29
Tehran, Iran
When he came to, David found himself dressed in a fresh suit.
One of his own.
He was shaven. His hair was wet and combed. He was sitting across a large conference table from Abdol Esfahani. Smart, he thought, trying to regain his bearings. The table was too far for David to easily lunge across, and even if he tried, there were two armed guards standing behind Esfahani.
David tried to shake off the sedatives. He could hear Esfahani talking, but the first few sentences made little sense. It had to be the drugs, but two things were clear: Esfahani was responsible for this whole fiasco, and he was not apologizing.
“The entire planet is about to change.”
It was the first sentence that made any sense to David. His head was beginning to clear. But he did not like what he was hearing.
“We are about to live in a world without America and without Zionism,” Esfahani continued. “Our holy hatred is about to strike like a wave against the infidels. We don’t trust anyone. We can’t trust anyone. The enemy is moving. He is among us. We must be careful.”
“That’s it?” David asked, a burst of anger and adrenaline now helping to give more clarity.
“What do you mean?” Esfahani asked.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“About what?”
“You had me tortured. You had me waterboarded.”
“We could not take a risk that you worked for the CIA or the Mossad. Now that we’re convinced you don’t, we can get back to work.”
“Back to work?” David shot back. “Are you out of your mind? Why would I want to do anything for you at this point? What happened today is completely unacceptable.”
“Mr. Tabrizi, you’re not leaving this country until we get all the phones.”
“How am I supposed to get the phones if you won’t let me go get them?”
“We don’t think you’ll ever come back.”
“Really? Whatever would give you that idea?”
“You said you wanted to work with us, Mr. Tabrizi. You said you wanted to serve Imam al-Mahdi. Were you lying?”
“Of course not. I’ve been doing everything you asked.”
“Not fast enough.”
“As fast as possible.”
“That’s where we disagree.”
“So your idea of how best to motivate me is to torture me?”
“You were being vetted.”
“Vetted?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“You wanted to be part of the Group of 313, did you not?”
David was stunned. Was he hearing this correctly? “Yes, of course,” he said cautiously. “But I—”
“How were we supposed to know if we could really trust you? We had to know for certain. Now we do.”
“So what are you saying?” David asked.
“It is simple, Reza—you get us the rest of the phones in the next seventy-two hours, and you’re on the team.”
David didn’t really know what that meant, but he knew better than to ask too many questions for now. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Now, you have to understand, it’s not going to be easy to get these phones shipped in. It may cost more money.”
“Then that will come out of your wallet. Not ours. We’ve already paid you handsomely.”
“I know, but I am taking great risks here, Mr. Esfahani. I mean, I don’t have to remind you that these satellite phones can’t be legally purchased by Iran under the UN sanctions.”
“Technically, we’re not buying them. You are.”
“Which just further proves my point. I’m taking enormous risks.”
“We’re all taking great risks,” Esfahani countered. “But the fact is this: we cannot build the Caliphate if the Promised One cannot communicate with his top commanders. And this cannot happen until we have all of the phones. That is the end of the matter.”
With that, Esfahani got up and left the room. His bodyguards followed him after sliding a small box across the table, leaving David in the room by himself.
Curious, he opened the box. It was one of the satphones he had just brought with him. It was clear what he had to do—and clear what the consequences were if he did not.
* * *
Oakton, Virginia
Najjar Malik’s heart was beating wildly.
He had never driven in the US before. He had never even been to the States before. He had no idea where he was or where he was going. He just knew that he had to get as far away from the safe house as rapidly as possible without getting caught.
He glanced at the gas gauge. There was half a tank. In a Corolla, he figured that would keep him going for quite some time. What he needed was money and a map. At a stoplight, he checked the glove compartment but found only a stack of manuals, the car’s registration, a wad of napkins, and some toy cars. He glanced in the backseat—nothing but fast-food wrappers, two car seats, and some loose change on the floor. In the compartment between the front seats, though, he found a GPS unit. It wasn’t exactly like the one he had back in Hamadan, but it was close. He quickly powered it up, scrolled through various points of interest, and chose the nearest public library, only a few miles away.
Once there, he was greeted by a helpful young librarian who happily guided him to a bank of computer terminals and even showed him how to log on to the Internet. He thanked her, waited for her to go off to help someone else, then pulled up Google and typed in “Farsi language TV stations in Washington, DC.” That didn’t work. He typed in several other variations and soon came up with three possible options for getting his message into the Middle East. The first was BBC Persian. Launched on January 14, 2009, BBC Persian struck Najjar as the best option. It wasn’t run by Muslims. It was accessible from Washington. It had a large Farsi-speaking audience, and it had strong credibility inside Iran. He had never watched the network himself for fear of being branded a traitor by his father-in-law or his colleagues in the nuclear program. But he figured he was a unique case. He knew that the Hosseini regime was constantly denouncing BBC Persian, which meant it was watched and paid attention to by not only the elites in Iran but the masses, who often loved to do the exact opposite of what their leaders told them to do.
The second option was Al Jazeera. True, it was only available to the region in Arabic, but many Iranians spoke Arabic and watched the network. What’s more, the network was well watched and respected throughout the Islamic world and would be monitored by Iranian journalists and bloggers who, he hoped, would pick up his story.
The third option was the Persian Christian Satellite Network, a Farsi-language Christian TV company based out of Los Angeles but with studios in New York and Washington. This was a rogue network if there ever was one, broadcasting the gospel through Bible teaching and Bible dramas into Iran in Farsi twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It certainly didn’t have the ratings of the other two, but according to the website, it was respected by a wide range of Iranians searching for an alternative to Islamic teaching and state-run news. Most importantly, Najjar figured PCSN would be the most sympathetic to his story and perhaps, therefore, willing to give more airtime than the others.
He decided to aim high. He went back to the car and used the cell phone he’d taken from the neighbors’ house to call BBC’s headquarters in London, where he was transferred to a Farsi-speaking producer. He explained that he was a senior Iranian nuclear scientist who had defected to the United States. He briefly described his background and said he wanted to give someone an exclusive story about the Iranian nuclear program and the CIA’s efforts to stop it. Was the BBC interested?
The conversation didn’t go quite as Najjar had hoped. The producer asked a lot of questions, but to Najjar, she sounded skeptical, though she promised to talk to her editor and get back to him.
Najjar hung up the phone and stared out at traffic passing by. Then he closed his eyes and bowed his head. “O Father, thank You for saving me and making me Your child,” he prayed. “Please lead me now. Please guide me. Am I doing the right thing? Am I taking the right approach? As You promise in Psalm 32, please instruct me and teach me in the way I should go, and please counsel me with Your eye upon me, O Lord. Thank You again, Father. I trust You. And please bless Sheyda and Farah and my little one. You know where they are. You alone can protect and comfort and encourage them. I entrust them and myself entirely to You. In Jesus’ holy and powerful name I pray. Amen.”
Najjar opened his eyes again. He didn’t see a vision. He didn’t hear an audible voice. He did, however, feel a peace he couldn’t explain, and that was enough for him. The Lord had told him to talk to his country, to be a watchman to alert his people. Satellite television seemed the right way. He was open to other avenues, but for now he sensed he should keep trying.
He opened the cell phone again, dialed PCSN’s Washington bureau, and was again transferred to a producer. Once more he briefly shared his story, but this time he shared a little of the spiritual journey he was on as well.
The reaction was completely different. The producer was ecstatic. He asked a few more questions and seemed to grow more excited with Najjar’s every answer.
“Where are you?” the producer asked.
“Oakton.”
“How quickly can you get into the city?”
“I can come there now.”
“Thirty minutes?”
“I really don’t know,” Najjar conceded. “I’ve never driven it before.”
“Okay, let’s say an hour. Get on the road now, and I’ll call you back in a few minutes with several of my colleagues to ask you more questions.”
Thrilled, Najjar agreed. He entered PCSN’s address into the GPS and soon found himself merging onto Interstate 66 toward the nation’s capital, singing to the Lord in Farsi as he drove.
Until a terrible thought hit him: what if the CIA was monitoring the call?
* * *
Jerusalem, Israel
It was an hour’s drive back to the Defense Ministry.
But Levi Shimon wasted no time. Sitting in the backseat of the bulletproof sedan, he opened a small leather journal he called the Book of Death. It was here that he scribbled notes, dreamed up new projects, sketched out initial war plans, and jotted down page after page of operational questions that he needed to answer or get answered by his general staff. He pulled out a fountain pen, noted the date and time, and made a new entry.
• PM: no other way to protect Israel—we must attack Iran.
• Time is short—wants operation to be ready in forty-eight to seventy-two hours.
• Objectives:
1. Destroy all Iran’s nuclear weapons
2. Destroy key nuclear facilities
3. Destroy missile production facilities
4. Destroy Iranian naval assets in the Med and the Gulf
5. Assassinate top nuclear scientists
6. Hit key targets in Tehran—Ministry of Defense, IRGC hq, intelligence hq
7. Be ready for missile blitzkrieg
8. Be prepared to neutralize retaliatory capacities in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza—be ready with ground forces, if necessary
9. Minimize IDF casualties/loss of equipment, Israeli citizen casualties
• How do we maintain element of surprise?
• How do we keep the US on our side?
• What is the likelihood that Egypt or Jordan will enter the fray? What level of influence does the Twelfth Imam have there?
Back at the Defense Ministry, he had a full war plan in his safe. He and the generals had been working on it for years. They had been refining it for months. But it was just beginning to dawn on Levi Shimon that this was finally the moment for which they had been preparing for so long. Unless something dramatic happened to change the strategic dynamic, the duly elected leader of the State of Israel was going to authorize him to use all means necessary to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat in the next few days. It was going to be the most dangerous and difficult operation in the history of the IDF, and the stakes could not be higher. They were either going to lose their country or transform the Middle East forever.
There were so many details to finalize. There were so many ways this operation could go terribly wrong. What worried Shimon most, however, was that their success or utter failure depended on one man. Not him. Not the prime minister. Not any Israeli citizen, in fact. Their fate was now in the hands of one asset the Mossad had recruited years before, deep behind enemy lines. He was an asset who had provided extraordinarily accurate information in the past. He had helped plant the Stuxnet computer worm responsible for shutting down more than thirty thousand computers throughout Iran, particularly those running key Iranian nuclear facilities, and his involvement had never been detected. He had planned the assassination of Dr. Mohammed Saddaji, the clandestine leader of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and hadn’t been caught. He had provided the Mossad with detailed readouts from the Iranian nuclear weapons test just the week before, readouts proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that not only had the test gone well—it had gone far better than expected.
But now the asset had gone dark.
They had asked him for the exact location of each and every nuclear warhead in Iran. He was uniquely positioned to know that information, or at least find it out. But they hadn’t heard from him since, and they didn’t dare try to communicate with him again. What had gone wrong? Had he been compromised? Had he been arrested or executed? Shimon had no idea. All he knew was their most important asset was missing, and time was running out.