The Twelfth Imam

  Once again, he told himself he had to shift gears. His life depended on it. He could no longer afford to think like David Shirazi, or he would put at risk everything he had worked so long and so hard to achieve. And so, hard as it was, he forced himself to stop thinking about Marseille and instead to think about her mother. Radical Islamic mujahideen had murdered Claire Harper and 2,973 other people while the CIA slept.

  He put on his game face.

  68

  Mina met him at baggage claim, as promised.

  After David cleared customs, Mina introduced him to their driver, a bored young man who took David’s bag and carried it to the car.

  “Have you heard from Mr. Esfahani?” David asked as they headed for the parking garage. “He and his team must have their hands full trying to get mobile service up and running again.”

  “It’s been a nightmare; that’s true,” Mina said. “At least he was there when it happened.”

  “Who?” David asked.

  “Mr. Esfahani.”

  “He was already in Hamadan?”

  “Yes.”

  “He went there before it happened?”

  “Strange, huh?”

  “It is,” David said. “Why did he go?”

  “He was there to attend a funeral for Mr. Rashidi’s brother in-law.”

  “He could have been killed himself.”

  “Actually, several members of the funeral party were killed when their hotel partially collapsed.”

  “But Mr. Rashidi is okay?”

  “Yes, praise Allah, he’s fine,” she said. “But everyone is devastated. It’s just too much to take in all at once.”

  Mina got in the backseat, motioning for David to sit in the front with the driver, then explained that they were going to meet a young man named Javad Nouri, who would be given fifteen of the phones. When David asked who Nouri was, however, and where the remaining five phones would go, Mina became noticeably uncomfortable.

  “I really can’t say,” she apologized.

  Forty minutes later, they pulled up to a coffee shop.

  “Park here on the side street,” David directed the driver. “I’ll bring him out to get the phones.”

  “Shouldn’t I go with you?” Mina asked.

  “Why? Do you know what this Nouri guy looks like?” he asked.

  “Well, no, but—”

  David cut her off. “Just wait here. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  He got out of the car empty-handed, entered the café, and went to the back by the restrooms. There he found a young man in his midtwenties, smoking a cigarette and pacing nervously. That was Nouri, David thought, but he decided not to rush into things. He took a seat in a booth, his back to the wall. Behind the counter a television was on, showing coverage of the crisis in Hamadan.

  “Rescue workers continue to struggle to clear rubble and bodies from the streets of Hamadan, where a government official said the death toll from this 8.7-magnitude earthquake may exceed ten thousand, with more than thirty-five thousand wounded,” an Iranian newscaster reported from the epicenter of the flattened city. “Thousands of injured people are still waiting for care outside badly damaged hospitals, while an unknown number remain trapped inside collapsed buildings. Basic services like water and electricity are out, and the mayor says his government needs help clearing streets so rescuers can reach some of the hardest-hit areas.”

  “Help us!” one woman shrieked, holding her dead baby. “We have no water! We have no food! Help us! Someone, please help us!”

  “Rescuers are digging though the rubble of leveled buildings with their hands, looking for survivors or bodies,” the reporter continued. “But I must tell you, I have never seen devastation like this. Whole blocks of collapsed buildings. Bodies in the streets. And officials say they fully expect the death toll to soar throughout the coming days. International expressions of sympathy are pouring in.”

  The Iranian newscast cut to a clip of the White House press secretary.

  “President Jackson and the First Family have been deeply moved by the images of suffering coming out of the Iranian city of Hamadan, as have many Americans and people of goodwill,” the spokeswoman said. “The Jackson administration would like to extend its hand of friendship to the Iranian people. We currently have two U.S. planes filled with food, winter clothing, blankets, and other aid on the tarmac in Incirlik, Turkey. With the permission of the Iranian government, we can have those aircraft on the ground in Hamadan in a matter of hours.”

  The young man with the cigarette cursed the U.S. offer. “Our people are martyrs,” he said to no one in particular. “They are martyrs for the cause. Allah will have mercy on their souls. We don’t need the Great Satan’s help. Curse Jackson. Curse them all.”

  David recoiled, but he wasn’t about to defend the American government in a coffee shop in downtown Tehran. “Well, I don’t know about martyrs,” he said to the young man, “but you’re right about the Great Satan. Let the Americans all burn in hell.”

  “But they are martyrs,” the young man said.

  “Not everyone who dies tragically is a martyr,” David said.

  “But these are. They died preparing the way for the Lord of the Age, peace be upon him.”

  David stood and approached the young man. The Kolbeh Café was popular and beginning to fill up with the breakfast crowd.

  “Are you Javad Nouri?”

  “Are you Reza Tabrizi?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you have the gifts our friend asked for?”

  “I do.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the car, in the alley.”

  “Lead the way,” Nouri said.

  David complied, leading the man out to the car. He instructed the driver to pop the trunk and stay in the car.

  “Are they clean?” Nouri asked.

  David assured him that they were bug-free.

  “Good. That will be all,” Nouri said.

  A moment later a car pulled up behind them. Two men got out, took the boxes of satphones, put them in their own trunk, and departed, Javad Nouri with them. David memorized the license plate. He got back into his car, turned to Mina, and asked, “Now what?”

  Mina explained that Esfahani had left a large envelope of cash for the phones in his safe and directed their driver to take them back to the Iran Telecom offices.

  Once there, they headed into Esfahani’s office, and David waited for Mina to open the safe.

  “Here you go,” she said, finally handing him a zippered cloth bag with a manila envelope stuffed inside. “You can count it if you’d like.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, smiling. “I trust you.”

  Mina adjusted her headscarf and looked away.

  The phones were ringing off the hook, not just in Esfahani’s office but throughout the technical support department. Everyone was abuzz with the earthquake in Hamadan and with the Herculean efforts the company was expending to get wireless service for the northwest quadrant of the country back up and running.

  Mina’s cell phone rang.

  “Yes?” she said. “Yes, but . . . Yes, I will. . . . Do you want to speak to him? He’s right . . . Okay, I will. . . . Bye.”

  “The boss?” David asked.

  Mina nodded. “He wants you to come to him in Hamadan right away and bring the other five phones to him in person.”

  “Sure, whatever he wants.”

  “I’ll book you a flight and a rental car,” Mina said, heading back to her desk. “I don’t know if there are any hotels operating right now, but I’ll figure out something.”

  David suddenly found himself alone in Esfahani’s office. He quickly glanced at the safe, but Mina had already closed and locked it. He checked the hallway—clear. He looked at Mina, already on the phone with the travel department. Then he noticed Esfahani’s desktop computer was still on.

  David recalled the transcript he’d read from the intercepted call made by his driver the day of David a
nd Eva’s disastrous first meeting with Esfahani. The driver had referred to Esfahani as the “nephew of the boss.” Wondering just who it was Esfahani was related to, David quickly pulled up Esfahani’s phone directory and scrolled through it. He began by searching for the name Ibrahim Asgari, commander of VEVAK, the secret police, but came up empty. Next he looked up Supreme Leader Hosseini. It was a long shot, he figured, but worth a try. Again, he came up empty. He tried President Ahmed Darazi. This, too, was a dry hole. Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh was his next search. Yet again, the search came up blank.

  Still, Esfahani had 837 contacts. There had to be someone useful in there, David figured. He glanced at Mina again. She was still on the phone and typing on her computer. Knowing he had only a few moments before she came back in, he pulled a memory stick from his pocket, inserted it into the USB port of Esfahani’s hard drive, and downloaded the entire directory, as well as Esfahani’s calendar.

  “Okay,” Mina called out, getting up from her seat and coming back into Esfahani’s office, “I got you the last seat on the next flight to Hamadan.”

  Then she saw David sitting at her boss’s desk.

  First she was stunned, but she quickly grew angry. “What are you doing?” she snapped. “Get away from there.”

  As she marched over to see what he was doing on the computer, David’s pulse quickened. But when she got there, she found him staring at a news site in Farsi and a stunning headline that read, “Twelfth Imam Appears in Hamadan, Heals Woman with Crushed Legs.”

  Mina gasped, David’s offense forgotten.

  69

  David arrived at the airport with less than half an hour before his flight.

  He checked in, cleared security, found a quiet corner near his gate, and powered up his laptop. With so many contacts in Esfahani’s directory, he was hesitant to transfer them all onto his mobile phone. The NSA would be overwhelmed, and most of the numbers wouldn’t produce anything of value. So with only a few minutes before departure, he began looking for specific names.

  He began with Javad Nouri. Who was this guy, and how in the world was he connected to the Twelfth Imam? Unfortunately, he found only the young man’s mobile number and no other information. Still, he entered the number into his Nokia and kept hunting.

  Next David looked up Daryush Rashidi and found his various phone numbers, his private e-mail address, his birthday, and his children’s names. He also found contact information for the man’s wife, Navaz Birjandi Rashidi.

  Birjandi? It had to be a coincidence, he thought. She couldn’t possibly be related to . . .

  David quickly searched the phone directory and hit pay dirt. Not only was Birjandi’s home phone number there, so was his home address. The man was Daryush Rashidi’s father-in-law.

  Before David could fully absorb this development, however, a flight attendant suddenly announced the last call for passengers to board flight 224 to Hamadan. David realized he’d been so focused he’d lost all track of time. It was time to pack up his laptop and board immediately. Still, he had one more thing to check. He was determined to find the identity of the “boss” to whom Esfahani was related. He had already ruled out more than a dozen senior Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader and the head of state security. But David wasn’t ready to give up. He began scrolling through Esfahani’s contacts but glanced up and noticed the flight attendant preparing to close the door and seal the flight for takeoff. He called to her and asked her to wait two more minutes.

  “No, sir,” she snapped. “You have to board now or take the next flight.”

  Pleading her patience for just another moment, David closed Esfahani’s phone directory and opened the file containing the man’s calendar. He did a search for the word birthday and came up with twenty-seven hits. He glanced back at the flight attendant, who was growing more annoyed by the second. He had to go. He was out of time. But his instincts pushed him forward. He scanned through each birthday. Esfahani’s mother. His father. His wife. His daughters. His in-laws. His grandparents. A cousin. Another cousin. A dozen more cousins. And then: Uncle Mohsen, birthday, November 5.

  David’s heart rate accelerated. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He closed the calendar file and reopened the phone directory.

  “Sir, really,” the flight attendant said, standing over him now. “I must insist.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Just one more minute, please.”

  She was not amused. “No, sir. Now.”

  David hit the Search function and typed in Mohsen. A fraction of a second later, the name Mohsen Jazini popped up on the screen, along with all of his personal contact information. David did a double take. Esfahani’s uncle was the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps?

  He copied Jazini’s information—along with Birjandi’s—into his Nokia and hoped the NSA would get it and be able to use it quickly. Then he shut down his laptop and boarded the commuter flight, just before the flight attendant slammed and locked the aircraft door behind him.

  Yet as intrigued as he was by these two developments, his thoughts shifted as he buckled himself into the last seat in the last row. He found himself thinking about the headline he’d seen in Esfahani’s office: “Twelfth Imam Appears in Hamadan, Heals Woman with Crushed Legs.” How was that possible? If Islam was false, which he was increasingly convinced it was, how could their so-called messiah be appearing in visions and healing people? Didn’t only God have the power to do great signs and wonders such as these?

  70

  Tehran, Iran

  The news broke at midday on February 22.

  Supreme Leader Hosseini delivered the live address on Iranian television. It took only six minutes, but it was a shot heard around the world. In his speech, he announced the news for which the Shia world had longed for centuries and which the Sunni world had feared nearly as long.

  “It is my great joy to announce to you that the Twelfth Imam—the Lord of the Age, peace be upon him—has come at last,” the Grand Ayatollah declared, reading from a prepared text. “This is not rumor or speculation. I have been blessed with the honor of meeting with him and speaking with him in person several times. My security cabinet has met with him as well. Soon, all the world will see him and be astonished. Imam al-Mahdi has a powerful message to share with humanity. He is preparing to establish his kingdom of justice and peace. He has commanded me to inform you that he will make his first official appearance to the world in Mecca a week from Thursday. He invites all who seek peace to come and be with him for this inaugural sermon.”

  Not surprisingly, the evidence pointed to the Israelis.

  The Twelfth Imam and his inner circle listened carefully to Defense Minister Faridzadeh’s briefing. The assassination of Dr. Saddaji, the nation’s top nuclear scientist, represented a serious blow to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Everyone was furious. But the Mahdi counseled patience.

  “We all know the Zionists are descendants of apes and pigs,” he began. “They got lucky this time, but let us all remember—they are destined to be wiped off the face of the earth once and for all, and it is our destiny to make this happen. But let us not be distracted from our higher calling. The Zionists would have no power against the Muslims if it were not for the American whores and lepers. It is time for the wave of jihad to crash upon them both. The day of the Judeo-Christian empire is over. The kingdom of Allah and his servant has come. Tell me, then, how soon will we be ready to launch the War of Annihilation?”

  “Soon, my Lord,” Minister Faridzadeh assured him. “But we need to replace Dr. Saddaji, and that won’t be easy to do.”

  “Saddaji was the deputy director of your nuclear program,” the Mahdi said. “Why not replace him with the director?”

  “The director is a political appointee, my Lord,” Faridzadeh said, choosing his words carefully. “He is a fine man, and we are deeply grateful for his service, but . . .”

  “But he does not hav
e the technical skills we need to run the weapons program,” the Mahdi said.

  “No, my Lord. I’m afraid he does not. He is really the face of the civilian program, working with the IAEA and other international bodies.”

  “But you obviously know how to move forward without Saddaji.”

  “That’s true, my Lord,” the defense minister agreed. “But that’s because all the pieces were already put in place by Saddaji before he died and because the Supreme Leader wanted to send a message to his killers that they could not stop our plans.”

  “Who was Saddaji’s right-hand man?” the Mahdi finally asked.

  “Dr. Najjar Malik.”

  “Najjar Malik from Iraq?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “From Samarra?”

  “Yes, yes, that is the one.”

  The Mahdi smiled. “I know Najjar; he is a faithful servant. He is married to Saddaji’s daughter, Sheyda, is he not?”

  “He is indeed, my Lord.”

  “Does he know all the details of the weapons program?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” the defense minister said. “He is a very able physicist, my Lord. He’s also a first-rate manager, and he was personally recruited and trained by Dr. Saddaji. But for security purposes, and at my command, Dr. Saddaji kept everything compartmentalized. Dr. Malik knows the rest of Iran’s civilian nuclear program better than anyone in the country, but we kept him in the dark about the weapons program. We operated that on a separate track.”

  “Could he learn it?” the Mahdi said.

  “I think he could. He is definitely someone we could trust. He would need time to get briefed. But I think he would be ideal. And of course, he would have all the scientists and staff on the weapons team who reported directly to Saddaji to help him.”

  The Twelfth Imam smiled again. “Bring him to me at once.”

  71

  Hamadan, Iran