Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  She could see the enormous pain in this family, and not just because of Mrs. Shirazi’s passing. These relationships were broken. The boys were estranged from one another. Worse, they seemed estranged from their father as well. There were clearly deep tensions just under the surface, and there were moments she feared those pains might explode into the open. She prayed throughout the day that they wouldn’t and that no one else would notice.

  For some families, tragedies brought them together and helped heal old wounds. This didn’t appear to be one of those families. What the Shirazis needed most, Marseille began to see, was the same thing her father had needed most but never found. Not ancient traditions or a house full of family and friends or a piping-hot cup of Persian tea. What they needed was the healing touch of God’s Son, Jesus. They desperately needed Christ’s love, his comfort, the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,” that he had promised to all who followed him. She wanted them to know the love and mercy and healing she had found after her mother was killed in the Trade Center attacks. She wanted them to know the amazing truth of God’s great love.

  But now didn’t seem the time to say anything, and again, who was she? Why should they listen to her? Yes, Christ had poured into her heart an everlasting, transforming love she hadn’t known existed. He had adopted her into his family and truly healed the wounds in her soul. She desperately wanted this family to know the Jesus she knew. But “there is an appointed time for everything,” she recalled from Scripture. “And there is a time for every event under heaven. . . . A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. . . . A time to be silent and a time to speak.” Tonight, she knew, was a time to be silent, and so she was.

  Marseille glanced at her watch. It was now well past midnight. This very long day was finally winding down. She stepped into the kitchen and took a look around. Most of the guests who had come to mourn with the Shirazi family had gone or were in the process of saying good-bye. Dr. Shirazi hugged the last few to leave and then headed upstairs without a word. He had to be exhausted. But Marseille felt a twinge of disappointment that he wouldn’t take a moment and say good-bye to her as well.

  She quietly began helping Azad wrap and put away the mounds of food that people had brought over. A few moments later, Saeed stepped into the kitchen but continued out to the back deck without a word, fixated on his BlackBerry and raising not a finger to help. Marseille tried not to let it bother her. She was exhausted after such an emotional day. She needed a good night’s rest and some time to herself before packing up and finally flying back to Portland late the following evening. But as tired as she was, she couldn’t quite bear to leave. Not yet. So she began wiping down tables and then rinsing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.

  There was something special about being back in this house. She loved how it looked, how it smelled, how it felt to be here. She smiled, remembering the love and affection the Shirazi parents had for each other. They held hands. They took long walks together. They doted on one another, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy each other. Marseille suspected they would have been deeply in love anywhere on the planet, regardless of the circumstances, for they were, at heart, classic romantics. The kind of love they’d had for each other—the kind they seemed uniquely wired for—was at once special and magical and deeply mysterious, and Marseille found herself wondering if David was wired for that kind of love as well.

  Fond memories notwithstanding, she had never really expected to be standing here again after so many years. Not after how she had treated David. Yet here she was, alone with David’s family, trying to love them and comfort them in their loss, while David was somewhere far away. Life had a funny way of working out, she told herself as she rooted around on her hands and knees under the kitchen sink, looking for some dishwasher detergent.

  She wondered if she would ever see David again. Surely she would, right? God hadn’t brought her all this way to reconnect with his family only to lose him all over again, possibly forever, had he? The very thought made Marseille wince. She again offered a silent prayer for David, for safety and for his speedy return. She’d been foolish to wait so long to reach out to him. He’d been so warm and encouraging when they’d met, glad to see her again after so many years. Perhaps her fears had been misplaced. Perhaps David was still her friend. Perhaps he could be more than just a friend.

  She wondered where he was at that very moment. What was he doing? Whom was he with?

  KARAJ, IRAN

  David felt his phone vibrate, signaling an incoming message. He checked it as he kept jogging and found that it was actually a Twitter post from Najjar Malik. Where was Najjar, he wondered. And why hadn’t the FBI found him yet? The man had been Iran’s top nuclear scientist and the CIA’s top prize, and now he was gone? How was that possible? Who was the moron who had let Najjar escape?

  Then again, though he couldn’t admit it to anyone on his team, David wasn’t entirely disappointed it had happened. Najjar was a transformed man. He had not only had a vision of Christ in Iran but now had the courage to tell the world about it. Najjar was fast becoming the modern-day apostle Paul of Iran, and David found himself intrigued by every tweet the man sent. And he was not alone. Najjar’s Twitter following was surging exponentially, and he was using all the sudden interest to urge his countrymen to turn away from Islam and turn to Jesus. He was linking to sites exposing the evils of the Iranian regime and warning about the dangers of the Caliphate and the Twelfth Imam, whom Najjar openly and unapologetically called a “false messiah.”

  Najjar’s latest messages contained a link and the comment “Mustafa is evil, but make no mistake—the Mahdi is behind this savagery. But God will not be mocked. Judgment on Iran and Syria is coming.”

  Intrigued, David clicked on the link as he rounded a corner and headed up Abu Bakr Street. The page that loaded was from the website of the Daily Star, a Beirut-based newspaper. The headline read, “Syrian Girl Found Mutilated.”

  The horrifying story began: “A young woman was found beheaded and mutilated, and the crimes were reportedly committed by Syrian security agents. According to reports, the eighteen-year-old woman’s brother was arrested and killed earlier this month. When their mother was brought by security forces to pick up his body, which showed bruises, burns, and gunshots, she found her daughter’s body as well. The family said the girl had been decapitated, her arms cut off, and skin removed. After the burial last weekend, women held a protest . . .”

  David stopped reading.

  God will not be mocked. Judgment on Iran and Syria is coming.

  David could only hope Najjar was right. Syrian president Gamal Mustafa was arguably the most bloodthirsty tyrant in the Middle East, and that was saying something. David wasn’t entirely sure how close Mustafa and the Mahdi were. It was odd that the Syrians weren’t yet engaged in the war with Israel, but he had little doubt they would be soon. These dictators needed to be toppled. Their people needed to be liberated. But it was going to take an act of God, David realized. For clearly the U.S. government was no longer in the business of regime change.

  David’s phone rang. His pulse quickened. Perhaps it was Birjandi or Rashidi. But then, to his surprise, he found himself wishing most that it was Marseille. And yet how could it be? She didn’t know this number, and he knew Langley wouldn’t let an unauthorized call from the States come through to his phone anyway. Unless, perhaps, it was his dad.

  David read the caller ID. His heart sank. It wasn’t any of his contacts calling him back with a new lead, or Marseille or his father. It was Zalinsky at Langley. He took a break from his run to catch his breath and answer the call.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey—are we secure?” his handler asked.

  “Absolutely. What have you got?” David wondered if his voice betrayed the level of anxiety he now felt.

  “We’ve intercepted a call from the Iranian high command,” Zalinsky began. “It’s not good.”

  “
What?” David pressed. “What is it?”

  Zalinsky paused. He seemed to be steeling himself for the conversation to come. David scanned the street around him. There were few people out and no one who looked suspicious. He looked behind him but saw no one following. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself for whatever was coming next.

  “The Israelis missed two of the warheads,” Zalinsky said finally. “They seem to have gotten the rest, but they’ve missed two. How, I don’t know. But they’re out there somewhere, and we don’t know where. And that’s why I’m calling. The president is directing you to find both warheads fast and help us take them out before it’s too late.”

  8

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  “We have a missile launch,” shouted the IDF watch commander. “Missile in the air—no, make that two Shahab-3s—just launched out of Tabriz.”

  Five stories beneath the heavily fortified Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, in a high-tech war room whose walls were lined with large-screen plasma computer screens and TV monitors, Defense Minister Levi Shimon looked up from a sheaf of briefing papers and scanned for the correct images. When he found them—stunning satellite images from the Ofek-9 spy satellite in geosynchronous orbit six hundred kilometers over northern Iran—his stomach tightened.

  “Estimated targets?” he demanded.

  “Looks like Haifa and Jerusalem, sir, but we’ll know more in a minute.”

  Levi Shimon didn’t have a minute.

  His country was being pummeled. Hundreds of Hezbollah rockets were being fired out of south Lebanon every hour. Dozens more rockets were being fired by Hamas out of Gaza. Israel’s missile defense systems were cutting down 75 to 80 percent of the incoming, but the sheer volume of rockets made it impossible to stop them all. Most of the inbounds had no targeting systems. But some of the more advanced rockets did. The problem was, the IDF commanders had no way to determine which were which.

  Schools were being hit. Apartment buildings and hospitals were being hit as well. Synagogues and shopping centers were being decimated, along with power stations and cell towers. Millions of Israelis had been forced into bomb shelters. All flights into and out of Ben Gurion International Airport had been canceled. Nearly a third of the country was suffering blackouts. No lights. No heat. No TV. No computers. No power whatsoever. More than three-quarters of the country had no mobile phone coverage. Worse, the death toll was spiraling. Over the past three days, nearly five hundred Israeli citizens had been killed. The casualties of the past twenty-four hours had been the worst—triple the rate of days one and two of the war. The number of injured was ten times that. Israeli hospitals were at their breaking point, and there was no end in sight.

  But the rockets were the least of Shimon’s worries. They were deadly but not decisive. What Shimon feared most were the advanced ballistic missiles that Iran and Syria possessed, the kinds with highly sophisticated guidance systems and warheads that would be horrifying enough with conventional payloads but could be apocalyptic if they were NBC—nuclear, biological, or chemical. Damascus, oddly, had fired only three missiles so far—and conventional ones at that—in the first hour of the fight on Thursday. After the IDF’s Arrow system had shot all of them down, Syrian missiles had suddenly and inexplicably stopped coming. Iran, however, was firing five or six of their most advanced Shahab-3 missiles every hour. By the grace of God, the IDF was taking out almost all of these, but those that did penetrate Israel’s state-of-the-art missile defense systems were devastating. Fortunately none of them—so far—carried unconventional warheads. None of them were weapons of mass destruction. But they were still causing the most damage, Shimon knew, and wasn’t it only a matter of time until one of them created an extinction-level event?

  KARAJ, IRAN

  David hung up the phone with Zalinsky and started walking again, his mind reeling. How could the Israelis have missed two of the warheads? Where were they now? And how in the world was he supposed to track down either of them, much less both? He had no leads and couldn’t get a single one of his contacts to even take his call.

  He had hoped for a longer run, but it was time to get back, brief his men, and come up with a plan. Maybe they’d have an idea. He hoped so because at the moment, he had no idea where to start.

  As best he could tell, he was about three miles from the safe house. He began jogging back, taking a right down a side street. He spotted a little corner market a few blocks up and decided to sprint. When he reached the bodega, he slowed his pace, then entered the shop and bought a bottle of water and a banana. He wolfed down the fruit and discarded the peel before leaving the store, then chugged half the bottle of water. He pulled out his satellite phone and once again dialed Dr. Birjandi.

  Nothing. Again he tried Rashidi, then Esfahani, and again he came up empty. This particularly infuriated him, since these were the two who had insisted David take enormous risks to find, buy, and smuggle into Iran several hundred of these satphones for the Mahdi and his key men so they could be reached at all times. Rashidi and Esfahani were both members of the Group of 313, the Twelfth Imam’s most elite warriors, operatives, and advisors. They were personally responsible for overseeing the creation and smooth functioning of the Mahdi’s own private communications system both here in Iran and in whatever foreign countries he traveled to. And now neither of them were answering their satphones.

  In desperation, David decided to try calling Esfahani’s secretary at Iran Telecom. Mina wasn’t exactly in the Mahdi’s inner circle. Though she was smart and sweet and highly effective at her job, Esfahani practically treated the woman like a slave. He cursed at her and threw things at her and made her life miserable, though she never complained and still worked hard and professionally every day. Then again, she wasn’t likely to be at work today with Israeli bombs falling all throughout Tehran. David scrolled through his contacts list and realized he no longer had her home number. He called her work number anyway, on the off chance that she had her work calls forwarded to her home number. But even as he dialed and hit Send, he realized how stupid that was. Most of the mobile phone system in the country was down, and what were the chances that Esfahani had given Mina, of all people, a satphone? Sure enough, the call went to voice mail. David didn’t bother to leave a message. What was the point?

  David shoved the phone in his pocket and started jogging again, heading for the safe house. He had taken only a few steps when the phone rang. He stopped, pulled out the phone, and was surprised to see Mina’s name on the caller ID.

  “Hello? Mina? Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” Mina said. “Is this Reza? Reza Tabrizi? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, it’s Reza, and I’m safe, thank you, Mina,” he said. “And you? How are you and your mother?”

  “Praise Allah, we are okay,” she replied, though her voice was trembling. “We’ve been living in the basement of our apartment. I just came upstairs to get some more food and water, and the satphone rang. But when I picked up, you’d already hung up.”

  “Abdol gave you a satphone?”

  “In case he needed me to help him.”

  “Are you helping him?”

  “A little, here and there,” Mina said. “But no, not much.”

  “Where is he now?” David asked. “I’m trying to find him and Mr. Rashidi.”

  “I don’t know where Mr. Rashidi is. Mr. Esfahani has been trying to find him too.”

  “Okay, but where is Abdol? It’s urgent, Mina. I must talk to him.”

  “I just spoke to him about twenty minutes ago,” she replied. “He’s heading to Qom.”

  “Qom?” David asked. “Why Qom? The Israelis are bombing the daylights out of the nuclear sites and military bases there.”

  “That’s why he went.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “His parents live in Qom,” Mina said. “Near one of the bases. His mother is terrified of all the bombing. She wants to leave, but his father, as you know, is a big mu
llah there. He won’t leave the seminary. He says leaving would show a lack of faith in Allah.”

  “So why’s Abdol going?”

  “To get them out of there before they are killed.”

  David suddenly realized his best chance—maybe his only chance—to reconnect with Esfahani, or anyone inside the Mahdi’s Group of 313, was in Qom.

  “Mina, I need an address,” he said, his mind already made up.

  “For what?”

  “For Abdol’s parents.”

  “No, Mr. Tabrizi, please, you cannot go,” Mina said.

  “I have to.”

  “But why? It’s a suicide mission.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s to help a friend.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Mina? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Please, I cannot let Abdol go alone,” David insisted, trying to come up with a plausible-sounding rationale for what clearly seemed to Mina an act of insanity. “Abdol’s life is too valuable to the Mahdi to let him die in Qom. I must help him get his parents to safety and then get him to safety as well. The fate of this war may very well depend upon it.”

  It was silent again for a few moments, and then Mina relented and gave him the address.

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  “Haifa is a confirmed target,” the IDF watch commander said urgently. “I repeat, Haifa is a confirmed target.”

  “And the second target?” Shimon pressed. “You’re sure it’s Jerusalem?”