Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  That said, the risk was enormous. Was there another way to break Nouri? Any other way? He probably didn’t actually know the current location of the warheads, David decided. Even if he had known twenty-four hours ago, or twelve or six or even two hours ago, the warheads had to have been moved by now. Especially now that the Iranian high command knew that Nouri had been captured.

  But Torres was also probably right that Nouri knew where the Mahdi was, and if that was the case, the Mahdi and his entire team would soon be packing up and moving somewhere else. Indeed, they could already be on the move. But if they weren’t, this was the CIA’s best chance to take out the Mahdi and destroy the Caliphate once and for all. To hold Nouri and not to inflict any bodily harm against him certainly seemed the humane thing to do, and it meant they would be able to interrogate him over days and weeks and extract precious information about the Mahdi, about the Ayatollah, about the president, and about other high-ranking officials that was perhaps unknowable any other way. But ultimately that wasn’t the mission, was it? The mission was finding and destroying the warheads or finding and destroying the man who controlled them. The humane thing, therefore, meant using all means necessary to protect millions of innocent souls from nuclear genocide.

  “All right, you sold me,” David said. “You guys go back inside. I’ll be right in.”

  29

  HAMADAN, IRAN

  Dr. Birjandi, Ali, and Ibrahim were preparing to take a break from their intensive studies of the prophecies about the future of Iran when the phone rang. Eager to talk to David again, Birjandi didn’t hesitate to take the call this time. But he was stunned by the voice he heard on the other end. It was not David Shirazi.

  “Dr. Birjandi, please hold for the Grand Ayatollah.”

  Birjandi instinctively rose to his feet as he simultaneously snapped his fingers and signaled the men to remain quiet. There was a short pause, and then Hamid Hosseini picked up.

  “Alireza,” he said, “is that you?”

  “Why yes, it is.”

  “What a joy to hear your voice, my friend.”

  “Uh, yes, well, thank you—that is very kind,” Birjandi stammered, trying to regain his composure.

  “I’m calling first and foremost to see if you are safe and well.”

  “I cannot complain,” said the old man.

  “You have not been affected by the Zionists’ attacks?”

  “Well, as you know, I live quite a ways from the city center and not close to anything anyone would want to bomb.”

  “So you’re okay?”

  “I am saddened events have come to this, but physically, yes, by the grace of God I am fine.”

  “Good, good,” Hosseini said. “I am glad to hear this. For I have a request for you. It comes from the top.”

  “How can I be of service, Supreme Leader?” Birjandi asked, putting his hands together as if to pray and hoping Ibrahim and Ali would see the anxiety on his face and commit themselves to intercessory prayer.

  “Please, Alireza, how many times must I insist that you call me Hamid?” Hosseini asked.

  “At least once more,” Birjandi replied, not wanting to be—or appear to be—too chummy with a man who was plotting to annihilate God’s chosen people.

  “Very well, I insist again,” Hosseini chuckled. “Now listen, are you at home?”

  “Yes, of course. Why?”

  “Very good. I am sending a helicopter to fetch you.”

  Birjandi tensed. “A helicopter? Whatever for?”

  Birjandi knew precisely what it was for, but that was precisely the problem. The Mahdi was requesting his presence, yet it was an encounter Birjandi wanted to avoid at all costs.

  “The Mahdi wants you at an emergency meeting,” Hosseini explained. “I cannot say where, of course. But needless to say, it is of the utmost importance.”

  “Who else will be there?” Birjandi asked, trying to stall for time and think of a way out.

  “I’m sorry, old friend. I am not at liberty to say. But don’t worry about the details. They have all been arranged. Everything will be taken care of. Just pack a bag with some clothes and personal effects and be ready in ten minutes.”

  “A bag?”

  “Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “You may be away for a few days.”

  “Why?”

  “All will be revealed in due time, Alireza.”

  “No, no,” Birjandi protested, his mind racing to find a plausible excuse. “This is a mistake. I am a foolish old man, old and very tired. You are in the midst of a very serious war. There’s nothing I could say or do to help. I should not be wasting the time of any of our nation’s leaders—not at a time such as this. Let me just stay home and pray. I am about to begin a forty-day fast. For this I need to be alone and quiet and undisturbed. Believe me, Supreme Leader, this is my best service to the country.”

  “Ever the humble man of God, Alireza,” Hosseini said. “This is why the president and I consider you a national treasure. And this is why the Promised One has asked for you. But relax, my friend. You have been given a great honor. You are about to be ushered into the presence of the messiah for whom we have long been waiting, the messiah for whose coming you taught us so carefully to prepare. You are about to meet your savior and be honored by the same. And while I’m not really supposed to say anything more, let me encourage you: you will want to hear what Imam al-Mahdi has to say, especially when you learn how close we are to wiping the Zionist entity off the map forever. Now get yourself ready. You have five minutes.”

  “Only five?” Birjandi asked. “But Tehran is more than—”

  But the line was already dead.

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  “Are you freaking crazy?” Zalinsky yelled as a hush settled over everyone around him. “Absolutely not! It’s out of the question!”

  “Jack, listen to me; Torres is right,” David pushed back.

  “No, Torres is not right,” Zalinsky fumed.

  “Yes, he is,” David argued. “If we don’t force Javad to talk now—right now—anything he knows, any value he could give us, is going to evaporate. The warheads are going to be moved, if they haven’t been already. The Mahdi is going to move too, as will all the senior team. Whatever he knows, we need to get it out of him now.”

  “Enough,” Zalinsky shouted, not caring that every eye in the Global Ops Center—including Murray’s—was on him and his tirade against his top NOC in Iran. “Enough. Now shut up and listen to me. That’s right; shut your mouth and just listen to me, Zephyr. I’m running this op, not you. I want this information as bad as you, maybe more so. But you need to take a deep breath and start listening to me. I recruited you into this Agency. You didn’t even want to work for the CIA. It was my idea to send you into Iran. You wanted to stay in Pakistan. You’ve done some great work, but now you’re tired, you’re stressed, and you’re about to destroy your one chance to get real intel out of Nouri and compromise our safe house in Karaj at the same time. So knock it off and start listening to me.”

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  David was fuming, pacing the parking lot of the motel and doing everything in his power not to hang up this phone and smash it into the pavement.

  “Are you listening?” Zalinsky asked.

  David took a deep breath, forced himself against all his instincts not to retaliate, and said, “Yes. What is it?”

  “Javad’s phone,” said Zalinsky.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “It’s in the Hyundai.”

  “Get it.”

  David held his tongue and walked over to the van, opened the passenger door, and took Javad’s satphone out of the glove compartment and powered it up.

  “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  “Is it on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to the contact list.”

  David found the contact list and opened it.

  “Okay, I’m there.”


  “Good. Now look up Omid Jazini.”

  “Who’s that?” David asked.

  “Just look him up.”

  So David did. He found the man’s home address and work phone number, along with his mobile number.

  “Got it,” he said after a moment.

  “Good,” said Zalinsky. “That’s your new target.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Omid Jazini is the twenty-eight-year-old son of Mohsen Jazini.”

  “General Mohsen Jazini?”

  “The very same.”

  “The commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps?”

  “Well, he was, until today.”

  “And now?”

  “He’s the Caliphate’s new defense minister and commander in chief.”

  “What about Faridzadeh?” David asked.

  “He’s out,” said Zalinsky. “And don’t ask—we don’t know why. But we do know that General Jazini wrote a strategy memo that caught the Mahdi’s eye. He called the general this morning, gave him the promotion, and told him to start putting the ‘first section’ into motion immediately.”

  “What’s in the first section?” David asked.

  “I don’t know, but Omid might,” Zalinsky said. “Omid is part of his father’s security detail. But he was injured on the first day of the bombing campaign, nearly crushed under a collapsing wall. Was in the hospital for two days. Got sent home this morning. And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “He lives in an apartment complex nine blocks from the motel you’re at right now. I want you guys to move—fast. Grab him and interrogate him and find out where his father is and what that memo says.”

  “What makes you think he’ll talk any more than Javad?” David asked.

  “Because I don’t think Omid is a zealot,” Zalinsky said. “A Muslim? Yes. A Shia? Yes. A Persian nationalist like his father? Yes. But a Twelver? No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m not,” Zalinsky admitted. “It’s a hunch. Call it a gut instinct. But Omid’s mother, Shirin, isn’t a Muslim. She’s Zoroastrian. Eva actually met her at an embassy party in Berlin a few years ago when General Jazini was assigned as the defense attaché to Germany. In fact, she tracked her for several months, and there was a point at which Eva thought she might actually be able to recruit Shirin, but suddenly they moved back to Tehran when Mohsen was promoted to commander of the IRGC. But Eva says Shirin wasn’t religious and certainly not an ideologue. She never went to a mosque, even though her husband did. She didn’t like to talk about religion. She preferred shopping and socializing.”

  “So how do we know Omid isn’t more like his father?”

  “We don’t,” said Zalinsky. “But that’s the plan. And it’s an order.”

  “What am I supposed to do with Javad Nouri?”

  “Have Mays drop him at the safe house and secure him. We’ll have someone pick him up, probably even before Mays rejoins the rest of you at Omid’s apartment. Now get moving.”

  President Ahmed Darazi stood at the conference room door for a moment, making certain he was in full control of his composure. He reminded himself that at least the Mahdi had agreed to come down into the blastproof underground bunker. Then he knocked twice.

  “Come,” said the Mahdi.

  Darazi opened the door, entered quickly, closed it behind him, and bowed low.

  “Yes?” the Mahdi asked, an edge of exasperation in his voice.

  “My Lord, I’m not sure why, but Daryush Rashidi, the head of Iran Telecom, is upstairs in the lobby and says he is here to see you,” Darazi began. “He says you summoned him and that everything you asked for is ready. The security team told him there must be a mistake, that we would certainly have known if you requested any nonmilitary or nonpolitical personnel to come to the command center to meet with you. But he absolutely insisted, and eventually they requested that I intervene because Daryush and I have known each other such a long time. Anyway, I went up to see him, and—”

  “Yes, yes, I know all this,” the Mahdi said. “I did summon him here, and he is right on time. Did he give you a password?”

  “Well, uh, he—”

  “Did he or did he not give you a password?” the Mahdi repeated.

  “He did have something he wanted me to say to you, but I—”

  “Then don’t stand there blabbering like a fool, Ahmed. Say it.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency, of course. He . . . uh . . . he told me to say, ‘The fire has begun.’”

  At that the Twelfth Imam arose instantly. “Excellent. Did he bring a trunk?”

  “Uh, well, yes—several, actually.”

  “Good. Bring him—and them—down here immediately,” said the Mahdi. “We don’t have a moment to spare.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Darazi said. “What is this all—?”

  “Just do what I have commanded you, Ahmed,” the Mahdi bellowed, his countenance darkening. “And do it well and quickly.”

  “Yes, my Lord,” Darazi sputtered, bowing again. “As you wish.”

  ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

  “I have come to reestablish the Caliphate.”

  The haunting words of Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali spoken during a phone call just a few days before still echoed in Iskander Farooq’s ears as he stood beside the landing pad in the immense dust storm created by the descending military chopper that had come to whisk him away on a last-minute, unplanned, ill-timed trip to certain disaster.

  “I have come to bring peace and justice and to rule the earth with a rod of iron,” the Mahdi had said that day. “This is why Allah sent me. He will reward those who submit. He will punish those who resist. But make no mistake, Iskander; in the end, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that I am the Lord of the Age.”

  It was hard to believe, but it had only been a week since the so-called Promised One had threatened Farooq, his family, and his government, demanding that he acquiesce. Farooq remembered waking up that Sunday, the sixth of March, dreaming up many interesting projects to discuss with his advisors. Then, in an instant, everything had changed.

  Every fiber of his being told him to resist. But more than a quarter of a million Pakistanis were demonstrating outside the gates of the palace. “Give praise to Imam al-Mahdi!” they had shouted again and again. “Give praise to Imam al-Mahdi!” He had feared they would overrun the place. And there was the Mahdi, pushing, pushing.

  “What say you?” the Mahdi had asked. “You owe me an answer.”

  What was he supposed to have done? He was horrified that Tehran had suddenly become the seat of a new Caliphate. Neither he nor his father nor his father’s father had ever trusted the Iranians. The Persian Empire had ruled his ancestors, stretching in its day from India in the east to Sudan and Ethiopia in the west. Now the Persians wanted to subjugate them all over again.

  Everyone he knew, it seemed—everyone but him—had been bewitched. They all believed this Mahdi was the messiah, the savior of the world.

  The chopper landed, and several members of the Pakistani Air Force helped the president inside and into his seat. As Farooq put on his seat belt and prepared to take off for the short hop to New Islamabad International Airport in Fateh Jang, west of the palace, he stared out the window, unable to believe this was really happening. The world had gone mad. The crowds had grown daily. Now his palace guard estimated upwards of half a million Pakistanis surrounded the presidential compound, clogging traffic for miles in every direction. They were still chanting, “Blessed be Imam al-Mahdi,” and “Join the Caliphate now.” They were even threatening to burn the palace to the ground if he didn’t move fast to form an alliance with the Mahdi. His Sunni-dominated Cabinet, meanwhile, had actually threatened to have him arrested and tried for treason if he didn’t immediately join the Caliphate and hand Pakistan’s launch codes over to this Shia “messiah.”

  Farooq had resisted, argued, and delayed as long as he could, but to
no avail. Even his wife and children had begged him to make the deal and get it over with before they all met their grisly deaths. What more could he do? He was set to meet the Twelfth Imam face-to-face at half past midnight tonight.

  The day of reckoning was at hand.

  HAMADAN, IRAN

  “. . . so, Father, we pray for our dear friend and brother Dr. Birjandi, that you would protect him and that you would fill him with your Holy Spirit and that you would use him to say whatever you want him to say and do whatever you want him to do, no matter what the cost. We pray these things in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was and is and is to come. Amen.”

  Dr. Birjandi, packed and dressed in the black robes and black turban he used to wear when he taught at the seminary in Qom, reluctantly lifted his head as Ali and Ibrahim finished praying with him. Even now he could hear the faint echo of a helicopter approaching in the distance. He loved these men so much. He didn’t want to leave them and certainly not for an “emergency meeting” with the Twelfth Imam. But despite all his protestations that he would never go to such a meeting, the die now seemed to be cast. He had pleaded with the Lord to let this cup pass from him, but short of a miracle, in the next few minutes he would be picked up by Revolutionary Guards with orders to take him to some secure, undisclosed location for a face-to-face meeting with the personification of evil.

  And yet now, strangely, after so much prayer and angst, Birjandi actually did not feel anxious. Rather, he felt a peace that surprised him. He knew the Lord had a good and perfect plan for his life, and maybe these boys were right. Maybe the Lord was about to give him the opportunity to share the gospel with Hosseini and Darazi.

  “Thank you so much, boys,” he told them. “I am forever grateful. But now you must go, before they get here. Please, there is not much time.”

  “But we want to stay with you,” Ibrahim said. “We are not afraid.”

  “I know, and I am so grateful, my son, but you must not be connected to me. Not now, not today,” Birjandi said. “Your courage is admirable, and it is from the Lord. But use it to share the gospel with your families and friends. Use it to start house churches and teach the Word throughout this nation. Use it to advance the Kingdom of Jesus, and I will see you in heaven, when all is well. Now go. Both of you. If you love me, you must leave right now.”