58

Munich, Germany

David arrived in Munich but was desperate to get back to Tehran.

He had no interest in watching TV, paying his bills, or reading all the Christmas cards and other assorted mail he’d FedEx’d to himself from the Atlanta airport, not to mention all the other junk mail and magazines that had piled up since he’d been here last. Time was too short. Iran was out of control. He couldn’t prove it yet, but he knew they were closing in on nuclear capability, and he was determined to get back into the action.

He wondered why the package from Amazon hadn’t arrived yet. He’d been looking forward to reading Dr. Alireza Birjandi’s book on Shia eschatology and had ordered it to be sent to Germany. But it was nowhere to be seen.

He called Zalinsky to check in but learned his boss was on a secure conference call with Langley. He called Eva to gripe but got her voice mail instead. He logged on to the CIA’s secure intranet system to review the latest transcripts of intercepted calls inside Iran. But of the dozens of calls, none provided any useful information. He cleaned his 9mm Beretta 92FS and wondered how to smuggle it into Tehran on his next trip. But it was all busywork, and it was killing him. He hadn’t joined the CIA to waste time in Germany. They had to get moving.

He checked his AOL account, hoping at least for word from Marseille, but found nothing. On a whim, he did a search on Facebook. He hoped to find a recent photo or some current information about her and wondered why he’d never thought of it before. But there was no Marseille Harper listed. Then again, neither was he. He checked MySpace and Classmates.com and Twitter but found no sign of her at all. When he simply typed her name into Google, however, he found one link: a story published September 12 of the previous year by the Oregonian, Portland’s daily newspaper, headlined, “Charles D. Harper Commits Suicide.”

Not believing it could be the same person, he clicked on the link and read the obituary.

Charles David Harper, an Iran expert who served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, served in various other embassy posts as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. State Department, and later served as a professor of Middle East history at Princeton University, was found dead Saturday afternoon in the woods near his farmhouse on Sauvie Island. Blake Morris of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said Mr. Harper died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He is survived by his only child, Marseille Harper, a schoolteacher in the Portland Public School District, who found his body; and by his mother, Mildred, who resides in a Portland-area nursing home. Sources close to the family say she is suffering from an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s. Mr. Harper’s wife, Claire, died in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.

Numb, David stared at the screen, wishing he could simply shut down the computer and make the story go away but unable to take his eyes off the words.

Why had he done it? The date of his death told part of the story, but not all of it. No matter how much pain the man was in, how could Mr. Harper have done that to Marseille? She needed him. She loved him. He was all she had in this world. How could he have abandoned her? And how would she ever erase the image of finding her father in those woods?

He hadn’t known Marseille was a teacher, but he had no doubt she was a great one, and he hoped somehow she could go on teaching despite all that had happened. He hadn’t known that the Harpers lived on Sauvie Island. He’d never even heard of Sauvie Island. A quick check of Wikipedia revealed that it was the largest island along the Columbia River and lay approximately ten miles northwest of downtown Portland. The island was made up mainly of farmland and boasted barely a thousand year-round residents. “Bicyclists flock to the island because its flat topography and lengthy low-volume roads make it ideal for cycling,” he read. It wasn’t the Jersey Shore, but it did sound like a beautiful place to live.

He had learned another thing from the article, something that had come out of left field. He had never known that Mr. Harper’s middle name was David. His father had never told him. Nor had his mother. Marseille had never said anything, and he’d never had more than a few brief conversations with Mr. Harper himself. He’d had to read it in an obituary, but in that moment it dawned on him that his parents had named him after the man who had saved their lives. There were no other Davids in the Shirazi family tree. He had been named after Charles David Harper, and now the man was dead.

Hamadan, Iran

Najjar Malik lay in bed, unable to move.

He had awoken with a fever of 104 and a head that felt like it was going to explode. Sheyda did her best to take care of him all morning. She brought him cold washcloths for his face, stomach, and chest. She fed him spoonfuls of ice chips and cold yogurt. She also contacted their doctor and asked him to come over to their apartment for a house call, which he promptly did. By noon, the doctor had already come and gone, having given Najjar antibiotics to fight off whatever infection was presently coursing through his body.

“Honey,” Sheyda said in a whisper, “I’m going to take the baby over to Mother’s so there’s no risk of her getting sick, okay?”

“You’re going to leave me?” Najjar groaned.

“Just for a little bit,” she promised. “Just to drop off the baby and have lunch with Daddy. Then I’ll be right back. Is there anything I can get you at the store?”

Najjar asked for some ice cream, then closed his eyes and drifted off again. He knew why this was happening but didn’t dare tell her. It was because he had watched that program by the Christians. Allah was punishing him, he knew, and he deserved it.