the figure said, “Do not be afraid.”
“Who are you?” Najjar asked shakily.
But the reply shook Najjar even more.
“I am Jesus the Nazarene.”
Munich, Germany
David was startled by the knock on the door.
He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. It was almost 9 p.m. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He hardly even knew anyone in the city. Grabbing his Beretta from the drawer of the nightstand by his bed, he disengaged the slide-mounted safety with his thumb and moved cautiously and quietly down the hallway, through the dining room, and to the front door.
Aside from cleaning it, weeks had passed since he had held the pistol in his hands, and his palms were perspiring. He pressed himself against the wall by the door and quickly looked out the peephole. A moment later, he reengaged the safety, though more confused than relieved.
What in the world is Eva doing in Munich?
He opened the door a crack.
“Delivery girl.” She smiled.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” he replied.
“I couldn’t resist,” she said. “May I come in?”
“Of course.”
She was toting several large boxes. He hoped they were satellite phones. The first box she handed him upon entering, however, was already open. It was from Amazon and contained Dr. Birjandi’s book. Fully awake now, he flipped through it quickly and noticed it was already heavily marked up with yellow highlighter and notes in pen in the margins.
“I stole your book for a few hours,” Eva confessed. “It’s fascinating. You should read it.”
David laughed. “I was hoping to.”
“I’m doing some research on Birjandi, working up a profile on him,” Eva said. “He’s an interesting guy. Noted professor, scholar, and author. He’s widely described in the Iranian media as a spiritual mentor or advisor to several of the top leaders in the Iranian regime, including Ayatollah Hosseini. They have dinner once a month. But at eighty-three, the guy is pretty reclusive; he’s rarely heard from in public anymore. Until that conference a couple weeks ago, he hadn’t given a sermon or speech in years.”
“Why the reemergence?” David asked.
“Turn to page 237,” Eva replied.
David did and began to read aloud the underlined passage.
“The Mahdi will return when the last pages of history are being written in blood and fire. It will be a time of chaos, carnage, and confusion, a time when Muslims need to have faith and courage like never before. Some say all the infidels-especially the Christians and the Jews-must be converted or destroyed before he is revealed and ushers in a reign characterized by righteousness, justice, and peace. Others say Muslims must prepare the conditions for the destruction of the Christians and the Jews but that the Mahdi will finish the job himself.”
David looked up, his heart pounding. “Birjandi thinks he’s here.”
“That’s my guess.”
“We need to get this to Zalinsky.”
“It’s not enough,” Eva said. “We need more.”
“You said it yourself-Birjandi is Hosseini’s advisor. If this is what Birjandi believes, it’s got to be what Hosseini believes. Darazi, too.”
“I agree,” Eva said. “This is what’s driving them to get the Bomb. But that’s just us guessing. We need proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“I don’t know,” she conceded. “But more than this.”
David sighed. She was right. He looked at the boxes.
“Tell me those are satellite phones,” he said.
“They are. Twenty. Government-issue. Military-grade.”
“And our friends back at Langley have toyed with them all a bit?”
“Actually, no. Jack was worried the Iranians would find any chip we put into the phones. These particular satphones are the product of a joint venture between Nokia and Thuraya.”
“Thuraya-the Arab consortium?”
“Based in Abu Dhabi, right. Long story short, I have people on the inside at Thuraya. They gave me the encryption codes and all the satellite data. I gave them a boatload of money.”
“And you’re sure the phones all work?”
“My team and I personally tested them this afternoon,” she said. “Langley heard everything, loud and clear. We’re good to go.”
“You’re amazing.”
“That’s true,” Eva said, smiling, “but that’s not all. I have another gift for you.”
“What’s that?”
“I booked you on the next flight back to Tehran,” she said. “I just e-mailed the itinerary to your phone. It’s time to pack, my friend. You’re going back in.”
Hamadan, Iran
“I am Jesus the Nazarene,” came the man’s deep voice.
Najjar felt the sound of it rattle in his chest, as though the words went through him.
“You have come?” Najjar cried. “The lieutenant to the Twelfth Imam has actually revealed himself to me?”
But at these words, the ground below Najjar shook so violently that he feared it would open and swallow him. Rocks skittered across the road from ledges above. The wind picked up strength. Najjar flattened himself on the ground, covering his head with his hands.
“I AM first and last and the living One,” Jesus said. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever after, and I have the keys of death and of hades. Come and follow me.”
The first sentences were uttered with authority such as Najjar had never heard before, not from any mullah or cleric or political leader in his entire life. Yet the last four words were spoken with such gentleness, such tenderness, that he could not imagine refusing the request.
Shaking, Najjar cautiously looked up. Though he was wrapped in a thick parka over his blue jeans and sweater, he felt completely naked, as if all of his private sins were exposed to the light and the elements. For as long as he could remember, he’d had a deep reverence for Jesus. Like his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather before him, going back fourteen centuries, Najjar believed Jesus was born of a virgin. He believed Jesus was a doer of miracles and a speaker of great wisdom and thus a prophet. But not God Himself. Never. And yet…
Jesus stretched out His hands and motioned for Najjar to come closer. Part of him wanted to run and hide, but before he knew it, he was taking several steps forward.
As he drew closer, Najjar was astonished to see holes where spikes had been driven through Jesus’ hands. He looked away for a moment, but then, unable to keep his head turned, he looked back and stared at those hands. As a devout Muslim, Najjar had never for a moment in his life even considered the possibility that Jesus had been crucified at all, much less to pay the penalty for all human sins, as the Christians taught. He had never believed that Jesus had actually died on a cross. No Muslim believed that. It was sacrilege. To the contrary, Najjar (and everyone he had ever known) believed that at the very last moment, Allah had supernaturally replaced Jesus with Judas Iscariot, and Judas had been hung on the cross and crucified instead.
Questions flooded his mind.
How could Jesus be appearing to him as a crucified Messiah?
If the Qur’an were true, wouldn’t it be impossible for Jesus to have nail-scarred hands?
If the ancient Islamic writings about the Twelfth Imam were true, then how could Jesus, who was supposed to be the Mahdi’s lieutenant, have hands scarred by the nails of crucifixion?
Najjar kept staring at those hands. It didn’t make sense. Then he looked into Jesus’ eyes. They were not filled with anger and condemnation. They spoke of love in a way Najjar couldn’t even comprehend, much less express. And Jesus’ words echoed in his heart. He wasn’t claiming to be the second-in-command to the Mahdi. He claimed to be God Almighty.
“Forgive me; please forgive me,” Najjar said, bowing low. “But how can I know the difference between Muhammad and You?”
“You have been told, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” Jesus replied. “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
The words cut into Najjar’s heart like a knife. This was an enormous difference between the two.
“Don’t be angry with me, O Lord,” Najjar stammered, “but I am so confused. All my life I was raised a Muslim. How can I know which way to go?”
“I am the Way. And the Truth and the Life,” Jesus said. “No one can come to the Father except through Me.”
“But my heart is full of sin,” Najjar said. “My eyes are full of darkness. How could I ever follow You?”
“I am the Light of the World,” Jesus replied. “Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness. That person will have the light of life.”
Najjar knew he was experiencing something extraordinary. At the same time, he was genuinely in agony. Was Jesus telling him that everything he had ever been taught was wrong? that his life had been on the wrong path up to this very moment? that it had been completely worthless? It was too much to bear. He began to formulate sentences but could not find a way to finish them.
Yet as Najjar looked into the eyes of Jesus, he sensed deep in his spirit that Jesus knew every thought he had, every fear, every question, and loved him anyway. He wanted to move toward Jesus but could not. Yet at that moment, Jesus walked toward him.
“God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son,” Jesus said. “Whoever believes in Him will never die but instead have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge it, but that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not judged; but whoever doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Najjar just stood there in the snow. He had never read any of this in the Qur’an. But he knew it was true. And suddenly, irresistibly, Najjar fell to the ground and kissed the scarred feet of Jesus.
“O Lord, open my eyes!” Najjar sobbed. “Help me! I am a wicked and sinful man, and I am undone-lost in the darkness, lost and alone. Open my eyes that I may see.”
“Do you believe I am able to do this?” Jesus asked.
“Yes, Lord.”
“Then follow Me,” Jesus said.
At that, something inside Najjar broke. He wept with remorse for all the sins he had committed. He wept with indescribable relief that came from knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that God really did love him and had sent Jesus to die on the cross and rise from the dead, thus proving that He really was the truth and the life and the only way to the Father in heaven. He wept with gratitude that because of Jesus’ promise, he could know that he was going to spend eternity with Jesus.
He bowed before his Savior and Lord, weeping and rejoicing all at once for what seemed to be hours. How long it really was, he had no idea. But then he heard Jesus speaking to him again.
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Remember, I am coming quickly!”
And with that, He was gone.
Suddenly, all was as it had been before-dark and windy and cold. Yet not all was the same. In that moment, Najjar Malik realized that he was not the same man he had been when he woke up that morning. Mysteriously, miraculously, something inside him had changed. How he would explain it to Sheyda or to his mother-in-law, he had no idea. But he felt a peace emanating from so deep within him it made no logical sense.
Najjar got back in his car, turned on the engine, and carefully headed down the mountain in the snow and ice. Only then did he realize that his fever was gone.
His mobile phone rang. It was Sheyda. She was up to feed the baby. She was asking him if he was okay, asking if he could stop by her parents’ apartment to pick up some things for her mother. Najjar was so happy to hear Sheyda’s voice, he would have said yes to almost anything she asked him.
But then a thought occurred to him. He wondered if Dr. Saddaji’s laptop was still in his home office and if it contained any of the information he was hoping to find. What’s more, he wondered if the authorities had been to his father-in-law’s home yet.
Najjar hit the accelerator and prayed for the first time in his life to a nail-scarred Messiah.
Najjar struck oil.
Sitting on the desk in his father-in-law’s home office was Saddaji’s Sony VAIO laptop. Right next to it was a one-hundred-gigabyte external hard drive. Beside that was a stack of DVD-ROMs that Dr. Saddaji apparently used to back up his computer.
Najjar quickly gathered his mother-in-law’s toothbrush, makeup, and the other assorted toiletries she had requested, along with all of her husband’s electronics, and headed for his car. He didn’t dare sift through it all now, for he fully expected plant security and intelligence officials to descend on the apartment at any moment.
Just before he turned the ignition, Najjar remembered what the police had told him about how Dr. Saddaji had died. Then he recalled the words of the mysterious caller: You’re next. He was suddenly frightened again. Was he being followed? by his own security forces? by the Israelis? or even the Americans? Had they just planted a bomb in his car? He began trembling again.
But then he heard a voice and recognized it immediately.
“Do not fear them. There is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.”
Najjar wasn’t sure whether he had heard an audible voice or whether the Lord had simply spoken to him in his spirit. But once again a peace he couldn’t explain immediately came over him, and Najjar was no longer afraid. He turned the ignition without hesitation. The car started without a problem.
As he drove, Najjar again heard the voice of the Lord. “Now you must leave this city. The Lord will rescue you. He will redeem you from the grip of your enemies.”
Racing toward home, Najjar was troubled by this message. Leave this city? Why? To where? He had been a follower of Jesus for less than an hour, but he knew his Shepherd’s voice, and he was determined to follow Him wherever He led. Clearly Jesus wanted him to take his family and leave Hamadan. But how in the world would he explain all this to Sheyda and Farah? He had no idea, but Najjar clung passionately to the command of Jesus. He was not to succumb to fear. He was to live by faith in the One who had conquered the grave and who held the keys to death and hades in His own hands. It will be okay, he told himself. Somehow it will be okay.
It was nearly four in the morning when Najjar finally got home. He decided he would take his family to Tehran-as good a destination as any, he supposed. They could find a hotel there easily enough. He knew that the distance from Hamadan to Tehran was about three hundred and fifty kilometers-a five-hour drive. He had driven it a thousand times. They could be there for breakfast if they left quickly. That was the easy part. The hard part would be persuading the women to go.
Najjar entered the apartment as quietly as he could. He expected the lights to be off, but they were on. He expected his wife and mother-in-law to be sound asleep, but to his shock, they were lying prostrate on the floor of the living room.
Upon hearing the door open, Sheyda jumped up, ran to him, and hugged him as she never had before. Her eyes were red. Her makeup was running. She had obviously been crying, but that was to be expected. What wasn’t expected were the words she spoke next.
“He appeared to us, too, Najjar,” she whispered in his ear. “We’re packed and ready to go. I’ll get the baby. Meet us in the car.”
It was 7 a.m., and Esfahani cursed Mina under his breath.
As his hired driver snaked the Mercedes through the streets of Hamadan, crowded with shopkeepers beginning their day, Esfahani wondered why in the world she had made these travel arrangements. Didn’t she ever think about the difficulty of heading to the airport in the thick of morning traffic? Didn’t he pay her to anticipate these details and make his life as comfortable as possible?
If she’d been smart and booked a later flight, he could have slept longer and waited until the roads cleared. Instead, the driver had picked him up at his family home southeast of Bu-Ali Sina University at 6:30 and was now winding along the edges of Lona Park and onto the ring road heading north and then east toward the airport. He wished he’d paid attention to the itinerary yesterday and demanded she change the ticket. Foolish woman! Perhaps it was time to fire her.
The previous day had been consumed with his large extended family and the business of Dr. Saddaji’s funeral. Saddaji was the brother-in-law of his friend and boss, Daryush Rashidi, and their families had known each other for generations. And given the man’s prominence in the world of science and energy, it was a fairly elaborate funeral, despite the fact that there was no body to speak of to bury. Esfahani went to the funeral in deference to Rashidi, but now he was anxious to return to Tehran and his work. He would not stay for hafteh, the seventh-day visitation of the grave. He wasn’t that close to the man, tragic though his death was.
The car came to a stop as it approached the northern edge of the city, and Esfahani looked out the window to see why.
“There’s a problem ahead, sir,” the driver explained. “Maybe an accident. It will take me just a few minutes to get to the turnoff, but then we’ll take an alternate route. Please forgive me, sir; I heard no warning about this delay.”
Ten minutes later they turned onto a side road and headed toward the center of the city. Esfahani hoped the driver knew what he was doing.
As if reading his mind, the man explained, “I’m going to the inner ring road and then will try to circle around to the north. The traffic should ease up, sir. I beg your forgiveness.”
“I don’t care how you get there,” Esfahani snapped. “I just don’t want to miss this flight.” He wasn’t fully awake, and the last thing he needed was a detailed description of their route.
He looked outside and sighed heavily. He was proud of his birthplace, the most ancient of Iran’s cities and a cradle of poetry, philosophy, and science. But right now, he wished he were asleep. It had been a busy few days, and time spent with his family was never peaceful. He longed for the solitude of his apartment in Tehran, far away from the domestic drama of his mother and her many siblings.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember the poetry he’d memorized as a youth. The great scientist and poet Ibn Sina, whose tomb was one of the proudest possessions of their city, had written, “Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate, I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, and many Knots unravel’d by the Road, but not the Master-knot of Human Fate.”
He had just begun to drift off when he felt a deep shudder beneath him and the car rising up and lurching forward. His eyes now wide open, Esfahani saw the earth outside his window moving like the waves of the sea. He saw an apartment building to his left rock and sway and then collapse before him.
“Hold on, sir! I don’t know what is happening! Oh, save us, Allah!” the driver cried, calling out to heaven and trying to reassure his wealthy passenger at the same time.
The Mercedes pitched and heaved on the writhing pavement and then slammed down violently, crashing headlong into a telephone pole. As if in slow motion, Esfahani saw the pole snap in two and start falling back toward the car. There was no time to run and nowhere to hide. Esfahani covered his head and face with his arms, and an instant later, the pole slammed down across the front of their car, crushing his driver and sending glass and blood everywhere.
Terrified, Esfahani scrambled out of the backseat of the car, only to hear the rumbling of the massive earthquake intensifying. The road shook violently. People were running and screaming everywhere. Esfahani searched for a place to take cover but found none. He looked to his left and saw more houses and office buildings collapsing. To his right he saw a long cement wall, roughly two meters high, gyrating wildly as if alive. And then, as he watched in horror, helpless to do anything, he saw the wall collapse atop a woman and her baby.
Finally, after what seemed like several minutes, the ground stopped shaking. But the screaming from all sides of him grew louder and wilder. The air was rapidly filling with debris and clouds of dust. People were running through the streets, crazed with panic. They looked like ghosts, covered in white powder. Esfahani pulled out his cell phone, but there was no signal. What was he supposed to do?
He felt dizzy as he walked slowly toward the side of the road and the fallen wall, choking on dust. He slumped to the ground and closed his eyes tightly to shut out the chaos around him.
“Save me, Allah, most merciful!” he cried. “Show me what to do, where to go!”
When he opened his eyes again, he saw several men from a nearby construction site trying desperately to move massive slabs of concrete off the woman and her screaming child. They were calling for help to anyone who could hear them, calling for people to help move the rubble and try to save these people’s lives.
At that moment, Esfahani felt a strong hand on his shoulder. He prayed it was a medical worker, a policeman, someone of use to him, but as he looked up, he met the eyes of a young mullah. The man had an urgency in his expression, but not fear, not confusion.
“I am here,” he said.
The mullah quickly joined the workers heaving pieces of cement and rebar from the sidewalk, and as they did, they were able to pull the baby out first and then her mother. Remarkably, the child was relatively unscathed, but Esfahani turned away in disgust when he saw the woman’s legs twisted gruesomely behind her and covered in blood. Yet the young holy man did not turn away. Rather, Esfahani watched in shock as the mullah knelt next to the woman while she wept with despair.
“You are a righteous daughter,” he said.
“Help me!” she cried. “I can’t move! I can’t feel anything below my waist!”
The mullah began to speak in what sounded to Esfahani’s ears like an ancient language, in a mesmerizing tone that seemed almost like poetry. Then the mullah took the woman’s hands in his and lifted her gently to her feet. A crowd had formed, but now-stunned-people began to back away.
“She’s walking!” someone exclaimed.
“He healed her!” another yelled.
Realizing it was true, that her crushed legs had suddenly been restored to normal and that even the bleeding had stopped and the ugly gashes had disappeared, the woman began crying all the more. Then she fell at the man’s feet, praising him and thanking him for saving her.
“Walk in righteousness, daughter,” the young man said, kissing her baby on the head and giving the child back to the woman. “And tell everyone you know that I am come, the long-awaited One, the Miraculous.”
“Praise to the Prince of Mercy!” the woman cried out in ecstasy. “It is our Imam! The Twelfth Imam! The Mahdi has come, blessed be he!”
Esfahani stared at the scene in awe. He had come. He was standing right before them. Esfahani began to shout praises as well, and then the Mahdi unexpectedly turned to him, smiled, and placed his hand upon Esfahani’s head, causing him to bow low in prayer. But when Esfahani lifted his eyes again, the Twelfth Imam was gone.
Munich, Germany
Just before dawn, David’s mobile phone rang.
He was still awake, reading Dr. Birjandi’s book cover to cover. He took the call and found Eva on the line asking him if he’d heard about the massive earthquake that had just hit northwestern Iran. David hadn’t but immediately turned on his TV.
The epicenter of the quake, he soon learned, was not far from the city of Hamadan in the north of the country. Already, officials for Iran’s Red Crescent emergency relief services were estimating at least three thousand people were dead and more than twenty thousand wounded. Yet just by watching the devastation in the early video images being beamed out of the ancient city, it was clear to David that the casualty figures were going to climb throughout the day. Eva said she was already in touch with the MDS technical crew in Tehran. None of them had been affected, and her team at the MDS operations center in Dubai was in the process of contacting their families to reassure them that they were all right.
“I have an idea,” David said.
“What’s that?”
“Find out if the muckety-mucks upstairs would be willing to set up a relief fund to care for families of the survivors in Hamadan. Maybe if Iran Telecom does something, we could provide matching funds.”
“That’s a great idea,” Eva said.
But David wasn’t done. “What if we let Rashidi and Esfahani know that if they’d be willing to run the fund-set it up, decide who gets the money, that kind of thing-that they can keep 10 percent as an administrative fee?”
“That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Eva said.
“Exactly.”
“Can they be bought that easily?”
“I think they can, as long as they don’t think that they’re being bought,” David said. “They have to think it’s simply money they’re due for a job well done. What do you think?”
“It’s brilliant,” Eva said and hung up.
An hour later, she was back on the phone. She had reached the CEO of Munich Digital Systems at a conference in Singapore. He loved the idea and had already committed to put five million euros into the account. David was impressed with her persuasiveness.
Then it was David’s turn. It took several attempts, but after a few hours he reached Esfahani on his cell phone. The man seemed out of breath with what David perceived as excitement rather than the stress he had anticipated.
“Most systems are down,” Esfahani explained. “We’ve got crews working on things already, but I’m still amazed you got through. You must come to Hamadan immediately. I have seen him-he is here!”
“Who is here?” David asked cautiously.
“The Mahdi, of course! Who else? Reza, I tell you I saw him with my own eyes. He touched me; he spoke to me. I saw him do a miracle! Where are you right now?”
David explained that he was leaving Germany for Iran that afternoon. He also explained that MDS had established a fund to help the survivors of the earthquake in Hamadan.
Esfahani was deeply moved and was astonished when David suggested the generous offer of compensation. He agreed immediately, but with one condition.
“What’s that?” David asked.
“Mr. Rashidi need not be burdened with this project, as honorable as it is,” Esfahani said. “I don’t think we should ask him to administer the fund. It would be too much. It would be a great honor to handle it myself.”
It never ceased to amaze David how well hard, cold cash worked in the world of intelligence. “That’s fine with me,” he said.
“I’ll have a bank account in Tehran set up by the end of the day,” Esfahani offered, “then get you the SWIFT code so you can wire the money.”
“Great,” David said. “As for the gifts you asked me to pick up, where do you want me to bring them, and how do I get them into the country without drawing attention to myself?”
“You have twenty already?” Esfahani asked in surprise.
“You said it was important.”
“Listen, you mustn’t wait to come,” Esfahani said. “Mina will meet you at baggage claim in Tehran. She’ll clear you through customs and take you to the person who should receive the gifts. I’ll call her right now.”
En Route to Tehran
Najjar knew nothing about the earthquake.
To let the baby sleep, he and Sheyda didn’t have the radio on as they drove east along Route 48 toward Tehran. Instead, Sheyda talked nonstop about what had happened to her mother and her while Najjar had been out that night.
She began by explaining they had forced themselves to do their evening prayers, even though they were just going through the motions. With everything that had happened, she said, they had lost all faith in Allah and all faith in Islam. Then Jesus appeared to them in the living room, scaring them half to death. They compared notes with Najjar on how Jesus looked, what He sounded like, and what He told them, and it was amazing how similar their experiences had been.
“The first thing He said was, ‘Fear not, little children,’” Sheyda recalled. “Then he said, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have drawn you with lovingkindness. I know the plans I have for you-plans for good, not for evil; plans to give you a future and a hope. Come and follow Me.’”
“What did you say?” Najjar asked.
“What could I say?” Sheyda replied. “I said yes!”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Jesus told me not to be.”
“Weren’t you worried about what I would say?”
“A little, but what could I do? I suddenly had a mere glimpse of just how much Jesus loved me, and I couldn’t resist.”
Najjar turned to his mother-in-law. “What about you? Your husband was awaiting the Mahdi.”
“So was I,” Farah replied.
“Then what did you say to Jesus?”
“I said yes!”
“But why?”
“Why did you?” she asked.
Najjar thought about that. “I knew He was telling me the truth.”
“So did I,” Farah said. “I knew it in my soul.”
“Why do you think He came to us, of all people?”
“I don’t know,” Sheyda said. “But Jesus did say, ‘You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.’”
“I asked, ‘What should we do?’” Farah said, smiling at the memory and savoring each precious word. “He said, ‘Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do all that I command you. My words shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on them day and night, so that you may carefully follow them; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’”
For the next half hour, they discussed the meaning of these words. Was Jesus asking them to speak publicly about what they had seen and heard? They knew all too well the risks involved. Telling anyone in Iran that they had left Islam and become followers of Jesus Christ as the One True God-the only way to heaven-would lead to their arrest, torture, and possibly execution. Of this they had no doubt. Yet Farah reminded them that Jesus had told them not to be afraid but to follow His words carefully.
“We need a Bible,” Sheyda said.
Najjar agreed but wondered aloud where they were likely to find one-in Tehran of all places. The two women had no idea, but they immediately bowed their heads and asked the Lord to give them a Bible, in Farsi if possible. Then they concluded by saying, “We ask these things, O Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our great God and King.” They half expected a Bible-or Jesus Himself-to appear immediately, but nothing happened. Still, they all had peace that He would provide for them soon.
For now, however, Najjar had a somewhat-vexing question.
“What are we to believe about the Twelfth Imam?” he asked. “I have seen him myself. I have met him at least twice. He told me the future. He told me that I would marry you, Sheyda, when there was absolutely no prospect of that happening. He told me other things that have come true. How could the Mahdi tell the future if he is not the messiah? How could the Mahdi do miracles if he is not from God? I’m not saying I don’t believe Jesus. I do. But I admit I’m confused, and if we were ever to say any of this publicly…”
“You mean, when we speak of this publicly,” Sheyda gently corrected him.
Najjar was amazed by how deep his wife’s faith had grown so quickly. “Right-when we speak of this publicly, people will ask me about the Twelfth Imam, and I don’t know how to respond.”
“Jesus told us something about that,” Sheyda said.
“What do you mean?” Najjar asked.
“He said something about that,” Sheyda repeated. “What was that, Mother? You wrote it down, right?”
“I did,” Farah said, pulling a small notepad out of her pocketbook and passing it from the backseat, where she was sitting beside the baby, to her daughter, who was sitting in the front beside Najjar. “There, on the third page.”
Sheyda scanned her mother’s scribblings to find the line she was thinking of. “That’s right. Jesus told us to read Exodus chapter 7 and Deuteronomy chapter 13.”
“What are those?” Najjar asked.
“We’re not sure yet,” Sheyda admitted. “We’re guessing they’re in the Bible.”
The three continued talking about their encounters with Jesus until they reached the outskirts of Tehran. Unsure where the Lord wanted them to go, how long they were supposed to be there, or what they were supposed to do, they prayed for wisdom, then pulled into a small motel near the Mehrabad Airport. Sheyda needed to nurse the baby. Najjar decided to use the time to shower. Farah needed to rest a bit.
But no sooner had Najjar stepped into the hot shower and begun thanking the Lord for His kindness and His mercies than he heard Sheyda cry out. He scrambled to turn off the water, wrapped himself in a towel, and bolted out of the washroom. He found his wife sitting in a chair, feeding the baby, and properly covered, but she had turned on the television to discover news of an earthquake that had struck their city not long after they had left. The images were shocking. Entire buildings and neighborhoods had been flattened. Major bridges and highways had crumbled and collapsed like sand castles. Newscasters said the death toll had now risen past six thousand. Countless other people were wounded, and emergency workers were responding from all over northwestern Iran.
This was why Jesus had commanded them to leave the city immediately, Najjar knew. He was leading them as a family, just as He had promised.
Sheyda picked up her cell phone and called their next-door neighbor at their apartment building, but there was no answer. She called another neighbor. Again, no answer. She called six more neighbors. None of them answered.
Farah called Dr. Saddaji’s secretary, who lived in an apartment building around the corner from them. It took many rings, but the woman finally came to the phone. Farah put the phone on speaker so Najjar and Sheyda could hear the woman’s news. She was safe but weeping for those less fortunate. And now she rejoiced to know that Farah was still alive. She’d known Farah had decided to spend the night at Najjar and Sheyda’s, and she told Farah that the Maliks’ apartment building had completely collapsed during the quake. Not a single resident who had been in the building was thought to have survived.
“Why weren’t you asleep in your beds like everyone else when the quake struck?” the secretary asked.
Farah explained that the family had gone to Tehran for a few days to grieve in private. It wasn’t a lie, though it wasn’t the whole truth, either.
“Did you have a premonition?” the secretary asked.
Farah clearly wasn’t sure what to say to that. “We just wanted to be alone,” she finally said.
“Allah was truly looking out for you. You and your family should all be dead right now.”
Munich, Germany
David paced in the waiting area of the Munich airport.
He had checked his luggage and cleared through security and passport control; now he watched continuing coverage of the earthquake in Hamadan as he waited for his flight to Tehran. As boarding began, he pulled out his phone and decided to check one more time to see if there were any messages on the phone back in his apartment. There was nothing. But when he checked his AOL account, there was an e-mail from Marseille.
Hi, David,
Thanks so much for your voice mail and your kind words about my father. I thought I might not hear from you at all, so I have to say I was relieved to know that you simply hadn’t received my letter until recently. I was worried you were mad at me for not being in touch with you and your family for all these years. It must have seemed like we ceased to exist. In some ways, we did.
I’ve never been quite sure how to apologize, but I’ve come to the conclusion face-to-face would be better than e-mail or a note or a phone call. So thanks for being willing to get together with me. I feel like this wedding being in Syracuse and my friend’s insistence that I be there are part of God’s plan for you and me to meet again.
Do you ever think about those days in Canada, before the world spun out of control? Sometimes I think they were just a wonderful dream I had, but then I am reminded that they were very much real. In fact, I think they were some of the most real days of my life. How did so much time pass so quickly? Who have you become?
Well, I guess you’ve become a successful international businessman, for one. Congratulations. Even as a girl, I think I always knew you were going to be very successful at whatever you did. Thanks for taking time to call me from overseas. I know you must be very busy, but it meant so much to me that you called. It has given me a bit more courage.
Write to me, if you’d like. I miss your friendship, and I know it’s my fault. I’ll be there in Syracuse. I’ll be the one who’s shaking in her boots a bit.:)
Your friend,
Marseille
P.S. Unless you’d like to go somewhere else, let’s meet at the downtown Starbucks on M Street. I’ll be there by 8 p.m. that Thursday. See you then.
Tehran, Iran
David landed in Tehran shortly after 6 a.m.
He had spent far too much time on the flight thinking about Marseille’s e-mail. He had wanted a diversion, any diversion, from the enormous stresses upon him. But this was more than a diversion. It was a reconnection, and it stirred deep emotions long held back.
He was glad to hear from her again, of course. He wasn’t sure what to make of her idea that God had “a plan” for the two of them to meet again, but he liked the warm and even, at times, awkward tone of her e-mail. He liked that she missed their friendship and was willing to say so, and he was surprised but pleased by how much she wanted to see him again. Most of all, though, he deeply appreciated her apology and the hint that more was coming when they met in person. That meant more to him than anything else. The smiley face at the end made him chuckle; it seemed so childlike, as if the teenage Marseille were writing to him from the past.
For whatever reason, and at the most unexpected time, the ice was melting between them. And it turned out she did think about their time together in Canada. They had made a terrible mistake, he knew. They should never have gone as far as they did. He had always hoped she didn’t hold it against him. But until now, he’d never had a shred of evidence that she had cherished all their time together as he had. To the contrary, the years of silence had sown years of doubt in his mind and heart. How could he not assume that she regretted their friendship? How could he not assume she was embarrassed for having ever liked him, even for such a brief time, and had chosen to put him out of her mind and move on with her life? Why else would she have become so cold so fast? He had been certain of such things for a long time. But he’d been wrong. In the blink of an eye, he had learned that she had never regretted their friendship but had actually valued it for all these years.
David tried to gather his emotions as the plane taxied to the gate. He wished he were back in Munich and could call her again. But it was not to be-not yet, anyway. And he had no idea when the opportunity would come.
As much as he wanted to meet Marseille in Syracuse, the truth was he was having a hard time imagining a scenario that would allow that to happen. He had given his life to the Central Intelligence Agency. They had sent him to Iran. The stakes for his country and for the world couldn’t be higher. There was no guarantee he would live through today, much less until the first weekend in March. And even if he did, how exactly was he supposed to tell Jack Zalinsky and Eva Fischer he needed to take off a long weekend to see his first love?
Once again, he told himself he had to shift gears. His life depended on it. He could no longer afford to think like David Shirazi, or he would put at risk everything he had worked so long and so hard to achieve. And so, hard as it was, he forced himself to stop thinking about Marseille and instead to think about her mother. Radical Islamic mujahideen had murdered Claire Harper and 2,973 other people while the CIA slept.
He put on his game face.
Mina met him at baggage claim, as promised.
After David cleared customs, Mina introduced him to their driver, a bored young man who took David’s bag and carried it to the car.
“Have you heard from Mr. Esfahani?” David asked as they headed for the parking garage. “He and his team must have their hands full trying to get mobile service up and running again.”
“It’s been a nightmare; that’s true,” Mina said. “At least he was there when it happened.”
“Who?” David asked.
“Mr. Esfahani.”
“He was already in Hamadan?”
“Yes.”
“He went there before it happened?”
“Strange, huh?”
“It is,” David said. “Why did he go?”
“He was there to attend a funeral for Mr. Rashidi’s brother in-law.”
“He could have been killed himself.”
“Actually, several members of the funeral party were killed when their hotel partially collapsed.”
“But Mr. Rashidi is okay?”
“Yes, praise Allah, he’s fine,” she said. “But everyone is devastated. It’s just too much to take in all at once.”
Mina got in the backseat, motioning for David to sit in the front with the driver, then explained that they were going to meet a young man named Javad Nouri, who would be given fifteen of the phones. When David asked who Nouri was, however, and where the remaining five phones would go, Mina became noticeably uncomfortable.
“I really can’t say,” she apologized.
Forty minutes later, they pulled up to a coffee shop.
“Park here on the side street,” David directed the driver. “I’ll bring him out to get the phones.”
“Shouldn’t I go with you?” Mina asked.
“Why? Do you know what this Nouri guy looks like?” he asked.
“Well, no, but-”
David cut her off. “Just wait here. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
He got out of the car empty-handed, entered the café, and went to the back by the restrooms. There he found a young man in his midtwenties, smoking a cigarette and pacing nervously. That was Nouri, David thought, but he decided not to rush into things. He took a seat in a booth, his back to the wall. Behind the counter a television was on, showing coverage of the crisis in Hamadan.
“Rescue workers continue to struggle to clear rubble and bodies from the streets of Hamadan, where a government official said the death toll from this 8.7-magnitude earthquake may exceed ten thousand, with more than thirty-five thousand wounded,” an Iranian newscaster reported from the epicenter of the flattened city. “Thousands of injured people are still waiting for care outside badly damaged hospitals, while an unknown number remain trapped inside collapsed buildings. Basic services like water and electricity are out, and the mayor says his government needs help clearing streets so rescuers can reach some of the hardest-hit areas.”
“Help us!” one woman shrieked, holding her dead baby. “We have no water! We have no food! Help us! Someone, please help us!”
“Rescuers are digging though the rubble of leveled buildings with their hands, looking for survivors or bodies,” the reporter continued. “But I must tell you, I have never seen devastation like this. Whole blocks of collapsed buildings. Bodies in the streets. And officials say they fully expect the death toll to soar throughout the coming days. International expressions of sympathy are pouring in.”
The Iranian newscast cut to a clip of the White House press secretary.
“President Jackson and the First Family have been deeply moved by the images of suffering coming out of the Iranian city of Hamadan, as have many Americans and people of goodwill,” the spokeswoman said. “The Jackson administration would like to extend its hand of friendship to the Iranian people. We currently have two U.S. planes filled with food, winter clothing, blankets, and other aid on the tarmac in Incirlik, Turkey. With the permission of the Iranian government, we can have those aircraft on the ground in Hamadan in a matter of hours.”
The young man with the cigarette cursed the U.S. offer. “Our people are martyrs,” he said to no one in particular. “They are martyrs for the cause. Allah will have mercy on their souls. We don’t need the Great Satan’s help. Curse Jackson. Curse them all.”
David recoiled, but he wasn’t about to defend the American government in a coffee shop in downtown Tehran. “Well, I don’t know about martyrs,” he said to the young man, “but you’re right about the Great Satan. Let the Americans all burn in hell.”
“But they are martyrs,” the young man said.
“Not everyone who dies tragically is a martyr,” David said.
“But these are. They died preparing the way for the Lord of the Age, peace be upon him.”
David stood and approached the young man. The Kolbeh Café was popular and beginning to fill up with the breakfast crowd.
“Are you Javad Nouri?”
“Are you Reza Tabrizi?”
“I am.”
“Do you have the gifts our friend asked for?”
“I do.”
“Where are they?”
“In the car, in the alley.”
“Lead the way,” Nouri said.
David complied, leading the man out to the car. He instructed the driver to pop the trunk and stay in the car.
“Are they clean?” Nouri asked.
David assured him that they were bug-free.
“Good. That will be all,” Nouri said.
A moment later a car pulled up behind them. Two men got out, took the boxes of satphones, put them in their own trunk, and departed, Javad Nouri with them. David memorized the license plate. He got back into his car, turned to Mina, and asked, “Now what?”
Mina explained that Esfahani had left a large envelope of cash for the phones in his safe and directed their driver to take them back to the Iran Telecom offices.
Once there, they headed into Esfahani’s office, and David waited for Mina to open the safe.
“Here you go,” she said, finally handing him a zippered cloth bag with a manila envelope stuffed inside. “You can count it if you’d like.”
“That’s okay,” he said, smiling. “I trust you.”
Mina adjusted her headscarf and looked away.
The phones were ringing off the hook, not just in Esfahani’s office but throughout the technical support department. Everyone was abuzz with the earthquake in Hamadan and with the Herculean efforts the company was expending to get wireless service for the northwest quadrant of the country back up and running.
Mina’s cell phone rang.
“Yes?” she said. “Yes, but… Yes, I will… Do you want to speak to him? He’s right… Okay, I will… Bye.”
“The boss?” David asked.
Mina nodded. “He wants you to come to him in Hamadan right away and bring the other five phones to him in person.”
“Sure, whatever he wants.”
“I’ll book you a flight and a rental car,” Mina said, heading back to her desk. “I don’t know if there are any hotels operating right now, but I’ll figure out something.”
David suddenly found himself alone in Esfahani’s office. He quickly glanced at the safe, but Mina had already closed and locked it. He checked the hallway-clear. He looked at Mina, already on the phone with the travel department. Then he noticed Esfahani’s desktop computer was still on.
David recalled the transcript he’d read from the intercepted call made by his driver the day of David and Eva’s disastrous first meeting with Esfahani. The driver had referred to Esfahani as the “nephew of the boss.” Wondering just who it was Esfahani was related to, David quickly pulled up Esfahani’s phone directory and scrolled through it. He began by searching for the name Ibrahim Asgari, commander of VEVAK, the secret police, but came up empty. Next he looked up Supreme Leader Hosseini. It was a long shot, he figured, but worth a try. Again, he came up empty. He tried President Ahmed Darazi. This, too, was a dry hole. Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh was his next search. Yet again, the search came up blank.
Still, Esfahani had 837 contacts. There had to be someone useful in there, David figured. He glanced at Mina again. She was still on the phone and typing on her computer. Knowing he had only a few moments before she came back in, he pulled a memory stick from his pocket, inserted it into the USB port of Esfahani’s hard drive, and downloaded the entire directory, as well as Esfahani’s calendar.
“Okay,” Mina called out, getting up from her seat and coming back into Esfahani’s office, “I got you the last seat on the next flight to Hamadan.”
Then she saw David sitting at her boss’s desk.
First she was stunned, but she quickly grew angry. “What are you doing?” she snapped. “Get away from there.”
As she marched over to see what he was doing on the computer, David’s pulse quickened. But when she got there, she found him staring at a news site in Farsi and a stunning headline that read, “Twelfth Imam Appears in Hamadan, Heals Woman with Crushed Legs.”
Mina gasped, David’s offense forgotten.
David arrived at the airport with less than half an hour before his flight.
He checked in, cleared security, found a quiet corner near his gate, and powered up his laptop. With so many contacts in Esfahani’s directory, he was hesitant to transfer them all onto his mobile phone. The NSA would be overwhelmed, and most of the numbers wouldn’t produce anything of value. So with only a few minutes before departure, he began looking for specific names.
He began with Javad Nouri. Who was this guy, and how in the world was he connected to the Twelfth Imam? Unfortunately, he found only the young man’s mobile number and no other information. Still, he entered the number into his Nokia and kept hunting.
Next David looked up Daryush Rashidi and found his various phone numbers, his private e-mail address, his birthday, and his children’s names. He also found contact information for the man’s wife, Navaz Birjandi Rashidi.
Birjandi? It had to be a coincidence, he thought. She couldn’t possibly be related to…
David quickly searched the phone directory and hit pay dirt. Not only was Birjandi’s home phone number there, so was his home address. The man was Daryush Rashidi’s father-in-law.
Before David could fully absorb this development, however, a flight attendant suddenly announced the last call for passengers to board flight 224 to Hamadan. David realized he’d been so focused he’d lost all track of time. It was time to pack up his laptop and board immediately. Still, he had one more thing to check. He was determined to find the identity of the “boss” to whom Esfahani was related. He had already ruled out more than a dozen senior Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader and the head of state security. But David wasn’t ready to give up. He began scrolling through Esfahani’s contacts but glanced up and noticed the flight attendant preparing to close the door and seal the flight for takeoff. He called to her and asked her to wait two more minutes.
“No, sir,” she snapped. “You have to board now or take the next flight.”
Pleading her patience for just another moment, David closed Esfahani’s phone directory and opened the file containing the man’s calendar. He did a search for the word birthday and came up with twenty-seven hits. He glanced back at the flight attendant, who was growing more annoyed by the second. He had to go. He was out of time. But his instincts pushed him forward. He scanned through each birthday. Esfahani’s mother. His father. His wife. His daughters. His in-laws. His grandparents. A cousin. Another cousin. A dozen more cousins. And then: Uncle Mohsen, birthday, November 5.
David’s heart rate accelerated. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He closed the calendar file and reopened the phone directory.
“Sir, really,” the flight attendant said, standing over him now. “I must insist.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “Just one more minute, please.”
She was not amused. “No, sir. Now.”
David hit the Search function and typed in Mohsen. A fraction of a second later, the name Mohsen Jazini popped up on the screen, along with all of his personal contact information. David did a double take. Esfahani’s uncle was the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps?
He copied Jazini’s information-along with Birjandi’s-into his Nokia and hoped the NSA would get it and be able to use it quickly. Then he shut down his laptop and boarded the commuter flight, just before the flight attendant slammed and locked the aircraft door behind him.
Yet as intrigued as he was by these two developments, his thoughts shifted as he buckled himself into the last seat in the last row. He found himself thinking about the headline he’d seen in Esfahani’s office: “Twelfth Imam Appears in Hamadan, Heals Woman with Crushed Legs.” How was that possible? If Islam was false, which he was increasingly convinced it was, how could their so-called messiah be appearing in visions and healing people? Didn’t only God have the power to do great signs and wonders such as these?
Tehran, Iran
The news broke at midday on February 22.
Supreme Leader Hosseini delivered the live address on Iranian television. It took only six minutes, but it was a shot heard around the world. In his speech, he announced the news for which the Shia world had longed for centuries and which the Sunni world had feared nearly as long.
“It is my great joy to announce to you that the Twelfth Imam-the Lord of the Age, peace be upon him-has come at last,” the Grand Ayatollah declared, reading from a prepared text. “This is not rumor or speculation. I have been blessed with the honor of meeting with him and speaking with him in person several times. My security cabinet has met with him as well. Soon, all the world will see him and be astonished. Imam al-Mahdi has a powerful message to share with humanity. He is preparing to establish his kingdom of justice and peace. He has commanded me to inform you that he will make his first official appearance to the world in Mecca a week from Thursday. He invites all who seek peace to come and be with him for this inaugural sermon.”
Not surprisingly, the evidence pointed to the Israelis.
The Twelfth Imam and his inner circle listened carefully to Defense Minister Faridzadeh’s briefing. The assassination of Dr. Saddaji, the nation’s top nuclear scientist, represented a serious blow to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Everyone was furious. But the Mahdi counseled patience.
“We all know the Zionists are descendants of apes and pigs,” he began. “They got lucky this time, but let us all remember-they are destined to be wiped off the face of the earth once and for all, and it is our destiny to make this happen. But let us not be distracted from our higher calling. The Zionists would have no power against the Muslims if it were not for the American whores and lepers. It is time for the wave of jihad to crash upon them both. The day of the Judeo-Christian empire is over. The kingdom of Allah and his servant has come. Tell me, then, how soon will we be ready to launch the War of Annihilation?”
“Soon, my Lord,” Minister Faridzadeh assured him. “But we need to replace Dr. Saddaji, and that won’t be easy to do.”
“Saddaji was the deputy director of your nuclear program,” the Mahdi said. “Why not replace him with the director?”
“The director is a political appointee, my Lord,” Faridzadeh said, choosing his words carefully. “He is a fine man, and we are deeply grateful for his service, but…”
“But he does not have the technical skills we need to run the weapons program,” the Mahdi said.
“No, my Lord. I’m afraid he does not. He is really the face of the civilian program, working with the IAEA and other international bodies.”
“But you obviously know how to move forward without Saddaji.”
“That’s true, my Lord,” the defense minister agreed. “But that’s because all the pieces were already put in place by Saddaji before he died and because the Supreme Leader wanted to send a message to his killers that they could not stop our plans.”
“Who was Saddaji’s right-hand man?” the Mahdi finally asked.
“Dr. Najjar Malik.”
“Najjar Malik from Iraq?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“From Samarra?”
“Yes, yes, that is the one.”
The Mahdi smiled. “I know Najjar; he is a faithful servant. He is married to Saddaji’s daughter, Sheyda, is he not?”
“He is indeed, my Lord.”
“Does he know all the details of the weapons program?”
“Unfortunately, no,” the defense minister said. “He is a very able physicist, my Lord. He’s also a first-rate manager, and he was personally recruited and trained by Dr. Saddaji. But for security purposes, and at my command, Dr. Saddaji kept everything compartmentalized. Dr. Malik knows the rest of Iran’s civilian nuclear program better than anyone in the country, but we kept him in the dark about the weapons program. We operated that on a separate track.”
“Could he learn it?” the Mahdi said.
“I think he could. He is definitely someone we could trust. He would need time to get briefed. But I think he would be ideal. And of course, he would have all the scientists and staff on the weapons team who reported directly to Saddaji to help him.”
The Twelfth Imam smiled again. “Bring him to me at once.”
Hamadan, Iran
On the way to the car rentals, David tried to call Mina.
With so much of the network in the region down, however, getting a signal proved impossible. So he called from a pay phone and finally tracked her down. Mina provided him with directions on where to find Esfahani but apologized that she still hadn’t found him a functioning hotel. She asked him to be patient and promised to have something in the next few hours.
“No problem,” David said, figuring he could always fly right back to Tehran if she couldn’t find him any accommodations. “But I have a question to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“I’m just wondering, would it be appropriate if I called Mr. Rashidi and offered my condolences for the death of his brother-in-law?”
“Of course,” Mina said. “I think that would be very kind. Let me get you that number.”
As he waited, David asked if Mr. Rashidi’s brother-in-law was elderly or ill.
“Neither,” Mina said.
“He wasn’t killed in an accident, was he?”
“Not exactly,” Mina answered.
“Then how?”
“He was killed in a car bombing.”
“What?” David asked, not believing he had just heard her correctly. “In Hamadan? When?”
“Just a few days ago,” Mina said. “And the odd thing is that you’d think something like that would make the news. But it didn’t.”
That was strange, David thought. If his mobile phone service had been working, he’d have immediately done a search for the story on the Internet. Instead he asked for the man’s name.
“You mean Mr. Rashidi’s brother-in-law?”
“Yes, who was he?”
“His name was Mohammed,” Mina said. “Mohammed Saddaji.”
David was stunned, though he tried not to let his voice betray that fact. “You mean Dr. Mohammed Saddaji? the deputy director of Iran’s nuclear agency?”
“Yes. He was a brilliant scientist, and he and Mr. Rashidi were close. It’s very sad.”
“It certainly is. Why was Dr. Saddaji visiting Hamadan?”
“He wasn’t visiting,” Mina said innocently. “He lived there.”
David had many more questions, but he didn’t want to risk arousing suspicion. So he thanked Mina and promised to check back with her in a few hours about the hotel. Then he hung up the phone and proceeded to pick up his rental car while trying to process this new piece of information. There were no Iranian nuclear facilities in Hamadan-none that he had been briefed about, anyway. So why did such a high-ranking official in the Iranian nuclear program live there? Was Mina mistaken? Or was it possible there was a major facility in the area of which U.S. intelligence was unaware?
David found his car, pulled out of the airport grounds, and began driving south on Route 5 toward the city center. For the first ten minutes or so, he saw no serious signs of damage, confirming the news reports, which indicated the most severe impact had occurred downtown and to the west. He soon passed Payam Noor University on his right, then came through a roundabout onto the main beltway around the city, named after Ayatollah Khomeini. When he approached the neighborhood of the Besat Medical Center on the city’s south side, he began to see the full effects of the devastation.
Ambulances passed every few moments with flashing lights and sirens. Army helicopters were landing on the hospital’s roof, bringing in more casualties. All around, David could see single-family homes split in two and high-rise apartments lying toppled on their sides or crumpled into heaps of smoldering ruins.
He turned on the radio, and the news got worse. The confirmed death toll now topped 35,000 dead, with more than 110,000 wounded. Jumbo jets from the Red Crescent would be arriving soon, one reporter said, bringing tens of thousands of blankets and tents, along with desperately needed water and food. But movement on severely damaged roads was slow, the reporter explained, and rescue efforts were being hampered by the lack of reliable communications.
“It’s not just that the cell towers are down,” the newscaster reported. “Technicians from Iran Telecom are scrambling to restore wireless service, in particular, to help emergency crews of first responders rescue the wounded and care for the suffering. But thousands of landlines are down, fiber-optic lines have been severed, and even regular two-way radio service is being hampered by levels of static and blackout zones for which officials say they have no immediate explanation.”
David turned down a one-way street, then another, and then a third. He looped around in a school parking lot, then zigzagged through another residential neighborhood, trying to determine if anyone was following him. Satisfied that he was not being tailed, he pulled over to the side of the road and fired up his laptop. He opened the file with all of Esfahani’s contacts and searched for Dr. Mohammed Saddaji.
The search came up blank. Saddaji’s information wasn’t there.
Still, he knew he had to get that information back to Zalinsky as fast as possible. This wasn’t Baghdad or Mosul or Kabul. Car bombings didn’t happen every day in Iran. Certainly not in Hamadan. The Israelis were here, David concluded. They had to be. Which meant they knew more about what was going on with Iran’s nuclear program than Langley did. They wouldn’t have taken out Saddaji unless they had reason to believe that he was at the heart of Iran’s weaponization effort and that the weaponization effort was about to bear fruit.
David checked his phone. The good news was that he now had some coverage. The bad news was that he had only one bar. That was too much of a risk. He couldn’t take the chance and make an international call when so many cell towers were down. Even if he got through, a call to Dubai would likely get noticed by Iranian intelligence since call volume in the area had to be so low at the moment. Then again, David figured, he did have five secure satellite phones on the seat beside him.
He opened one, called Zalinsky, and coded in as Zephyr.
The conversation didn’t go as David hoped.
“Your memo was inappropriate,” Zalinsky began.
“Why?”
“Because your job is to gather and send us actionable information about the Iranian government, not political analysis about our own. Also because I told you not to get sidetracked by all this Shia End Times stuff. That’s not the story. The weapons are the story. And even if all the analysis in your memo was right-and I highly doubt that it is, but even if it was-you provided no hard facts to back up all those dubious assertions. It’s an op-ed piece for the Post, and not a particularly good one at that.”
David gritted his teeth but didn’t back down. He insisted he was sending back every scrap of intel he could. But he was equally adamant that he would be derelict in his duty not to report his impressions of the religious and political dynamic he was seeing inside Iran, and his sense that the U.S. was not doing nearly enough to stop the Iranians in time. Only having got all that off his chest did he tell Zalinsky that the deputy director of Iran’s nuclear program had recently been killed by a car bomb, and that he suspected the Israelis were doing what the U.S. wasn’t-fighting fire with fire.
Zalinsky was stunned that Saddaji was dead. Stunned, too, that Saddaji had been living for several years in Hamadan. He hadn’t known that. No one in the Agency had. And David was probably right: it had to have been the Israelis who had taken Saddaji out. It certainly hadn’t been anyone from Langley.
“The Mossad is treating this like a real war,” David argued.
“We are too,” Zalinsky said.
“No, we’re not,” David pushed back. “The Israelis have been sabotaging Iranian facilities and kidnapping or assassinating key scientists and military officials for the last several years. What have we been doing? begging Hosseini and Darazi to sit down and negotiate with us? threatening ‘crippling’ economic consequences but imposing lame, toothless sanctions instead? No wonder the Israelis are losing confidence in us. I’m losing confidence in us.”
“That’s enough,” Zalinsky said. “You just do your job and let me do mine.”
“I’m doing my job, but it’s not enough,” David replied, trying to control himself but growing more frustrated and angry by the minute. “I’m sending you everything I have, but where is it getting us? Nowhere.”
“You have to be patient,” Zalinsky counseled.
“Why?”
“These things take time.”
“We don’t have any more time,” David insisted. “The Israelis just ran the largest war game in their history. They just took out the highest-ranking nuclear scientist in the country. Prime Minister Naphtali is warning President Jackson and the world that if we don’t act, Israel will. What are we doing? Seriously, what are we really doing to stop Iran from getting the Bomb? Because from my perspective on the ground, sir, things are spinning out of control.”
“Believe me, I understand,” Zalinsky said, “but we have to build our case with facts, not guesses, not speculation, not hearsay. We blew it in Iraq. I told you that. Not completely, but when it came to weapons of mass destruction, we didn’t have the facts-not enough of them, anyway. We didn’t have the ‘slam dunk’ case we said we did. So we’d sure better have one this time. We need to be able to carefully document the answers to every question the president or his advisors ask us. The stakes are too high for anything less. So give me a target. Give me something actionable, and we’ll take action.”
“What kind of action?” David asked. “You think the president is going to order someone assassinated? You think we’re really going to blow up some facility? We already know of a dozen or more nuclear facilities here. Have we hit one yet?”
“First of all, that’s not your call,” Zalinsky said. “Your job is to get us information we don’t have. What happens next is my job. But don’t forget the president’s executive order. We are authorized to use ‘all means necessary’ to stop or slow down Iran’s nuclear weapons program. When the time is right, we’ll do just that. But we can’t afford any screwups. You got that?”
David wanted to believe Zalinsky. But he secretly admired the courage the Israelis had to defend the Jewish people from another Holocaust, and he worried his own government had either lost its nerve or become resigned to the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Shifting gears, David asked if Zalinsky and Fischer had gotten anything useful out of Rashidi’s or Esfahani’s phone calls. Unfortunately, the answer was no.
“We learned that Rashidi’s brother-in-law had died tragically,” Zalinsky replied. “We learned his name was Mohammed and that the funeral was going to be in Hamadan. None of the calls ever mentioned a car bomb or his last name. So this is good work, son. I’ll get the rest of the team right on this, verifying all this. But this is exactly what I want you to be doing-giving me information I can use. I’m not saying you can’t have your own opinion. But I’m not asking you for your analysis. I’ve got twenty guys doing analysis. What we need are facts no one else in the world has. Stuff like this. Just get me more.”
David promised he would. He coded out, hung up the phone, and cleared the satellite phone’s memory of any trace of the call. But his frustration was growing. It was one thing for the White House not to get what was truly happening on the ground inside Iran. But David feared his mentor might not fully get it either.
David pulled into an Iran Telecom switching station on the edge of the city.
The facility itself and the equipment inside had been heavily damaged by the earthquake, and the parking lot was filled with the trucks of Iran Telecom staff and contractors who had come to get the place back in working condition.
David found Esfahani on the second floor, wearing a hard hat and assessing the extent of the damage with a group of repairmen. He caught the executive’s eye and held up his right hand, indicating he had the five remaining satellite phones with him. Esfahani excused himself from his colleagues and took David aside.
“Where are they?” Esfahani asked.
“They’re in my trunk.”
“How quickly can you get all the rest of them here?”
“All 313?”
“Exactly.”
“I really don’t know if that’s possible.”
“Look, Reza, we don’t have a lot of time,” Esfahani said. “Things are moving very rapidly now. I will go to the Chinese if I have to, but I want to work with you, so long as you understand we have to move fast.”
“I completely understand,” David said. “I know you’re under a huge time constraint. I’m just saying we have to be careful. Do you know how hard it was to get these twenty without drawing suspicion from within my company, much less from all the international intelligence agencies who are watching everything that comes in and out of this country like hawks?”
“The Chinese couldn’t care less about international intelligence agencies,” Esfahani said.
“But you have to,” David said, taking a risk. “Look, these phones aren’t for just anyone. They’re for the Lord of the Age, correct? Shouldn’t he have the very best?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll be blunt. The Chinese phones stink. I mean, they’ll do if you’re a business guy trying to sell steel or cars or toys or whatever. But you told me you needed state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Then you need me, not the Chinese,” David assured him. “We just have to make sure we do it the right way so you don’t invite scrutiny that you don’t need and I don’t get caught by my company. We have to do it in a way that provides Imam al-Mahdi and his team with exactly what they need so they can talk without Beijing or the Russians or, Allah forbid, the Americans or the Zionists listening in.”
“You’re right,” Esfahani said. “We need to be careful.”
“You’re trying to help the Mahdi-peace be upon him-build an army,” David continued. “I want to help you. I want to be part of changing history. Just tell me what I need to do, and I’ll get you whatever you need. You have my word.”
“I appreciate that. Now let me see what you brought me,” Esfahani said.
David took him to the car, opened the trunk, and gave him the five boxes.
Esfahani opened one and smiled. “These are nice.”
“Best in the world.”
“My people back in Tehran scrubbed the ones you gave them this morning,” Esfahani said, leafing through one of the instruction manuals. “They said they’re all clean.”
“They are. I checked them all myself before I brought them from Munich. This is the very same phone the chancellor of Germany uses, and the president of France, and the prime minister of Italy, and all of their top staff. And believe me, the Europeans don’t want the Americans or Israelis intercepting their calls either.”
“You’ve done well, Reza. I am very grateful.”
“It’s an honor to help my country,” David said. “I want only the best for my people.”
“I believe that’s true,” Esfahani said, taking the five boxes to his own car and locking them in the trunk. “Which is why I want to tell you something.”
Then Esfahani quietly explained what the Group of 313 was and why he and Rashidi were searching for devout Shia Muslims who possessed strong administrative and technical skills and would be completely loyal to the Mahdi.
“We are recruiting an army of ten thousand mujahideen ready to give their lives to annihilate Tel Aviv, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles and usher in the reign of the Promised One.”
David didn’t dare say anything that might get Esfahani suspicious. “How can I join?” he asked after a few moments.
“No one joins,” Esfahani said. “You must be chosen.”
“But you could recommend me.”
“We are considering you. Mr. Rashidi will decide. But if you can deliver all these phones quickly, I think you will win his confidence and his recommendation.”
David couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and he wondered what Zalinsky would say.
“I will do my best to earn that honor.”
“I know you will. In the meantime, I want you to learn from a master. He is one of our greatest scholars and he lives close to here. You will spend the evening there; there are no hotels available anyway. Tomorrow, I expect you to start working on the rest of the phones we require. But for tonight, you will sit at a master’s feet and learn about our beloved Imam.”
“Who is he?”
“He is a great teacher. He also happens to be related to Daryush.”
David immediately knew whom he meant, but he said nothing.
“Have you ever heard of Dr. Alireza Birjandi?” Esfahani asked.
“Of course,” David said. “I recently read one of his books. But isn’t he living in seclusion?”
“I think he would like to meet you. He is a professor at heart, and he loves bright, young, eager minds.”
“I couldn’t impose on him.”
“It is all arranged. You should bring the man some food. It is never acceptable to visit empty-handed.”
“That is very gracious,” David said. “May Allah bless you and your family. May I ask one more question before I leave?”
“Of course,” Esfahani said. “What is it?”
“Did Imam al-Mahdi actually reveal himself here in Hamadan?”
“Yes, he did,” Esfahani said. “It was astounding!”
“Did he really heal a woman who had her legs crushed in the earthquake?”
“Yes, he did. Everyone has been talking about it.”
“But how do you know it’s really true?” David asked. “I’m always a little skeptical about what I hear on the news.”
“You are a very wise and thoughtful young man,” Esfahani answered. “But I didn’t hear it on the news.”
“How then?”
“I was there.”
An hour later, David arrived at Alireza Birjandi’s house.
It was a modest, single-story, two-bedroom home that might be called a bungalow back in the States. Built of concrete and wood on the outskirts of the city, it appeared to David as if it dated back to the 1940s or 50s and hadn’t seen many updates since.
Carrying a bag of bread and cheese, a sack of potatoes, and a case of bottled water that Esfahani had given him from the Iran Telecom regional substation’s supplies, David went up to the front door and knocked several times. It took a few minutes, but the elderly cleric finally came to the door carrying a white cane and wearing dark glasses.
Esfahani had failed to mention that the man was blind.
“Is that you, Mr. Tabrizi?” the old man said, his voice sad, his body frail and gaunt. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“It is, but please, call me Reza.”
“Is that what they’re calling you these days? Very well; please come in.”
David was a bit startled by that response and was glad Birjandi couldn’t see his reaction. What did the man mean by that? What else would people be calling him?
“Forgive me for being late,” David said. “I got a bit lost.”
“That is quite all right,” Birjandi said. “I can’t imagine driving out there at all right now. Of course, I’ve never driven, but still…”
His voice trailed off, and David felt sorry for the old man. “Mr. Esfahani speaks very highly of you,” he said. “It is a great honor to meet you. Thank you for making time to see me on such short notice.”
“It is nothing,” Birjandi sighed. “Daryush and Abdol speak very highly of you, as well. You seem to have made quite an impression.”
“Well, they have been very kind to me. Oh, and Mr. Esfahani asked me to bring you these groceries and said he would send more supplies over soon.”
“He’s a good boy,” Birjandi said. “I’ve known him since he was eight years old. He and Daryush were the best of friends growing up. Did he tell you that?”
“No, sir,” David said, noting this new clue. “He never mentioned it.”
“Well, they were very competitive boys,” Birjandi said with a touch more animation in his voice. “I’m sure Abdol can’t stand the fact that Daryush is the boss. It was always the reverse when they were kids. Abdol was smarter, faster, stronger-learned the entire Qur’an by the time he was ten. Not Daryush. I don’t think he ever memorized it. But Daryush… Well, let’s just say he was more diplomatic, had more savvy than Abdol. It’s made all the difference. Now come, let’s put the food away; then we’ll go into my study and talk.”
As they entered Birjandi’s home, David was immediately struck by the sheer number of books that were in the living room alone. Every wall was lined with bookshelves, and every shelf was stacked with so many tomes the shelves themselves were sagging and looked like they might collapse at any moment. Books were piled on the floors and on chairs, together with boxes of scholarly journals and other publications, and David couldn’t help but wonder what a blind man living alone did with them all. Nothing looked dusty or filthy, so he wondered if someone came and cleaned on a regular basis. He certainly couldn’t imagine this poor old man taking care of this home himself. Fortunately, aside from a cracked front window and some noticeable cracks in his walls and ceiling, the house had sustained remarkably little damage from the earthquake.
David took the supplies into the kitchen, which was cramped but clean. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No garbage in the trash bin. Nor was there any food in the pantry or much of any in the refrigerator. It was no wonder the old man was so thin.
After instructing David where to put the groceries, Birjandi padded down the hall, and David followed. They ended up in the old man’s study-actually a retrofitted dining room. It, too, had bookshelves lining the walls, sagging with the weight of books, many of which looked fifty or a hundred years old or more. In one corner was a desk stacked with books on tape, along with a large tape player from the 1980s, a set of giant headphones, and an assortment of unopened mail. In another corner stood a television that was on but whose screen was full of snow and static that hissed so loudly it actually hurt David’s ears. Seemingly not bothered by the noise, Birjandi found a well-worn armchair that was clearly his favorite and plopped down in it. Then, much to David’s relief, the old man found the remote on an end table and turned off the TV.
“Please have a seat.”
“Thank you, sir,” David said, carefully removing a stack of yellowed newspapers from the 1990s from another armchair. “I have many questions, and Mr. Esfahani said you would be the best man to ask.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence, so long that David wasn’t sure the old man had heard him.
“We are living in extraordinary times, wouldn’t you say?” David finally offered, searching for a way to begin the conversation.
“I see days of great mourning,” Birjandi said with a heavy sigh.
“But at least Imam al-Mahdi has come, right?” David said, his voice upbeat and hopeful. “I’m sure you’ve heard all the reports.”
“I have no joy in my heart,” Birjandi said.
“None?”
“Young man, a very dark day has dawned upon the earth.”
David was taken aback. Wasn’t this man’s life’s work studying and teaching about the coming of the Twelfth Imam? Why wouldn’t he allow himself a bit of joy? Yes, the day had come with death and destruction. But hadn’t all that been prophesied anyway? Didn’t the old man believe all this suffering was Allah’s will?
“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him,” Birjandi said, seemingly out of the blue. “He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child; teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise; follow him.”
“Is that from the Qur’an?” David asked.
Birjandi smiled a little and shook his head.
“From the hadiths?”
Again the old man shook his head.
“Something Zoroaster said?”
“No, it is an ancient Persian proverb.”
“Well, it sounds very wise.”
“Which one are you?”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
David pondered that for a moment, silently reciting the proverb several times to understand its meaning.
“I suppose I am the child,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“Because I know not, and I know that I know not. That’s why I am here, because I believe you know.”
“Very good,” Birjandi said. “Then start with this. What Hamadan just experienced was not a natural earthquake.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“The size. The scope. The timing. Think, Mr. Tabrizi. What triggered all this? Do you really think it was the arrival of Imam al-Mahdi?”
What was the man talking about? David’s confusion grew still more when Birjandi suddenly rose, excused himself, and said it was time for him to pray.
“We can talk some more in six hours,” Birjandi explained simply, without apology.
Six hours? David looked at his watch. It was only three in the afternoon. What was he going to do for the next six hours?
“Thank you for the groceries,” Birjandi said before he left for his room. “Feel free to have anything you would like. I am not hungry. I don’t have a guest room, but I hope you are comfortable on the couch. There are more blankets in the closet. Take a nap, Mr. Tabrizi. You need the rest. You seem tired. And, I suspect, you could use some prayer time as well.”
Then he turned and walked away. His bedroom door closed softly behind him. David was startled and a little annoyed. He didn’t want to nap. He didn’t want to pray. He had questions. He had come for answers. But he wasn’t getting any. At least not for the next six hours.
As the hours passed, there was one bit of good news.
Wireless service had now been restored for sections near the airport, which meant David’s phone worked and he could use it to get on the Internet. He grabbed his laptop and waited for it to boot up.
As he did, he kept thinking about Birjandi’s words. What did he mean that the earthquake wasn’t a natural event? There were only two other possibilities. One was a supernatural event, perhaps connected to the arrival of the Twelfth Imam. But Birjandi had seemed to dismiss that notion, which was odd, given the man’s specialty. The only other possibility was that it was a man-made event. But the only way for man to trigger an earthquake was…
No, David thought, surely that wasn’t possible. Birjandi wasn’t suggesting the earthquake had been triggered by an underground nuclear test, was he?
Once connected to the Internet, David did a quick search. What he found unnerved him.
On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted five nuclear weapons tests, triggering an earthquake that measured 5.0 on the Richter scale.
On October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted a nuclear test in the North Hamgyong province, resulting in a 4.3 seismic event.
On May 25, 2009, North Korea conducted another nuclear test, resulting in an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.7.
David was no physicist or geologist. He had no way of knowing for certain. But on its face, it did seem possible that an earthquake could be triggered by a nuclear test or a series of tests. Was that what had just happened? If so, how huge must the nuke have been to trigger an earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale?
Barred from accessing Langley’s database from inside a hostile country, David continued scouring the open-source articles on previous nuclear tests, looking for similarities and differences. The article that worried him most was an October 2006 piece by David Sanger in the New York Times.
North Korea said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states.
The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.
Since when has a U.N. Security Council warning ever stopped a country from building the Bomb? David wondered.
The White House and State Department were kidding themselves. The president and the secretary of state and all their muckety-mucks could huff and puff all they wanted, but in the end, negotiations and diplomacy and high-level talks and Security Council meetings were all just words, and words weren’t going to blow the Big Bad Wolf’s nuclear house down.
David continued reading.
North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan, and Israel as one of the world’s “undeclared” nuclear powers. India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon. But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its abilities.
“I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren’t going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese,” a senior American official who deals with the North Koreans said. “In the end, there was just no stopping them.”
Was there any stopping Iran? Not like this, David thought. The CIA was learning too little. They were doing too little. And too much time was going by.
He did a quick search of the headlines in the last twenty-four hours. Had there been any indication by the Iranians that they were testing a bomb? He found none. If they had just tested, that may have been a key lesson they learned from the North Koreans: Why announce the test? Why confirm it? Why let the world know they had the Bomb? In this case, why let the Israelis know? Then again, David thought, maybe the Iranians were still going to announce it. Maybe they were just buying time, reviewing the technical data, making sure they really had an operational weapon-or several of them-before telling the world the apocalyptic news.
David did some more poking around the Internet to double-check his memory on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Sure enough, Iran was one of the 182 signatories to the pact. By signing, it had agreed with all the other signatory states to two central provisions.
First, “Each State Party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control.”
Second, “Each State Party undertakes, furthermore, to refrain from causing, encouraging, or in any way participating in the carrying out of any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.”
By way of enforcement, David knew, the International Monitoring System (IMS) and International Data Center (IDC) had been established. These networks included over three hundred primary and auxiliary seismic monitoring stations worldwide specifically tracking all seismic events and determining whether they were natural or triggered by a nuclear explosion. The difference was fairly simple for experts to discern. In an earthquake, seismic activity was slow at first and then steadily intensified as tectonic plates scraped against one another. But when a nuclear blast occurred, the seismic activity would be incredibly intense at first and then would slow down over a few minutes.
Which one had just happened at Hamadan? David didn’t know, but he had to get Langley checking. Taking a risk, he decided to use his Nokia to send an encrypted message back to Zalinsky and Fischer. There was a slight chance that the encrypted message would be picked up-not read but noticed-by Iranian intelligence, since it was being sent from an area so close to the epicenter of the quake. But it was a risk he had to take. He typed quickly.
FLASH TRAFFIC-PRIORITY ALPHA: Request immediate focus on Hamadan earthquake. Stop. Possible nuclear test. Stop. Check IMS/IDC data. Stop. Request immediate CP pass. Stop. Possible link to death of Saddaji. Stop. Also: indications that TTI recruiting army of 10,000 mujahideen. Stop. Source close to TTI says plan is to “annihilate” Tel Aviv, DC, New York, and LA. Stop. Working to get more details. Stop. Will call secure when I can. Stop. Out.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zalinsky was getting frustrated again.
The Saddaji news had been useful. But was David Shirazi actually suggesting the Iranians had just conducted a nuclear test-the first in the country’s history-in Hamadan, of all places? The notion was ridiculous. The Iranians had their Shahrokhi Air Base about thirty miles north of the city. But they certainly didn’t have nuclear facilities in or around Hamadan.
Then came the audacity of Zephyr’s suggestion that the United States Air Force dispatch its high-tech WC-135 “nuclear test-sniffing plane”-code-named CP for Constant Phoenix-over Iran. Did he really think the secretary of defense and the joint chiefs of staff were going to authorize an expensive flyover of a hostile country amid such a delicate diplomatic dance with the Iranians? Based on what? speculation? guesses? gut instincts? Zalinsky could just imagine the dressing-down he’d receive from the higher-ups within the CIA, at the Pentagon, and at the White House when the air sample data sent from Constant Phoenix to the Air Force Technical Applications Center at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida came back negative. No radiation. No evidence of a nuclear test whatsoever. He’d be a laughingstock.
What’s more, “Reza Tabrizi’s” interest in TTI, presumably the Twelfth Imam, was a distraction. It worried Zalinsky, and it disrupted the controlled and careful tone with which he wanted this operation to be carried out. The kid seemed to think this religious fervor was going to boil over into drastic events any minute, but Zalinsky wasn’t convinced anything new was happening in the hearts of these madmen. They were on a steady course to develop nuclear weapons, and his team needed to remain on a steady course to stop them, not to act rashly.
It was almost 10 p.m. when Birjandi’s door finally opened.
David, devouring his third book on Shia eschatology from the old man’s shelves, watched him make his way slowly to the kitchen.
“Would you like some help?” he asked, setting a hefty tome aside.
“Yes, son, that would be very kind.”
Together, they made a pot of tea and set out a plate of naan, Iranian bread that was a favorite of David’s. He was anxious to ask his host about the Twelfth Imam, the earthquake, Iran’s weapons program, and a thousand other things. But as David carried the tray to the study and the two sat down together, he sensed the man was not quite ready to talk about such things. He had to be patient, he reminded himself. He had to pace himself. This was a source and a potentially high-value one at that. He needed to build a relationship, some camaraderie, some trust. Above all, he had to be careful not to offend the man. Birjandi had been described by many as a recluse. David needed to find a way to open him up.
He smiled as Dr. Birjandi popped a sugar cube in his mouth and then began sipping his tea. It was just the way his father used to drink tea. He hadn’t seen his father do it in many years, but somehow watching Birjandi made David feel homesick. He missed his father, worried for his mother, and felt a sudden hunger for home that surprised him. He looked out the window at the quiet suburban street and saw a young family walking past, the man a few strides ahead of the woman and several children running around them. They sat in silence for a while, and Birjandi seemed to enjoy the quiet. And then, as David took a piece of bread and began to chew it slowly, he had an idea.
“May I ask you a question, sir?” he began.
“Of course,” the old man said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Were you ever in love?”
Dr. Birjandi cleared his throat in surprise. “That was not a question I was expecting when Abdol said you wanted to come over to meet me.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that-”
“No, no, it’s a good question,” Birjandi interrupted, “and an honest one. I appreciate a young man who is not all business.”
David had been taught at the Farm not to throw fastballs straight down the center of the plate. Curveballs and the occasional slider tended to work better, throwing the batter off a bit. It didn’t always work. But this time, he sensed it just might.
“I will tell you the truth, son,” the old man said between sips of tea. “I was in love with the same girl for sixty-seven years, and I’m still in love with her. She passed away six months ago, but I think about her every moment of every day. I have an ache in my heart that will not leave.”
“I’m so sorry,” David said.
“It’s okay,” Birjandi responded. “It hurts now, but soon enough we will walk hand in hand in paradise, reunited forever. I cannot wait.”
David was moved by the man’s devotion to his bride. “What was her name?”
“Souri.”
“A red rose,” David said. “That’s a beautiful name.”
“As was she,” Birjandi said. “Her heart, anyway. Her voice. The touch of her hands. The smell of the flowers she would pick in the morning. I never had the joy of seeing her. But then again, I didn’t need to see her to know her. All I could do was listen to her speak, but the more I listened, the more I knew her, and the more I knew her, the more I loved her. Someday, when we meet in paradise, I will finally get to see just how beautiful she really is. That will be something, won’t it?”
“It will indeed,” David said. “May I ask how old you were when you met?”
“I was sixteen; she was seventeen. My mother hired her to tutor me in Arabic, because her family was originally from Najaf, in Iraq. We married the following year.”
“It was an arranged marriage?”
“Of course, though we did our best not to seem happy about it.”
“Why’s that?”
“We were afraid if our parents knew how in love we were, they would force us to marry someone else!”
David began to laugh but quickly covered his mouth.
“It’s okay, son. I still laugh about it myself. I still savor each and every memory with that woman. I can remember our entire first conversation, the day we met. And I can remember our last. I can tell you how her hand felt as I held it at the hospital, sitting beside her cancer-ravaged body. I can tell you what it felt like the moment she breathed her last breath and slipped into eternity, leaving me all by myself. I’m not going to, but I could.” The old man’s voice had grown thick as he was overcome with emotion.
Moments passed slowly in silence. Then Dr. Birjandi asked an unexpected question. “Her name is Marseille, right?”
David’s heart stopped. “Pardon?” he said, hoping he hadn’t heard the man right.
“The girl that you love,” the old man continued, “her name is Marseille; am I right?”
In shock, David didn’t know what to say.
“Your real name is David,” Birjandi added. “David Shirazi.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David stammered. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“So you’re not the David Shirazi who fell in love with Marseille Harper on a fishing trip in Canada, who was arrested for beating up a boy who thought you were an Arab? You weren’t recruited by a Mr. Zalinsky to be an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency?”
Stunned, David rose to his feet without thinking. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why are you accusing me of such lies?”
“You know they’re not lies,” Birjandi said gently. “And I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just telling you what God told me to tell you.”
David’s mind was reeling. “The Twelfth Imam told you all this?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I don’t follow the Twelfth Imam,” the old man said.
David was more confused than ever. “What are you talking about? No one knows him better than you.”
“That’s why I don’t follow him.”
David scanned the empty room, looking from side to side and listening carefully for any sign that they were not alone. What was going on? His mind scrambled to think how best to handle such a bizarre and dangerous breach of identity. What options did he have? If he’d been compromised at levels this high up and was about to be seized by Iranian intelligence, there wasn’t much he could do. He had no weapon, and the old man didn’t seem like a promising hostage. It was unlikely he could successfully run. In the absence of another viable alternative, maybe he should find out as much as he could and try to control his emotions. He needed to think clearly for whatever came next.
“Now, just sit down,” Birjandi said. “Take a deep breath. Be patient. You are in no danger from me. And I’ll explain everything. It will take some time, but it is vitally important that you listen until the end. I will give you the information you seek and point you in the right direction. But first I need to tell you a story.”
“I have been blind from birth,” Birjandi began. “But I was always a devout Muslim. My father was a mullah. So were most of my forefathers, going back several centuries. So I was raised in a very devout environment. But my parents didn’t force me to believe. I wanted to. Growing up, I loved to hear my parents teach me the Qur’an, especially my mother. She would read to me for hours, and when she stopped, I would beg her to read more and to answer all of my questions. She insisted I study Arabic because she wanted me to hear and understand and memorize the Qur’an as my heart language.
“By the time I was nine or ten, I would often go to the mosque by myself, praying and meditating for hours. I couldn’t see the trees and the flowers and the colors of the world. All I had was my own inner world. But I knew Allah was there, and I wanted to know him and make him happy.
“Souri, my wife, was even more devout than I. She memorized the Qur’an faster. She prayed longer. She was smarter. By the time we graduated from high school, she was fluent in five languages. I knew only three.
“We got married right after high school. I went to college and then to seminary. I was going to be a mullah, of course. It was not anything forced on me. I wanted to spend my days and nights learning about God, teaching about God. And Souri was at my side every step of the way. She read my textbooks to me. I dictated my homework to her. She typed my papers. She walked me to class. We did everything together.
“With her help, I always got high marks on my exams and papers. When I graduated from seminary, I was first in my class.”
David’s heartbeat was slowly returning to just above normal. He tried to sound calm. “Was eschatology your main focus?”
“It was, and with Souri’s assistance I wrote a thesis that was later published in 1978 as my first book, The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah.”
“It became a huge best seller.”
“No, no, not initially.”
“Really?” David asked, perplexed. “On the cover of my copy, it says, ‘Over one million copies in print.’”
“You’ve read it?”
“Absolutely-it was riveting.”
“Well, that’s very kind,” Birjandi said. “Yes, the book did become popular in Iran and around the world, but that happened much later. The first printing was only about five thousand copies in Tehran and another few thousand copies in Iraq because there were a lot of Shias there. But you have to understand that Khomeini rose to power in 1979, just a year after the book was published. And from that point forward, it was illegal to discuss the Twelfth Imam. Well, not against the law per se, but severely frowned upon, especially in Qom and especially in academia.”
“Why?” David asked.
“Very simple. Khomeini was threatened by it. He wanted people to believe that he was the Twelfth Imam. He never claimed to be, mind you-not directly-but he certainly didn’t discourage people from thinking it. That’s why he insisted that everyone call him Imam Khomeini. Before him, no one ever dared call a religious man imam. Among Shias, that title was reserved for the first eleven special descendants of Muhammad and, of course, for the twelfth and last. Religious leaders were called clerics, mullahs, sayyids, ayatollahs-but never imams.”
Because of Khomeini’s effective prohibition on speaking or teaching about the coming of the Islamic messiah, Birjandi explained, his book had been banned in Iran in 1981. Nevertheless, during that time, he and his wife had developed an even greater fascination with-and love for-Shia eschatology. The more forbidden it was, he said, the more intriguing it became.
“We were determined to understand how and when the end would come, what would be the signs of the End Times, and how a devout Muslim should live in the end of days. Most of all, we wanted to understand what would happen on Judgment Day and how to be saved from the flames. After Khomeini died, an entirely new era of intellectual and religious freedom began to dawn. Not for Jews or Christians or Zoroastrians or other religious minorities, mind you. But certainly for Shia scholars and clerics. Certainly for Souri and me. That’s when we began to openly and aggressively accelerate our studies about all things related to the Twelfth Imam.”
“So when was the ban lifted?”
“In 1996. And that’s when the thing took off-over the next year or so. I honestly never thought of it as a book for the general public. I originally wrote it to serve as a textbook for a seminary class I hoped to teach. But somehow it became hugely popular, almost overnight, and soon I was speaking and teaching all over Iran.”
“And interest in the Twelfth Imam skyrocketed as a result.”
“Well, interest in the subject definitely grew exponentially, but not because of my book,” Birjandi humbly insisted. “My book just happened to be rereleased at the perfect time. One millennium was ending. Another was beginning. Talk of the End Times was in the air. Suddenly, it seemed as if everyone was writing and speaking about the coming of the Mahdi. Then Hamid Hosseini read my book. He gave it to President Darazi to read. Then the two of them invited me to begin meeting with them once a month to discuss my findings and talk about these and other spiritual and political matters. When the public learned of our meetings through the national press, interest grew in a way that shocked us.”
“It vaulted you into the status of the world’s leading expert on Shia eschatology and a close advisor to the nation’s leaders,” David said.
“Strange but true,” Birjandi conceded, shaking his head. “But along the way, something changed for me.”
“What?”
“Well, first of all, you have to understand that during this time my elderly parents died. Then our only child, a daughter, was killed in a car accident in 2007. Souri was devastated. I was devastated. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t teach. My fellow professors were very understanding. They gave me a sabbatical to grieve and rest and recover. But I kept sinking. I was sure that I would be next, or Souri. I thought about death constantly. I became a slave to fear. What really happens when one stops breathing? Does that heart beat again in paradise? I was sure such a place existed, but I doubted the certainty of my ever arriving there. After a lifetime of study, I realized I had no answers. And the joy of life was gone. I had no will to teach, no will to be a good husband. I barely desired to get up in the morning.”
“What did you do?” David asked.
“I made a decision not to give up on Allah,” Birjandi said. “Many people do in similar situations, and I understand why. They’re hurt. They’re depressed. They blame God. But let me be honest with you, son-and I am not being pious when I say this-I just knew in my heart that somehow Allah was the only answer. I knew he was there, even though I felt so far from him. Despite all my religious training, all my family’s history, all my knowledge of the Qur’an, I felt cut off from God, and it haunted me.”
David said nothing, waiting for the old man to continue at his own pace.
“I thought about it for a long time,” Birjandi continued after a moment, “and I concluded that the problem was that I only knew Allah intellectually, and that wasn’t enough. What I really needed was to experience him. Now, Shia Islam, as you know, is a very mystical religion. We teach students that there are higher and higher levels of spiritual consciousness they need to discover and help others discover. But as you probably also know, Shia doctrine teaches that God’s love is not available for everyone. It’s only for those who go through a very specific spiritual journey. So in my classes, I would teach my students to meditate until they entered a trance. In that trance, if they were truly devout, they would eventually see visions of ancient imams and the various prophets and other historical figures. The goal is to go higher, deeper, closer to Allah. But truthfully I had never taken this so seriously for myself. I loved learning about Allah, but I had never really tried to know him personally.
“Then one day I went for a long walk through our neighborhood, alone with my cane. I knew I was sinking deeper and deeper into despair. I thought about ending my life, but I was not ready to die. I believed that committing suicide would condemn me to hell for sure. I was lost. Yet so many looked to me as if I had all the answers. Finally I came home and went to my room. I begged Allah to reveal himself to me. I pleaded that he show himself to me. I told him that I had done everything he had asked me, but it wasn’t enough. I was ready to do more, but first I asked him to come and speak to me directly. But nothing happened. Months went by and nothing happened.”
David listened, entranced.
“I became even more despondent. I wouldn’t talk to my wife. I would stay up all night, unable to sleep. I would turn on satellite TV and mindlessly scan through the channels, listening to whatever was on. And one day I came across a program that caught my attention. It was an Iranian man who had been on the streets of Tehran during the Revolution in ’79, shouting, ‘Death to America!’ For some reason, he and his wife applied to graduate school in California; they were accepted, and they went. But then their marriage started failing and their lives started falling apart, and they questioned Islam. It promised peace, but he said it gave them no peace.
“And that’s when I started to listen more carefully. Until the man said he did a careful study of the Qur’an and the Bible and concluded that the Bible was true and that the Qur’an was false and that Jesus was the One True God. Then I cursed the television and turned it off, as furious as I had ever been.
“But after a few nights, when my wife was out doing errands, I couldn’t help myself. I became curious and found that show again and kept listening. And the next time she went out in the evening, I listened again. I wanted to be able to prove that this man was insane. I wanted to be able to write an article or a book refuting everything he said.
“Then something very strange happened.”
“What?” David asked.
“I simply knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I knew that this man on television was the Creator’s answer to my hunger. That I could not refute him. Through this man, God was telling me the simple truth about Himself. About His Son, Jesus. The anger in my heart for this man had displaced the despondency. Now that anger was suddenly gone, and only peace remained. Peace and the most solid, unmistakable knowledge that it was Jesus I should follow for the rest of my days.”
David felt as though he had been struck mute. He heard Birjandi’s words, but he could not believe they were coming from the mouth of such a revered Islamic scholar and counselor. Was this all a trick? But the man seemed to be filled with an energy that was growing as he told the story.
“Then I had this intense hunger and thirst-not for food and water but to know more about Jesus.”
“What did you do?” David finally asked.
“What could I do?” Birjandi responded. “I already knew the Qur’an held no real answers about Jesus. Some tidbits, to be sure, but nothing solid. So one weekend when my wife went to Qom to visit her sister, I left the house and took a bus to Tehran. I must have asked a dozen people for directions, and finally someone helped me find my way to an Armenian church. I went there and I begged them for a Bible. They wouldn’t give me one. They feared I might be a spy. I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look at me. I’m an old man, not a spy.’ I pleaded with them to read to me about Jesus just for an hour, even just for a few minutes. They asked me if I was a Christian. I told them the truth-that I was a Muslim. But they said they could only give Bibles to Christians, never to Muslims. I told them I wanted to know more about Jesus. But they sent me away, and I was very aggrieved.
“It took me eight months to find a Bible. I went to every bookstore I could find, asking for one. I went to every library. Finally, to my surprise, I reconnected with a retired colleague of mine from the seminary. I learned that he had been given a Bible in a comparative religion class in college in England during the days of the Shah. I told him I needed it for a research project I was doing, and he told me I could have it; he had no use for it.”
Dr. Birjandi leaned forward in his chair, drawing David in closer as well. “David,” he continued, “I had never been more excited in my life. My hands trembled as my colleague set that book in them, and I came back to my home and realized I had a problem. I obviously couldn’t read the Bible myself, not being able to see it. And I was scared to death to tell my wife what was happening with me. So I lied a little.”
“You lied?”
“Yes, and I still feel terrible about it. But I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What did you say?”
“I told Souri that the seminary wanted me to consider writing a chapter for a book they were going to publish about the fallacies in Jewish and Christian eschatology, and that this intrigued me,” Birjandi said. “To my relief, it intrigued her, too. So we locked ourselves in this study for several weeks and read and studied the Bible for ourselves from morning to night, from the first verse of Genesis-the first book of the Bible-to the last chapter of the last book, Revelation. We studied it. We discussed it. We filled up whole books with notes, and when our notebooks were full, Souri went out to get more, and we filled those up too. And as we did, I have to say, I was amazed by the life and teachings of Jesus. I fell in love with the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Have you ever read it?”
“No, I haven’t,” David admitted. None of this was clearing up his questions. He wondered how much more of this, no matter how interesting it was, he would need to listen to before he got the information he’d come for.
The old man leaned back in his chair, tilted his head against the faded cushion, and smiled. A look of restful delight crossed his face. He pressed his hands together at his chest and recited in a steady, melodic voice, “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’
“In all my life, I had never read more powerful words. I knew they were not the words of men. They were the words of God. And then we began to study Jesus’ warnings.”
“Warnings?” David asked.
“Throughout the New Testament, Jesus warned again and again of false teachers and false messiahs who would come to deceive the world after His death and resurrection. ‘Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves,’ Jesus warned His disciples in Matthew chapter 7. ‘You will know them by their fruits,’ He said. ‘Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.’
“I thought long and hard about such verses and many others like them. And I thought about the fruit of Muhammad’s life, about the violence. Muhammad lived by the sword and taught others to, while Jesus taught the exact opposite.”
Birjandi then asked David to go to the bookshelf to his left and pull out the first and second books on the right-hand side of the top shelf; behind them he would find a copy of the Injil-the New Testament-in Farsi. David did as he was told and found it immediately.
“Turn to the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 24,” Birjandi said. “Matthew is the first book in the Injil, so it won’t be difficult to find.”
David did so.
“Okay, let’s begin in verse 3,” Birjandi said, beginning to recite the Scriptures aloud from memory as David followed along silently in the text. “‘As He’-Jesus-‘was sitting on the Mount of Olives’-that’s near Jerusalem-‘the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”’ You see, Jesus’ disciples wanted to understand when their Lord was coming back to earth to set up His kingdom and reign upon the earth. They wanted one sign, just one, that would indicate when His return was close at hand. But Jesus didn’t give them just one sign. He gave them many. Earthquakes. Famines. Natural disasters. Wars. Rumors of wars. Apostasy. Persecution of the believers. The spread of the Christian gospel message all over the world. All that will happen in the last days, Jesus warned, just before He returns.”
“That’s all happening right now,” David said.
“That’s true,” Birjandi said. “But look at the first sign Jesus warned His disciples about, beginning in verse 4. ‘And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will mislead many.”’”
David read the verse for himself. Birjandi was right.
“Now look at verse 11,” Birjandi said. “What does it say?”
“‘Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many,’” David read, curious at why Jesus was repeating Himself.
“Did Jesus say false messiahs and false prophets might arise in the last days?” Birjandi asked.
“No,” David said. “He said they will arise.”
“Did He say they might mislead many?” Birjandi pressed.
“No, He said they will mislead many.”
“Okay, now read verses 23 through 27.”
David turned the page and continued reading. “‘Then if anyone says to you, “Behold, here is the Messiah,” or “There He is,” do not believe him. For false messiahs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, “Behold, He is in the wilderness,” do not go out, or, “Behold, He is in the inner rooms,” do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.’
“That’s the third time in the same chapter that Jesus is warning about false prophets and false messiahs,” David observed.
“That’s right,” Birjandi said. “And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my life’s work was built on lies.”
“So let me get this straight,” David said. “You’re not a Muslim anymore?”
“No, I’m not.”
“What are you, then?”
“I am a follower of Jesus.”
“You don’t believe that Muhammad is a prophet?”
“No.”
“You don’t believe the Twelfth Imam is the messiah?”
“No.”
“How long ago did this happen?” David asked, dumbfounded.
“About eighteen months ago.”
“Did you tell your wife?”
“I was going to,” Birjandi said.
“What happened?”
“When we learned she had cancer, I started praying for her eyes to be opened to the truth about Jesus. I didn’t pray five times a day for her. I prayed twenty-five times a day for her. And one day, as she slept, she dreamed of Jesus. He said, ‘Souri, do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.’ And in her dream, Souri said to Him, ‘Lord, I don’t know where You are going, so how can I know the way?’ And Jesus said to her, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’
“Then she woke up, and right there and then, Souri realized that what she had been taught all her life, even by me, was wrong. She wasn’t angry with Islam. She wasn’t angry with me. She just knew in that moment that Jesus was the One True God, and she renounced Islam and became a follower of Jesus.”
“How did you find out?” David asked.
“She told me right away,” Birjandi said.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t scared?”
“She was scared,” Birjandi said. “But she told me that she loved me too much not to tell me the truth.”
“You must have been very happy,” David said.
“Actually,” Birjandi said, “I felt ashamed.”
“Why?”
“Because up to that moment, I had been too much of a coward to tell my own beloved wife that Jesus had saved me. When she told me her story, I broke down and cried, asking her to forgive me for not saying anything sooner. I could have lost her. She could have died and gone to hell, and it would have been my fault for not telling her the good news of Christ’s love. But you know what?”
“What?” David asked.
“Souri forgave me immediately,” Birjandi said. “It has taken me a long time to forgive myself, but my Souri forgave me immediately. That’s the kind of woman she was.”
There was another long pause while David tried to absorb all of this and make sense of it. “So to be clear, you don’t believe the Twelfth Imam is real?” he finally asked.
“Oh no; he’s real, all right. He’s just not from God. He’s from Satan.”
“But you believe he exists?” David asked.
“Of course,” Birjandi said. “He’s here now. He was right here in Hamadan. Haven’t you heard the news?”
“I’ve heard the rumors, but I-”
“They’re not rumors, son. He’s really here, and he’s doing miracles to attract attention and a following. But as Jesus said-and you read it yourself just now-they are signs and wonders designed to deceive people, not to save people. Which brings us to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” Birjandi said. “You see, a week ago, the Lord told me you would be coming to see me.”
“A week ago?”
“Yes. He told me all about you, and he instructed me to tell you things I’m not supposed to tell anyone. Things about Iran’s nuclear weapons.”
David could hardly breathe. He had come to Birjandi expecting to be taught about Shia eschatology and the Twelfth Imam. Instead he had gotten a crazy story about Jesus. And now the old man was about to tell him about Iran’s nuclear program? None of it seemed possible. Yet Birjandi continued to speak.
“Hosseini and Darazi built nine nuclear warheads. One was just tested. That’s what caused the earthquake. There are eight left. And they are large bombs. Each one of them could destroy Tel Aviv, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, London, you name it. But Iran doesn’t yet know how to attach them to a long-range delivery system, so they cannot fire ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads on them. Not yet. When they use them, they will have to transport them by ship or truck and detonate them on site or by remote control.”
David was trembling. In his head, he was still a skeptic. But in his heart, he believed it all. “How do you know this?”
“Hosseini told me last week at our monthly lunch together.”
“Why would Hosseini tell you all this?”
“I am his closest personal advisor, an old and trusted friend. He’s excited because he believes what I always taught him. That once we had the ability to wipe out the Jews and Christians, then the Mahdi would come. But he also asked me to pray that Allah would give him wisdom to know how best to proceed. He had not confided this to me before last week, guarding his secrets carefully, as usual.”
“Do you know where these warheads are?” David asked.
“They were all in Hamadan last week, but now they have been dispersed around the country,” Birjandi said. “The last chance to take them all out at once would have been to hit Saddaji’s research center in Hamadan. But no one did. The Israelis took out Saddaji, but that was the wrong move. They needed to hit the research center. Now it’s too late.”
“Do you have proof of all this?” David asked.
“I’m not sure it matters,” Birjandi said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we are in the last days,” the old man said with a sigh. “The arrival of the Twelfth Imam means that an apocalyptic war between Iran, the U.S., and Israel is imminent. I honestly don’t know why God has brought you here, but His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.”
“I want this nuclear program stopped,” David answered. “These men are madmen, and I believe they are hell-bent on killing millions.”
“I don’t know if it can be stopped,” Birjandi said. “You certainly can’t stop all of the wars and devastation and death. They are foretold. The same is true of the rise of false messiahs and false prophets and false teachers. It is written they will come. Now they are here. Such things are determined by God, and nothing can thwart or change His will.”
“But does the Bible say these deceivers win?” David pressed. Clearly Birjandi chose the Bible for his motivation, just as Hosseini and Iran’s leaders chose the Qur’an. He would have to appeal to this internal compass of the old man, no matter how crazy it seemed.
“No,” Birjandi said. “They do great damage, but ultimately they don’t win.”
“Then maybe God will use mere mortals like you and me to stop them,” David said.
“I don’t know that. But I hope so.”
David wasn’t sure what to think about Birjandi’s story of converting to Christianity. Maybe the man was crazy. He clearly hadn’t told this story to the leaders of this country during their monthly meetings. If they were sharing state secrets with him, they must believe he was still loyal to Islam. Birjandi was wise to keep his experiences to himself and try to live out the last few of his years in peace.
David didn’t think the man was trying to trick him. Maybe Birjandi would be a key, game-changing source for him, but he’d have to tread carefully. “I need to verify the things you’ve told me. Is there a trail I can follow, a person who might also want this nuclear program stopped, maybe someone on the inside?”
Birjandi paused. “Before you worry about the world, son, you should be sure your own soul is secure in God. He knit you together in your mother’s womb. He loves you. But you must choose without delay. The forces of evil are gathering, rising, and believe me, David, you will never be able to stand against the tempest unless you have been forgiven, washed by the blood of Christ, filled with His Holy Spirit, and suited up in His full and mighty armor.”
That wasn’t what David wanted to hear. “I appreciate that very much, Dr. Birjandi,” he replied. “But I’m not worried about myself.”
“You should be.”
“What about the souls of the innocent? What about the millions of people who will die if the Twelfth Imam orders Iran to detonate nuclear weapons in my country or in Israel?”
“You need to think of yourself first.”
“That’s selfish.”
“No, that’s wisdom,” Birjandi said. “You don’t know what you’re going up against. Satan is not to be taken lightly. That’s who is giving power to the Twelfth Imam-Lucifer himself. You can’t possibly thwart him on your own.”
“I’m not on my own,” David said. “I am an agent of the United States of America. We are the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the face of the planet-in the history of mankind. If anyone can stop the Twelfth Imam-if there is anyone who can stop Iran-it’s the United States. We have this country surrounded. We’ve got forces in Iraq and the Gulf states. We’re in Afghanistan. We’re in Turkey. We’ve got submarines and aircraft carriers parked off your coastlines. We’ve got Predator drones and spy satellites hovering overhead. But we need proof. We need specific targets. And we need them now.”
Several minutes went by. Birjandi said nothing. David looked at his watch.
“Najjar Malik,” Birjandi finally said.
“Who is that?”
“He lives in Hamadan. He’s the son-in-law of Saddaji and the next in line to lead the nuclear program. I’m told that he and his young family have disappeared since Saddaji’s murder and that there are many people looking for him.”
“Would he talk to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where can I find him?”
“I don’t know that either. But let me be clear, David-you’d better find him before the Mahdi does.”
En Route to Tehran, Iran
Every Muslim was commanded to make hajj.
As David had thoroughly studied during his college years in Munich, hajj was the fifth of the five pillars to which every follower of Islam must submit.
The first pillar was saying the shahada, the basic profession of faith in Allah and Muhammad as his prophet. The second was performing salat, praying five times a day at the prescribed times. The third was zakat, the giving of alms to the poor. The fourth was sawm, fasting from food, drink, and sexual relations during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan and at other times in the Islamic calendar. But it was the hajj that was the most difficult and thus the most honored act of the five.
David had never done it, but every year, despite enormous poverty and deprivation throughout the Islamic world, more than 1.5 million foreign Muslims joined roughly an equal number of Saudi Muslims to make their pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. Considered a holy city, Mecca was the epicenter of Islam, the city where Muhammad was born in AD 570, the city where he claimed he first began receiving revelations from Allah, a city whose people tried to resist and crush Islam in its infancy after Muhammad moved his base camp to nearby Medina, and the city that was ultimately conquered by Muhammad and his army of ten thousand mujahideen in AD 630.
After the conquest, Muhammad declared that no infidel could ever enter Mecca, but every year Muslims entered in wave after wave, fully doubling the normal population of the city that once had little, if any, historical significance. Some came by train. Some came by bus or automobile. Others trekked across the desert. When the hotels filled up, they camped out in the thousands upon thousands of white tents erected by the Saudi government. When the tents filled up, they slept on floors or out under the stars. Most saved their entire lives for one opportunity to pray at the Kaaba, the black, granite, cube-shaped building that stood in the heart of Al-Masjid Al-Haram, the Sacred Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque.
But every Muslim knew the hajj took place in the fall. This was late February, and no one had ever seen anything like this.
The Islamic world had been electrified by the announcement that the Twelfth Imam had returned and would soon appear publicly. With rumors spreading of the great signs and wonders he was doing, Muslims were converging on Mecca in a way that threatened to overwhelm all of the normal systems.
It was still the middle of the night, but David decided to use his rental car and drive rather than fly from Hamadan back to Tehran. Rather than get cut off from the flow of news and information in airports and on a plane, he wanted to be able to listen to the continuing coverage from Mecca on the radio. He also wanted to be able to transport the Farsi Bible that Dr. Birjandi had given him without some security guard at the airport finding it in his luggage and making a big deal of it.
One report that caught his attention on the way came from the official Saudi news agency. Every seat on every flight coming into the kingdom in the next seventy-two hours was full. A spokesman for Saudi Arabian Airlines said they were doing everything they possibly could to add charter flights, but he pleaded for patience and understanding.
So far, David noticed, the palace in Riyadh had not put out any official statement, either positive or negative, commenting on the Twelfth Imam’s coming to Mecca. But he interpreted the efforts of the Saudi government to move so quickly to truck in hundreds of thousands of tons of food, millions of gallons of water, and tens of thousands of additional tents as a sign of the Sunni kingdom’s acceptance, however reluctant, that the Shia leader’s imminent journey to Mecca was a fait accompli.
The question was, why?
It didn’t make sense that Saudi Arabia’s Sunni leaders were countenancing this visit by the Twelfth Imam to their country at all, much less enabling it. Why was the king essentially rolling out the red carpet for a religious figure in whom he did not believe, a political leader who could in a single sermon steal his kingdom right out from under the House of Saud? Was someone forcing their hand? Were they being blackmailed?
Tehran, Iran
“What do you mean you can’t find him?”
Defense Minister Faridzadeh had been up all night, and he was apoplectic. It had been hours since he had ordered his staff to track down Najjar Malik. Since issuing the orders, Faridzadeh had been locked away in his office, consumed with poring over the final results of the nuclear warhead test. It had never dawned on him that his aides were so inept as to be unable to find the man who was now the most important figure in the Iranian nuclear program.
“We don’t even know if he is alive,” Faridzadeh’s chief of staff explained, standing in the center of his boss’s spacious corner office in the Ministry of Defense.
“Why not?”
“Hamadan is still chaos, sir. There’s not enough food or water. The roads are a disaster. The phone system is only now coming back online. Tens of thousands are dead. Over a hundred thousand have been wounded, and many of those getting medical treatment don’t have identification with them.”
“Has anyone personally gone to Dr. Malik’s apartment and knocked on the door?”
“We tried, but the apartment was completely destroyed by the earthquake.”
“No survivors?”
“None, sir.”
“So he could be at the bottom of all that rubble?”
“It’s possible, sir.”
“What about the staff at Facility 278? Have any of them heard from Dr. Malik?”
“He was at the plant the night of Dr. Saddaji’s funeral, but no one we’ve talked to has seen or heard from him since.”
Faridzadeh stared at his chief of staff and delivered his ultimatum. “You’ve got six hours to find him and bring him to me. Don’t ask for a minute more.”
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zalinsky checked his caller ID and tensed.
“Zalinsky,” he said, picking up the phone on the third ring.
“Jack, it’s Tom Murray. I’m calling from Langley.”
“Hey, Tom.”
“We’ve got a problem,” the deputy director for operations said.
“What’s that?”
“I received a very uncomfortable call from the director.”
“What about?”
“Apparently President Jackson just got off the phone with Prime Minister Naphtali. Naphtali won’t say whether the Israelis took out Mohammed Saddaji or not. But he did say Israeli intelligence is detecting significant radiation emanating from a mountain west of Hamadan. What do you know about this?”
“Nothing concrete, sir,” Zalinsky answered, not exactly lying but not quite telling the whole truth either.
“You have a man in Hamadan right now, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Does he have indications that the Iranians may have just conducted a nuclear test there?”
“He’s hearing rumors, sir, but nothing solid.”
“Rumors?”
“Speculation,” Zalinsky said. “Hearsay. But there’s nothing to back it up.”
“The Israelis are requesting a Constant Phoenix pass over the city,” Murray said. “The president was blindsided by the request. He’s furious that no one gave him a heads-up that there was even a possibility that the earthquake could have been triggered by a nuclear weapons test. Not us, not DIA, not the Pentagon.”
“We’re working on it, sir,” Zalinsky assured the DDO.
“It’s not enough,” Murray fumed. “You need to do better, Jack. The president is ordering Constant Phoenix to head to Iran, but we won’t have data for another twenty-four hours. You need to get me something more, and fast.”
“We’re on it, sir.”
But Murray wasn’t finished. “What’s all this commotion about the coming of the Twelfth Imam?” he demanded to know. “Naphtali said the arrival of the Twelfth Imam could mean the Iranians are close to launching a strike against Israel. The Saudi ambassador was just at the White House and told the president the Iranians say the Twelfth Imam is going to give a major address in Mecca, and the king is afraid the Iranians are planning to overthrow his regime by flooding the country with Shias from Iran. Quite frankly, until today, neither the president nor I had even heard of the Twelfth Imam except as some vague Muslim concept.”
“My people are working on all that, too, sir,” Zalinsky said. “But we need more time.”
At that, Murray lost it. “We don’t have more time. You’re supposed to keep me ahead of the game. I needed something yesterday. I gave you all the money you requested-black box, no congressional oversight-and what have you given me in return? Nothing, Jack. Nothing I can use.”
Murray was right, and it made Zalinsky ill. He was failing his boss and his country at a critical moment, something that had never happened in his life. He tried to stay calm. All he had new on the Twelfth Imam was Zephyr’s memo. He cringed at the thought of sending that up the chain of command but wasn’t sure what else to do.
“I’ll get you something soon,” Zalinsky promised.
“You’ve got six hours,” Murray said. “I want a backgrounder on the Twelfth Imam and hard new intel on what’s happening in Hamadan on my desk. And I want an update every six hours after that. You need to squeeze your people, Jack. All of them. The director said he’s never seen the president so livid. He’s afraid the Israelis are going to launch any minute. You have got to get ahead of this, or there will be hell to pay.”
Zalinsky called Eva into his office.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, startled by his ashen face.
“Tell me we have something new-anything-on the Iranian weapons program and the Twelfth Imam,” he demanded.
“We do, Jack,” Eva said. “I was about to bring all this in, but you were on the phone.”
“What do you have?”
“The data is starting to come in from the international monitoring sites near Iran.”
“And?”
“It looks like Zephyr was right. The seismic activity around Hamadan is consistent with a nuclear weapons test, not a natural earthquake-unbelievably intense at first but then slowing down rather than building.”
If only I’d had that information an hour earlier. “Anything else?” Zalinsky asked, steeling himself for more “good news.”
“Actually, there is, though I’m not exactly sure what yet,” Eva said, showing Zalinsky the latest transcripts of intercepted calls from the NSA. “Zephyr has delivered the satellite phones, and the phones, in turn, have been delivered to senior Iranian officials. They’ve apparently already been scrubbed for bugs and given the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, because they’re starting to crackle.”
“Are we getting anything on Hamadan?” Zalinsky asked.
“Indirectly,” Eva said. “No one’s talking about a nuclear test, per se. They seem quite cautious about what they say on the phones, even if there aren’t any bugs that they can detect. But there is a firestorm of interest in some guy named Najjar Malik. The Twelfth Imam is asking for him personally, but they can’t seem to find him.”
“This Twelfth Imam is a real person, not a fable or a myth of some kind?”
“They’re talking about him like he’s flesh and blood, boss.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I know.”
“Do you have any background on who the religious scholars say this guy is and what he’s supposed to do when he appears?”
“Actually, I do.”
“Fine-I need you to write a fast backgrounder on all that for the president,” Zalinsky said.
“Sure. By when?”
“I need it in four hours. Murray needs it in six.”
“Done.”
“Good. Now, who is Najjar Malik?”
“We don’t know,” Eva conceded. “We’re running the name through all of our databases and haven’t come up with anything yet. But the search is being directed out of the defense minister’s office. Look at these transcripts.”
Zalinsky scanned the documents she handed him.
“Both mention Malik in context with Saddaji,” Eva noted. “And see, in both he’s referred to as Dr. Malik. My best guess at this point is that he’s a nuclear scientist. He probably worked for Saddaji on the weapons program, very likely as a deputy or at some other senior level. What’s curious is that when you look at all the calls, it becomes clear that they’re looking for Dr. Malik in Hamadan. They’re afraid he might be dead because his apartment was destroyed in the earthquake and no one in the building survived.”
There it was again, Zalinsky thought-the city of Hamadan.
There was no question about it now, he realized. Zephyr was right. There was a secret nuclear facility in Hamadan, and the CIA had totally missed it. What’s more, Zephyr and the Israelis were also right that the earthquake to the west of the city had been triggered by an underground nuclear blast. Which meant Eva had to be right, as well. Dr. Najjar Malik had to be a nuclear scientist, probably a big shot in the program if he worked for Saddaji. Iran’s defense minister wanted to see him urgently. The Twelfth Imam, whoever he was, was asking for him. The evidence was circumstantial, but for Zalinsky, the next step was clear. If Najjar Malik was still alive, he was now a high-priority target. The Agency needed to pull out all the stops to hunt him down and capture him before the Iranians or the Israelis got to him.
Zalinsky looked up from the transcripts. “Get Zephyr on the phone; I need to talk to him-now.”
Tehran, Iran
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Defense Minister Faridzadeh said, exhausted and growing more anxious by the hour.
“We found his secretary,” an aide said.
“Whose?”
“Dr. Saddaji’s.”
“Where’s she been all this time?”
“She’s been going from hospital to hospital and to the morgue, trying to identify Facility 278 employees.”
“Does she know anything about Dr. Malik?”
“Yes, she knows he’s alive, sir. She spoke to Mrs. Saddaji by phone. She says they went as a family to Tehran to mourn in solitude.”
“Fine,” the minister said. “Get him here so he can see Imam al-Mahdi.”
“Well, that’s just it, sir. She doesn’t know exactly where he is.”
“What?”
“She only knows he’s somewhere here in the capital.”
“Can’t she call him?”
“She has, sir, numerous times. But he’s not picking up. Like I said, he’s in mourning with his family. He probably turned his phone off.”
The defense minister cursed and slammed his fist on the desk. “I don’t care,” he shouted. “Just find him!”
David was entering the outskirts of Tehran when his phone rang.
He glanced at the caller ID and recognized the number as one used by Eva Fischer in Dubai.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Reza, it’s me,” she said. “The boss needs you to call him.”
“I’m kind of busy at the moment, Eva. Can it wait?”
“I’m afraid it can’t,” Eva said. “It’s about the expense reports for your team. They’re racking up quite a bill over there already.”
David sighed. “Expense reports” was Eva’s code. Whenever she mentioned them on an unencrypted call, he knew he was supposed to call Zalinsky immediately on a secure line.
“No problem; I’ll call him as soon as I get back to the hotel,” he said for the benefit of Iranian intelligence, sure to be taping this like all other international calls.
“I’ll let him know.”
“Thanks,” David said. “How’s business?”
“It’s picking up,” she said cryptically. “We’re going to have a good quarter so long as you and the boys there don’t spend us into oblivion.”
“We’ll try to be more careful.”
“I know you will,” Eva said. “Now get some sleep. Bye.”
David hung up the phone and checked his rearview mirror as he turned off the Saidi Highway and headed north through the city’s western neighborhoods. He hadn’t seen anyone following him at any point during the trip from Dr. Birjandi’s, but now that he was back in Tehran, he took special care. He joined the hundreds of cars that clogged Azadi Square, circling the iconic Azadi Tower, also called Freedom Tower, built in 1971 to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire. David took the exit onto Meraj Avenue, past the National Cartographic Center and the Iranian Meteorological Organization, before taking a left on Forudgah, just beyond the airport grounds. Satisfied that he was alone, he pulled into a quiet little neighborhood of single-family homes and parked on Hasanpur Street. There he pulled out his phone again, switched to the encrypted system, and dialed Zalinsky’s private line from memory.
This must be big, he thought. He was taking a risk making this call from inside the capital. It was impossible for Iran’s intelligence services to hear what he was about to say or what was being said to him. But if they were watching him closely, he was bound to trigger suspicion.
Zalinsky picked up on the first ring. “Have you ever heard of a Dr. Najjar Malik?” he asked immediately.
And hello to you, too, Jack. “Why do you ask?” David said, startled by the request.
“I’ve just decided he’s the highest-value target in the country at the moment,” Zalinsky said. He explained the intercepted calls and the enormous and growing urgency inside the Defense Ministry and the Twelfth Imam’s inner circle to find Malik. “We know he’s a wanted man, but we know almost nothing about him.”
“I do,” David said. “He may be the key in helping us unlock the entire Iranian nuclear weapons program.”
“Talk to me,” Zalinsky insisted.
“Malik was born February 1, 1979,” David said, drawing on the profile Birjandi had sketched out for him just hours before. “He’s Persian but was raised in Samarra, Iraq. Speaks Arabic, Farsi, and English fluently. Did his doctoral work in nuclear physics at the University of Baghdad. Dr. Saddaji recruited him to come to Iran soon after 9/11, though I’m not sure exactly when. Malik married Saddaji’s daughter and became Saddaji’s right-hand man. They worked out of a place called Facility 278, which I’m told is the headquarters for the nuclear weapons development team. Saddaji oversaw Iran’s entire civilian nuclear power program. But that was his cover. Most of the day-to-day work on the civilian side was run by Malik. Saddaji himself focused primarily on building weapons. But he used very few Iranians. Most of his team is comprised of Pakistanis whom Saddaji hired from A. Q. Khan. Apparently, Saddaji also recruited a senior Iraqi nuclear scientist. Bottom line: Najjar Malik wasn’t just on the inside; he was family. As far as I can tell, he knows everything about the program, and he knows where the bodies are buried. I’m guessing that’s why the Twelfth Imam wants to meet with him so badly. They need someone new to run the weapons program now that Saddaji is dead.”
“Who’s your source?”
David explained who Alireza Birjandi was, his relationship with the leaders of the regime, and the time they had just spent together.
“You’re saying this Birjandi is a senior advisor to the Supreme Leader?” Zalinsky asked.
“He’s not on the payroll, but from all that I have gathered, few people are closer to Hosseini or Darazi. You should ask Eva for more. She’s the one who first told me about him and has been working up a profile on the guy.”
“And you believe him?” Zalinsky pressed.
“I do.”
“Even the conversion story?”
“It’s strange, I know, but I think he honestly believes it.”
“Why?”
“Why else would he tell me? I mean, it’s a capital offense here to convert to Christianity. Especially if you’re a spiritual advisor to the Supreme Leader. Why tell a complete stranger? It’s a statement against interest.”
“Why is he talking to you?”
It was a good question, one David had been contemplating since the moment he left the man’s house. “Birjandi strikes me as a classic dissident,” he told Zalinsky. “No one knows more about Islam than him, but Islam has failed him. The regime has failed him. And now he’s rejected both. What’s more, he’s deeply worried the leadership is going to bring ruin upon his country.”
“How?”
“By trying to bring about the end of the world. And Birjandi believes they now have the means to do it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Birjandi says the regime now has eight nuclear warheads ready to go.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“How does he know?”
“Hosseini told him.”
“When?”
“The last time they met for lunch, about a week ago.”
Zalinsky was silent for so long that David finally asked if he was still on the line.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” Zalinsky replied.
“Why aren’t you asking me if I have any proof?”
“Do you?”
“No,” David said, “but it’s strange you’re not asking.”
“I’m not asking because I already believe you.”
“Why?”
“The president ordered the Constant Phoenix pass over Iran.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
“And we got the seismic report. You were right. There was a nuclear explosion in a mountain range just west of Hamadan. That’s what triggered the earthquake. So that’s it. Iran has the Bomb. The Israelis are about to launch a preemptive strike. And we’re out of time.”
David was silent for a few moments. The magnitude of what was unfolding was almost more than he could bear.
“Does this Birjandi guy know where those warheads are at the moment?” Zalinsky asked. “They can’t possibly still be in Hamadan?”
“No, you’re right,” David said. “He says they’ve been scattered all over the country. But he says our best shot is finding Najjar Malik before the Iranians do.”
“Malik knows?”
“We’ll see, but he’s our best shot.”
“So how do we find him?”
“At the moment, I have no idea,” David admitted. “Do you?”
“No,” Zalinsky said. “But I’m going to put a special ops force on standby. If you can find him, we need him alive. Get him to a private airstrip; use any means necessary. We’ll get him out. I promise.”
“Any means?” David asked, just to be clear.
Zalinsky wasn’t taking any chances. “Any means necessary,” he repeated, and the line went dead.
Najjar was worried as he entered the tiny motel room.
He put down the bag of groceries he was holding, then quickly locked the door behind him and pulled the drapes shut. He kept telling himself he was supposed to be “strong and courageous,” but the truth was that fear was getting the better of him. If the Israelis could get to Dr. Saddaji, they could certainly get to him. The Americans couldn’t be far behind. And how soon until Iranian intelligence began suspecting he was on the run? Maybe they knew already.
Four days had gone by since they’d arrived in Tehran. Najjar had been crisscrossing the city looking for a Bible for him to read with his wife and mother-in-law. Everywhere he went, he heard footsteps behind him. He feared someone was waiting for him around every corner. At any moment, he imagined a car would come screeching to a halt, and men with guns and masks would jump out, seizing him and putting a bullet through his skull or forcing him into the trunk to be taken somewhere and beheaded. He’d seen it happen to others. He had no doubt they could do it to him. Every time he came back to the motel room, he feared Sheyda and Farah and the baby would either be dead on the floor with their killers waiting for him or bound and waiting to be killed in front of his eyes.
Najjar was haunted by the sober, bitter truth that he was a target, and thus so was his family. And the two women he loved were still haunted by the sudden and horrific death of Dr. Saddaji, a man they practically regarded as a saint. At some point, Najjar would have to tell them the truth, but he couldn’t do so now. Sheyda and Farah were grieving. It was natural. He didn’t blame them for it. It could hardly be otherwise. But Najjar worried it was only a matter of time before they were going to ask why he wasn’t shedding tears over the loss.
Sheyda still had no idea her father had been the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Farah hadn’t the foggiest notion her husband had been planning a second holocaust while working for a regime that denied the first had ever even happened. Neither of the women had any idea that Dr. Saddaji’s laptop-the one Najjar had stolen out of his home office and now had hidden in the motel closet-contained details about Iranian weapons. Was he actually going to tell them? He couldn’t imagine how.
“Did you find a charger for your phone?” Sheyda asked as Najjar unpacked fresh-baked bread, cheese, pomegranates, and some bottles of water.
“Yes,” he told her, coming over to kiss her on the forehead. “But that’s not all-look.”
He pulled out a copy of the Bible in Farsi, and his wife lit up instantly.
She immediately took the Bible from his hands, kissed it, and examined it with great reverence. After a moment, she looked at Najjar. “Where did you get this?”
He grinned. “You’ll never believe me.”
“Tell us,” Sheyda said, her face filled with joy.
“I was coming back to the motel after visiting five different bookstores. No one admitted to having a Bible, and I was becoming convinced I’d never find one. I was praying and asking Jesus to help me, but I kept getting more and more discouraged. But then I stopped by an electronics shop to pick up a charger for the phone. The owner took one look at me and said, ‘I have what you want.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘I have what you’re looking for.’ I told him I was looking for a cell phone charger, and he said, ‘Yes, yes, but I have your other item as well.’ By now I was totally confused. He left me standing there and disappeared into the back somewhere, and when he returned, he was holding this Bible. I tell you, I almost turned around and ran out of the shop! He told me his family had been followers of Jesus for several years but had never had a Bible of their own until just a few weeks ago, when he received a shipment of electronics supplies for the store. Hidden in the bottom of the box were two Bibles. He took one home and had been praying about what to do with the other one, when just before I came into the store, he felt the Lord speaking to his heart that the next customer would be looking for a Bible. And a second later, I walked in.”
“Thank You, Jesus!” Sheyda said, tears in her eyes. “I can hardly believe it!”
“I said you wouldn’t,” Najjar said.
“Would you read to us, Mother?” Sheyda asked as the baby began to cry. Sheyda picked her up from the bed to nurse her again.
“Yes, of course,” Farah said. “Let me find those passages Jesus told us to read. Deuteronomy 14 was one of them, right?”
“Actually, it was chapter 13,” Sheyda said.
Najjar was eager to hear the words from the Bible, but he took a moment to plug in his phone, thinking he should check his voice messages. Then he sliced open several pomegranates in their little kitchenette and shared them with Sheyda and Farah. None of them had had much of an appetite for the past few days. But the fruit tasted wonderful and picked up their spirits.
Farah, meanwhile, turned to the table of contents. She had never seen a Bible in her life and had certainly never held one. None of them had. But after a few minutes of fumbling through the pages, Farah found the chapter and began reading.
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.”
Sheyda listened to the words and turned to her husband. “Those verses are speaking to you, don’t you think?”
“They could be,” he replied.
“Of course they are. When the Twelfth Imam appeared to you those times as a boy, he was predicting your future, right?”
Najjar nodded.
“And those predictions came true.”
Najjar nodded again.
“But that doesn’t mean the Twelfth Imam was speaking for God, right?” Sheyda continued. “Just the opposite-the Twelfth Imam was trying to take you away from the Bible, away from the One True God. But Jesus was merciful to you. He appeared to you to counter the Twelfth Imam, and now He’s explaining to you that He was testing you back then.”
“But I failed the test,” Najjar said. “I followed Islam all those years. I believed in the Twelfth Imam all those years.”
“But you don’t now, my love,” Sheyda said, comforting him. “Now you know the Twelfth Imam is a false prophet, because God has opened your eyes. And I think He is calling you for something very important.”
“What’s that?”
“I think you’re supposed to help people understand what’s true and what isn’t so they have the chance to be set free as well.”
Najjar wasn’t sure about that. He hoped she was right. But at the moment he was so filled with regret for the life he had lived for so many years-so many wasted, lost years-that it was hard to think of anything else.
Farah suggested they read the next passage listed in their notebook. She handed the Bible to Najjar, who found the book of Exodus and turned to chapter 7.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh does not listen to you, then I will lay My hand on Egypt and bring out My hosts, My people the sons of Israel, from the land of Egypt by great judgments. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.’
“So Moses and Aaron did it; as the Lord commanded them, thus they did. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
“Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, “Work a miracle,” then you shall say to Aaron, “Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.”’
“So Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, and thus they did just as the Lord had commanded; and Aaron threw his staff down before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent.
“Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.”
“It’s a pattern,” Sheyda said softly when Najjar had finished reading.
“What do you mean?” Najjar asked.
“Sometimes false prophets and ungodly rulers can do signs and wonders. Sometimes they can do tricks that look like miracles of God, but they are really tapping the power of the devil. But we should not fear because God is greater, and in due time, He will swallow the enemy and thwart the enemy’s plans.”
“That makes sense,” Farah said. “But do you think the Lord is saying the Twelfth Imam is like Pharaoh?”
“Maybe so,” Sheyda said, “but let’s keep reading.”
Taking turns reading a chapter at a time, they backed up to chapter 1 of Exodus, read all forty chapters, and discussed them for hours. Was the Lord going to raise up a Moses to lead the Iranian people out of Islam?
It was almost two in the morning when they finally turned out the lights. But as Najjar lay his head on the pillow next to his wife and heard her begin to snore softly almost immediately, he found he could not sleep. His mind swirled with new thoughts and ideas he’d never even heard of before, much less considered seriously.
He was completely captivated by the person of Moses. In Islam, Moses was certainly considered a prophet, but Najjar was enthralled by the richness of the biblical details of Moses’ life and interaction with the One True God. Moses had been chosen by God from birth. He had been taken from his home as an infant but by God’s grace given a great education. His character had been shaped in the halls of power of the mightiest empire of the day, until one day the Lord God called him out. It didn’t make sense at first. God required Moses to give up all that he had, all that was important to him. But God had a plan for the man of God, Najjar realized, and that captured his thoughts.
As the clock kept ticking into the wee hours of the morning, Najjar began wondering what plan God had for him. He loved Sheyda’s new passion and her conviction that perhaps God was calling Najjar, of all people, to speak for Him, to reach Iran with the message of Christ’s love and forgiveness. He was by no means convinced she was right. It seemed too lofty a role. But there was a more immediate question: What were they supposed to do next? They couldn’t stay in a motel on the edge of Tehran for too many more days. They couldn’t go back to Hamadan.
Where, then? Was the Lord going to take Najjar and his family out of Iran, the way He took Moses out of Egypt to prepare him for his future role? He hoped so. He couldn’t imagine staying and living under this bloodthirsty regime and now under a false messiah. But the only thing more difficult to imagine than staying in Iran was getting out alive. Millions of Iranians were heading to Mecca. The traffic jams all around them, so close to the airport, were proof of that, as were the constant reports on radio and television. Maybe they should join them? Maybe they should head to Saudi Arabia under the pretense of going to Mecca, then find a way to slip into Jordan or even Egypt.
Najjar suddenly felt thirsty and got up to get a glass of water in the kitchenette. As he did, he noticed his phone and realized he had forgotten to check his messages earlier. Powering up the phone, he was shocked to see twenty-three voice messages, all from Dr. Saddaji’s secretary.
The first message instantly sent terror into his heart. The defense minister was looking for him? Why would Faridzadeh want to see him immediately? It was a trap, Najjar thought. What else could it be? Yet what could he do? Each message proved progressively more ominous than the last, but the final voice mail was the most terrifying of all. Najjar was supposed to have reported to the defense minister’s office several days before. From there, he was to have been taken to a private meeting at the palace with the Twelfth Imam. Najjar had been instructed to tell no one about the invitation and bring no one else and nothing but his ID. No briefcase. No camera. No notebook. Nothing. The Mahdi and the minister were looking forward to seeing him, Saddaji’s secretary said, and they were eager to give him some “good news” that they promised would “cheer him and his family.” Najjar had no idea what that meant, nor did he want to find out. He quickly powered down the phone and set it back on the table.
What was he supposed to do? Moses had gone back to Egypt and confronted Pharaoh and his magicians directly, hadn’t he? Then again, hadn’t Jesus specifically said that when a false messiah comes-especially one who performs “great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect”-and someone says to you, “Behold, He is in the inner rooms,” that you should not go?
Najjar was chilled with fear. Sheyda and the baby were asleep. So was Farah. He had no friends he could call. He had no family to whom he could reach out. So he did the only thing he knew. He got down on his knees and begged the Lord for mercy.
David paced his tiny hotel room.
He stared out the window at the traffic beginning to build up and tried not to panic. It was Tuesday, March 1. He’d spent most of the last several days searching for Najjar Malik on the Internet, in Iranian phone directories, through real-estate transaction records, and on Iranian newspaper and magazine databases, all to no avail. He had dozens of analysts back at Langley searching every intelligence database they could and data-mining all other materials toward the same end, but with no results. He had the NSA feverishly translating and transcribing intercepted calls, whose frequency were growing exponentially and beyond the Agency’s capacity to keep up.
None of the transcripts indicated Faridzadeh or his men had found Najjar yet, but they were definitely closing in. According to the tidbits Eva had relayed, the Iranians now knew Najjar was in Tehran. They’d even gotten a momentary ping from his cell phone in the middle of the night somewhere on the west side of the city.
In desperation, David thought about calling Mina and saying he had urgent business at Iran Telecom. Could he persuade her to let him in the building this early in the morning? Even if the answer were yes, could he persuade her to let him break into the company databases and search Malik’s phone records to see whom he had called in the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours? Maybe there was someone in Tehran, someone with an address, someplace David could focus his attention? But he quickly dismissed the notion. Faridzadeh and the chief of VEVAK certainly already had that information, and there would be agents at any of those locations. David’s showing up at any one of them would only raise suspicions he couldn’t afford. And he wasn’t sure Mina would help him anyway. She was no fan of her boss, Esfahani, but she seemed loyal to the company. David believed he could eventually turn her into an asset. But he hadn’t yet, and he concluded she’d be no help now.
He considered calling the head of the MDS tech team in Tehran. Maybe he could help David break into Iran Telecom’s database and at least get Najjar Malik’s cell phone number. Without it, Langley and the NSA couldn’t listen in on Najjar’s calls in real time once he turned his phone back on. But once the man turned his phone on, how much time would he have before VEVAK triangulated his position and swooped in to take him down? Ten minutes? Fifteen, tops? Even if the NSA was listening in, there wouldn’t be enough time to find him before the Iranian authorities did.
David rubbed his eyes and stared in the mirror. He wondered if he should call Dr. Birjandi. The man had been extraordinarily helpful in so many ways. But to talk on an open line was too much of a risk. And what exactly would he ask? The old man didn’t have a crystal ball, though David desperately wished that he did.
He glanced at his watch. It was now almost quarter past six. The call of the muezzin would begin soon, and dawn prayers would start before the sun rose. He still had no desire to pray, certainly not to the god of Islam. But once again, he had no choice. He had to maintain his cover, however worthless it seemed at the moment.
Thousands of men were already on their knees, bowing toward Mecca, by the time David arrived by taxi at the Imam Khomeini Mosque. He paid the driver, ran in, performed his ritual washing, and found a spot in the back. He knelt down, bowed toward Mecca, and picked up the morning prayers in progress.
“Glory to my Lord, the Most High,” David began, chanting in unison with the others. “Glory to my Lord, the Most High. Glory to my Lord, the Most High. Allah is great. All good, whether rendered by speech, by prayer, by deed, or by worship, is for Allah only. Peace be unto you, O Prophet, and the mercy and blessings of Allah. Peace be unto us and the righteous servants of Allah.”
At the next line, however, he froze. He knew what was coming. But he couldn’t say it.
“I bear witness that there is no God except Allah, and Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.”
Everyone else chanted the words, but David did not. He had said them thousands of times. But this time he could not. He continued going through the motions, hoping no one would notice he had stopped speaking.
Someone did.
“What happened?” the man beside him to his right whispered as the room continued chanting.
“What do you mean?” David whispered back.
“You stopped praying,” the man said, bowing in unison with David and the others.
“I didn’t,” David lied, his heart racing. “I just had… to clear my throat.”
David bowed again and finished this particular prayer more loudly than usual, making certain all those around could hear him clearly.
“As you praised and venerated Abraham and the followers of Abraham, in the worlds, surely You are praised and magnified,” he chanted. “Amen. Peace be unto you and the mercy of Allah. Peace be unto you and the mercy of Allah.”
But the stranger on his right would not let it go. As they moved on to a different prayer, he began asking David questions.
“Are you new here? I’ve never seen you here before.”
David grew more concerned. “I’m from Dubai,” he whispered between chants. “Germany, actually, but-”
The man cut him off. “Munich?”
David was silent.
“Is your name Reza?” the man asked.
David was stunned but tried to keep his cool and continued praying. Maybe this was one of Esfahani’s men. He had met Esfahani here before. Or maybe it was one of Rashidi’s men. Maybe Javad Nouri had sent a colleague to summon him, though for what he couldn’t imagine.
“Why do you ask?”
There was a long pause while the two men continued praying in synchronization with the thousands of others in the great mosque.
“Because my name is Najjar Malik,” the stranger said. “As soon as this prayer is over, get up and follow me.”
The baby’s cries woke Sheyda just before dawn.
And the call to prayer from a nearby minaret wasn’t far behind.
Sheyda rubbed her eyes and forced herself to get up, surprised to find that Najjar was not at her side. Assuming he was in the bathroom, she rolled over, picked up the baby, and tried to nurse her. Only then did she see the note Najjar had left on the bedside table saying that he had gone out and would be back soon. Something about that troubled her, but she was not sure what.
Eager to find out if he was okay, Sheyda asked her mother, just waking up as well, if she would get her cell phone out of her pocketbook and bring it to her so she could call Najjar without moving the baby. Farah was still groggy, but she happily got up and found Sheyda’s cell phone and turned it on.
“Not that it’s going to do you any good, dear,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Look,” Farah replied, pointing to the counter by the kitchenette.
Najjar had forgotten to take his cell phone. Sheyda sighed with disappointment, her anxiety growing. She asked her mother to turn it on and check for new messages. There were none, Farah reported as she set the phone back on the counter and went to wash for prayer.
The baby was fussing. She didn’t want to eat, so Sheyda got up and walked her around the room, patting her lightly on the back and swinging her gently in her arms. Farah finished washing and bowed down on the carpet, but not toward Mecca. After much discussion over the past few days, the three of them had decided as a family to pray toward Jerusalem instead, and to do so in the name of Jesus. Farah prayed for a few minutes, but the baby wasn’t calming down. In fact, she seemed to be crying louder.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Sheyda said. “Let me take her for a walk, and I’ll come back when you’re done.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” Farah said. “I’ll go with you. We could all use a little fresh air. She’ll fall asleep, and then we can both come back, put her down for a nap, and pray together.”
David’s head was filling with questions.
But his only hope for answers was about ten paces ahead of him and moving rapidly toward the east gate.
David worked his way quickly through the thick crowd, trying not to lose sight of the man claiming to be Najjar Malik. Was this a setup? How could it not be? How could this really be Najjar Malik? If it was, why would Najjar have come to him? And why here? The mosque was crawling with undercover policemen and intelligence operatives.
An elderly man hobbled into his path, and David almost knocked the poor man over in his bid to keep up with the stranger. For a moment, he lost visual contact. He turned to the right but saw nothing. He turned to the left and noticed the man turning a corner. He made sure the old man was okay, then elbowed his way through the crowd, walking as fast as he could to catch up but not daring to run lest he draw too much attention-which meant any attention at all.
A moment later, David caught up to the stranger, who was getting into a car parked along a side street. The man motioned for David to get in quickly. David looked up one end of the street and down the other. There were plenty of people still pouring out of the mosque and walking through the surrounding neighborhoods, but no one looked particularly worrisome. Besides, even if someone had looked threatening, David was too intrigued not to get in the car and find out who this was.
The instant David closed the door, the stranger hit the accelerator and pulled out onto Panzdah e-Khordad boulevard.
“Who are you really?” David asked.
“My name is Dr. Najjar Malik,” the man said, pulling his Iranian passport from his trouser pocket and handing it over.
David carefully looked over the document. If it was a fake, it was an awfully good one, and he wondered why anyone would go through the trouble. He had never seen Najjar Malik before. He had no idea what the man would look like. Anyone could say they were Najjar and catch his attention. But why would they, and why now?
“What do you want with me?” David asked.
“I want to leave Iran.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” the man continued. “I have information your government wants. I will give it to you in exchange for political asylum.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” David said cautiously. “I’m just a businessman. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No,” the man said, “you’ve been looking for me, and now here I am. I’m offering you my help, but you must also help me.”
“You’re crazy,” David said. “Pull over the car.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a lunatic. I’m a businessman. I sell phones. Now pull over and let me out.”
David didn’t know whom he was dealing with, but if this was some test by Esfahani or Rashidi or someone else, he was determined to pass it. Yet he could see the stranger turning white. The man was perspiring and gripping the steering wheel for dear life. If he was acting, he was good. David wondered for a moment if this could be the real deal, but he quickly banished the thought from his mind. It was impossible. There was no way that-
“I have a laptop,” the stranger blurted out.
“You need to pull over now,” David insisted.
“I have a laptop you will want,” the stranger said again. “It was Dr. Saddaji’s laptop. I am sure you know who he was.”
If this was a trap, David thought, it was becoming irresistible.
“The Israelis killed him,” the man continued. “Or maybe you did. I don’t know. Either way, I don’t regret it. The man was… Anyway, I have his laptop.”
There was a long silence as the man kept driving through increasingly congested city streets. David said nothing. He didn’t dare say anything. What the man was offering was the crime of treason.
“I haven’t had time to review all of the material on his hard drive,” the stranger said, “but some of it I have. Your government needs to see it immediately.”
“I don’t work for the German government,” David said. “I told you, I’m a businessman. I work for Munich Digital Systems. We sell-”
“Mr. Tabrizi, please,” the stranger said. “I’m not interested in talking to the German government. I want this laptop and the information I have to go to the Americans, to your government. I know you work for the Americans, and I know you want what I’m offering. So please, I don’t have time to play these games. I’m risking my life here. I’m risking my family’s life. I was told that you could help me. Can you?”
The man suddenly took a hard right on a Vahdat e-Islami Street, and then another right into Shahr Park, a quiet, wooded oasis in the middle of Tehran’s concrete jungle. When he found a parking space with no one else around, he stopped the car but kept it running.
“Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Tabrizi,” the stranger continued, obviously trying to keep his emotions in check. “I have studied the reports on my father-in-law’s computer. Iran now has eight nuclear warheads in its possession. By the end of March, they will have fourteen. By the end of April, they will have twenty. The weapons work. Our scientists don’t yet know how to deliver them via a missile, but that’s not going to stop this regime from using them soon. Ayatollah Hosseini ordered my father-in-law, Dr. Saddaji, to write a detailed plan for how one of these warheads could be shipped to Egypt, smuggled across the Sinai desert, into Gaza through the Hamas tunnels, and then into Israel to be detonated in Tel Aviv. I have the memo. It’s on the laptop, along with dozens of e-mails to and from Hosseini’s top aides-mainly General Jazini-refining the plan and improving it significantly. But that’s not all, Mr. Tabrizi.”
David finally bit. “What else do you have?”
“I have dozens of e-mails between Jazini and my father-in-law discussing the technical challenges of transporting several of these warheads first to Venezuela, then to Cuba and Mexico, and finally into the United States. Like I said, I haven’t had time to review everything that’s on the laptop, but I can tell you there are detailed discussions on how to ship the warheads safely, how to evade international detection, how to maintain operational control over the trigger mechanisms, and so forth. I’m willing to turn it all over to your government. But my family and I want asylum and protection.”
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Eva burst into Zalinsky’s office.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re getting all kinds of chatter on the satphones. The Iranians just found Najjar Malik. They’re sending agents to pick him up as we speak.”
Tehran, Iran
They sat in the park with the car still running.
“Why are you telling me all this?” David asked.
He was increasingly convinced he was really speaking to the actual son-in-law of Dr. Mohammed Saddaji. But to be sure he wasn’t being set up, he needed to better understand the man’s motive.
“I don’t want innocent people to die,” Najjar explained.
“All of a sudden you have a conscience?” David countered. “You’ve been working with your father-in-law on building nuclear weapons for years.”
“No, that’s not true,” Najjar said. “He hired me to help him develop civilian nuclear power plants, not to build the Bomb.”
“That’s easy for you to say now.”
“It’s the truth,” Najjar insisted. “I never even suspected what my father-in-law was up to until recently. But even then I had no proof.”
David was still skeptical. “What changed?”
“Everything has changed,” Najjar replied. “Dr. Saddaji was killed by a car bomb. I read what was on his laptop. Then there was the earthquake, which you must know was not a natural event. It was triggered by a nuclear test. There are scores of e-mails in which my father-in-law was scheduling the test and assigning tasks for the final details. It’s all on the laptop.”
David listened carefully. It was all adding up. Everything Najjar was saying was consistent with the evidence he and his team had collected so far, but far more detailed and far more dangerous. If it was all true, it certainly explained why the Iranian regime was working so hard to hunt this man down.
“Why me?” David asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Of all people, why did you come to me? And how did you know who I am or what I look like?”
David could see the hesitation in the man’s eyes.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Then no deal,” David said.
“What do you mean?”
“You heard me. I’m not making you a deal unless you explain how you found me and why.”
“What does it matter?”
David ignored the question. “How could you have even known I would be at the mosque this morning?” he demanded. “I wasn’t even sure I was going to come until just before the prayer service began.”
It was clear Najjar didn’t want to answer his question, but David wasn’t going to give up. He had to call this in to Zalinsky, but not unless he was sure, and at that moment, he still had doubts.
“We should go,” Najjar said, glancing at his watch. “We’re not safe here anymore.”
But David pulled out his phone. “I can help you, Najjar,” he said calmly. “One phone call, and I can get you and your family out of this country forever. I can get you set up in America with a new life, safe from your enemies here. But first you need to answer all of my questions.”
“I’m telling you what I know. I’ll tell you more. But not here.”
“Najjar, you came to me,” David reminded him. “You obviously believe I will help you, and I will. But I need to know-who sent you to me?”
“Please, Mr. Tabrizi,” Najjar implored. “My family is not safe. I must get back to them.”
“We will pay you. More money than you’ve ever seen.”
“I’m not doing this for money! I’m doing this for my family.”
“Then just tell me. Who sent you? It’s a simple question. Give me a name.”
“It’s not that simple,” Najjar said.
“The name, Najjar; just give me the name.”
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zalinsky’s phone rang.
It was Tom Murray from the CIA’s Global Operations Center.
“Talk to me, Jack. What have you got?”
“It’s not good,” Zalinsky said. “Best we can tell, the Iranians have tracked down Najjar Malik. They’ve dispatched about a dozen police and intelligence units to pick him up. They should be there any moment.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I’m working on it, sir.”
“What about your man in Tehran?” Murray asked.
“He’s been working on this nonstop,” Zalinsky explained. “But at this point, I don’t think there’s anything more he can do.”
“Call him,” Murray ordered. “We can’t let this guy slip away. The Israelis are on edge. They’re 100 percent sure now the Hamadan earthquake was triggered by a nuclear test, and the president is afraid Naphtali is going to launch a preemptive strike. If the Iranians get Malik…”
Murray didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t have to. Zalinsky promised to get back to Murray in a few minutes, then hung up and speed-dialed Eva.
“Get me Zephyr.”
Tehran, Iran
David wasn’t sure how to respond.
He’d asked for a name, and Najjar had given him a name. It just wasn’t one he could possibly have expected. In any other country, at any other time, the whole notion would have been ludicrous. But with all that had been happening in recent weeks…
“Let me make sure I have this straight,” David said. “You were a Twelver. But you’ve converted to Christianity because you saw a vision of Jesus. And now you’re saying that Jesus told you to come here and meet me? That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
“Not that strange. It happened in the New Testament all the time,” Najjar said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Jesus told people things were going to happen, and they happened.”
“Really.”
“Jesus sent people to certain places and they went. Jesus told Ananias to go to Straight Street in Damascus and heal a blind man named Saul of Tarsus at the house of Judas, and Ananias did it. He didn’t know Saul. He’d never seen Saul. The Lord just led him, and he obeyed.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that Jesus sent you to me?” David asked.
“Believe it or don’t believe it; I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”
He certainly was, and David realized he had entered an entirely different dimension. He had come to Iran to engage in a clandestine geopolitical war but had come face-to-face with something else entirely. There was a spiritual battle going on for this country unlike anything he had ever heard of or imagined, and he wasn’t prepared for any of it. People were talking about visions of the Twelfth Imam and visions of Jesus as if such events were commonplace. What’s more, it was becoming clear that the people of Iran were being asked to choose sides between the two.
It occurred to David that he wouldn’t have even known the name Najjar Malik or his importance to the Iranian nuclear program if it hadn’t been for Dr. Birjandi-a brilliant octogenarian former Shia Muslim scholar who sometime in the past few years had secretly renounced Islam and become a follower of Jesus. What’s more, according to Birjandi, more than a million Shia Muslims in Iran had converted to Christianity in the past three decades. Many of them had converted after seeing dreams and visions, he said, and more were converting every day. In a strange sort of way, while Najjar Malik’s story was far outside of anything David had ever experienced, it did have a certain logic to it.
The ultimate proof, perhaps, was in the laptop, and David was eager to see it. Just then, his phone rang. It was not a welcome call. Not at the moment.
“Hey, I really can’t talk right now,” he told Eva. “I’ll call you back.”
“Actually, this can’t wait,” Eva said.
“This really isn’t a good time.”
“Too bad.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“It’s your expense reports, Reza. They’re still not in order. The boss wants to talk to you about them before he heads into a budget meeting.”
“Fine,” he said. “Tell him I’ll call in a few minutes.”
He hung up the phone and turned to watch a jogger running through the park. He followed the man for a moment and scanned the woods to see if there was anyone else around. For now, they were still alone. But Najjar was right; they couldn’t stay much longer. They had to keep moving or be questioned by the next patrol car that came through the park. But there was something he had to do first.
“Where is the laptop now?” David asked.
“In the trunk,” Najjar said.
“Can I see it?”
“Do we have a deal?”
“If you have what you say you have, then yes, we have a deal.”
They got out of the car, and Najjar opened the trunk. Sure enough, there, wrapped in a motel blanket, were a Sony VAIO laptop, an external hard drive, and a plastic bag filled with DVDs. Najjar powered up the laptop and briefly showed David some of the files and e-mails he’d been describing.
Thunderstruck by what was in front of him, David told Najjar to gather it all and bring it up to the front passenger seat.
“I’m going to drive,” he said. “You’re going to read to me.”
“Where are we going?” Najjar asked.
“Where’s your family?”
“In a motel near the airport.”
“We need to get them, and fast.”
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
For Eva’s taste, information wasn’t flowing fast enough.
It was taking too long for the NSA to transcribe and interpret the intercepted calls and get them to her and Zalinsky. So Eva called her NSA counterpart and insisted she and Jack be able to listen in to any of the intercepted calls in real time, only to be told that such a request couldn’t be made by someone at her level but had to come from at least the CIA’s deputy director for operations.
Furious, Eva slammed down the phone and drafted a memo to Tom Murray to that effect. She e-mailed it to Zalinsky for his approval, then walked over to his office to follow up, wondering as she walked how exactly they were supposed to fight and win the war on terror with such insane bureaucratic constraints. She knocked on the door and popped her head in as Zalinsky was picking up the phone.
“Code in,” he said.
“Is that Zephyr?” she whispered.
Zalinsky motioned for her to come in quickly and shut the door behind her. But rather than answer the question, he put the call on speakerphone. Zalinsky confirmed Zephyr’s passcode, then cut to the chase.
“We’ve got a problem,” he told David. “The Iranians have Malik.”
“No, sir; I’ve got him!”
“What do you mean you’ve got him?”
“He’s with me right now.”
“That’s impossible,” Zalinsky said. “VEVAK forces just stormed Malik’s motel room near the airport.”
“No, sir,” David said. “I’m telling you, he’s sitting right beside me. We’re driving to the motel now.”
Zalinsky paused. “Son, can he hear what I’m saying?” he asked quietly.
“No, sir.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” David confirmed.
“Then listen to me very carefully,” Zalinsky said, getting to his feet. “You’ve got the wrong guy. The VEVAK team tracked Najjar Malik’s cell phone to a motel near the airport. They raided the place a few minutes ago.”
There was a pause. “Hold on.”
Eva could hear David asking the person sitting next to him if he had his cell phone with him.
“No,” they heard the man reply, “I left it at the motel.”
“Sir,” David said, “we may have a problem.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Zalinsky said.
“No, I’ve got Dr. Najjar Malik, all right. I’ve got his passport. I’ve got his father-in-law’s laptop. I’ve got Saddaji’s external hard drive. I’ve got Saddaji’s memos, his e-mails. I’ve even got his backup discs. It’s real, sir. It’s all that we’ve been looking for. But Dr. Malik left his cell phone at the motel. Iranian intelligence must have triangulated the signal and tracked it down. If they just stormed his motel room, then we have another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“They now hold his wife, his daughter, and his mother-in-law.”
Ayatollah Hosseini picked up the phone.
He found the Twelfth Imam on the other end of the line.
“Do you have Malik yet?” the Mahdi demanded to know.
“No, my Lord,” Hosseini said. “Not yet.”
“I thought you had him at a motel.”
“We thought we did, too, my Lord. His cell phone was there, but he was not. We think…” Hosseini hesitated.
“What?”
“I hesitate to say because we’re still-”
“It’s okay, Hamid,” the Mahdi said calmly. “Just tell me what you know.”
“My people think he has defected, my Lord.”
“What makes you say this?”
“General Jazini says Dr. Saddaji’s laptop is missing from his apartment. We know that Dr. Malik went to Dr. Saddaji’s office the other night, ostensibly to get his personal effects. But the general thinks Malik might really have gone there to gather evidence of the nuclear program. He may now have what he needs.”
“To do what?”
“We don’t know, my Lord. We would just be guessing at this point.”
“Then guess.”
“Worst-case scenario?” Hosseini asked. “He could be trying to sell it to the Americans or perhaps the Israelis. We may have to accelerate our attack plans before either can launch a preemptive strike. But for the moment, there is a more urgent matter. We must stop Dr. Malik from getting out of the country.”
“What do you recommend?”
“For starters, we need to close the airports, the bus stations, the train stations. We’ll also set up police checkpoints on all the major highways leading in and out of Tehran.”
“No, that’s a mistake,” the Mahdi said, catching Hosseini off guard. “All that would stop the flow of Iranian pilgrims heading to Mecca to see me revealed to the world. And it would create a negative news story right at the moment when I am receiving excellent worldwide coverage about my imminent arrival. No, you must keep all this quiet. Don’t let the media catch wind of the manhunt or report it in any way.”
Startled, Hosseini said nothing for a moment.
But then the Twelfth Imam said one more thing. “Make no mistake: I want you to find Najjar Malik. I want you to find him, and I want you to bring him to me that I may separate the head of this infidel from his neck and rip his heart out of his body.”
Najjar Malik was rattled.
“Mr. Tabrizi, those monsters have my family. We have to find them,” he insisted.
“We‘re doing everything we can,” David promised as he drove. “We’re putting our best people at the CIA on it right now.”
“I can’t leave without them. You understand that, right? I’m not leaving this country without my family.”
Najjar didn’t seem to be panicking, but there was no question in David’s mind that his new asset had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“I understand,” David assured him, “but for the moment we need to focus. We need to get you someplace safe. You’re no good to your family if you get captured or killed. Do you understand me?”
Najjar nodded and grew quiet.
“You guys are on Azadi Road, heading west, correct?” Eva said.
David was startled to hear her voice. For a moment, he had forgotten that he still had Fischer and Zalinsky on the line and that they were following him via the GPS tracker in his phone.
“Affirmative,” David said. “We just passed the metro station and should be at Azadi Square in a few minutes.”
“How’s traffic?” Zalinsky asked.
“Not good, and getting worse,” David said. “We’re on an eight-lane boulevard. I’m doing ten to twenty kilometers an hour at the moment, but half a klick ahead it’s all brake lights.”
“We need a plan to get you guys out of there,” Eva said.
David already had one. “Once I clear through this mess, I’m heading for Safe House Six,” he said, referring to a basement apartment the CIA owned on the outskirts of the city of Karaj, about twenty kilometers west of Tehran, in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains. “We should be there in about an hour.”
“That’s good,” Zalinsky said. “What then?”
“If the regime shuts down all the airports, we’ll hunker down at the safe house, upload all the contents of the laptop to you, and wait until things quiet down a bit. But let’s assume for a moment that they keep the airports open.”
“Why would they do that?” Eva asked.
“They might not want to stop all these Iranians from being able to get to Mecca to see the Twelfth Imam. That’s a huge deal for this regime.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Eva said.
“Maybe,” David conceded. “But if by some chance I’m not, I say we use this mass pilgrimage to our advantage.”
“How?” Zalinsky asked.
“Send a private plane to Karaj under the guise of a charter flight,” David said. “Report the flight as a group of wealthy pilgrims heading to Mecca to see Imam al-Mahdi. With any luck, we’ll get lost in the exodus. They can’t possibly keep tabs on everybody. State-run radio says they’re expecting another half-million Iranians to leave for Saudi Arabia in the next twenty-four hours.”
“I don’t have a private plane to send,” Zalinsky said. “I have a CIA special ops team on standby in Bahrain to extract you guys out of a site in the desert.”
“No, I don’t want to take Dr. Malik into the desert; it’s too risky,” David said. “We need to hire a plane out of Dubai and try to get it to Karaj by tonight before they think twice and really do shut down the airports. It’s our best shot, Jack. It may be our only shot.”
Suddenly David wondered if they’d even make it to Karaj.
As they inched toward Azadi Square in the stop-and-go traffic, they saw the flashing lights of police cars ahead of them. More seemed to be coming from every direction, and despite the roar of jumbo jets and cargo planes landing at Mehrabad International Airport, the two men could hear the sirens approaching.
“We’re only a few blocks from the motel,” Najjar said. “Look, over there, to the left-it’s just a few blocks.”
“That explains it,” David said.
“What do you mean?”
“All the police.”
“That’s just because of the traffic, all the people trying to go to Mecca, right?”
“No,” David said, “they’re setting up a roadblock.”
Najjar stiffened. “Then we need to get off this road.”
David agreed. They did need to get off the main thoroughfare and avoid the roadblock. The problem was that every side street from here to the square was clogged with hundreds of other drivers trying to find their way around the logjam as well.
“Is this your car?” David asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you own it? Is it registered in your name?”
“Yes, yes, it’s mine.”
“We’re going to have to get rid of it.”
“Why? What for?”
“The moment a police officer runs these license plates, it’s going to come up with your name. We don’t want to be in the car when that happens.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Hold on,” David replied.
Then, without any more warning, David pulled the steering wheel hard to the right. He darted across two lanes of traffic, triggering a wave of angry drivers honking their horns before he got off Azadi onto a street called Nurshahr and began to head north. Unfortunately, it, too, was practically a parking lot. It wasn’t totally stopped. They were moving, but progress was slow, and David was getting edgy.
He needed to get Najjar out of Tehran. He was too exposed. They both were. At any moment, David knew, the Iranian police would in all likelihood be issuing an all-points bulletin. Every police station in the city was about to be faxed a wanted poster with Najjar’s face and details, which would be bad enough. But David had other concerns to worry about as well. Under no circumstances could he allow himself to get caught or implicated in Najjar’s extraction from the country. To do either would blow his cover and compromise all the work he’d done. The Twelfth Imam’s inner circle would stop using their new satellite phones. The MDS technical teams would be thrown out of the country. The CIA’s multimillion-dollar effort to penetrate the Iranian regime’s command and control would be ruined. And given that Iran already had the Bomb and a war now seemed both inevitable and imminent, the CIA needed every advantage it could possibly get.
Suddenly they heard a siren behind them. David cursed as he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the flashing lights about ten cars back. He guessed that a police cruiser had spotted his rapid and reckless exit from Azadi Road and gotten suspicious.
Najjar, cooler than David would have expected under the circumstances, bowed his head and began to pray. David admired the man’s courage. He was trying to do the right thing for himself, his family, and his country. But already he was paying an enormous price. David couldn’t imagine the grief he and his family were suffering. His wife had almost certainly been captured by his enemies, as had her mother and their baby daughter. Who knew where they were right now? Who knew what kinds of torture they were now being subjected to? Yet Najjar’s initial anxiety seemed to be fading, and the worse things got, the more calm the man became.
The siren and flashing lights were getting closer. David knew what he had to do. He turned the wheel, jumped the curb, pulled Najjar’s car off the congested street and onto the sidewalk, and hit the accelerator. Najjar’s eyes popped open as he was thrust back against his seat. Pedestrians started screaming and diving out of the way as David plowed through trash cans and mowed over fire hydrants. Every driver on the street was cursing at him. Every horn was honking, but the police cruiser was left in the dust, and David let himself smile. He hadn’t had such fun in a car since training at the Farm.
The escape, however, was momentary. By the time David reached Qalani Street and took a hard left, another police cruiser was waiting for him and began pursuit.
David wove in and out of traffic, blowing through one light after another. The traffic on Qalani was not nearly as bad as the other streets they’d been on, but David was steadily losing ground. Najjar was not praying anymore. He was craning his neck to see what was happening behind them and urging David simultaneously to go faster and be more careful.
One block passed. Two. Three. The police car was hot on their tail and gaining. But the road ahead was coming to an end. They were coming up to a T. David suggested Najjar grab the door handle and brace for impact.
“Why?” Najjar asked at the last moment. “What are you going to do?”
David didn’t answer the question. It was clear he wasn’t going to be able to successfully turn right or left without rolling the car. Instead, he slammed on the brakes and turned the steering wheel hard to the right, sending the car screeching and spinning across four lanes of traffic.
They were hit twice. The first was by the police cruiser itself since it was too close behind them and the officer hadn’t expected David to slam on the brakes. The second was by a southbound delivery truck that never saw them coming. The air bags inside Najjar’s car exploded upon impact, saving their lives but filling the car with smoke and fumes. But theirs was not the only collision. In less than six seconds, David had triggered a seventeen-car pileup on Azizi Boulevard, shutting down traffic in all directions. Up and down the boulevard David and Najjar could hear the clash of twisted, tangled metal and smell burning rubber and burning engines.
David quickly unfastened his seat belt. “You okay?” he asked.
“Are we still alive?”
“Yeah,” David said, checking his new friend for any signs of serious injuries. “We made it.”
“Are you insane?”
“We needed a diversion.”
“That was a diversion?”
“It was,” David said. “Now listen, are you okay?”
“My arms are burning.”
“That’s from the air bags. You’ll live. Any broken bones?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Check yourself. Check the computer, and stay here. I’ll be right back.”
David couldn’t get out the driver’s-side door. It had been too badly mangled from the force of being hit by the delivery truck. So he climbed into the backseat, which was littered with shards of broken glass, and kicked out the back passenger-side door. His hands were covered with blood, he felt blood on his face, and his arms were badly burned by the air bags as well. Other than that, he was fine. He jumped out of the car and surveyed the scene. It was a terrible mess in both directions, but he saw what he needed-the police cruiser-and made his way to it as quickly as he could.
The car was a smoldering pile of wreckage. Gasoline was leaking everywhere. David feared a single spark could blow the whole thing sky-high. Inside, the solitary officer was unconscious. He couldn’t have had any time to react to David’s slamming on the brakes, and that had been the point. David had needed the element of surprise, and he’d gotten just that.
Using all his strength, David pried the driver’s door open and checked the man’s pulse. Fortunately, he was still alive, but he had an ugly gash on his forehead, his face was covered in blood, and David realized to his regret that no air bag had deployed. But he saw what he needed and pocketed the officer’s.38-caliber service revolver and portable radio. Then he pulled the officer from the wreckage, carried him a good distance from the glass and gasoline, and laid him on the sidewalk.
David hobbled back to Najjar’s car, suddenly realizing his right knee had gotten banged up worse than he’d first realized. He looked down and noticed his pants were ripped and that blood was oozing out of the knee. But he had no time to worry about it. They needed to get out of there before the place was swarming with more police.
“You ready to move?” David asked, coming over to the passenger side.
“I think so,” Najjar said, his arms filled with the laptop and accessories.
“Is that everything?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Najjar asked.
“You’ll see.”
They walked north about a hundred meters before David turned, pulled out the.38, aimed at the gas tank of Najjar’s crumpled Fiat, and pulled the trigger. The car erupted in a massive ball of fire that not only obliterated the vehicle but all traces of their fingerprints and DNA as well. The force of the blast threw Najjar onto his back. David, still standing, gave him a hand and helped him back to his feet.
“What was that for?” a stunned Najjar asked, shielding his eyes from the intense heat of the flames.
David smiled. “Insurance.”
David walked north down the center of Azizi Boulevard.
With Najjar close behind, he limped his way past wrecked cars and distraught motorists fixated on all the fire and smoke. He clipped the police radio to his belt, put in the earphone, and made sure it was plugged into the radio so the transmissions couldn’t be overheard by anyone else.
His phone vibrated. It was a text message from Eva, telling him to call Zalinsky in the secure mode. He did so right away and coded in, but it was Eva who actually picked up.
“What in the world just happened down there?” she asked, her voice betraying her distress.
“We had a little accident.”
“A little accident? Have you gone insane? The entire Global Operations Center-and everyone in our safe house-is watching you via a Keyhole satellite. What are you doing?”
The chatter on the police radio suddenly intensified. Reports of the accident and explosion were coming in from concerned citizens and drivers on their cell phones. Police units, ambulances, and fire trucks were being dispatched. David knew they had only a few minutes before the first units arrived on the scene.
“I can’t really talk now,” he said. “I need to boost a car that’s still running. Do you need something, or are you just interfering in my operation?”
“I found you a plane,” she said, not taking the bait. “It’ll be in Karaj tonight. And we’ve got more intercepts about the motel. I thought Dr. Malik would want to know.”
“And?”
“There was no one there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m saying, when the Iranians stormed the room, no one was in there,” Eva said. “Just Dr. Malik’s phone, some clothes, and a few overnight bags.”
“Where’s his family?”
“That’s the thing,” Eva said. “We have no idea.”
David turned to tell Najjar the good news, but just then shots rang out, shattering a windshield beside them. Instinctively David hit the ground and pulled Najjar down with him between a Peugeot and a Chevy, dropping his phone as he did so. People started screaming and running for cover. He could hear Eva yelling, “What is that? What’s going on?” but he had no time to respond. He grabbed the phone and jammed it into his pocket. Ordering Najjar to stay on the ground, he pulled the revolver and tried to get an angle on whoever was shooting at them. Was it one officer or two? Did they know who he was? Had they ID’d him and Najjar? He couldn’t take that chance.
Two more shots rang out, blowing out the front windshield of the Peugeot. David again flattened himself to the ground and covered his head to protect himself from the flying glass. His knee was killing him as bits of glass ground into the already-injured joint. But there was nothing he could do about it now. As he opened his eyes again, he could see under the cars that someone was moving toward him. He got up into a crouch and took a peek. Another shot whizzed by him and ripped into the door of the Chevy.
Dead ahead, maybe ten yards away, was a garbage truck. David double-checked to make sure Najjar was okay, then made a break for the rear of the truck. With his wounded knee, he was slower than usual. His movement also drew more fire. But it also gave him a chance to see who was doing the shooting. The blue jacket and cap were the giveaway. This was a Tehran city police officer and he didn’t look much older than himself, David thought.
Then the officer’s voice crackled over the radio.
“Base, this is Unit 116. I’m at the crash site. One officer is down. I repeat, one officer is down with multiple injuries. Witnesses say they saw someone steal the officer’s service revolver. I’m currently pursuing two suspects on foot. Shots fired. Requesting immediate backup and helicopter support.”
“Unit 116, this is Base-roger that. Backup en route. Stand by.”
This was not good. David had to defend himself and his asset, which meant he had to move fast. He crept along the side of the garbage truck, hoping to outflank the officer from the right, then stopped when he heard the sounds of crunching glass just a few yards ahead.
David was confused. How could this guy be so close so quickly? It didn’t make sense. A moment before, he’d been at least four cars over. Quickly wiping the sweat from one hand, then the other, David tried to steady his breathing and carefully choose his next move as the footsteps got closer and closer. Should he wait for the officer to come around the corner or seize the initiative and take the first shot?
Moving first was risky. He had seen only one officer, but there could be more. He could hear more sirens rapidly approaching. He couldn’t wait. He was out of time. He took three steps and pivoted around the front of the truck, aimed the.38, and prepared to pull the trigger. But it was not the officer. It was a little girl, no more than six, shivering and scared. David, a millisecond away from firing, was horrified by how close he had come to killing a child.
How did she get here? Where is her mother?
Three more shots suddenly rang out. At least one round ricocheted off the grille of the truck. David dropped to the ground and covered the girl with his body. The pain in his knee was now excruciating, but his first priority had to be the girl. He quickly checked her over to make sure she hadn’t been hit. She hadn’t been, but she was definitely slipping into shock. Her eyes were dilated and she looked vacant. Her skin was clammy and cold. David took off his jacket and wrapped her in it, then got back in a crouch and tried to reacquire the officer in his sights.
But now there were two.
David had a clean shot at one of them, but he didn’t dare fire from right over the child. So he broke right, hobbling as best he could for a blue sedan just ahead. Once again, gunfire erupted all around him, as did the screams of terrified motorists who had no idea what was going on or why. David barely got himself safely behind the sedan. He gritted his teeth and caught his breath, then popped his head up again to assess the situation.
To his shock, one of the officers had decided to ambush him. He was running straight toward David, while the other started running toward Najjar. David didn’t hesitate. He raised the revolver and squeezed off two rounds. One shot hit the officer coming toward him in the stomach. The other hit him in the face. The man collapsed to the ground no more than six yards from David’s position. David quickly pivoted to his left and fired twice more, missing the second officer but sending him sprawling for cover behind the garbage truck.
David could hear a helicopter approaching from the southeast. He had no time to lose. Adrenaline coursing through his system, he made his way to the first officer, grabbed the revolver from his hand, and sprinted toward the second officer. Racing through the maze of cars, he approached the garbage truck, stopped quickly, and glanced around the side. The second officer was waiting for him and got a shot off. David pulled back, waited a beat, then looked again and fired.
The round hit the officer in the shoulder. Screaming in pain, the man spun around but didn’t drop. Instead, he began firing wildly at David, stumbling backward as he did.
David’s first.38 was now out of bullets. Using his shirt, he wiped it clean of his fingerprints and tossed it aside. Then, with the second.38 in hand, he circled back to the other side of the garbage truck. Using the truck as his shield, he made a dash for where he had left Najjar.
But to his shock, Najjar wasn’t there. The second officer was.
The man fired three more times. David could hear the bullets whizzing past his head. He dove left behind the Chevy, then flattened himself against the ground and fired under the car at the officer’s feet. One of the shots was a direct hit. The man fell to the ground but refused to quit. David could hear him radioing for help and giving his superiors David’s physical description. Then, before David realized what was happening, the officer crawled around the front of the Chevy, took aim at David’s chest, and fired again.
David instinctively leaned right, but the shot grazed his left arm. Still, with all the adrenaline in his system, he didn’t feel a thing. Not yet, anyway. Instead, he righted himself, took aim, and squeezed off two more rounds at the officer’s head, killing the man instantly.
David’s mobile phone rang, but he ignored it. Blood was everywhere. More sirens were approaching, as was the helicopter. They had to get out of there. They couldn’t let themselves be caught. But Najjar was nowhere to be found.
Again his phone rang, but still David ignored it. Frantic, he looked for Najjar in, behind, and around car after car. Up and down the block he searched, to no avail. Now his phone vibrated. Furious, he checked the text message. It was from Eva.
EF: 3rd bldg on rt.
David suddenly got it. He glanced at the sky, thankful for Eva and her team watching his back from two hundred miles up. He made his way up the street to the third apartment building on the right, a four-story walk-up that had seen better days. A few bright orange geraniums in ceramic pots gave the place a look of pride and even some cheer, despite its faded glory. Why was Najjar in there? Who had taken him? There wasn’t anyone standing outside the building.
David was out of time. How could he search every apartment before the whole area was flooded with police? But what other choice did he have? He pressed himself close to the dirty windows, thankful that the caked dirt from the city streets obscured any view from inside. His gun drawn, he slowly edged his way toward the entrance, wondering what had happened to the doorman. There was one at every apartment building in this city; they were there supposedly for security but in reality spent their time smoking cigarettes and minding everyone’s business. But there was no doorman here, only an empty chair on the front steps.
David did a quick peek into the lobby, fearing the worst.
Najjar was there, but he was not alone. On the marble floor next to him were the laptop and accessories. And in Najjar’s arms was the six-year-old girl from the street. He was trying to keep her warm and telling her everything would be all right.
David began to breathe again. “Didn’t I tell you not to move?”
“I didn’t want her to get hit,” Najjar said.
David wiped blood from his mouth. “We need to go.”
“There’s a Renault out front, and it’s running,” Najjar said.
“Where’s the owner?”
“She jumped out to help me with the girl. I asked her to find a blanket, and she went upstairs to knock on doors.”
David nodded. “Then we’d better move now, before she gets back.”
It was beautiful-and theirs for the taking.
Not seeing anyone looking their way, David and Najjar bolted across the street and got in the platinum Renault coupe. David did a K-turn and swung the Renault around, and the two men were on their way.
With the exception of emergency vehicles approaching them, the northbound side of Azizi Boulevard was fairly clear. The disaster behind them prevented any vehicles from heading north and had no doubt backed up traffic for many kilometers. David turned west on Salehi, then took a right on the Jenah Highway. Their route to Karaj was going to be a bit circuitous and would take longer than he’d hoped, but at least they were finally on their way as Eva-using live imagery from a KH-12 Keyhole satellite-helped them navigate around police checkpoints, roadblocks, and further traffic.
David felt no sense of relief, however. They were far from safe, and he was under no illusions. His diversion hadn’t worked as intended. He’d hoped to create a wreck that would shake the police car following them, lock up traffic behind him, allow him to steal a car that still worked, and let him slip away with Najjar unnoticed. He hadn’t planned on becoming a cop killer in the process, and the notion haunted him. Everything had spiraled out of control. He’d had no other choice. He’d only fired in self-defense. But his mission was now in jeopardy.
If anyone could give an accurate description of him to the Tehran police…
David couldn’t bear the implications of where that sentence led, and he dreaded his next conversation with Zalinsky, who, of course, had watched it all play out in real time. He needed to focus on something else. So as they left the city limits of Tehran, David turned to his passenger, who was sitting silently, his head down in prayer.
“Najjar, I actually have some good news.”
Najjar looked up.
“I was about to tell you this earlier, but then everything started going crazy.”
“What?”
“My team tells me your family wasn’t in the motel room when the police got there.”
Najjar sat up straight. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. We’ve intercepted phone messages from the local police saying the place was empty when they raided it.”
“Thank God,” Najjar said. “Where are they?”
“We don’t know,” David said. “But I told you my people would do everything they can to find them, and they are.”
“Thank you.” Najjar’s face brightened in an instant. “Thank you so much, Mr. Tabrizi. How can I ever repay you?”
“Your information is more than enough.”
“But you’re risking your life to help me, to protect me. I am very grateful.”
“You’re risking your life, too, Najjar.” David kept driving for a few moments. “But you’re welcome,” he added quietly.
Najjar looked out the window, then suddenly turned back to David. “Could I have your phone?” he said. “I just had an idea. I want to try to call my wife.”
“How?”
“She has a mobile phone.”
“She does? You never said that.”
“We thought she’d been captured,” Najjar said. “There was no point. But now…”
David wasn’t authorized to let a foreign national use his Agency phone. But there was a mobile phone plugged into the cigarette lighter right in front of them. “Here, use this one,” he said.
Najjar punched the number and hit Send, and ten seconds later, he was talking to his wife, telling her how much he loved her, asking where she was, and relaying David’s cryptic instructions on how they should get to Karaj and where they should meet.
David thought he had never seen a man so happy.
Karaj, Iran
At the safe house, David dressed Najjar’s wounds.
Only then did he tend to his own and find some clothes for them to change into that reasonably approximated their sizes.
Najjar ate a little and fell fast asleep. David unlocked a vault stacked with communications gear and uploaded everything on Dr. Saddaji’s laptop, external hard drive, and DVD-ROMs to Langley, with encrypted copies cc’d to Zalinsky and Fischer in Dubai. Then he typed up his report of all that had happened so far and e-mailed that encrypted file to Zalinsky and Fischer as well.
At six the next morning, word came that the plane had arrived. David woke Najjar, loaded the computer equipment into a duffel bag, and took the bag and Najjar to the garage downstairs, where he had parked the Renault. Ten minutes later, they arrived at the edge of the private airfield.
David pointed to the Falcon 200 business jet on the tarmac. “There’s your ride,” he said.
“You’re kidding me,” Najjar said.
“Have you ever flown on a private jet?” David asked.
“No, never.”
“Well, it’s about time. Your family is already onboard. My people are taking care of them as we speak. They’re all waiting for you. You’d better hurry.”
“What about you?” Najjar asked. “You’re coming too, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Why? You can’t stay here.”
“It’s my job, and there’s more to be done,” David said.
“But if they find out you were connected to me, they will kill you.”
“That is why I have to stay.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Najjar, I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you,” David said, smiling. “The things you don’t know about me will have to remain unknown. But believe me, you and your family will be very happy in the U.S.”
Najjar was quiet for a moment. “Sheyda would have liked to have met you,” he said finally.
“I would have liked that too.”
“Someday?” Najjar asked.
“Perhaps.”
Najjar shook David’s hand and held it for a moment, then got out of the car, duffel bag in hand, and ran for the plane.
David watched him go. He wished he could stay and watch the plane take off as the sun rose brilliantly in the east. But he couldn’t afford the risk. He had to dispose of the Renault, steal another car, and get back to Tehran before Esfahani, Rashidi, or his team realized he was missing.
Tehran, Iran
David’s phone rang as he approached the outskirts of Tehran.
It was Esfahani, finally. “It’s been a nightmare here. Have you heard about the manhunt for this traitor Malik?”
“I’ve been glued to the coverage. I just hope they catch him.”
“And the man who was with him,” Esfahani added. “They both deserve to be hanged.”
David winced but played along. “Exactly.”
“It’s despicable what they’ve done. But that is not why I called. Things are moving very rapidly right now, as you can see. The Twelfth Imam’s plane just took off for Riyadh a few minutes ago.”
“I thought he was going to Mecca.”
“He is, but I’m told he’s going to meet with the king first. Then the two of them will go to the holy city tomorrow morning for the Mahdi’s address to the world.”
“I wish I could be there,” David said.
“Me, too,” Esfahani agreed. “But there’s much work to be done. That’s why I’m calling.”
“What do you need?”
“The Mahdi wants an update on the satellite phones. Rashidi said he asked about them just before his flight took off. They want to know how quickly you can get them.”
David hesitated. Again he knew Zalinsky and Eva could have the phones for him in a few days, but he couldn’t let it seem too easy, or it might raise suspicion. “Mr. Esfahani, I’ll do my best,” he said, “but I can’t make any promises. It was hard enough to get twenty, but you’re asking for almost three hundred more.”
“It’s not me who is asking,” Esfahani reminded him.
“I know, I know, and I promise you, I will do my best. But I’m going to need some time. And it’s going to cost a lot of money.”
“Don’t let the cost be your concern, young man. Just get the phones, and I will make sure you get the money, plus a generous bonus for your troubles.”
David knew the CIA wasn’t going to let him keep any money, but he saw an opportunity, and he seized it. “No, I cannot take any more,” he said. “You were too generous before, and I shouldn’t have taken the money then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You earned it.”
“But I don’t want it,” he insisted. “Please, I want this to be a pure act of worship for the Promised One, peace be upon him. Nothing else.”
Esfahani paused, clearly taken aback by David’s declining what would amount to a payoff north of a quarter of a million dollars.
“Allah will reward you, my friend.”
“He already has.”
With that, Esfahani explained that Mina had already booked David on a 6:45 Emirates flight that night to Dubai and then a 7:45 direct flight to Munich the following morning on Lufthansa.
“It was the best she could do on short notice,” Esfahani apologized. “Everything else was booked. But at least we put you in first class.”
“That’s really not necessary. And I could have made my own arrangements.”
“Believe me, I know,” Esfahani said. “But it was Mr. Rashidi’s idea. In fact, he insisted.”
David thanked Esfahani and asked him to thank Rashidi. Then he hung up the phone and found a safe place to ditch the stolen car he was driving. He walked a few blocks to distance himself from the car, then caught a cab back to the Simorgh Hotel to pack. He didn’t seem to be under any suspicion from Esfahani.
Meanwhile, he knew Eva and her team were tracking the satellite phones as well as the police radio traffic in Tehran. They weren’t picking up any indications he was in danger either. If all continued to go as planned, he’d be sitting with Zalinsky and Fischer and briefing them by ten that night.
That was the good news. The bad news was that it was now Wednesday, March 2. It was becoming painfully obvious to David that there was no way he was going to make it back to Syracuse to see Marseille that weekend, much less by the following night. Even if he could physically make it there before the wedding was over, Zalinsky would never let him go. There was too much at stake. He had to be in Germany to get the phones and then head straight back to Tehran. There was no way around it. It was his job. It’s what he had dedicated his life to doing.
But something in him grieved.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The moment he landed in Dubai, David found a pay phone.
It was a depressing thought that he would have to call and let Marseille know he wouldn’t be there. But it would be unforgivable to just stand her up, so he determined to contact her now before it became impossible.
Unfortunately, he got her voice mail. He wanted to talk to her, to hear her voice, to let her know how truly sorry he was. But she was probably teaching, and he didn’t know when he’d get another chance to call. He had no choice. He left a message.
“Marseille? Hey, it’s David. Look, I’ve only got a moment, but I’m calling to apologize. I feel terrible about this, but I’m not going to get back to Syracuse in time to see you. I’m very sorry. I’m in Budapest, working on a deal that’s critical to my company, and let’s just say, it’s not going well. The client’s asking for extensive revisions to the contract. We’ve been over it a million times. But my boss is pressing me to get this thing done. My company desperately needs the business, so, anyway, all that to say, I’m going to have to stay until it’s done. I feel terrible-I really do. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again and catching up with you and just telling you in person how sorry I am for all you’ve been going through. But I’m afraid it’s not going to happen this weekend. I’ve got to go right now, but I promise to call you again the moment I can. I hope you’re well. Bye.”
David hung up the phone, wincing at all the lies he had just told. But at the moment, he honestly had no idea how to do it better. As he got his luggage, he checked his phone for e-mails. The first one he opened was from his father. His mother was going downhill fast.
Twenty minutes later, David stepped out of a cab at the regional office of Munich Digital Systems. The place was dark. All the staff had gone home for the day. But in a back office, Zalinsky and Fischer were waiting for him. Eva welcomed him back with a hug. To his surprise, Zalinsky did as well. They had a long night of debriefing ahead of them, but Zalinsky made it clear they were proud of him and were glad he was once again out of Iran safe and sound.
“Are Najjar and his family okay?” David asked as Eva poured each of them a cup of coffee.
“They’re all fine,” Zalinsky said, glancing at his watch. “In fact, they should be touching down in the U.S. in just a few minutes.”
“Did you get all the files off Saddaji’s laptop?”
“Absolutely,” Eva said, taking her first sip. “It was a gold mine. We’ll go over all that in a few minutes.”
David sighed and slumped in a chair. His eyes felt gritty, and he’d definitely lost some weight.
“You must be exhausted,” Zalinsky said.
“No-well, yeah, but it’s not that,” David said. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Spit it out,” Zalinsky ordered.
“No, it’s nothing; let’s just get started. We’ve got a lot to cover.”
“David, what’s the matter?”
So David took a deep breath and confessed, “It’s my mom.”
“Nasreen?” Zalinsky asked. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“She has cancer. It’s pretty serious. She’s had it for a while.”
Zalinsky and Fischer were quiet. David never talked about his personal life. They’d had no idea. But Zalinsky’s relationship with the Shirazis went back more than thirty years.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “How long have you known?”
“Just a few weeks,” David said. “They decided to tell me when I went back there to visit. But I just got an e-mail from my dad. He says she’s taken a turn for the worse, and they don’t know how long she’ll be able to hang on.”
Eva reached for David’s hand.
“You need to get home,” Zalinsky said.
“Yeah, right.”
“No, you have to, David.”
“Jack, how can I? Look at what’s happening.”
“It’s your mother, David. You only get one. Go. It’s okay.”
Munich, Germany
David landed in Munich around noon on Thursday.
He was booked on a flight to Newark with a connection to Syracuse later that afternoon. But for now he sat in the Lufthansa business lounge, sending e-mails to his father and to Marseille and watching live coverage of the Twelfth Imam’s address in Mecca.
The imagery was overwhelming. Saudi police estimated more than 14 million pilgrims had descended upon a city whose normal population was fewer than 2 million. Commentators were describing the event as the largest gathering of Muslims in history, larger even than the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini, which had drawn nearly 12 million to Tehran in June 1989. To maintain order, a quarter of a million Saudi soldiers and police officers were present, and an estimated five thousand journalists and producers were there to capture the moment and transmit it to the world.
The Saudi king arrived first, cloaked in his standard white robes but with none of the pomp and circumstance that typically accompanied the monarch. To David’s eyes, the man looked ashen. His hands trembled slightly as he read from a prepared text off a single sheet of paper.
The introduction was short and unmemorable. What would be remembered and discussed for quite some time, David was certain, was the image of the king of the House of Saud finishing his remarks, backing away from the microphone, and then bowing down to the point of lying prostrate, together with two dozen other Sunni and Shia emirs, clerics, and mullahs.
Then the Twelfth Imam emerged and took center stage. He was younger than David had expected-he looked to be around forty-and in contrast with the other men on the stage, he wore a black robe and a black turban, denoting that he was a descendant of Muhammad.
The crowd in Mecca erupted with an intensity David had never witnessed in any public event. The roar of the applause and cheering and the unabashed weeping was surprisingly intense, even coming through the TV speakers. He could only imagine what it sounded like in person.
And it went on and on. Sky News cut away after several minutes to a roundtable of three commentators in their London studio discussing the significance of the Mahdi’s reemergence. But even then it was another ten or twelve minutes until the crowd calmed enough for the Mahdi to speak, and when he did, the people seemed transfixed.
“It is time,” the Twelfth Imam said with a strong, booming voice that instantly seemed to command both reverence and respect. “The age of arrogance and corruption and greed is over. A new age of justice and peace and brotherhood has come. It is time for Islam to unite.”
Again the crowd went wild.
“No longer do Muslims have the luxury of petty infighting and division. Sunnis and Shias must come together. It is time to create one Islamic people, one Islamic nation, one Islamic government. It is time to show the world that Islam is ready to rule. We will not be confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups, and nations. Ours is a universal message that will lead the world to the unity and peace the nations have thus far found elusive.”
David pulled a pad and pen out of his briefcase and made notes. The Mahdi was calling for the re-creation of the caliphate, an Islamic empire ruled by one man, stretching from Pakistan in the east to Morocco in the west. It would never happen, but it made good theater.
“Cynics and skeptics abound,” the Mahdi said. “But to them I say, it is time. Time for you to open your eyes and open your ears and open your hearts. It is time for you to see and hear and understand the power of Islam, the glory of Islam. And today, let this process of education begin. I have come to usher in a new kingdom, and today I announce to you that the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States are joining together as one nation. This will form the core of the caliphate. My agents are in peaceful, respectful discussions with all the other governments of the region, and in short order we will be announcing our expansion.”
David was stunned. The Saudis and the emirates both hated and feared the Iranians. But just as he wondered how they could possibly join forces, the Twelfth Imam explained.
“To those who would oppose us, I would simply say this: The caliphate will control half the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, as well as the Gulf and the shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. The caliphate will have the world’s most powerful military, led by the hand of Allah. Furthermore, the caliphate will be covered by a nuclear umbrella that will protect the people from all evil. The Islamic Republic of Iran has successfully conducted a nuclear weapons test. Their weapons are now operational. They have just handed over command and control of these weapons to me. We seek only peace. We wish no harm against any nation. But make no mistake: any attack by any state on any portion of the caliphate will unleash the fury of Allah and trigger a War of Annihilation.”
Syracuse, New York
David needed to walk a little to clear his head.
He had spent Friday and Saturday with his parents in the hospital and had promised his father that he’d be back when visiting hours began at noon. But now, to his amazement, he was actually about to meet Marseille face-to-face. The thought both excited and terrified him at the same time.
Anxious to be on time, he got up early and drove his rental car to the hill where Syracuse University perched, finding the campus largely still asleep on this cold, quiet Sunday morning. He found a parking space on Crouse Avenue right away, got out, and began a brisk stroll through streets whose memories echoed from his past. Marseille would meet him in about forty-five minutes for an 8 a.m. breakfast at the University Sheraton, where she was staying. Then she’d be leaving to meet up with some friends from the wedding party for a 9:30 church service in the eastern suburb of Manlius. Her flight back to the West Coast left at one that afternoon. That gave them about an hour to talk.
It had been a long time since David had been on an American college campus. Marshall Street, the students’ main drag, wasn’t exactly charming, but somehow it had a worn-in feeling that seemed rather comforting to him at this moment. It was a slice of the familiar world he’d left long ago, though it wasn’t really one that belonged to him anymore.
As he stepped over a break in the sidewalk and around a pile of trash-beer bottles and fast-food wrappers apparently left over from the night before-he flashed back to scenes of the delirious chaos in Syracuse whenever S.U.’s basketball team won a key game. He remembered once or twice when the school made it to the Final Four and his brothers took him to eat pizza with them at the Varsity and buy sweatshirts at one of the many shops on M Street. He used to love hanging out there with Azad and Saeed. It made him feel older, cooler, than he was.
As he walked the few short blocks toward the Sheraton, he tried to savor these memories, in part because he didn’t want to think about a world on the edge of war. He wished he could dial back the clock to a time that was simpler and happier. Maybe that’s why he was headed to breakfast with a woman whose memory had such a strong hold on him, a woman with whom he had longed to reconnect since he was only an adolescent.
David still had another fifteen minutes before breakfast, so he stepped into the Starbucks on the corner. The place was quiet but for the Wynton Marsalis jazz music playing in the background. He ordered a triple-shot latte and sat at a table in the corner, thankful it was too early for the place to be filled with students. He found himself wishing he’d brought a book, something to occupy him as he waited. He certainly didn’t want to be early.
Finally it was time. He took a deep breath, crossed the street, entered the lobby of the Sheraton, and was soon sitting by himself at a table in Rachel’s Restaurant with a new cup of coffee. He was starting to worry that he might get a little too jumpy with all this caffeine.
And suddenly, there she was, carrying a red scarf and black wool coat and sporting a turtleneck sweater to ward off the late-winter chill. Wearing faded jeans with a leather backpack thrown over her shoulder, she could have been a graduate student herself. She was even more beautiful than he remembered, especially those large green eyes.
She walked in, spotted him, and gave him a shy smile. He stood to greet her and was grateful when she gave him a quick hug.
“David, it’s really you!”
“Hello, Marseille,” he replied with a warm smile.
In another few minutes they had ordered-eggs Benedict for him, blueberry pancakes for her. She had settled in across from him with her own cup of coffee and was looking suddenly hesitant. He glanced around the warmly lit room, noticed the waitstaff beginning to set up the tables for Sunday brunch, and was glad they were in a quiet corner, away from the preparations.
He spoke first. “It’s really good to see you, Marseille. I was sorry to hear about your father.”
“It’s been a difficult year. But you know, things have been difficult for a long time. How’s your mom doing?”
“She’s a fighter, but I’m not sure how much longer she has. Thanks for sending her flowers, by the way. It meant a lot to her-and my dad, too.”
Neither of them spoke for several moments. Then David said, “It must have been hard on you, losing your dad. What happened?”
She smiled sadly and looked away for a moment before meeting David’s eyes again. “I guess he never really recovered from my mom’s death. You know we moved to Oregon right away. He believed he’d never be able to raise me alone. He wanted me to have at least a grandmother in my life, and he was wise in that. A girl needs a woman’s touch as she goes through life. My grandma helped me through a lot…”
She trailed off, and David remembered reading that her grandmother was suffering from Alzheimer’s and living in a nursing home.
He shifted back to her father. “Did your dad end up teaching out there? He was so brilliant. He’d been a professor at Princeton, right?”
“He was, but no, he never taught in Portland. He tried to write articles for some newspapers and Middle Eastern journals. But he couldn’t ever keep up with the deadlines. He’d spend months researching and then quit after writing half an article. He seemed haunted. He’d tell me he was a cursed man, that everyone was against him somehow. In the last few years, he lived in another world. He’d mutter things in Farsi even, and he’d look at me as though he was wondering who I was.”
“That must have been awful for you.”
“It was sometimes. But on other days, my dad seemed his old self, and we’d go for long walks or bicycle rides. Those were wonderful, but he was unpredictable. Lots of days he’d simply stay in his room. But I didn’t want to talk about my dad right away. I wanted to apologize first and try to explain.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Marseille. It’s been a long time. We were just kids.”
“I know, but we had a real connection; I’ve always believed that.”
She paused and looked at him as if hoping he wouldn’t contradict her. He didn’t, and when she spoke again, she seemed to have a bit more strength in her voice. “I wanted to reach out to you. You have no idea how much I wanted to talk with you and see you again. But my father absolutely forbade it. He was furious with you, David.”
“Why?”
“Because of what happened between you and me in Canada. He would rant against the Iranians-all Iranians-that they’d caused him nothing but heartbreak all his life. What you and I did… we shouldn’t have let ourselves go so far. I don’t blame you, but my father did. He blamed you for ruining my life.”
“Why did you tell him? I mean, I agree, it was wrong. But wouldn’t that be hard for a father to hear?”
Marseille looked down at her hands resting on the table. She seemed to be gathering courage again. “I didn’t tell him about us, David. Not at first. I didn’t have to. After a few months, it became kind of obvious.”
“I was pregnant.”
David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You have a child?”
She shook her head. “The pregnancy was difficult from the beginning. I was so young… Anyway, I lost the baby when I was three months along.”
David was silent.
“I know this must be shocking for you. And I know that saying I’m sorry now for not telling you-for not being in touch at all-can’t make up for it. It’s just that my world fell apart, you know? I was living on the other side of the country with a dad who was spinning out of control. I had lost my mom, and I had lost you, and then I was sick all the time. Then when I lost the baby, too… These are all just excuses, I know. But by then so much time had gone by, I was afraid to reach out to you. I told myself it wasn’t as important as it was.”
David didn’t move as the words poured out from Marseille. He wasn’t sure what to say. He noticed she had tears in her eyes and her face showed a hint of fear. He didn’t want that.
“I’m not upset with you, Marseille. I just… I can’t believe you’ve gone through all this alone. I wish I could have helped you somehow.”
“Thank you. That means a lot. But I don’t expect you to forgive me so easily. It wasn’t right to keep you in the dark. You must have been hurting too, wondering why I wouldn’t respond. But you are very kind.”
Some light seemed to return to her eyes. He was still puzzled by a lot, but at least he could understand now why she had cut off all contact. She had to because her father had lumped him and his family into the growing list of Iranians who had supposedly poisoned his life. But he wondered what Marseille wanted from him now. Just to reconnect? to be forgiven?
The food arrived, but he couldn’t eat, and neither could she.
“Is there any way I can help you now, Marseille? Is there anything you need?”
She was quiet for a while, picking at her food. “When Dad died, it took me a while to go through his things,” she said at last. “His office was a disaster, and I was tempted to just gather it all up and take it to the trash heap. But I knew somehow that I should go through everything slowly and read carefully. There was so much about my parents that I didn’t know. Dad never spoke about my mom after 9/11, and I never even got the chance to tell him what I’d learned from you about their escape from Iran with your parents.”
David noticed she still hadn’t told him how her father had died, though he certainly didn’t blame her.
Marseille reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope, unwrapping the string around it and setting it on the table. “My dad kept journals-did I ever tell you that? He wrote a lot of journals over the years. Even though there were large gaps over time, I learned a lot. My parents were pack rats, and their files went back into the sixties. Look, this is a medical record from their time in Iran. See, it’s issued from the Canadian Embassy. My mom miscarried their first child during the Revolution.”
“I never knew that,” David said.
“The records are incomplete, but I think she was badly injured before they escaped. It doesn’t seem like it was a normal miscarriage. I think that’s why they never wanted to tell me about Iran. It was too painful for them.”
David remembered the quiet, normal home on the Jersey Shore that he had visited so long ago. What a difference it must have seemed to the Harpers from the craziness of Tehran.
“It makes sense now,” she continued. “That’s why they stayed at the Canadian Embassy so long. It wasn’t just to come up with an escape plan. My mom had to heal enough to travel. I wish I could have talked to them about it all. I wish I could hug my mother. I feel like, in some ways, I never really knew them. You know?”
Marseille looked so wistful and seemed so fragile; David wanted to hold her, to protect her. But he had no right to do it. And anyway, he couldn’t go back to those days when life was normal. Things weren’t normal anymore. Not for him. And soon, maybe not for anyone. Right now, here in this place with Marseille, he could almost forget what his task really was. Then she interrupted his thoughts, and he realized he’d been silent for too long.
“David? Are you okay? This is strange, isn’t it? My just showing up and dumping all this information on you. I’m sorry. It’s just that my friend insisted I come here to be in her wedding. It’s so… I don’t know, random that she grew up near Syracuse. I couldn’t imagine coming to your hometown without looking for you. And with my father’s death and everything I’ve been reading in his files… I just… needed to see you.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I’ve thought about you often, even when I didn’t want to. I always wished things had turned out differently between us. But I thought it was all gone. Those few days were so amazing, and then everything just caved in. I went home, back here, back to high school, and you were gone, and the world was a different place. It’s never been the same again.”
“I know,” she answered quietly. Now it was her turn to seem lost in her thoughts, lost in old memories.
David wasn’t sure what else to say or where to go from here. Their food was cold, and it was almost time for her to go. But he didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to find a way to ask her to stay longer in Syracuse. He wanted to pick up where they had left off and pretend everything that had happened in between hadn’t happened at all. He wanted to forget Iran, forget MDS, forget Eva Fischer and Jack Zalinsky, forget Esfahani and the Twelfth Imam and the threat of world war. He wanted to call his mother and tell her he was ready to settle down, stay in central New York, marry Marseille, and give her some grandchildren. She’d be thrilled. Maybe it would give her a new reason to fight for life and survive. Was it all so impossible?
Suddenly Marseille came back from her daydream and interrupted his. “David?”
“Yes?”
“There’s one other thing I wanted to tell you about my father. I guess it’s okay to tell you. I haven’t said anything to anyone about it yet, and somehow it seems like you’re the only one in the world who might care.”
“What is it?” David asked. He was half-listening and half desperately scrambling to come up with a way to run off with her. Would she go with him if he asked?
“I always thought my dad worked for the State Department-you know, a political analyst or whatever. He spoke Farsi, and I thought he translated and analyzed news reports for our government. But I found something in his papers that makes me believe he never worked for the State Department at all. I don’t even think my mom knew. David, he was in the CIA all along. Look at this.”
She moved her chair next to his and showed him a document on CIA stationery. It was a letter of commendation for Charles Harper for valor under fire in Iran. It mentioned the crisis of 1979 and thanked him for his crucial work for the Agency. And it was signed, Tom Murray, Director of the Near East Division.
“Wow, this is really something,” David said.
“It is, isn’t it?” Marseille said. “It’s been so long, and now that he’s gone, I suppose it’s okay for people to know. Nobody back in Oregon ever really knew my dad. There’s no one to share this with. But you knew him. Your family was part of our past-a crucial part-which is why I wanted to tell you. I don’t know if he continued with the CIA when he came to the States. I find myself trying to remember long trips he took when I was growing up. ‘Research trips,’ he called them. I thought they were for his books and lectures at the college. I just wonder what my dad’s life was really like.”
David wondered too, intrigued by this striking new connection between the two of them and feeling terrible that he couldn’t tell her what he was doing and why. But at that moment, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and recognized Zalinsky’s number on the caller ID.
“Sorry; it’s my boss,” he said and took the call. “Hey, it’s me. Can I call you right back? I’m in the middle of something.”
Zalinsky’s voice was somber. “David, you need to get somewhere private and call me in the next five minutes. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely. I will.”
David clicked the phone off and glanced apologetically at Marseille. He hated to lie to her, but he had no choice. “That was my boss; things are not good. I’m afraid I have to go.”
“Seems like a very stressful job.” She smiled. “I think I’ll stick to my first graders.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not always like this. It’s just a particularly urgent moment for us. I can’t believe the timing of all this.” David ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Marseille, I’m going to take a risk here. I want you to know that I’d like nothing more than to sit here with you for hours, take a long walk with you, even fly back to Oregon with you, for that matter. I don’t want to be cut off from you again. I’m not sure how to even put it into the right words. But believe me, I’m going to wrap up this business in Europe and then, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to come to wherever you are. There’s so much more to talk about, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would,” Marseille said, clearly moved by his earnest words. She reached out and touched his hand, and his fingers closed around hers.
“I’ve hardly even asked anything about you,” she said. “I’ve been just talking nonstop, I’m afraid. There are so many questions I have about you and your work and your family.”
He held her hand tightly for a moment, then gave her a slight squeeze and let go. He stood, and she did too. “I have to go.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
He slid some cash under his water glass to pay for the meals, and she thanked him for breakfast.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll need to be over there. It’s going to be a bit all-consuming for a while. But I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. I promise.”
“I look forward to it.”
And then he gave her a long hug and walked away from Marseille Harper, out of the restaurant, through the lobby, and into the crisp morning air.
Zalinsky got right to the point.
“I just got back to Washington. We need you back in the game. The Israelis want to talk, and I want you in that meeting. Plus, Najjar Malik has given us some critical leads that someone needs to follow up on quickly. How is your mother?”
“Jack, my mother is dying right now. I need to sit with her, at least for a few more days, and then there may be a funeral. I owe her that. You said so yourself.”
“Listen, you can probably get back there in a day or two. But right now, you are needed here for some things.”
“What things?”
“I can’t talk about it on the phone. You need to be in Washington by noon tomorrow.”
“Jack, please, don’t make this harder than it is.”
“David, this isn’t a request. It’s an order.”
“From who? Tom Murray?”
“No.”
“The director?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“The president.”