The Twelfth Imam (36 page)

78

“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.”

79

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.”