The Twelfth Imam (15 page)

32

It was just after midnight when Zalinsky let them go.

They had spent nearly fourteen hours poring over the briefing book and talking through various aspects of the mission. It was now February 12. They would meet again at a safe house in Dubai on the evening of Monday, February 14, he told them. There he would give them several more days of briefings before sending them in. In the meantime, Zalinsky suggested they get lost for the weekend—the Caribbean, Cancún, Cozumel, someplace that didn’t start with a
C
; he didn’t really care.

“Enjoy yourselves,” he ordered. “Clear your heads. Get some fresh air. It might be your last break for a while.”

Eva immediately started texting someone to make plans. David wondered if she had a boyfriend or a fiancé and surprised himself with the twinge of disappointment he felt. They had, after all, only just met. But he said good-bye and left the building without asking any questions. He didn’t want to seem too forward or too interested so quickly. He would find out in due time where she had gone and with whom, he figured. He and Eva were about to spend a lot of time together. There was no point stumbling at the starting gate.

As he stepped out of the CIA’s main building and headed to the parking garage to pick up his company loaner for the weekend—a Chevy Impala—he stared up at a million diamonds sparkling on the dazzling black canvas above him. He breathed in the brisk, still, cloudless night air and tried to enjoy the beauty and the silence. He was energized by the prospect of the mission ahead of him, but at the same time he suddenly felt alone in the world. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He didn’t have a best friend. He hardly had any friends to hang out with aside from Zalinsky and his Mobilink rent-a-friends in Karachi. He tried to think about the last time he was really happy, and it inevitably brought him back to thoughts of his time with Marseille in Canada. Before 9/11. Before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before joining the CIA. It was so long ago, and the memories were painful. He tried to think of something else.

There was, he realized, nowhere to go except home. He was rarely in the U.S. these days, and he hadn’t really kept in touch with anyone in the States aside from his parents. His brothers had little interest in his overseas life. They would have, of course, if he told them that he worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. That he’d been hunting down the upper echelons of al Qaeda’s leaders to have them assassinated. That he was now on a mission to penetrate the inner circle around Iranian president Ahmed Darazi and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Hamid Hosseini.

But he couldn’t tell them any of that without going to prison. So even with his family, he stuck with his cover—that he was running his own little computer consulting practice in Munich. And Azad and Saeed’s lack of caring did have an upside. It prevented David from having to lie so much to their faces.

His parents, on the other hand, were a different story. They cared a great deal about David’s work and personal life, and their curiosity had made things significantly more complex. For one thing, it produced twinges of guilt every time he told them anything other than the truth. His mother, in particular, constantly peppered him with questions. She wanted him to call more, to write more, to come home for Christmas (though they had never celebrated Christian holidays growing up). His father was almost as persistent, urging him at the minimum to come home for the annual fishing trip to Canada. But there was nothing David wanted less than to go back to that island and relive memories of Marseille.

So he always had a million excuses. Business trips, conferences, new clients, old clients, billing problems—the list went on and on. He hated the secrecy and the deceit and the distance, but he really didn’t see another way. Increasingly, however, he worried that if he didn’t go home soon, his parents would make good on their threats to just fly to Munich one day and “pop in.” Given that David didn’t actually even live in Munich—his apartment, phone, and mailbox there were all simply to maintain his cover story—that would be a disaster.

It was time to go home, he concluded. So he signed out the Impala and headed north.

He drove all night.

He arrived in Syracuse just under seven hours later, pulled into his parents’ driveway—tucked away in a little cul-de-sac off East Genesee Street—and finally turned off the engine. As a light snow fell, he stared at his childhood home. He knew he should go in. He could see lights beginning to come on inside. He could picture his mother padding about in her robe and slippers, making tea and toast for his father and softly singing Persian melodies with the Food Network on in the background.

But David wasn’t ready to go domestic just yet. His body might have come home, but his head was still back at Langley, swimming with numbers.

• 5,000—the number of miles of fiber-optic cable networks in Iran in the year 2000.

• 48,000—the number of miles of fiber-optic cable networks there in 2008.

• 4,000,000—the number of cell phones in Iran in 2004.

• 43,000,000—the number of cell phones there in 2008.

• 54,000,000—the number of cell phones there now.

• 70,000,000—the combined number of Iranians in country and in exile.

• 100,000,000—the number of SMS messages sent daily in Iran.

• 200,000,000—the number of text messages that would be sent daily in Iran in the next twelve to eighteen months.

• $9.2 billion—the revenue produced by the Telecommunication Company of Iran, or Iran Telecom, in 2009.

• $12.4 billion—the projected revenue for Iran Telecom in 2014.

Zalinsky believed such explosive growth in the Iranian telecommunications arena afforded the Agency a unique window of opportunity. The regime in Tehran was investing heavily in modernizing and expanding its civilian communications networks. Simultaneously, they were spending aggressively on a parallel track to create a secure and robust military communications system.

As Iran feverishly tried to become a regional nuclear power—and soon a world power—the Supreme Leader wanted his country to have state-of-the-art voice and data networks for all sectors of society, but especially for the military’s system of command and control. To get there as quickly as possible, the Iranians were reaching out in an unprecedented way to European technology companies, offering them contracts worth billions of dollars to upgrade Iran’s hardware and software and provide them with much-needed technical assistance.

Iran Telecom, Zalinsky had explained, had recently awarded a huge contract to Nokia Siemens Networks, requiring all manner of NSN engineers and other experts to enter Iran, make specific telecommunications upgrades, and train their Iranian counterparts. NSN, in turn, had contracted Munich Digital Systems to build much of the necessary infrastructure. Since the CIA already had agents, including David, embedded within MDS, this had created—virtually overnight—the opportunity to put boots on the ground, to place Farsi-speaking Agency operatives inside Iran Telecom, the mother ship of the modernization effort.

Zalinsky had shown David a story in the
Wall Street Journal
reporting that the Iranian regime was seeking, with NSN’s and MDS’s help, to develop “one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.” This effort went far beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections, enabling authorities not only to block communication but to gather—and sometimes alter—information about individuals.

David recalled another intriguing headline from the business section of the
New York Times
: “Revolutionary Guard Buys Majority Stake in Iran Telecom.” That story, he knew, had eventually made it into the president’s daily intelligence briefing. David’s heart still raced as he recalled the text of the article in his mind’s eye and considered its implications in light of the NSN/MDS deal.

The transaction essentially brought Iran’s telecommunications sector under the elite military force’s control. The article explained that the purchase would allow the Guard in times of crisis to “interrupt mobile phone networks” and “hinder the opposition’s organization.”

The last paragraph of the story intrigued David most. It noted that the IRGC was essentially “free from any state oversight” and was “accountable only to the Supreme Leader, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran.”

If the
Times
story was accurate, then Zalinsky was right. If the CIA could penetrate the inner circle running Iran Telecom, perhaps they really did have a shot at penetrating the inner circle running the Revolutionary Guard. Whether that trail could lead David into the Supreme Leader’s office, getting him hanged or shot in the face, was a question mark at best. But as David watched the snow sticking to his windshield, he imagined the prospect of actually being able to intercept the most private phone calls of Iran’s Supreme Leader and the calls of his closest staff and advisors. What if Langley could actually read the e-mail and text messages of Iran’s highest leaders? What if they could follow messages coming to and from computers and phones inside Iran’s clandestine nuclear facilities? The very notion made him want to get into Iran now. He could hardly wait. They had to move fast, before the Israelis struck.

Suddenly there was a knock on his passenger-side window. It was his father, standing there in the freezing cold in his pajamas, holding the Saturday morning edition of the
Post-Standard
newspaper in his hand and staring at him in disbelief.

“David? Is that you?”

33

Hamadan, Iran

Najjar Malik awoke to the sound of his baby daughter crying.

He groaned, rolled over, and whispered to his wife, “It’s okay, princess. I’ll get her and bring her to you.”

But as he opened his eyes and tried to rub the sleep out of them, Najjar realized that Sheyda was not beside him. He glanced at the alarm clock. It was only 4:39 a.m. He still had nearly an hour before he had to be up for morning prayers. Still, he slipped out of bed and went looking for the love of his life, only to find her nursing their baby daughter.

“You okay?” he asked through a yawn.

“Yes,” Sheyda replied, smiling at him with a warmth and genuineness of which he never tired. “Go back to bed. You need your rest.”

Najjar smiled back. He could have ten more children with her, he decided, even if they were all girls.

Suddenly there was heavy knocking on the door of their high-rise flat.

“Who could that be at this hour?” an annoyed Najjar said.

To his astonishment, two Revolutionary Guard soldiers brandishing machine guns were standing in the hallway.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a whisper, trying not to wake the entire floor.

“The director says you must come immediately,” said the larger of the two, apparently a colonel.

“Dr. Saddaji sent you?” Najjar asked. “Why didn’t he just call?” The man was, after all, not just the director of Iran’s atomic energy agency but his father-in-law.

“I don’t know,” the colonel said. “He just said it was urgent.”

“Fine, I’ll be there in an hour.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The director told us to take you with us. We have a car waiting downstairs.”

Najjar turned to Sheyda, who had covered herself with a blanket.

“Go,” she said. “You know Father would never send for you if it wasn’t important.”

She was right, and Najjar loved her all the more for her support. He closed the door, leaving the soldiers in the hallway. Then he threw on some clothes, brushed his teeth, splashed some water on his face, grabbed his briefcase, and ran out the door, stopping only to give Sheyda a kiss.

On the drive, they passed dozens of mosques, and Najjar felt a strong need to pray. He had no idea what the day held. But he had never been summoned so early in the morning, and his anxiety over what was coming grew minute by minute.

As sunrise approached, Najjar finally heard the call to the
Fajr
, or dawn prayer, coming from the speakers of one of the many minarets adorning the skyline of Hamadan. As had become a ritual five times a day since he was a small child back in Iraq, he dutifully faced Mecca, raised his hands to his ears, and recited the
Shahada
—the testimony of faith—declaring he bore witness that there was no one worthy of worship except Allah and he believed with all his heart that Muhammad was the servant and messenger of Allah. Then he placed one hand to his chest and his other hand on top of the first and prayed, “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. The Most Gracious. The Most Merciful. The Master of the Day of Judgment. You alone do we worship. You alone do we ask for help. Show us the straight path, the path of those whom you have favored, not of those who earn your anger nor of those who stray. Amen.”

As he continued reciting portions of the Qur’an, bowing toward Mecca as best he could from the backseat and continuing his morning prayers, Najjar found his anxieties multiplying, not dissipating. He desperately wanted to hear from Allah, to see him, to behold his beauty and come fully into his presence. He wanted Allah to grant him favor and wisdom and a calm reassurance that he was doing Allah’s will and pleasing him in every way. But he felt no peace. He felt no joy. When he finished, he felt further away from Allah than when he had begun.

An hour later, Najjar stood in the middle of a cavernous, empty warehouse. The concrete floor was cold and wet, as if it had been recently hosed down. Sitting several yards away was a man bound to a chair, his hands and feet shackled in iron chains. The man’s mouth was gagged, but he was not blindfolded, and Najjar could see the terror in his eyes. It was clear he had been beaten severely. His face was bruised and swollen, and blood trickled down his cheeks.

Najjar thought there was something vaguely familiar about him. “Who is he?”

“You were never supposed to meet him,” Dr. Saddaji replied not only to Najjar but to the two dozen other scientists standing around them. “But events beyond our control have forced the issue.”

Najjar watched his father-in-law staring at the man, who was silently pleading for his life. But there was nothing in Dr. Saddaji’s voice or body language that suggested mercy would be forthcoming. Indeed, Najjar had never seen him so cold, so dark, so filled with hatred.

“Gentlemen, take note of this man and remember him well,” Dr. Saddaji said. “He is an Arab—an Iraqi—and a traitor.”

Najjar was stunned. It was one thing to be from Iraq. He was, and so was Dr. Saddaji, along with several others. But they weren’t Arabs. They were all Persians.

How can there be an Arab in our midst? Who allowed it, and why?

This research facility was top secret, buried deep inside Alvand Mountain, the highest peak in the region. Of the half-million people in the surrounding area, including in Hamadan—one of the oldest cities in Iran—not a single one was Arab. Less than one-tenth of one percent of them knew this facility existed at all, much less that the future of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program was being designed and developed here.
What on earth could have possessed someone to allow an enemy into the camp?

As if on cue, Dr. Saddaji took the responsibility upon himself.

“Gentlemen, I will be candid. I recruited this man. He was once a colleague at the University of Baghdad, one of the most brilliant minds of our generation, an absolute genius in the field of UD3. He was not one of us, true. But we needed his expertise. I thought I could trust him. With the blessing of the Supreme Leader, I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. But I made a mistake. He sold us out. Now he must pay.”

Saddaji’s response generated more questions than it answered, at least for Najjar.
UD3?
Why in the world would Saddaji need an expert in the use of uranium deuteride? Even a junior physicist like himself knew UD3 had no civilian uses. Had Dr. Saddaji completely lost his mind? What if the IAEA caught wind of a UD3 expert—one from Iraq, at that—inside a nuclear facility the IAEA didn’t even know existed? Why take such a risk with the eyes of the international community riveted so intently on the Iranian nuclear program?

Before Najjar could raise any of these questions, however, Dr. Saddaji continued, outlining what this man had done to betray them all. He explained that the man had been caught making two unauthorized calls to Europe.

“He claims he has a girlfriend in France,” Dr. Saddaji sniffed. “He claims he had no idea his girlfriend was an agent for the Mossad.”

Najjar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had never met a man as careful, as thorough, as meticulous about everything—and especially about security—as his father-in-law. Whoever this person sitting before them was, his treachery was appalling. But what did his father-in-law expect? Couldn’t he have seen this coming? Something didn’t make sense.

But this “trial”—if it could be called that—was suddenly over as quickly as it had begun. No one was being invited to ask questions of the accused or of Saddaji. An executioner now entered the warehouse, carrying an ornate sword that looked several centuries old. His face was covered by a black ski mask. A moment later, the traitor’s head was rolling across the warehouse floor. Najjar became violently ill, but the point had been made—all betrayals, real or imagined, would be punished severely.