The Twelfth Imam (16 page)

34

Syracuse, New York

The weekend was bittersweet.

It began Saturday morning with a breakfast of pancakes and lies. David couldn’t tell his parents the truth about why he was in the country. Instead, he told them he had suffered through a series of mind-numbingly dull business meetings in Chicago. Then he lied about where he was heading next, telling them he was flying to Frankfurt, then driving to Wiesbaden for more meetings. He lied about whether he would be home for Mother’s Day, saying, “Absolutely,” then silently cursed himself for the rest of the day. He had no way of knowing where he would be or what he would be doing in three months. It wasn’t fair to lead his parents on. But he didn’t know what else to do, and he felt terrible.

Deception was central to his life in the CIA. But that didn’t make it any easier, and a brooding conscience, growing anxiety about the mission ahead, and a serious lack of sleep after driving all night from Washington proved a depressing cocktail. David tried to catch a few hours of sleep in his old room after breakfast but kept tossing and turning. Finally he gave up and joined his father for an afternoon of cross-country skiing across the back nine of the golf course at Drumlins Country Club.

That night, over dinner with his parents at their favorite Italian place on Erie Boulevard, David asked about his brothers. He was just trying to be polite, but the very question made his mother wince.

Azad, his father explained, was thriving as a cardiologist in Philadelphia, and yes, the rumors were true: he and his wife were expecting their first child. But no, they never visited; no, they never called; no, they hardly ever e-mailed. Once the baby was born, the Shirazis planned to drive down and visit Azad and his wife, but they honestly weren’t sure how long they’d be welcome.

Saeed, meanwhile, showed no signs of settling down. He was dating a dancer—or was it a cellist? At any rate, he was dating someone new—
always
someone new—in Manhattan. He still seemed to be married to his job with Merrill Lynch and was convinced he was well on his way to making his first million. But no, he hadn’t been home in ages, and no, he hadn’t gone fishing with his father in years. Not long before, the Shirazis had visited Saeed for a long weekend, but Saeed spent most of the weekend in the office and had made little time for his parents, who had returned to Syracuse brokenhearted.

After dinner, David tried to shift gears. Talking about family wasn’t doing them any good, so he suggested they rent one of the Lord of the Rings films and watch it together. His mother had never seen it and insisted on making popcorn, pulling out some afghans, and having her husband make a fire in the fireplace. They all got comfortable in the family room to watch
The Return of the King
, but within the first few minutes, David’s mother fell asleep. Within half an hour, so did his father. David didn’t bother to watch the rest, though it was one of his favorite films. Instead, he turned off the TV, went up to his room, and surfed the Web for the latest headlines from Iran and the Middle East.

Several caught his eye.

Israeli PM Naphtali at Dachau Says World Must Stop Iran, or He Will

Israeli Defense Minister Says Someone Must Hit Iran’s Nuclear Sites “Before It’s Too Late”

President Jackson Warns Against Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

U.N. Security Council Considers New Round of Iran Sanctions

Iranian President Darazi Warns Israel “Doomed” If Zionists Attack

David’s stomach churned along with his thoughts. Exhausted, he eventually went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Around four in the morning, he got an e-mail from Eva, whose subject line read, “You up?” He eagerly opened it, hoping it might be personal. It wasn’t.

EF:
Something’s afoot in Yemen


She was right, of course. He recalled the phone call DDO Murray had taken in his office. But why did it matter at 4 a.m.? Eva included a link to a recent Agence France-Presse story she had found on the Internet. David opened it and quickly scanned the article.

“Before the Twelfth Imam appears on earth to establish his global kingdom, we will see a series of signs,” said Dr. Alireza Birjandi, author of
The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah
, at a conference Friday in Qom sponsored by the Bright Future Institute. “The first sign is the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani. He will attack the enemies of Islam, and in so doing he will help pave the way for the end of days.”

Birjandi, widely considered the world’s leading expert on Shia eschatology, declined to comment on whether the recent attacks against Christians in Yemen represented the fulfillment of that sign. But other scholars gathered for this three-day conference speculated that this could, in fact, be the case.

The Bright Future Institute is a theological think tank established in the city of Qom in 2004 by Shia scholars to study Mahdism in depth and to prepare Shias for the return of the Islamic messiah, known as the Mahdi or the Hidden Imam or the Twelfth Imam.

Puzzled, David sent a text message to Eva’s phone.

DS:
don’t know what 2 make of that


A moment later, Eva wrote back.

EF:
i don’t know either


DS:
ever hear of birjandi?


EF:
can’t say i have


DS:
me neither . . . on amazon now . . . ordering his book


EF:
good idea . . . i’ll look into the bright future institute


DS:
thnx—let’s compare notes on mon . . . how R U? where R U?


EF:
i’m good . . . thnx 4 asking . . . hanging out w/ my parents and sisters in berlin . . . how about U? surfing in cancun? sunbathing in san juan?


David smiled as he replied.

DS:
lol—i wish. actually visiting my folks in syracuse . . . but can’t wait 2 get started


EF:
me 2. . .  see you soon—looking fwd 2 it . . . how about *$ in DXB?


It took a moment for David’s sleep-deprived brain to decipher that last one, until he realized she was suggesting they go to Starbucks when they got to Dubai. He typed a final message.

DS:
Yes—SYS—OAO


See you soon. Over and out.

He plugged his phone back into its charger and finished ordering Dr. Birjandi’s book online, directing it to be shipped to his apartment in Munich. Then he shut down his laptop, lay back down in the darkness, and stared out the window at the moonlight falling on the snow-covered backyard.

So, Eva wasn’t with a boyfriend for the weekend. Interesting. It didn’t mean she didn’t have one, of course. But if she did, she hadn’t chosen to spend the weekend with him. She was with her family, instead. And thinking of him. He liked that, and in the privacy of his childhood bedroom, he admitted—if only to himself—that he found Eva a little more than just interesting, against his better judgment.

He hadn’t dated much in college, and not at all since, in part because most of the German girls he knew were too brusque for his liking and because—his falsified passport notwithstanding—he wasn’t really German. He didn’t like sauerkraut. He couldn’t stand
Wiener schnitzel
. He could barely choke down German chocolate cake. But something about Eva was different. Maybe, he thought, it was finally time to let go of Marseille’s hold on him.

35

They all got up late and joined each other for Sunday brunch.

That was when his mother upped the ante. Over homemade Belgian waffles and fresh-squeezed orange juice, she implored David to give up all of his international travel, get a job with Carrier or Lockheed Martin or Bristol-Myers Squibb or some other solid company in central New York, find a nice Syracuse girl to marry, find a nice single-family home in Manlius or Fayetteville or DeWitt—not too far away—and finally make a real life for himself where they could see him and truly be a family.

“Please, Davood,” his mother pleaded. “You’re my youngest son, and I feel like I’m losing you.”

David hadn’t heard her use his Persian name—
Davood
—since childhood. Knowing he was leaving in a few hours and potentially never coming back made him feel even worse than before.

David’s father wasn’t quite so direct, but it was abundantly clear that he, too, wanted his son to slow down and settle down. David certainly understood why. His parents were rapidly approaching retirement age. The whirlwind of raising three high-octane sons was over. The house was empty. No one was around to break any lamps or hit any baseballs through the front windows—or the neighbors’ windows. No one needed to be rushed to the hospital for stitches anymore. A box of cereal in their house now lasted them a month, not a day. They only needed to buy a quart of milk a week, not four gallons. Everything was different. They were lonely. David promised to be in touch more and privately vowed to do better.

Just then, David’s phone vibrated. Waiting for him was a new text message. Eva Fischer was en route to Dubai. Zalinsky was as well. They had breaking news, so “DBL,” she wrote.
Don’t be late.

David’s pulse quickened. It was time to get into the game. He apologized to his parents and excused himself to check his BlackBerry for the status of his flights. Despite a massive snowstorm heading across Lake Ontario from Canada by nightfall, all flights at the moment appeared to be running on time. He was booked on Delta flight 5447, leaving Syracuse’s Hancock Field at 5:33 p.m. and arriving in Atlanta at 8:06 p.m. That should get him out of central New York before the brunt of the storm hit, and for that leg, he would be traveling under his real name. Once in Atlanta, however, he planned to switch to his German passport and his alias—Reza Tabrizi—and catch Delta flight 8. That would depart at 11:20 p.m. and arrive in the largest city of the United Arab Emirates at 9:25 p.m. the following evening.

David checked his watch, then apologized to his parents again and told them it was time for him to go. That’s when his mother explained the driving force behind her request.

“Davood?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Yes, Mom?”

“Honey, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I’ve been diagnosed with stage III stomach cancer. We didn’t want you boys to worry about me, but you showing up like this so unexpectedly seems like a gift. So I wanted you to know.”

The news stunned David. As he listened to her describe the symptoms she had been experiencing in recent weeks and the various tests the doctors were running and the aggressive treatment plan they were recommending and her fears of dying, all of David’s guilt came rushing to the fore. He desperately wanted to stay, to listen, to care for both his parents as they headed into this terrible storm. But he had to leave.

They begged him to reschedule his flight, to call his boss, to explain the situation. But he couldn’t. He could see the pain and deep disappointment in his mother’s eyes in particular, and he grieved for her. His excuse for having to leave sounded so lame under the circumstances, but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t tell them the truth.

As David stood on the front steps of his childhood home in an increasingly heavy snowfall and hugged his parents good-bye, Nasreen Shirazi began to cry.

“Mom, please, don’t,” David said, his suitcase in hand, the car running.

“I can’t help it,” she said in Farsi, sniffling. “I love you, Davood.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

“Remember when I used to walk you by the hand to the bus stop when you were a little boy?”

“Mom, really.”

“Remember when you came racing home every day with a backpack filled with notes and papers and goodies for me? Remember when you couldn’t wait to tell me about everything you had done that day?”

“Mom, it’s going to be all right,” he assured her. “Dad knows the best doctors in the world. They’ll take great care of you. And I’ll find a way to come back soon to visit you and cheer you up. But if I don’t leave right this second, I’m going to miss my plane. And I really have to go.”

“Fine,” she said. “Go. Who am I to stand in your way?”

David felt worse than ever. He kissed her on the cheek, gave his father a hug, and was in his car when his mother suddenly began calling after him.

“David, David—wait! Before you go, I totally forgot—I have something for you!”

She turned and ran into the house. David looked to his father for help, but Dr. Shirazi simply shrugged off any knowledge of what his wife was up to. Two minutes passed. Then three. Then five. David checked his watch. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. He forced himself not to gun the engine or honk the horn, but inside he couldn’t take it anymore. Finally his mother came running back out to the car and breathlessly handed him a plastic Wegmans grocery bag.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Just a little mail for you,” she said, giving him one last kiss through the open window as the snow began coming down even harder. “I keep forgetting to send it over to you.”

“Thanks, I guess,” he said, putting the Impala in reverse and easing out of the driveway. “Anything interesting?”

“Probably not,” she said. “Except maybe one.”

“Really? From who?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But the postmark said Portland.”

Hamadan, Iran

Najjar woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

He couldn’t breathe, haunted for yet another night by the face of the man he had seen beheaded as a Zionist spy. His dear wife, Sheyda, held him, startled awake, no doubt, by his repeated nightmares and constant thrashing and moaning.

“What is it, my love?” she whispered with a tenderness that typically calmed and comforted him.

Now neither her soothing voice nor the gentle touch of her arms around him sufficed. Najjar had no idea what to say. He couldn’t tell her that her father was a butcher. He couldn’t fully believe it himself. What’s more, he had to remain quiet. Everything that happened in that facility—
everything
—was highly classified. He was not authorized to say anything to anyone about anything that happened there. To be found breaching security, even to the daughter of the director of the facility, would land him, he feared, in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. And that, he knew, would be a merciful sentence. Two unauthorized phone calls had already cost one man his life.

But it wasn’t simply the gruesome image of the executioner’s blade slicing the man’s head off and the massive flow of blood that threatened to prevent Najjar from ever sleeping peacefully or innocently again. It was the fact that the man hadn’t been given a fair trial in a court. It was the fact that neither Najjar nor his colleagues had seen a single shred of proof against the man. It was the fact that this man was a fellow Muslim, yet he had been shown no mercy. Worse, it was the fact that Najjar now knew why the man had looked so familiar.

For in his most recent nightmare, Najjar suddenly came to the realization that this was the man he had seen kidnapped back in Baghdad years before, the man whose family he had seen slaughtered execution-style on Al Rasheed Street.