The Twelfth Imam (22 page)

48

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Zalinsky was furious.

But he tried not to show it. It had been his decision to send Eva Fischer in as the project leader. He hadn’t had any indications that the senior executives at Iran Telecom were so religious. Clearly, he and his team knew far too little about Abdol Esfahani, for starters. Still, the trip wasn’t a complete loss, he told Eva over coffee in the Dubai safe house. Thanks to Zephyr, they now had Esfahani’s private cell phone number, and it was already bearing fruit.

He slid the laptop over to Eva so that she could look at the most interesting of several transcripts.

> > > > > >
000017-43—NSATXTREF: ZEPHYRINTERCEPT—EYES ONLY


CALL BEGAN AT 0209/21:53:06


ESFAHANI
[98-21-2234-5684]: Hello?


CALLER
[98-21-8876-5401]: You up?


ESFAHANI:
I am now.


CALLER:
Take this down.


ESFAHANI:
This had better be important.


CALLER:
It is.


ESFAHANI:
Hold on.


CALLER:
Hurry up. I’ve got to get back in.


ESFAHANI:
Where are you?


CALLER:
The Qaleh.


ESFAHANI:
Still?


CALLER:
Something happened.


ESFAHANI:
What?


CALLER:
I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. Not on an open line.


ESFAHANI:
Give me a hint.


CALLER:
I can’t. . . . I . . .


ESFAHANI:
What? What is it?


CALLER:
You won’t believe it. It’s miraculous, but . . .


ESFAHANI:
But what?


CALLER:
I will tell you more when I see you. But I really have to go. Are you ready?


ESFAHANI:
Yes, I’m ready.


CALLER:
We need twenty SSPs.


ESFAHANI:
Did you say twenty?


CALLER:
Yes; two-zero. Twenty.


ESFAHANI:
How soon?


CALLER:
Yesterday.


ESFAHANI:
Why? What’s happening?


CALLER:
It’s big, but I can’t say right now. Will call you again when I can.


CALL ENDED AT 0209/21:56:23


“Interesting,” Eva said. “Not every day you read the word
miraculous
in an intercept.”

“My thought exactly,” Zalinsky said.

“What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea. So let’s start with the more mundane. What’s an SSP?”

“I thought you knew everything, Jack,” she teased.

Zalinsky was in no mood for jocularity. “Just answer the question.”

“I’m guessing they’re referring to secure satellite phones. But why twenty? They need thousands.”

Zalinsky took another sip of black coffee and mulled that for a bit. They both knew that the Iranians had recently bought thousands of satellite phones from a Russian company. The Iranian high command was building an alliance with Moscow and buying billions of dollars’ worth of arms and nuclear technology from the Russians. Why not communications equipment as well? There was just one problem. The Iranians eventually discovered the phones had been tampered with in a way that allowed the FSB, the Russian intelligence services, to monitor their calls. When the bugs were discovered, every Russian-made satellite phone in the country belonging to an Iranian military or intelligence commander had been recalled and destroyed.

The Iranians still had fairly secure landline communications for their military and intelligence organizations, but Iranian officials knew they were vulnerable due to the lack of secure, encrypted mobile communications. This was the very reason the NSA was having success intercepting calls from Esfahani’s cell phone and anyone else’s phone for which Zephyr was able to get a number. It wouldn’t last long. The Iranians had proven themselves incredibly resourceful in the past. But for the moment, the NSA and CIA had caught a break, and they were exploiting it as best they could.

Eva was right. The Iranians needed thousands of secure satellite phones, not twenty.

“Maybe they simply want to test a new supplier and see if they can get a phone the Russians can’t bug,” Zalinsky mused.

“Or maybe they’re setting up a new unit of some kind,” Eva said.

“What kind of unit?”

“Could be anything—suicide bombers, missile operators, something we should be worried about.”

“That’s encouraging,” Zalinsky said. “Okay, then, what’s the Qaleh?”

“It’s Farsi,” Eva said. “It means fortification or walled settlement. But the question is, what do
they
mean by it?”

“I have no idea,” Zalinsky conceded. “But you’d better find out.”

Tehran, Iran

Waiting for word from Esfahani, David had been going to prayer five times a day, often at the Imam Khomeini Mosque, though not always. He still wasn’t sure what he believed, but he wanted to believe in a God who would hear his prayers. So he prayed for his parents. He prayed for his brothers. He prayed for his country and Zalinsky and the president. He prayed most of all for Marseille. He asked Allah to bless her, to take care of her, to heal her heart and ease her pain. Yet he doubted any of it was getting through. Sometimes there were “coincidences” that seemed like answers to his prayers. But most of the time he still felt he was talking to the ceiling.

When he wasn’t at the mosque maintaining his cover, he went for long walks. He got to know the city. He visited shops that sold mobile phones, asked lots of questions, and then asked some more. Back in the hotel, he tracked business headlines on his laptop. He sent e-mails to colleagues at MDS. Mostly, he reviewed his cover story, again and again, meditating on every tiny fact until it had truly become a part of him.

But he was dying. For too much of the day, he was sitting in a hotel room in the capital of a country feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons. It was his mission to find a way to stop it, and he was stuck. Alone and out of ideas, he could only wait. He couldn’t talk to Zalinsky. He couldn’t talk to Eva.

The worst part, however, was not the isolation. Or the boredom. Or the feeling of helplessness and frustration at not being able to do more—do anything—to advance his mission, protect his country, and care for his family and friends. The worst part was trying to pretend he was a good Muslim. Deep in his heart, David Shirazi—aka Reza Tabrizi—knew he was not. He believed in God, or at least in some form of divine being in the universe known as “God,” or at least “a god.” He believed this God was a creator, that He had created the heavens and the earth and mankind and him personally. Beyond that, however, he wasn’t sure what he believed.

A shudder ran down his spine. To let such thoughts cross his mind—even if they remained unspoken—was tantamount to apostasy for a Muslim. They were an eternal death sentence, a fast pass to eternal damnation.

Yet how could Islam be true? The purest practitioners of the religion, he reasoned, be they Shia or Sunni, were the ayatollahs and the mullahs. His experiences in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere had taught him that these “holy men” were the most unholy men on the planet. Their minds were filled with thoughts of violence and corruption. The leaders of Iran were the worst of all. They actively denied the Holocaust while planning another. They were trying to obtain weapons capable of incinerating millions upon millions of people in the blink of an eye, and to do so in the name of their god. How could that be right? How could a religion that taught such things be true?

49

David sat up in bed in the dark.

It was 3:26 in the morning. He had not slept a wink. Three full days and nights had now gone by, and he had still heard nothing from Abdol Esfahani. But he couldn’t stop thinking about a particular line in his rant to his secretary the day David and Eva showed up for breakfast.

“Don’t you know how close we are, you fool?”
Esfahani had shouted.
“Don’t you know how pious we must be? He’s coming at any moment. We must be ready!”

What did Esfahani mean by that? Who was coming? When? And what did it matter? Why did they have to be ready? Why did they have to be more pious?

Could Esfahani be referring to the coming of the Islamic messiah? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely, David thought. Maybe Esfahani had been talking about an Iran Telecom executive or a board member, or perhaps a top official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—a possibility, given that they had just bought a major stake in the company.

Still, David had just gotten an e-mail from Amazon telling him that Dr. Alireza Birjandi’s book,
The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah
, had been shipped to his apartment in Germany. It reminded him of how little he knew about Islamic End Times theology, but he was getting the sense it was becoming a bigger deal in the dynamic of the region than anyone at Langley—Zalinsky included—was considering.

How many Muslims believed the end of the world was at hand? he wondered. How many Iranians did? How many Iranians at the highest levels of the regime believed it?

As David pondered that, it occurred to him that there was a growing sense in cultures around the world that the end of days just might be approaching and that with it was coming a final, momentous clash between good and evil. Preachers and rabbis and imams and even environmentalists were saying with increasing frequency and intensity that “the end is near.” But rather than laugh them all off as nuts, people seemed to be eating up the message. Even Hollywood was cashing in, making millions from apocalyptic movies.

What did it all mean? David had no idea. But in the privacy of his thoughts, he, too, feared the world was speeding recklessly toward the edge of the cliff. The longer he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the more classified information he gained access to, the deeper his fears became. And if Iran got the Bomb, or—God forbid—if Osama bin Laden did, something told him the implications would be far worse than even Langley’s most dire predictions.

Which prompted another thought.

He had always told himself that he had joined the CIA to destroy radical Islam, to avenge the death of nearly three thousand Americans on 9/11, to avenge the death of Claire Harper, and perhaps even to show Marseille Harper how much he loved her. It was all true, but it had become more than that. He had come to fear that the events of September 11, 2001, would pale in comparison to the death and destruction that would be wrought if the world’s most dangerous extremists gained possession of the world’s most dangerous weapons. He had to stop them. He had to try, anyway. Most Americans had no idea the threats their country faced. But he did, and he’d never be able to live with himself if he didn’t do everything in his power to save people’s lives.

David turned on the lights. He was covered with sweat. What he really needed was a good, stiff drink. But this was Tehran. The minibars weren’t exactly stocked with Smirnoff and Jack Daniel’s. Come to think of it, he realized, his room didn’t even have a minibar.

He got up, went into the bathroom, and opened a bottle of water. Then he turned on the shower—good and cold—stripped down, and stepped behind the plastic curtain.

As the water poured down his body, he half expected to be struck by lightning or felled by a massive heart attack. End of the world or not, if there was a God, and if it really was the God of the Qur’an, then he knew he was doomed. In college, David had faithfully attended a Shia mosque in Munich, studied the Qur’an, and become a part of the Muslim community, just as Zalinsky had required. He knew what he was supposed to believe. But he didn’t. Plain and simple.

Shivering, David finally turned off the ice-cold water, wiped himself down, wrapped up in a towel, and stepped in front of the mirror. His glasses had been replaced by contact lenses years ago. His braces were long gone. He was taller than his brothers now, taller even than his father. But all that was superficial. Who was he now, really? What was he becoming? Where was he going?

He left the bathroom and paced around the hotel room. He pulled the drapes back a bit and stared out at the quiet streets of Tehran. He wondered what Marseille was doing at that moment, what she was thinking. Was she upset that he had never responded? Was she angry with him? He hoped not. He wished he could call her right then. She’d had enough heartache in her life. He didn’t want to be the cause of any more.

He thought back to the note she’d sent him and reread a particular line in his mind’s eye.

I wondered if you might like to get a cup of coffee together, or something. . . . It’s been a long time . . . and there are things to say.

He wondered what she meant by “there are things to say.” It was an interesting turn of phrase—old-fashioned, almost. She was right, of course, but it didn’t sound like a person casually suggesting coffee simply to catch up on old times. She had specific things to tell him or ask him. But what? As he thought about it further, he realized she hadn’t just used the phrase once. She had actually used it twice—or at least a variation of it.

If you can’t get together, or if you don’t want to, I’ll certainly understand. And I’m sorry for rambling on like this. I didn’t mean to. I just meant to say . . . it would be good to catch up and tell you things I should have said earlier, if you’re okay with that.

So she didn’t have questions for him. At least, that’s not what she was signaling. She had things on her heart she wanted—needed—to say directly to him, in person, not on paper. Why would he not be “okay with that”?

Was she talking about why she’d never written back to him? Maybe there was more to why she and her father had moved to Portland. Or was it something to do with religion? She had told him that her friend’s wedding was going to be held at an “awesome” church. She had even invited him to go with her to the church while she was in town, even though she must know he was an avowed agnostic. Maybe she thought he had changed. It sounded like she had. Was that what this was all about?

Trying to clear his head, David turned on the television and started flipping through the channels. State-run news. Football (soccer). More state-run news. More football. Some cleric teaching from the Qur’an. Some lame black-and-white movie from the 1950s. It was all mind-numbingly boring. He turned off the set and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan whirring above him.

He let his mind drift back to the little A-frame in Canada. All these years later, he could still feel her lips on his, the warmth of her body against his own. She’d been so nervous and yet so trusting, and she had held him so tightly. And what had she asked him? Whether he believed in God. Whether he believed in Jesus. Whether he thought God was real and loving and answered prayer. He hadn’t known what to say back then. And it depressed him to think he still didn’t. He had no answers, and given the risks he was taking—and the very real and growing possibility that he could be captured and killed for being an American spy in Tehran—the thought of not knowing the truth about God and the afterlife terrified him.

If there was one thing he knew from studying the Qur’an, it was that Islam was a works-based religion. If his good works didn’t outweigh his bad works when he died, then he was damned for eternity.

He recalled reading Sura 23:102-104 in college. The text was crystal clear in his memory: “Those whose scales of good deeds are heavy, they are prosperous, while those whose scales are light, they will be those who have ruined their own selves, in hell abiding. The fire will scorch their faces, their lips being displaced and their jaws protruding.”

The problem, as David saw it, was that Islam provided no way for a Muslim to assess how he or she was doing throughout his or her life. There was no Web site to log on to and check daily scores. There were no quarterly report cards. There were no annual performance reviews. How, then, could anyone know for certain whether he would spend eternity in paradise or in punishment? How could anyone find the assurance of salvation that every thoughtful soul seeks before death?

The brutal truth was, no one could. That was what terrified David most. He had lied to almost everyone he had ever known. He had been unkind to people he loved. He had been ungrateful to people who had treated him well. He didn’t stay in touch with his parents. He didn’t stay in touch with his brothers. His professional life required that he be a liar and, more recently, a hypocrite—playing the part of a religious man but denying Islam’s truth and power. And then there were his secret sins, the ones he dared not confess. The more he cataloged his bad deeds, the worse he felt, and he had no idea where to turn.

No wonder devout Muslims took the verses in the Qur’an about waging jihad so seriously. Why shouldn’t they? To disregard the command to jihad would be to disobey, and such disobedience could tip the scales of justice against them in the final reckoning.

Which brought him to martyrdom.

The mullahs and ayatollahs taught that the only true assurance or secure promise of eternal salvation for a Muslim was to die as a martyr, often as a suicide bomber, in the cause of jihad. Osama bin Laden himself had once said, “The call to jihad in God’s name . . . leads to eternal life in the end and is relief from your earthly chains.”

There was no way that was true, David was certain. But what was?