“Yes, Master. I will do all that you say.”
“Very good, Hamid. Get ready; be prepared. Let there be no mistake—I am coming back soon.”
40
Mount Tochal, Iran
Hosseini pressed his face to the floor.
The words of the Twelfth Imam rang in his ears. He wanted to ask questions, to plead for wisdom, to say something, anything, but no words would form; no sound would come.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone. Hosseini lay prostrate, unable to move. It seemed like only a few minutes, but later, as his breathing calmed and his heart slowed, he realized that nearly an hour had gone by. None of his aides dared check on him, of course. Nor would his guests.
Slowly Hosseini began to compose himself. He washed his hands and face, changed into fresh clothes, and stepped out of his room. He walked down the freshly mopped hallway, then turned right and went down another long hallway, past several bodyguards stationed at strategic points, and entered the main dining room. There he was greeted by his security cabinet, all of whom instantly rose to their feet.
“Please, gentlemen, be seated,” the Supreme Leader said, taking a seat at the head of the table.
“I have known the three of you for many years,” he began. “I have sought your counsel and relied on you many times. Now I need your best assessment. Ali, we will begin with you.”
Hosseini paused. He knew he needed to explain to his colleagues what had just happened. But first he needed to gather his thoughts and process it for himself.
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh began. “Last month you asked me to go back to my team and ask many questions, to press the scientists for more clarity. This I have done.”
“And what have you found?”
“We are ready, Your Excellency.”
“You are certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“The uranium is sufficiently enriched?”
“Most of the last batch was 97.4 percent,” Faridzadeh said. “Some came in at 95.9 percent. Both are sufficient, and we continue to make improvements.”
“How many warheads could you build with that?”
“We have already finished nine.”
Hosseini was taken aback by the defense minister’s impressive report. “They are already built?”
“Yes, Your Excellency—thanks be to Allah—nine of them are ready to be detonated. My men should have another six done by the end of the month.”
“This is welcome news, indeed,” the Supreme Leader said. “Which design did you use? The one from Pyongyang?”
“No, Your Excellency. In the end, we chose A. Q. Khan’s design.”
“Why?”
“The data from the North Korean tests were disappointing, Your Excellency,” Faridzadeh explained. “The warheads the North Koreans tested certainly detonated. But the yields were not that impressive.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Pyongyang’s bomb could annihilate several city blocks, but we don’t believe they could take out a city. And this was one of your stated objectives, the capacity to take out all or most of a city with a single weapon.”
“Yes, we must achieve this,” Hosseini pressed. “You’re certain the North Korean plans are not sufficient?”
“I am not a physicist, as you know, Your Excellency,” the defense minister replied. “But my top man has pored over the data from every angle, and he is simply not convinced the North Korean design has been perfected to the point that we’d want to risk the future of our own country on it.”
“But we paid so much for it,” Hosseini said.
“We did, Your Excellency. But what the North Koreans sold us was effectively worthless in comparison to what we bought from A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.”
“But we hardly paid Dr. Khan anything.”
“Nevertheless,” the minister said, “Islamabad has built 162 warheads to date based on Khan’s design. They’ve tested their warheads multiple times. The yields are absolutely enormous. So we know the design works. Now we simply need to test what we have built and make sure we have followed his impressive design to the letter.”
“And you are ready to test?”
“Almost, Your Excellency,” the defense minister said.
“How soon?” Hosseini asked, leaning forward. “Could you be ready by summer?”
Faridzadeh could not suppress a smile. “Inshallah, we should be ready by next month.”
The Supreme Leader was ecstatic. He was tempted to drop to his knees and offer Allah a prayer of thanksgiving right there and then. But he did not smile. He did not visibly react. There were still too many risks, too many variables, too many unknowns, too many things that could go wrong. Still, they were almost there. After so many years and so many setbacks, they were almost ready. And just in time, for the coming of the Mahdi was at hand.
“Do I have authorization to proceed with the test?” the defense minister asked.
Hosseini did not answer immediately. He rose and walked to the window, where he stood looking down at the lights of Tehran. He wanted to say yes, of course. But the stakes could not be higher. The testing of an Iranian nuclear warhead would alert the world that they were ready. The charade that they were simply running a civilian nuclear power program would be over. Talks at the U.N. over the possibility of imposing new international sanctions were already under way. For now, their allies in Moscow and Beijing were standing firm against such sanctions. But a nuclear weapons test could radically change that dynamic. And what if the first warhead failed? Or what if it was less impressive than they wanted or needed? They would have lost the critical element of surprise. Yet in light of the vision he had just experienced, could he afford any delay? Had he not been commanded to “get ready; be prepared”?
“What would the Americans do in reaction to such a test?” he asked President Darazi as he continued to gaze at the twinkling lights in the valley.
“Nothing, Your Excellency,” the president replied.
Hosseini turned. “Are you really willing to bet your life on that, Ahmed?”
“I am, sir.”
“Why?”
“Your Excellency, the Americans are a paper tiger,” Darazi argued. “They are an empire beginning to implode. Their economy is bleeding. Their deficit is skyrocketing. They’re fighting two wars in the Middle East—at a cost of about $12 billion a month—two wars that most Americans don’t want. Their Congress is focused on jobs and health care and reenergizing their economy. President Jackson is committed to pulling U.S. forces out of the region as rapidly as possible. And he has signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. will never use nuclear weapons against any other nation—even if attacked first. Believe me, Your Excellency, regardless of what they are saying about keeping their military option ‘on the table’ with regard to ‘the Iran issue,’ we needn’t worry about a preemptive strike from the Americans. It is never going to happen. Not under this president. Not under this Congress.”
The Supreme Leader hoped Darazi’s analysis was accurate. It was certainly consistent with his own perspective and with the vision he had just received. But the Americans were not the only threat. He looked the president in the eye and asked, “What about the Zionists? What will they do?”
“Of that, Your Excellency, I’m not so sure,” Darazi conceded. “We all know Prime Minister Naphtali is a warmonger. He is oppressing the Palestinians. He is terrorizing Lebanon. He is humiliating the Egyptians and the Jordanians. He is playing the Syrians for fools. The good news is Naphtali’s government is headed for a train wreck with the White House. Relations between the two countries are souring rapidly.”
At that, however, the Supreme Leader pushed back. “How can you say that, Ahmed? Yes, Jackson and Naphtali have had a few spats. But so what? Naphtali still has Congress in his pocket, no? He still has the Jewish lobby, correct? Israel is still getting $3 billion a year in Americ
an military aid, true? A lovers’ quarrel is not a train wreck, Ahmed.”
“With all due respect, Your Excellency,” the president countered, “this is not a lovers’ quarrel. I believe we are witnessing a fundamental rupture between these two governments. Could it change? Yes. Could President Jackson be defeated in the next election? Of course. But for right now, the foreign policy of the United States is run by President William Jackson—a man who fundamentally believes he must negotiate with us, can negotiate with us, and will be successful in the process. He won’t attack us militarily while he’s trying to engage us diplomatically. What’s more, I believe he will do everything in his power to keep the Israelis from attacking us.”
The Supreme Leader considered that for a few moments. He liked Darazi. The president was a true Twelver, devoted in every respect to the coming of the Twelfth Imam, and thus useful in many ways. Still, Hosseini did not entirely trust the man’s geopolitical instincts.
Just then an aide to General Jazini rushed into the room and handed the commander a note.
“What is it?” the Supreme Leader asked, seeing Jazini’s face grow ashen.
“It is the Israelis, Your Excellency,” Jazini said.
Hosseini braced himself. “What have they done?”
“You’re not going to believe this.” Jazini proceeded to read the entire classified cable aloud.
“Russian intelligence indicates massive Israeli war game under way. Stop. Four hundred warplanes have been launched. Stop. Inbound for Greek isles for practice bombing, strafing runs. Stop. Repeat of their 2008 drill, but four times as large. Stop. FSB warns Jerusalem making final preparations for war. Stop. Please advise. Stop.”
Faridzadeh and Darazi gasped.
Hosseini was not surprised. Nor was he rattled like the others. It was time, he realized, to share with the men the vision he had just experienced and the message he had received.
“Gentlemen, we need not fear the Israelis, and let me tell you why,” the Ayatollah began. “Just before coming into this meeting, I received a message directly from the Twelfth Imam. In a vision not fifty yards from this room, he told me that the time for his appearance has come. The time of the extermination of the Israelis and the Americans has thus come as well. The Lord of the Age has chosen you and me to act, and we must be faithful. So get out your notebooks, and allow me to explain. . . .”
41
Hamadan, Iran
It had rained most of the night.
But it wasn’t the storm that had kept Najjar awake, and even though the downpour had now stopped, he knew this would be another sleepless night.
He slipped out of bed, threw on some casual clothes and a jacket, and went out for a walk. The streets—abandoned and quiet—were slick, the air damp and brisk. A low fog had moved in across the city. Najjar zipped up his jacket and shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. As he walked, he tried to reconstruct all that had brought him to this point.
He had been recruited by Dr. Mohammed Saddaji to come to Iran with three specific goals in mind, his marriage to Sheyda notwithstanding.
First, he was to serve as his father-in-law’s right-hand man at the Hamadan research facility. It had been an honor to help one of the world’s most gifted physicists create a civilian nuclear power industry for Iran that would be the envy of the world and a rebuke to her critics, especially the Americans and the Zionists.
Second, he was to serve as the primary liaison between Dr. Saddaji and the team of physicists working in the city of Bushehr to bring Iran’s first nuclear power plant online safely and efficiently. A man of Saddaji’s intellect and importance could not be bothered, after all, with constant phone calls, e-mails, and other interruptions from the Bushehr reactor. He needed someone to manage all of that, and for this he trusted Najjar implicitly. It was the combination of these two roles that had been so attractive from the beginning and that gave Najjar a level of intellectual stimulation and professional satisfaction he deeply appreciated.
But there was a third role for Najjar, and Dr. Saddaji had strongly implied that over the long term this would be his most important mission: to help train up a new generation of Iranian nuclear scientists by eventually—within the next few years—teaching at one of the country’s premier research universities. This was Najjar’s true passion. He longed to move Sheyda and their newborn daughter away from Hamadan, buy a home, and carve out a more stable life for his family. He knew he had to pay his dues, and paying his dues meant serving his father-in-law faithfully, but now he was beginning to question everything.
A lone car drove past, splashing water onto the sidewalks. Najjar ducked out of the way just in time, then turned down a side street and picked up the pace. The more he thought about it, the more trouble he was having with the notion that a UD3 expert had been operating inside a civilian nuclear research compound. It wasn’t just that the man was an Arab, though that was bad enough. The real concern was that the Times of London had published a highly controversial story in December 2009 alleging that Iran was engaged in trying to build a trigger for a nuclear bomb. The top-secret memo exposed in that article had been partly responsible for an international firestorm of criticism against the Iranian regime. It had caused the United Nations Security Council to consider imposing new economic sanctions against Iran. Normally Najjar and his colleagues had limited access to Western newspapers and the Internet due to their sensitive positions. Yet copies of this particular article—“Discovery of UD3 Raises Fears over Iran’s Nuclear Intentions”—had been passed around by Dr. Saddaji himself as “proof,” he’d said at the time, of a “Zionist campaign of lies and slander” against Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program.
Najjar recalled a particular section from the article with crystal clarity. “Independent experts have confirmed that the only possible use for UD3 is as a neutron source, the trigger to the chain reaction for a nuclear explosion. Critically, while other neutron sources have possible civilian uses, UD3 has only one application—to be the metaphorical match that lights a nuclear bomb.”
That was true, Najjar knew. What’s more, any test explosion using UD3 would leave behind traces that would certainly be regarded as proof that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. There was no way, he was sure, his father-in-law would take such a risk.
At the time, Najjar had fumed that the entire article was built on lies. The Times reporter had quoted a “Western intelligence source”—someone who had to be from the Israeli Mossad, Najjar was convinced. It was all a plot by the Jews to subjugate the Persian people under Western colonialism and imperialism. He had passionately echoed his father-in-law, not because it was the party line but rather because Najjar believed it to be true. As Dr. Saddaji’s chief of staff, he personally knew—or knew of and controlled the personnel files for—every single nuclear scientist in the country. All 1,449 of them. He had pored over their files. He had pored over their security clearance dossiers. He knew all of their supervisors and was in direct contact with many of them. So he knew for a fact that not one of them—not a single one—was a specialist in uranium deuteride or titanium deuteride.
Now what was he to think? Dr. Saddaji had been keeping secret from him—his own son-in-law—the presence of an Iraqi UD3 expert in the Iranian nuclear program. The man had then proceeded to order the brutal execution of that expert without a trial, without even a hearing. Why?
What else was his father-in-law hiding? Was the man really running a civilian nuclear power program, as Najjar had thought from the beginning? Or was he actually spearheading a clandestine program to build a nuclear weapon, as the Americans and the Israelis claimed? It was beginning to look as if the latter was the case. If so, was this the real project for which Dr. Saddaji had recruited him, the one that would “change the course of history”? Was this actually the project that would “make way for the coming of the Promised One”?
42
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
It was late when “Reza Tabrizi?
?? landed in Dubai.
He couldn’t wait to get to the hotel for a hot shower, a good meal, and a real bed. To maintain the fiction he had already set into motion, he traded phone numbers with Yasmeen, giving her his number in Munich, and headed toward passport control, reminding himself again and again that he was no longer David Shirazi. He was a successful German businessman of Iranian extraction. He wasn’t coming from Syracuse, but from a trade show in Chicago that had been a waste of time. He rarely went to the U.S., he reminded himself. Indeed, he disdained doing business with the Americans. They were too loud, too pushy, and too greedy, and there were far too many Jews. He repeated this to himself again and again. CIA protocols required him to have spent the transatlantic flight refreshing himself on his cover story and getting himself fully into his alias. But his mind had been elsewhere on the flight, and he was rapidly playing catch-up.
Fortunately, he cleared passport control without being asked any questions. At that moment, his first instinct was to call Marseille and explain the delay in getting back to her. But he couldn’t use his new Nokia cell phone. It was carefully monitored by his friends back at Langley, and this was not a call he wanted Jack Zalinsky or anyone else at NSA or the CIA to track. As he headed to baggage claim, he walked past banks of pay phones and was tempted to stop and use one of them. But this, he hoped, wasn’t going to be a quick call, and Eva was waiting for him beyond customs.
Eva Fischer.
The very name suddenly confused David. For starters, of course, Eva wasn’t even her real name. It was an alias. Neither she nor Zalinsky, he realized, had ever given him her real name. So who was she? Where was she really from? What was she really all about?