Damascus Countdown (5 page)

The Twelfth Imam had no intention of litigating any of this in front of Hosseini and Darazi. This was not a democracy. Allah forbid! Faridzadeh was not presumed innocent until proven guilty. This was no time to reprimand or demote or arrest the man. He was not, after all, merely incompetent. He was not simply a bumbler or a fool or a failure. He was a traitor to the Islamic people, a betrayer of the Caliphate. He was apostate. He was guilty of treason against Allah, and thus he was worthy only of the eternal fires of damnation.

Realizing this gave the Mahdi a great peace about what Allah required of him. Without warning, he drew a small gun from underneath his robe. Darazi’s eyes went wide. Hosseini immediately recognized the pistol as his own but clearly couldn’t imagine how the Mahdi had gotten hold of it. But neither of them could speak, and Faridzadeh, his forehead still bowed to the floor, had no idea what was coming.

The Mahdi aimed and pulled the trigger. The shot itself, especially in such a confined space, sounded like a cannon being fired. Guards immediately burst into the room, guns drawn, but stopped in their tracks at the grisly sight, as if unsure what to do. On the floor lay the lifeless carcass of Ali Faridzadeh, surrounded by a rapidly growing pool of crimson. In the Mahdi’s hand was a pistol, which he now calmly laid on the table. No one else in the conference room was injured, though everyone in the war room was now on his feet. Sirens were going off. Security was rushing to their location from all directions.

The Mahdi, however, told all of them to go back to work, all but those necessary for removing the body and cleaning up the mess. Without saying a word to the Ayatollah or the president, the Mahdi picked up one of the phones in front of him and asked to be patched through to General Mohsen Jazini, whom he was about to name the new defense minister of the Caliphate. Then he asked to be connected to the personal line of Gamal Mustafa, the president of Syria.

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

Marseille Harper needed a few moments to herself. She needed to catch her breath and pull herself together. She stepped into the powder room in the Shirazi home, just off the kitchen by the door to the garage, to hide herself away from all the people and all the hushed conversations and all the memories this home brought flooding back.

She took several tissues from the flowered box on the vanity, dabbed away the tears, and closed her eyes. All she could see was David. She missed him so much it was like a physical ache. She longed to hear from him, to talk with him, to know at the very least that he was alive and well. It felt so strange to be here in David’s house, with his father and his brothers and friends of their family, but without him around. She’d never been here without him. Why would she have been? Was she wrong to have come this time? Maybe the Shirazis were just being polite. Maybe they were wondering why in the world she was here and why she didn’t leave. The very thought made her wince, and tears once again began to push their way to the surface.

Fighting her mounting doubts, she silently prayed the Lord would give her the grace to finish this trip well and get back to Portland, where she belonged. She didn’t want to be a burden. She wanted to be a blessing somehow to this grieving family she loved so much.

Marseille opened her eyes and took a hard look in the mirror. She wasn’t happy with what she saw. She decided she didn’t like her hair down, so she reached into her small purse, took out a clip, and pulled her hair into a twist. She wished she’d worn a different outfit, like a
warm sweater—this house was freezing, despite all the guests—and black slacks and more comfortable shoes. These pumps she’d chosen instead were killing her feet. She looked at her hands—no rings, short nails, clear nail polish—and realized they were shaking. She turned on the faucet until the water was good and warm but not too hot. Then she put her hands under the running water and closed her eyes again. Something about the warmth soaking into her hands seemed to give her comfort. At least for now. What she really needed was a long, hot bath.

It had been a brutal week. Gentle flurries were falling throughout most of central New York. The forecast was calling for a major lake-effect snowstorm to swoop in by dawn, but in the Shirazi home, the emotional storm had already hit hard, and Marseille Harper knew its devastating effects would be felt for a long time to come.

On Wednesday, David’s mom, Nasreen, had succumbed to the stomach cancer that had appeared without warning just a few months earlier and ravaged her petite body. Her husband was devastated. Her two eldest sons were grieving too, each in his own way, though they had barely spoken to one another, at least not in Marseille’s presence or in her sight. On Friday evening, the family had endured the viewing at a funeral home on Grant Boulevard—though it wasn’t truly a viewing, for Dr. Shirazi didn’t want his wife remembered as gaunt and nearly emaciated and had, therefore, insisted the casket be closed. David’s unexplained absence had been whispered about by some who attended, a fact not lost on Dr. Shirazi and one that to Marseille seemed only to make more painful the wounds he already had to endure. Earlier this morning, at eleven o’clock sharp, they had all gathered again for the memorial service. Marseille had felt certain David’s noticeable absence would be explained by someone, but it wasn’t, adding an unintended but distinctly awkward feel to an already-somber mood, at least for Marseille.

That said, the service itself was well attended and beautiful. Dozens of stunning floral arrangements were on display, adorned with hundreds of yellow roses, Mrs. Shirazi’s favorite. Two professional violinists from the local philharmonic orchestra, apparently longtime friends of the Shirazis, played several pieces during the service, including during a slide show that featured photographs of Nasreen as a swaddled infant
being held by her parents in Tehran; Nasreen standing in front of a mosque as a young girl of about ten wearing a beautiful yellow headscarf; Nasreen and Mohammad beaming on their wedding day; Nasreen holding her firstborn son; Nasreen and Mohammad being sworn in as American citizens at a courthouse in Buffalo, New York; Nasreen standing beside David when he was about ten or twelve years old in his Little League uniform, holding a baseball bat over his shoulder; and so many more.

Most of the pictures Marseille had never seen, of course, but some she had and some had been captured in the season of life when she had first met the Shirazis, when she herself was a young girl, and they brought back very poignant memories. The one that completely caught her off guard actually showed her family and the Shirazi family gathered together for Thanksgiving when she was about ten years old, sitting around the Shirazis’ dining room table. They were all so young. None of the parents had gray hair. Neither of David’s brothers had beards. David was wearing an adorable little suit and tie. Marseille was wearing a robin’s-egg-blue dress with matching blue bows in her pigtails. She was sitting next to David, and just at the moment the photo had been snapped, she was sneaking a glance at him while he was making a silly face. She still remembered that very moment vividly. The photograph itself had hung, framed, on the wall of her father’s den for years. The sight of it instantly made Marseille’s eyes well up with tears and caused a lump to form in her throat. What a sweeter, simpler time that had been, long before the angel of death had descended upon them all—before her mother was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, before her father committed suicide in the woods outside their home, before Mrs. Shirazi lost her battle with cancer, before David joined the CIA and was sent inside Iran.

As she sat in that service, she’d had to grit her teeth so as not to lose her composure. Part of her had wanted to run from the room and hide and sob. Another part of her, however, had wanted to stand up and shout the truth to everyone in the room.
David isn’t here because he is serving his country! He is serving behind enemy lines in Iran. Of course he loved his mother. He loved her dearly. He would have done anything he
possibly could to be in this room, but he’s probably dodging a barrage of bullets or risking his life to stop the Iranians from firing their missiles. How dare you judge him! How dare you spread your gossip and lies when you don’t have the foggiest notion of the truth!

Marseille felt crushed by the pain David must be going through, unable to properly grieve his mother’s death or comfort his father. But she also felt angry at the whisperers in the room who had concluded that Azad and Saeed were heroes and that David was an unworthy son who couldn’t even deign to come home to his own mother’s funeral. But she couldn’t let her emotions get the better of her, she told herself.

No one in the room knew what she knew. In trying to learn the truth about her own father’s work for the Central Intelligence Agency, she had stumbled onto the truth about who David was and what he was doing. But as much as she wanted to tell everyone—or at least tell Dr. Shirazi to ease his pain—it was not her secret to reveal. Indeed, David’s life likely depended precisely on no one else knowing what he was doing, especially his own family, and the last thing she intended to do was put him in any more danger than he already was.

KARAJ, IRAN

The brisk winter air on David’s face was refreshing. The pounding of the cracked pavement under his feet was a good change of pace. But nothing could lift the weight from his shoulders, and though his recent “successes” were now legendary within the Agency, he struggled to see that he had achieved anything of real substance or lasting significance thus far. People were dying. The Mideast was in flames. That wasn’t success. That was failure.

That’s not how Langley saw it, of course. To the suits on the seventh floor of the CIA headquarters, David’s most important accomplishment had been tracking down Dr. Alireza Birjandi and developing him into an effective source. The aging scholar, professor, and bestselling author was also the world’s leading expert on Shia eschatology, widely described in the Iranian media as a spiritual mentor and senior advisor
to several of the top leaders in the Iranian regime, including Ayatollah Hamid Hosseini and President Ahmed Darazi. Birjandi spoke to these leaders by phone on a regular basis. He dined with them. Occasionally they shared the state’s most prized secrets with him. They trusted him. Indeed, the elites in Iran revered Birjandi. Little did they know how intensely Birjandi had come to repudiate their theology and eschatology. Nor did they know Birjandi had a direct pipeline to the Americans. It was from Birjandi that David had learned about Iran’s eight operational warheads and that the regime had already tested one in a previously undisclosed underground facility near the city of Hamadan. And it was Birjandi who had pointed David to Dr. Najjar Malik, the highest-ranking nuclear scientist in the country.

David had not only tracked down Malik but had persuaded him to defect and gotten him safely out of the country. With Malik’s help, David had hunted down Tariq Khan—nephew of A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Tariq, a top Pakistani nuclear scientist in his own right, had been helping the Iranians build the Bomb. At enormous risk to his own life, David had captured Tariq, forced out of him the precise location of all eight of the regime’s operational nuclear warheads, gotten that information back to Langley, and then secreted the scientist out of Iran and off to Gitmo for further interrogation.

But so what? Khan was no longer talking, and David hadn’t had any success in tracking down Jalal Zandi, Khan’s partner in crime and now effectively the highest-ranking nuclear scientist still alive in Iran.

And where was Dr. Birjandi now? Why wasn’t he answering any of David’s calls? And it wasn’t just Birjandi. Over the past several days, David had called every source, every contact, every person he knew in Iran. What did they know? What were they hearing? Where was the Mahdi? Where were Hosseini and Darazi? What were their plans? What were their strategies? David desperately needed answers, but no one was answering.

In the fog of war, so much was hazy and confusing. But at least two things were certain: the rocket and missile strikes against Israel were relentless and devastating, and the Israeli air strikes on Iranian targets kept coming, wave after wave.

Hamas had already fired hundreds of Qassam rockets at Ashkelon, Sderot, and Beersheva, endangering the lives of nearly half a million Israelis living in cities and towns along the southern border with Gaza. They were also firing dozens of longer-range Grad rockets at Ashdod and Tel Aviv.

At the same time, Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon had already fired thousands of Katyusha rockets at Haifa, Karmiel, Kiryat Shmona, and Tiberias, threatening the nearly one million Israelis living along the northern borders with Lebanon and Syria.

For reasons beyond David’s comprehension, the Syrians hadn’t fully joined the war yet. They hadn’t fired rockets or missiles except for those first three. They weren’t engaging their air force or even using their antiaircraft systems, despite long-standing defensive treaties between Damascus and Tehran. They still could join the war at any moment, of course, and David, along with every operative and analyst at Langley, fully expected them to do so. What made that prospect particularly worrisome was Syria’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. But for the moment, the Syrians were lying dormant. It made no sense, but for now it made the most dangerous strategic threat to the Jewish State the Shahab-class missiles coming out of Iran. True, the Iranians had already fired hundreds of them and weren’t believed to have many left. But every time one of them was fired, the question was, what kind of warhead was it carrying—nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional? It was a crapshoot every time, and it was driving deep fear into the hearts of the Israeli people.

The Israelis, for their part, kept launching fighter jets and their own missiles against Iranian targets. As far as David knew, Israel had at least succeeded in taking out Iran’s nukes, but this was still all-out war on both sides, and it wasn’t clear to anyone how it was going to end. There didn’t seem to be any part of Iran that was out of the Israelis’ reach, though the city of Karaj, at least, where this safe house was located, had not yet been hit.

Nevertheless, most other strategic Iranian cities had been, and the near-nonstop bombings and missile strikes were taking an emotional toll on people. Most of the power for Tehran and other major cities had
been knocked out. Nearly every Iranian TV and radio station was off the air. The Internet was down. Key government buildings, especially in the capital, were now flaming heaps of wreckage. The Ministry of Defense was a smoldering crater, as was the Ministry of Intelligence, the headquarters for VEVAK. Every real or suspected significant nuclear facility in Iran had been hit multiple times, and while the Israelis had clearly taken great pains to minimize civilian casualties, there had certainly been collateral damage. Thousands upon thousands of Iranians were dead and dying. David didn’t know the number, but he was sure whatever it was, it was climbing by the hour.