So he laid on the horn, tried to maneuver his tiny Renault through the crowd, and prayed desperately to a God he did not believe in that he wouldn’t run anyone over.
* * *
Ahmed smiled, for he did not know the dangers just ahead.
He dutifully put on his seat belt, and someone shut the door. The motorcade started moving again. As they left the camp, they took a right and then a quick left, and he could soon see the gigantic steel-and-glass stadium rising before them. Ahmed pressed his face against the window, fascinated by the sights and sounds of helicopters hovering overhead, of police motorcycles—lights flashing and sirens wailing—leading the motorcade and bringing up the rear, of well-armed Beirut policemen and Hezbollah militia members blocking off every street and providing a secure corridor. No longer were they surrounded by regular people. No longer was the Promised One being mobbed by commoners or refugees. Now he was being treated like a president, like a prince, like royalty, Ahmed thought, and he had never been more excited.
The side street they were on now was narrow and lined on both sides with small homes and parked cars and trucks. Ahmed realized he had never been this far away from the camp, and he began to wonder what the rest of Beirut looked like. He had heard there were beaches. He had heard that the Mediterranean lapped gently along the shoreline and that the waters were warm and tasted salty, and he wondered what that must be like.
Ahmed’s attention was drawn to a silver Mercedes, old and somewhat rusted and parked just a few yards ahead of them on the left. He didn’t know why it caught his eye. It just did. At that moment, the Mercedes exploded in a massive fireball. Flames shot high into the air. Shards of glass and twisted, molten metal flew in all directions. Ahmed’s arms instinctively covered his head, and he leaned right, away from the blast. But just then a green Volkswagen they were passing on the right exploded as well. Then so did the SUV ahead of them and the one right behind them.
The enormous force of the four blasts in rapid succession rocked their own SUV, lifted it, and sent it soaring through the air, flipping it completely over. They landed hard. Every one of the bulletproof windows blew out, and the roof scraped along the pavement, sparks and tongues of flame flying everywhere.
Thick, black, acrid smoke filled the interior. Covered in blood, his own and others’, and choking uncontrollably—gasping frantically for oxygen—Ahmed wanted to scream for his mother but couldn’t. He tried to turn to see her and his father, but he couldn’t move. He strained to hear them but the crackle of the flames and the screams and shouts of people on the streets nearby made it impossible. He was hanging upside down, tied in by his seat belt, which he couldn’t unfasten. He could feel the searing heat. Through his tears he could see the flames licking around the edges of their vehicle. He could see the driver hanging limply, blood pouring from his head. He could see the bodyguard in the front passenger seat shaking violently, an engine part driven deep into his chest. He knew he had to get out of this car as fast as possible or he was going to die. So he tried to turn and see if the Twelfth Imam could help him, but as he did, a pain more intense than anything he had ever felt before went shooting through his neck and down his spine like a thousand volts of electricity. Then everything went silent and black, and little Ahmed lost consciousness.
* * *
Miroux slammed on the brakes and bolted from his car.
His camera and notebook in hand, he began running toward the Twelfth Imam’s SUV. What he found when he got there and would relay to the world minutes later was a horror show unlike anything he had ever witnessed before.
The stench of burning human flesh was overpowering. The entire street seemed to be covered in blood, and yet oddly it also seemed like autumn, he noticed. Most of the trees lining the narrow street were now in flames, but the force of the explosions had stripped them bare, and leaves lay scattered everywhere, as if it were October or November and they needed to be raked.
Policemen, militia members, and ordinary citizens came running from everywhere. A crowd started forming, making it difficult for fire trucks and ambulances to reach the scene. Women were sobbing. Several of the men standing nearby looked dazed and confused. Miroux tried to ask people questions about what they had just seen and heard, but few could bring themselves to speak. He started shooting pictures until a soldier ripped the camera from his neck and smashed it to the ground. Then suddenly there was a loud gasp from the crowd, almost in unison.
Miroux turned quickly to see what everyone else was seeing. He couldn’t believe it. Someone was actually emerging from the wreckage. To his shock, he realized it was Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali, covered in soot but apparently uninjured. In his arms he held a small boy, no older than ten or eleven, Miroux figured. The child, too, was alive, though badly bloodied. No one else, it seemed, from the Mahdi’s vehicle had survived. Nor had anyone in the SUVs in front of or behind his.
At first the crowd erupted in applause and cheers that seemed like they were going to go on and on. But then, without warning, everyone grew quiet. One by one, they got down on their knees and bowed to the Mahdi. Miroux tried to write it all down but felt a cold shiver run down his spine. The hair on the back of his neck was standing. Something bizarre was in motion, he told himself. It finally dawned on him: this was not a political story.
16
Oakton, Virginia
Najjar Malik tossed and turned continuously.
Trying to fall asleep in a bedroom on the second floor of a beautiful split-level home in a quiet cul-de-sac somewhere in northern Virginia, he desperately missed the company of his wife, Sheyda, their baby daughter, and Sheyda’s mother, Farah, all of whom had defected with him. To the best of his knowledge, they were in another CIA safe house, apparently somewhere in Maryland. He had not been told when they would be reunited. For now, it was nearly as though he had been sentenced to solitary confinement. He’d been told to try to stay upstairs and in his room as much as possible. The bedroom was more spacious than the apartment he’d shared with his small family in Iran. There was a sitting area with two large overstuffed chairs, a basket piled with fleece blankets, and a huge spalike bathroom he couldn’t quite believe was for normal people. Still, he couldn’t say he was enjoying it. If only Sheyda were sitting in one of the chairs, holding the baby and sharing her heart with him.
He had asked for a Bible and been given one. So for now, all he could do was read and pray and think and try not to worry about the future—his own, his family’s, or his country’s—but it wasn’t easy. There was no television, no radio, no computer, and not a newspaper or magazine in his room or anywhere in the house. There was a phone in the kitchen, but it required a code his caretakers would not give him.
Going outdoors was out of the question. Eva Fischer didn’t want him to have any contact with the outside world until their interrogations—she called them “conversations”—were finished, though he couldn’t imagine what else she could ask. They had covered every conceivable topic, and he had done his best to be forthcoming. He had thoroughly studied and exhaustively explained all the information he could find in his late father-in-law’s computer files. He had given them Zandi and Khan. He had given them detailed floor plans of the nuclear facilities not only in Hamadan, but also in Bushehr, Natanz, Arak, and Esfahān, all of which he had been to many times and knew by heart. He had even described the execution of the Arab nuclear expert from the University of Baghdad and explained his theory on why an expert on UD3, or uranium deuteride, was even in Iran.
But it was not Iran’s nuclear weapons that burned Najjar Malik’s heart. The threat of their use against the US or Israel was real and serious, to be sure, and he was genuinely grateful for the opportunity to help the Americans unravel Tehran’s weapons program in any way he could. But what kept him up night after night at this safe house in the town of Oakton, what forced him to his knees in prayer for hour after hour—at least when Agent Fischer wasn’t there to ask him so many questions—was the haunting reali
ty that once again war was coming to the Middle East and that millions of his countrymen could very well perish and spend eternity burning in the fires of hell, with no hope of escape.
Najjar prayed desperately for peace. But the more he prayed, the more he sensed somewhere deep in his soul that the Lord’s answer to this heart cry was “no.” No, the Lord was not going to bring peace, security, or calm to the Middle East. No, He wasn’t going to restrain those who were determined to bring bloodshed. No; not yet; not now.
Najjar had been raised a devout Shia Muslim and a Twelver. For all his life, he had prayed for war. He had believed what his fellow Twelvers believed, that the more chaos and carnage and bloodshed that occurred in the Middle East, the more likely it was for the Mahdi to come and establish justice and peace. To pray for war and even genocide, especially against the Jews and the Christians, had been his religious duty, he had always believed, because it would hasten the coming of the Promised One. But now Najjar was a completely different person. Jesus Christ had appeared to him personally in a vision in the mountains of Hamadan. “Come and follow me,” Jesus had said. Jesus had shown Najjar the scars in His hands and feet, where nails had been driven during His crucifixion. And at that moment, Najjar had known beyond the shadow of a doubt that all he had ever been taught by the mullahs and the ayatollahs was a lie. He believed at that moment that Jesus truly was King of kings and Lord of lords, that Jesus was the Alpha and the Omega, and that He was coming back soon. And at that moment, at the very instant his eyes had been opened to the reality of Jesus’ love and compassion and forgiveness for him, Najjar had bowed down and worshiped Him and vowed to follow Him forever.
Ever since, he had been devouring the Bible. He had read it for hours each day, beginning when he first opened his eyes in the morning and making sure he did not go to sleep without meditating more on God’s Word and even memorizing large passages of it. He couldn’t get enough of the Scriptures. He was like a man who had been groping through the desert, parched beyond belief, had stumbled into an oasis of palm trees surrounding a spring, and was now gulping down fresh, clean, sweet water as fast as his system would allow.
And hour by hour, it seemed, Najjar felt his perspective on life, on the world, on the future changing dramatically. Now he knew that the prophet Isaiah had taught that the Messiah would be the Prince of Peace. Now he knew that Jesus had taught His disciples, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Now he knew that David had written in the Psalms, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” So he spent hours on his face before his God, often in tears, praying that war and chaos and genocide would not come, and yet he had the strongest sense that they were coming anyway.
He couldn’t see how events could turn out any other way. The Twelfth Imam was going to launch simultaneous nuclear attacks on Tel Aviv, New York, and perhaps London and Paris as well. Or Washington was going to attack Iran first using all the intelligence he himself was providing. Or the Israelis were going to hit first because they felt President Jackson and his advisors were too cowardly or were dragging their feet too long.
The question, Najjar thought, was no longer if war was coming but when. Which prompted a second and more pressing question: Why? Then again, the more Najjar studied the Scriptures, particularly Bible prophecy, the more he saw that Jesus and the prophets and the apostles all said that wars and rumors of wars would be prevalent in the last days before His return. Nations would rise against nations. Kingdoms would rise against kingdoms. Revolutions and lawlessness and death and destruction would come like birth pangs, the holy Scriptures foretold. Followers of Christ weren’t supposed to cause or foment or desire such traumas, but they were not supposed to be surprised by the fiery trials that were coming. To the contrary, they were supposed to be ready and be prepared, for the Day of the Lord was coming at a time when the world would be caught off guard. Indeed, if Najjar was reading the Scriptures correctly, it seemed to him that in the last days the Lord was going to allow great trials and tribulations to occur to shake people out of the notion that anything but faith in Jesus Christ could save them.
Before their escape from Iran, Sheyda had told him she was convinced that God had chosen Najjar not only to know the truth of salvation and full redemption through Christ Jesus but to proclaim that truth to all of Iran. Their people had to know the Good News of God’s love and free gift of forgiveness, she had insisted. Every single one of the seventy million people in his beloved country needed to hear—in Farsi—that Jesus Christ was the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no man or woman could come to the Father except through faith in Jesus Christ. Time was short, she had said, but the message had to go forth, and even though it went against every natural instinct within him, Najjar Malik had begun to wonder if Sheyda was right.
Was his Lord really calling him to preach the gospel without fear? And if so, how? He was a stranger in a strange land. He was a prisoner of the US government. How could he possibly get out? Where would he go? And how could he spread the Word before it was too late?
* * *
Word of the events in Beirut ricocheted across the globe.
Reuters moved the story first, without a byline, just nine minutes after the first explosion, noting simply that “the motorcade carrying the Twelfth Imam and his entourage was attacked by a series of car bombings in Beirut” and that the casualty count and condition of the Mahdi were “at present unknown.” Miroux’s intention wasn’t to deceive or even necessarily to heighten the suspense of an already-extraordinary global drama, though he would later be accused by some media critics of both. The truth was he simply didn’t know how to write what he had seen. The world needed to know about the attack first and foremost, he told himself, so he dictated a four-hundred-word story by satellite phone to his editor at Reuters headquarters at Canary Wharf in London.
Twelve minutes later, Reuters posted the first of what would become multiple updates. This time, the story was bylined—Jacques Miroux in Beirut—and this was the story that took the world by storm. Seventeen people were dead. Twenty-three were wounded. “But the Twelfth Imam emerged from the crumpled, blazing wreckage with barely a scratch on him, holding a boy covered in blood, but according to two police officials interviewed by Reuters, the boy was either ‘uninjured’ or ‘healed.’” The article quoted no fewer than six bystanders saying they were certain they had just witnessed “a miracle.” There was no mention, however, of the “angel” sighting in the Shatila refugee camp, not because his editors in London wouldn’t include it but because Miroux had not yet told them.
The Associated Press was the first to publish grisly still photographs from the scene, as well as exclusive photos of the Mahdi holding little Ahmed—photos taken on a bystander’s mobile phone—sixteen minutes after the first explosion. Within thirty minutes, Al Jazeera was the first network to broadcast live images from the site of the attack, plus exclusive videos of the actual explosions themselves and even of the Mahdi emerging from the wreckage of his SUV with the boy in hand. These, too, had been shot by several different witnesses and residents of the neighborhood near the stadium; Al Jazeera had purchased them for a rumored six-figure sum in US dollars.
An hour later, Agence France-Presse became the first international news service to report on the “angel” sighting in a story headlined, “Thousands Claim to Hear, See ‘Angelic Being’ Hovering over Mahdi in Beirut Refugee Camp.” The report quoted more than two dozen people, all unrelated and unknown to each other, who said they had been in the crowd in Shatila and had both personally seen the heavenly figure and heard him call their name and tell them to follow “the Promised One.” The wire story moved with photographs of the “divine apparition,” one taken by an AFP reporter, the other two taken on mobile phones by witnesses.
* * *
En Route to Tehran
David was now forty-one thousand feet over the Atlantic.
Upon Director Allen’s orders, he was heading back into Iran aboard the Ag
ency’s Citation. But to get there, he had to make sure it didn’t appear as if he had just been in the US, much less kibitzing at CIA headquarters. Thus, he first had to return to Munich, reassume his identity as Reza Tabrizi, and only then catch two Lufthansa flights, first to Frankfurt, and then into Tehran.
For the last several hours, David had been poring over transcripts of Eva’s interrogations of Dr. Najjar Malik. He’d dutifully read the five-page summary that Eva had written for Allen and the NSC. But as much as he respected Eva, he wasn’t interested in her analysis. He wanted to study every page of the transcripts for himself so he could draw his own conclusions. David found every word of the transcripts riveting, and he wished he’d been there with Eva for any or all of the sessions.
Malik had not been captured. He wasn’t being forced or pressured to tell the American government what he knew. He was a defector. He had been eager to leave Iran. He felt betrayed and deeply hurt by Dr. Saddaji and the Iranian government, and he wanted them exposed. The more he read, the more convinced David became that Malik had answered every single one of Eva’s questions as honestly and thoroughly as he could. He was impressed by the fact that when Malik didn’t know the answer to something, he just said so. He didn’t seem to be trying to impress anyone with his knowledge. He didn’t seem to be trying to say he knew more than he really did. Unless he was a world-class liar, Malik seemed to be telling them the truth, and one truth was crystal clear: they needed to hunt down and bring in Jalal Zandi and Tariq Khan as rapidly as possible, for at the moment they held the keys to the kingdom.
As useful as that information was—and it was very useful indeed—David was struck even more by Malik’s personal story. The scientist had been remarkably candid about his conversion from being a Twelver to being a follower of Jesus Christ. Eva had rightly pressed into his conversion, asked lots of questions, and gotten lots of details.