Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “Believe me, we’ve been here and awake the last few days,” McNulty replied, helping her out of the car. “Never a dull moment, I’m afraid.”

  He introduced her to the two armed guards at his side. One was assigned to him full-time. The other, he explained, would be assigned to her whenever she was inside NSA headquarters.

  “Expecting trouble?” she asked.

  “Wartime protocol,” he explained. “Come on, let’s get you inside, where it’s warm.”

  McNulty—who Eva guessed was in his midforties and likely a former Marine, well built, in good shape, with a closely cropped haircut and piercing blue eyes—handed her a temporary badge and a hot cup of coffee and gave her a quick briefing on security protocols as they stepped on an elevator.

  “General Mulholland will want to see you when he gets in around six,” he said, pushing the button for the top floor. “I’ve cleared out an office just down the hall from his, right next to mine. It’s nothing fancy, of course. We didn’t have much heads-up that you were coming. But it’s clean and quiet and secure, and I don’t have to tell you what a high priority we’ve given your work.”

  “Thanks; that’s very kind,” Eva said, taking her first sip of coffee and finding herself surprised that it was a Starbucks dark roast with a hint of hazelnut creamer, just the way she liked it. Someone had done his homework.

  A moment later, they passed through two more security checks—one getting off the elevator, the other as they approached the suite of offices of the NSA director, General Brad Mulholland, and his senior staff—before arriving at Eva’s new office.

  McNulty was right—it was nothing fancy. Indeed, Eva half suspected it had been a supply closet an hour earlier. It was small and cramped, and it had no window. But there was a desk with a lamp and a computer workstation, a phone, and a stack of files at least three feet high. Eva opened the top file. It was a transcript of an as-of-yet-untranslated Farsi satphone call, intercepted less than an hour earlier.

  “All of these are untranslated?” she asked in disbelief.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Don’t you have other Farsi translators?”

  “Five—though one is in the hospital with a burst appendix, so four, really.”

  “Are they here, in the building?”

  “Of course,” McNulty said. “Downstairs. Their names and extension numbers are all on that sheet by the phone.”

  “Why aren’t they working on these?”

  “Because they’re working on stacks even higher than this.”

  “You’re kidding me,” said Eva, feeling completely overwhelmed.

  “Wish I were,” McNulty said. “Listen. I’ll tell you what I told them. There’s no way you’ll be able to translate all of this word for word, type it up, proof it, and transmit it to Langley, much less do that with all the other intercepts that are coming in hour by hour. So at this point the general is asking that you simply start scanning these as fast as you can. Make notes in English on any that stand out. If something is hot, call me or one of my deputies. Again, names and numbers are on that sheet. You’ve got to triage this stuff. Top priority is anything that refers to the warheads, anything that references a possible strike on the U.S. or Israel or any other regional target, and anything that comes from the troika at the top—the Mahdi, the Ayatollah, or President Darazi. Got it?”

  Eva took a deep breath and another sip of coffee and found herself wishing—at least for a moment—that she was back in her cell in the detention center at Langley, sleeping soundly and relieved from such an enormous burden. “Got it.”

  “Good,” McNulty said. “You hungry? Can I get you something from the commissary? They’re open round the clock this week.”

  “No thanks. I’m fine for now.”

  “Okay. I’ll check in with you in a few hours. But call me if you strike oil.”

  “Will do.” She sighed, then sat down, picked up the first transcript, and got to work, already overwhelmed by how much she had to do and how little time she had to do it.

  22

  KARAJ, IRAN

  David speed-dialed Zalinsky, who picked up immediately.

  “Please tell me you’ve got something, anything,” Zalinsky said.

  “Only a hunch, but I need your permission to move on it,” said David.

  “What is it?”

  “A little while ago, I actually got through to Javad Nouri,” David explained. “He’s weak but definitely recovering. I couldn’t get much out of him over the phone, but he said something curious.”

  “Like what?”

  “He said the Twelfth Imam had come to visit him in the hospital.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. At the moment, it didn’t seem relevant.”

  “But now it does?”

  “Now I’m wondering why the Mahdi would have taken such a risk,” David said. “Why would he leave whatever bunker the Iranian military has him in to visit the hospital of a junior aide, a body man—a secretary, really?”

  “Unless Nouri is a more senior guy than we thought,” said Zalinsky.

  “Exactly,” David said. “The Twelfth Imam doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to drop by with a box of chocolates and a vase of flowers and a get-well card. They were talking about something. Nouri knows something that the Mahdi needed to talk about in person.”

  “Like the location of the warheads?” Zalinsky asked.

  “I don’t know,” David conceded. “Maybe they didn’t discuss the location but did discuss the possible targets. Or maybe something else entirely. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a courtesy call. It was important, and it was timely. Do we have any intercepts from Nouri’s satphone?”

  “Let me check.”

  David could hear his handler typing.

  “We’re horribly backed up on translating the intercepts,” Zalinsky explained as he searched his files. “But the NSA is at least providing me an hourly tally of the number of calls made to or from specific frequencies—that is, specific phones—that we know have been given to specific people. Obviously we know the phone you’re using and the one Dr. Birjandi is using. And unless they’ve changed, we know the phones the Mahdi, Hosseini, Darazi, and Nouri are using, based on the calls we’ve intercepted from them so far. Let’s see, looking at the tally for the last three days, Nouri has only made one outbound call, lasting about six minutes. He’s only received six calls—three of which were from you. Two of the others lasted thirty seconds or less, but one lasted nineteen minutes.”

  “Do we have transcriptions of the two longest calls?” David asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Can you ask Eva to make those a top priority?”

  Zalinsky hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” David asked.

  “You can ask her yourself,” Zalinsky said.

  “Why? Isn’t she right there with you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Where is she?”

  “Never mind,” Zalinsky said. “I’ll explain later. It’ll take too long to do it now. I’ll get the message to her, and we’ll prioritize those two calls.”

  Something didn’t sound right to David, but he didn’t have time to probe. He had a case to make, and he had to make it fast. “Listen, I know this is a long shot. I admit it,” he began.

  “Just say it,” Zalinsky insisted.

  “We need to grab Nouri.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Marco Torres, his team, and me.”

  “You want to kidnap Javad Nouri?” Zalinsky asked, the tone of his voice not exactly indicative of confidence in David’s recommendation.

  “Immediately.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean why?” David asked. “To interrogate him, to find out everything he knows.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute here, Zephyr,” Zalinsky replied. “Let’s not go crazy. Let’s get those calls translated. Let’s see what they say. Let’s see if he ma
kes any other calls. And then we’ll go from there.”

  “Jack, come on—we don’t have time to wait,” David said, putting all of his cards on the table. “Right now we have no leads, no clues, no trail to follow.”

  “What about Birjandi?”

  “I talked to him. He’s got nothing.”

  “Tell him to go meet with the Mahdi.”

  “You don’t think I tried that?”

  “And?”

  “He won’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “What does it matter?” David asked. “He just won’t.”

  “Can’t you push him, persuade him?”

  “Believe me, I tried. It’s not going to happen.”

  “What about your other sources?” Zalinsky pressed.

  “Jack, you’re not listening to me,” David said. “I’ve got nothing. No one is answering their phones. Maybe they’re all in bomb shelters and they’re not getting satellite reception. Maybe they don’t want to talk to me. Maybe they’ve been told not to talk to me. Maybe they’re dead. I have no idea. All I know is Abdol Esfahani is going to Damascus. I don’t know why. Birjandi is refusing to go see the Mahdi. And now we’ve got the location of an apparently senior advisor to the Twelfth Imam. We know where he is. We know that he’s just spoken to the Mahdi. We know he’s in a relatively unsecure facility. I’m telling you we can do this, Jack. We can grab him. We can shake him down. And we can make him spill his guts. That much I know. But time’s a-wastin’.”

  “And if you’re caught?” Zalinsky countered.

  “I won’t get caught.”

  “But if you do, the Iranians will shut down the satphone intercepts immediately.”

  “And do what?” David asked. “The Israelis have taken down almost all of Iran’s phone network, at least temporarily. Without the satphones, the Twelfth Imam wouldn’t be able to talk to most of his inner circle.”

  “It’s too big a risk.”

  “Compared to what? Look, we’ve got a narrow window here, and it’s rapidly closing. We know the nukes are out there. We don’t know where they are. We suspect at least one is going to be fired at the Israelis. The other may be coming to the States, to New York or Washington or L.A. But the president told us to find them, to stop them, using whatever means necessary. I’ve looked at all our options, Jack, and I’m telling you, this isn’t just our best play. It’s our only play. It’s this or nothing.”

  There was a long pause, so long David wondered if he had lost his connection to Langley. But finally Zalinsky spoke.

  “Where exactly is Javad Nouri right now, right this minute?”

  “Tehran University Medical Center.”

  “How long will it take you to get there?”

  “Assuming we don’t get hit by an Israeli cruise missile or stopped at a checkpoint and arrested for espionage?” David asked.

  “Funny.”

  “Less than an hour,” David assured him.

  “Then do it,” Zalinsky said. “And don’t get caught.”

  “Right,” said David. “And I’d be grateful for those transcripts from Nouri’s calls—and a Predator drone if you can spare one.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Zalinsky replied. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  David hung up and quickly stepped out of the office, where he found Torres and his men assembled in the living room.

  “Saddle up, gentlemen. We have a target.”

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  Ahmed Darazi stepped into the war room, thick with smoke and tension, looking for the Twelfth Imam, but he was not there. Darazi checked in several of the anterooms but did not find him there either. The Ayatollah had not seen where he went, nor had the top generals, fixated as they were on prosecuting the latest missile onslaught against the Jews. A corporal, however, told Darazi he had overheard the Mahdi say he wanted some fresh air. In disbelief, Darazi and his personal security detail boarded the elevator and departed the underground bunker.

  Ten stories up, they disembarked from the elevator and scoured the first floor of the Mehrabad Air Base headquarters, heavily guarded by armed military police. But the Twelfth Imam was nowhere to be seen, inside or out. Darazi boarded another elevator and took it three stories up, and there on the roof he found the Lord of the Age, bowing toward Mecca and finishing his prayers.

  The scene around them was surreal. As far as the eye could see, hangars and buildings were on fire. Row upon row of fighter jets were ablaze. Most of the administrative and maintenance buildings were raging infernos. All the runways had been bombed, making it impossible to take off or land. The base—long the home of Iran’s Western Area Command and the 11th and 14th Tactical Fighter Squadrons—lay in ruins. The thundering sound of aircraft taking off and landing had been replaced by the wailing sirens of fire trucks and ambulances streaming in from all directions.

  The civilian side of the airfield, on the other hand, was relatively unscathed. The Imam Khomeini Airport was Iran’s largest and most heavily trafficked international commercial facility, and the Israelis had chosen not to hit it directly. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, obviously military, was headquartered there, but their bunkers and command center were actually secretly located under the main commercial terminal to cover it, essentially, with thousands of human shields—ordinary citizens and foreign nationals transiting to and from the airport built for Iran’s capital city.

  Darazi was stunned. No one had briefed him on how much damage had been done by the Israelis to this prize of the Iranian Air Force. There were no news reports to watch. Even if the Iranian TV networks were operating—and they weren’t—the military censor would never have cleared images of such devastation at such a major airport. Darazi’s information had all come from planning meetings with the Mahdi, and he wondered why he of all people wasn’t being briefed on this.

  As Darazi looked out over the smoldering wreckage, his knees grew weak. He began to gag on the thick, black, acrid smoke and the stench of burning human flesh laced with jet fuel, and he knew this was not safe. The Jews would return, he knew. Wave after wave of attacks were coming, hour after hour, day after day, and he desperately wanted to get the Mahdi indoors, back downstairs into the safety and security of the war room bunker. But he didn’t dare violate the sanctity of the Twelfth Imam’s communication with Allah. So he immediately fell to his knees and began praying as well. Only when he could hear the Mahdi was finished did Darazi open his eyes. Then, still bowing, he addressed his leader and pleaded for mercy.

  “You may speak,” said the Mahdi, now on his feet and motioning the president to rise too.

  “I’ve communicated with General Jazini via secure e-mail, Your Excellency,” he said, rising quickly.

  “Good,” said the Mahdi. “How long until General Jazini is on site?”

  “Very shortly. I will brief you the moment he gets there.”

  “Fine—make sure all the arrangements we discussed are in place.”

  “Of course, Your Excellency. Everything is set. You can count on me and my men. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yes, there is,” the Mahdi said. “Contact our ambassador in Vienna. Have him release a statement that Iran and the Caliphate are withdrawing from the NPT.”

  “The nuclear nonproliferation treaty?” Darazi asked.

  “Is there another?” the Mahdi responded in disgust.

  “No, no, of course not,” Darazi said, bowing once again and feeling foolish. “I will do it immediately, Your Excellency. Anything else?”

  “Have you heard from Firouz and Jamshad?” he asked.

  The Twelfth Imam was referring to Firouz Nouri, the head of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps terrorist cell, and one of his deputies, Jamshad Zarif. The two were part of the cell that was responsible for the assassination of Egyptian president Abdel Ramzy and the attempted assassination of American president Jackson and Israeli prime minister Naphtali at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York a week before.<
br />
  “Yes, my Lord,” Darazi replied. “We got them successfully out of the States to Venezuela, where they holed up in our embassy in Caracas. Last night they flew to Frankfurt, where they are awaiting further instructions.”

  “They are traveling under new identities?”

  “Yes, my Lord, as you instructed.”

  “Very good. Tell them to get to Damascus as soon as possible and await my orders. I have an important assignment for them there.”

  “But, my Lord, no one is flying into or out of Damascus because of the war.”

  “Did I say anything about having them fly to Damascus?” the Mahdi retorted, his voice dripping with disdain for the Iranian president. “Tell them to fly to Cyprus. Tell them to look up a man named Dimitrious Makris. He’s a ship captain in the port of Limassol. From there, they should take a boat to Beirut. Makris will take care of everything. When they get to Beirut, they should make contact with a man named Youssef, who is in charge of security at the airport. Youssef is Hezbollah. He will provide them with a car, and they will drive to Damascus as quickly as they can. Tell them not to delay. I need them there in forty-eight hours. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, my Lord. Anything else?”

  “Just do those things and do them well,” said the Mahdi.

  “Of course, Your Excellency,” Darazi said. “But may I ask a question?”

  “If you must.”

  “When will we launch the last two warheads at the Zionists, my Lord? When will we finally have sweet vengeance upon those apes and pigs?”

  “One step at a time,” the Mahdi replied. “You must be patient. I have everything under control. Allah has a plan and a purpose, and it cannot be thwarted. We want the Jews to think they have the upper hand, but we are luring them into a false sense of security. And when they least expect it, we will finish them off once and for all. Just you wait, Ahmed. You will see it with your very eyes—and soon.”

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Zalinsky picked up the phone and dialed Tom Murray’s extension. He briefed the deputy director for operations on David’s call and his plan. Then he asked for Murray to relay the translation request to Eva. And he requested permission to retask a Predator drone over Tehran University Medical Center.