“You don’t really believe all that crap,” David said with disgust.
“I am speaking the truth,” Nouri said. “It is you who is bothered by it, not me.”
David was incensed, but mostly with himself. He had lost control of the conversation. Nouri’s fear was turning to defiance. He was talking in circles, but he had gotten inside David’s head, and David knew he had to turn the tables, to regain the initiative. But how?
28
TEHRAN, IRAN
“You’re absolutely certain?” Ayatollah Hosseini asked, unable to believe what he was hearing.
He pushed for more information. How long ago did it happen? How many were involved? Who was responsible? Were there any leads, any clues whatsoever? Hosseini asked a dozen more questions, but Ibrahim Asgari, commander of VEVAK, Iran’s secret police force, simply had no answers as of yet.
“Call me as soon as you know more, Commander,” Hosseini ordered and then hung up the phone, nervously looking about the war room. His hands trembled. All color had drained from his face.
“Where is the president?” he asked a young aide.
“I believe he stepped out to get something to eat,” the aide said.
“Get him, and bring him to me immediately,” the Ayatollah said. “I must speak to him on an urgent matter.”
“Yes, sir—right away, sir.” The aide scurried off.
The room began to grow blurry. Hosseini blinked several times and reached for a glass of water and drank it down quickly. This couldn’t be happening. Was it the Israelis? The Americans? Either way, they were getting far too close.
Moments later, Darazi rushed into the war room. “What is it? What happened?”
“Come in here,” Hosseini said, motioning his colleague to follow him into the recently cleaned conference room where Faridzadeh had been killed earlier. “Now, shut the door and have a seat.”
Darazi did as he was told. “What is it?” he asked again. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Javad Nouri has been kidnapped,” said Hosseini.
“That’s not possible,” Darazi countered.
“Nevertheless, it happened,” Hosseini replied. “So far Commander Asgari is reporting twelve dead, nine wounded.”
“How many attackers?”
“Best we can tell, it was a team of five commandos. But they had air support as well. They took out a police helicopter over the city, killing all three men on board.”
“Is that beyond the casualty numbers you just gave me?”
“No, that’s everybody that we know of right now.”
“Any leads?”
“None.”
“Asgari has absolutely no idea who is responsible?”
“He thinks it’s the Israelis.”
“He’s probably right,” said Darazi.
“Maybe yes, or maybe the Americans are here too,” Hosseini said.
“I thought the Americans were staying neutral in this war.”
“The fact is we have no idea. We’re flying blind here. But I’ll tell you one thing: whoever it is, they’re getting dangerously close to us. Think about it: if they have Javad and Javad starts talking, then they know where we are right now.”
“We need to move everything to the new facility at the mosque—tonight.”
“That’s my thought too,” Hosseini said. “But first, we need to talk to the Mahdi. Is he still up on the roof?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Praying.”
“We need to get him down from there. It’s too dangerous to stay outside.”
“You want me to ask him?” Darazi asked.
“No,” Hosseini said. “I’d better go myself.”
David tried to seize control of the conversation once again.
“Listen, Javad, I’m only going to say it one more time. You’re making a mistake. Your sins are going to be exposed to the Mahdi within the hour unless you start cooperating.”
Nouri sat up straight in the chair, puffing out his chest and lifting his head.
“I am not afraid of you, Reza,” he replied.
“Maybe not,” David said. “But you are afraid of Imam al-Mahdi. You care what he thinks about you. And now you’re about to be exposed for the man you really are. We haven’t manufactured these photos and this video of you in Dubai at that bar with the women and the alcohol, Javad. That’s not cooked up. Those are decisions you made. And knowledge of those sins alone is going to infuriate the Mahdi. But as I told you, we’re going to throw fuel on the fire by implicating you as the mole in this operation, with a direct, working relationship with the CIA.”
“But that’s a lie,” Nouri shot back. “I never worked with you or for you.”
“Really?” David asked. “Were you not my main contact within the Mahdi’s inner circle? Didn’t you and I speak on a regular basis? Didn’t I provide you with the satellite phones the Mahdi and his war council are using now? And aren’t those all CIA phones? And didn’t you literally hand those phones to the Mahdi?”
“The Mahdi will never believe it,” Nouri insisted. “He will never believe I betrayed him—and certainly not to a man like you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Javad,” David said, pulling out his own satphone, dialing a dedicated line back at Langley, entering his code number, and then—putting the call on speakerphone—playing for Nouri a phone call from just a few days earlier.
“Reza?”
“Yes, this is he.”
“This is Javad Nouri. I just got back to Tehran and got your message.”
“Hey, good to hear from you.”
“I hope it’s not too late to call you, but whatever you’ve got, we could use.”
“It’s no problem. Thanks for getting back to me. I expect to have a hundred of what we were discussing by late in the afternoon tomorrow—er, I guess today. They’re being shipped to me in Qom. That’s where I’m heading now to meet some of my tech team later this morning at some switching station that’s having a problem. Are you guys going to be in Qom by any chance?”
“No, we’re not. But I have a better idea. Could you bring them directly to us? Our mutual friend has heard many good things about you and would like to meet you in person. Would that be acceptable?”
“Of course. That would be a great honor; thank you.”
“Wonderful. Our friend is deeply grateful for your help, and he personally asked me to apologize for the vetting process you were subjected to. He hopes you understand that we cannot be too careful at this stage.”
“I understand. Abdol Esfahani explained everything. I’ll survive.”
“Good. Be in Tehran tonight at eight o’clock at the restaurant where we met before. Come by cab. Don’t bring anyone or anything else with you, just the gifts. I’ll have someone meet you there and bring you to us. Okay?”
“Yes, of course. I’m looking forward to it.”
“So are we. I’ve got to go now. Good-bye.”
“I have done nothing wrong,” Nouri insisted, his voice more defiant than ever.
“Is that how it’s going to look?” David asked.
The question hung in the air, but David wasn’t certain it was working.
“Why would the CIA come and kidnap me from my hospital room and then leave me for dead in this safe house if I really worked for them?” Nouri finally said. “It isn’t logical, and the Mahdi won’t buy it.”
Now it was David whose body stiffened. Nouri had a point. Why, indeed?
The Ayatollah took three bodyguards with him and headed for the roof. When he got there, sure enough, he found the Twelfth Imam on his knees, bowing toward Mecca, and evidently in no mood to be trifled with. He also found the sun beginning to sink in the west and heavy storm clouds rolling in over the city. Several strikes of lightning flashed in the distance, but as of yet he could hear no thunder. What struck him most, as it had struck Darazi earlier, was the stench of death and the magnitude of the dest
ruction of the airfield all around them and the Mahdi’s seeming imperviousness to it all. Was that faith, Hosseini wondered, or foolishness?
“Hamid Hosseini, what a surprise,” said the Mahdi.
The Ayatollah was immediately caught off guard. The Mahdi’s back was to him, and Hosseini hadn’t announced himself or made any sound.
“Here to coax me down off the ledge, are you, Hamid?” the Mahdi sneered.
How did he know? Hosseini wondered. Could this man read his mind?
“Well, my Lord, I . . . uh . . .”
“Save your breath, and don’t waste my time,” the Mahdi replied. “Do you think I am like all of you? Do you think I am a mere mortal? How do you think I knew it was you?”
“I . . . I don’t—”
“Go ahead, Hamid,” the Mahdi said, his back still toward the Ayatollah. “Take a pistol from one of your three bodyguards and shoot me in the back.”
Hosseini was aghast. “Never, my Lord, I would never—”
“It’s all right; go ahead,” the Mahdi pressed. “Then you’ll see if I’m a mortal or truly from above.”
Hosseini didn’t know what to say. He certainly couldn’t bring himself to even contemplate testing the Mahdi’s ability to withstand a gunshot from point-blank range.
“Are you a coward, Hamid?” the Mahdi asked.
“No, my Lord. . . . I—I’m your servant,” he replied and dropped to his knees in worship.
“You are a coward,” the Mahdi said, his voice dripping with disgust. “Your last truly courageous act was shooting your wife when she defied you for sending your sons off to be martyrs in the Great War with Iraq. Everything else has been easy for you. It has all been given to you, by Allah, to be sure, but it has made you a weak, sniveling little man. But that is why I have come, Hamid: to give the Muslim people what they want—true Islamic leadership—and to give the world what they need—a Caliphate governed from above, not from below.”
Hosseini continued to bow toward Mecca, his forehead pressed to the ground, not sure what to say or do at the moment.
“You have come to bring me dark news,” the Mahdi said after a brief pause. “In the last few hours, the battle has intensified dramatically. I feel it, and that is why I am on my knees in prayer. You should give yourself to prayer as well, Hamid, lest temptation overtake you and you succumb to the forces of evil.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Hosseini replied. “I am ready to commit myself to a night of prayer—indeed, to a new Ramadan of prayer and fasting, beginning this very night, if this will please you. But first I must tell you the disturbing news.”
The Mahdi said nothing. Instead, he rose from his knees and wrapped his black robe around him tightly.
“What is your news?” he asked.
Hosseini didn’t dare look up. But he did allow this one fleeting thought to cross the transom of his mind. If the Mahdi was omniscient, wouldn’t he already know the news? Maybe he couldn’t read minds, Hosseini thought, unsure if that was more reassuring or less so.
“Your Excellency, please know how it pains my heart to bring you this news, but I’m afraid it falls upon me to convey to you that your dear friend and trusted advisor, Javad Nouri, has been captured by forces of the enemy,” Hosseini said, forehead still pressed to the ground. “Details are sketchy. Commander Asgari does not yet know who is responsible, but I am concerned that whether it’s the Israelis or the Americans, if they truly have Javad, then they may now know—or soon know—this very location. I believe you are in grave danger, my Lord. So yes, it is my recommendation that you allow us to move you off this roof and get you to the new operations center, the one in the basement of the Imam Khomeini Mosque downtown.”
“No,” said the Mahdi. “I’m not going to the mosque. I am heading to Kabul to meet Iskander Farooq, and I leave in ten minutes.”
David and his team were startled by the knock at the motel door. Abruptly halting the interrogation, David put the gag back in Nouri’s mouth and told the man in no uncertain terms not to make a sound. “I’m not finished with you yet,” he whispered as he readied the Sig Sauer and watched Torres cautiously move to the door, check the peephole, and then give the all-clear.
David checked his watch. It was 5:44 p.m. He was stunned that Mays and Crenshaw were back so soon—unless, of course, there was a problem. Leaving Fox in charge of the prisoner, David uncocked the pistol, reengaged the safety, and tucked the weapon in the back of his trousers, hidden under his shirt. Then he and Torres slipped out the door to huddle with their men.
“That was fast,” David said, looking at a black 2005 Mercedes ML350 SUV and a silver 2009 Hyundai Entourage. “Any trouble?”
“Piece of cake, boss,” said Mays.
“And you’re positive you weren’t followed?” Torres asked.
“We’re good,” said Crenshaw. “How’s it going here?”
“Not good,” David admitted. “He’s confirmed the Mahdi has two warheads, and he’s saying both are going to target Israel, not the U.S., but honestly he might just be saying what he thinks we want to hear.”
“So what’s the plan?” Mays asked.
“We can’t stay here,” Torres said. “Not for long. We need to keep moving. And first, boss, you need to decide whether you can break him. If so, we can go a little longer. No more than an hour. If not, I say we send Matty here back to the safe house with Javad, ship Javad out of the country, and then have Matt hook up with us again ASAP. So, can you break him?”
“I honestly don’t know,” David said. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to extract actionable intelligence out of this guy. We’ve already risked so much to get him; it can’t be for nothing. But the fact is, Javad is too devout to be conned or bluffed into giving us anything real, anything valuable.”
The room, obviously, wasn’t really a CIA safe house. They didn’t really have with them the computers and files here to make it look like one. That had all been a bluff, and while it had rattled Nouri, it hadn’t broken him. The photos of Nouri in Dubai were real, the result of a brilliant sting operation Zalinsky had put together without even hinting about it to David or Torres. Indeed, until David had woken up in Karaj that morning and seen some of the photos in e-mails Zalinsky had sent, he hadn’t even known about the op. But little good it did them here in Tehran. The notion of the Mahdi seeing the pictures and the video had scared Nouri—seriously scared the man in this case—but it hadn’t broken him either.
That said, there was the safe house in Karaj. It was the real deal, and it had everything they needed—the computers, the files, the audio, the maps, the passcodes, the weapons. Maybe all they needed was for Mays to take Nouri there for a few hours and get Nouri’s fingerprints all over everything. David smiled at the genius of it. If he really wanted to spread panic inside the Mahdi’s operation, that was how to do it. First he had to persuade Zalinsky to let him tip off the local police about Safe House Six. Once the place was raided and the Iranians figured out what it was, the panic virus would spread up the chain of command with breakneck speed. As soon as the Mahdi found out that Reza Tabrizi was a CIA spy and came to believe that Javad Nouri was a CIA mole and that the satphones were a CIA operation from the beginning, the phones would become toxic. No one would be allowed to use them, virtually shutting down the Mahdi’s ability to communicate with his high command in these critical days of the war. It was high risk, but what else did they have?
David turned to Crenshaw. “Any luck with Javad’s phone?” he asked.
“I looked it over, but there’s not much there, at least that I could see. I uploaded everything to Langley to have them cross-check it against their computers and see if anything popped, but I haven’t heard back yet.”
“Where is it now?”
“In the glove compartment.”
“Which one?”
“The Hyundai.”
“Well, it was worth a shot,” David said.
Crenshaw nodded.
“So what’s the pla
n?” Torres pressed. “We still have one more shot to make Javad talk, right?”
“You want me to really take his kneecap off?”
“That definitely got him thinking, boss,” Torres noted. “I really thought he was going to give us everything. But when you shifted to talking about the Mahdi, I think he decided you were bluffing. That’s when he got all self-righteous and defiant.”
“Most people don’t talk when they’re missing half their leg,” David reminded him. “Most people can’t talk at that point.”
“Javad Nouri isn’t most people.”
“You really think he’ll talk if I do it?” David asked, skeptical of the notion but respectful of Torres’s years in the field.
“I do.”
“If I weren’t here, would you do it?”
“If you weren’t here, I’d have done it already,” said Torres. “Look—this is it. We’ve got two nukes in the field. We don’t know where they are. We’ve got the one person we’re likely to bag who probably knows. And if he doesn’t know where the nukes are, he sure as I’m standing here knows where the Mahdi is. Make him talk. Do it now. And then get Langley to use a Predator to blow the Twelfth Imam and his cronies to kingdom come. That’s the deal, boss. You want to stop a nuclear war? You do it right here, right now. Simple as that.”
Torres made a compelling case, David had to admit. He didn’t believe in torture per se. The information extracted from a torture victim wasn’t always reliable. Often the victim told you whatever he thought you wanted to hear. But this was clearly a moment that called for extreme measures. They were on the brink of nuclear war, and they did, after all, have a presidential directive to use all means necessary to hunt down these two warheads and destroy them.
Damascus Countdown Page 24