Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  As the pressure in his ears began to lessen, Birjandi could feel the helicopter start its long, slow descent. Eventually, he felt the aircraft touch down, the engines shut off, and the whirring rotors slow to a halt. Then he heard the side door slide open and soon felt someone taking his hands and helping him down onto the tarmac.

  “Where are we?” he asked the Revolutionary Guard officer assigned to him.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Birjandi. I’m afraid I’m not authorized to say,” the officer replied.

  “You think this blind old man is going to run off?” Birjandi asked.

  “No, I guess not,” said the young man, carefully guiding Birjandi across the tarmac to a waiting truck. “But I have my orders.”

  “To maintain strict operational security.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you do understand who I am, right, son?”

  “Yes, of course, Dr. Birjandi. I know everything about you.”

  “So you know that the Ayatollah and the president and I are very close friends.”

  “Of course, sir. Everyone knows that.”

  “And you understand that I have been invited to this meeting at the Mahdi’s personal request, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You understand all that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then let me ask you, son,” Birjandi said, folding up his white cane. “If the Mahdi trusts me, shouldn’t you?”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you; it’s just that . . .”

  “It’s just that what?” Birjandi asked.

  “Well, I . . . It’s . . .”

  “Believe me, young man, I understand the need for operational security. But even if I were inclined to tell someone, whom would I tell? You took away my suitcase. You can see I am not holding a satellite phone. The only people with me are you and your fellow guards and the pilot. Presumably they already know. And besides, how would I even know you’re telling me the truth?”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Of course it’s true,” Birjandi said. “Listen, son, I hope you never have the misfortune of going blind. But if you do, it is a very lonely existence. And somewhat unnerving, disorienting. Unless you’re home in your own house, in your own bed or your own chair, eating food you’ve prepared for yourself, you never quite feel secure. You never really know where you are, who is with you, or what is happening around you. You do your best, mind you; you do your best. But it’s nice every now and then to have some idea of what’s happening. It can’t completely give you peace, but it takes away some of the loneliness, some of the anxiety—for me, anyhow. But then again, I’m just an old man.”

  The young officer was quiet for a moment as he mulled the obvious logic of Birjandi’s point. “Very well,” the officer, whom Birjandi guessed was no older than thirty, finally said. “We have just landed on a small military base near Piranshahr.”

  “Near the Iraqi border?” Birjandi asked.

  “Yes, you know of it?”

  “Of course,” Birjandi replied.

  “But how?” the officer asked.

  “My wife had an aunt who lived here once, but that was many years ago,” Birjandi said. “I remember stories of Piranshahr from the war with Iraq back in the eighties. But I don’t understand. What are we doing here? I thought we were going to Tehran.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous to take you to Tehran,” the officer said. “The Israelis are bombing the daylights out of Tehran.”

  “Not every neighborhood,” Birjandi protested. “Surely there are secret centers from which the leadership is running the war.”

  “True, but my orders were to bring you here, transfer you to a vegetable truck, and drive you across the border to Erbil.”

  “Erbil?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Erbil in Kurdistan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Iraqi Kurdistan?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m just following orders from General Jazini.”

  “Mohsen Jazini?”

  “Yes, and I assume you know him, too?”

  “We’ve met a few times, but no, I wouldn’t really say I know him. But he’s the one who developed this plan?”

  “As far as I know,” the officer said. “Anyway, from Erbil we’ll fly you in a medical transport plane to a military base outside the city of Homs in Syria, and from there, you’ll be driven to a military base in or near Damascus.”

  “Damascus?” asked Birjandi, genuinely perplexed. “What on earth for? I thought—”

  But Birjandi stopped himself in midsentence. The beginning of an idea had just come to him, and he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him earlier.

  “That’s all I can tell you, Dr. Birjandi,” the officer said, not noticing the old man was now deep in thought. “Actually, that’s much more than I’m supposed to tell you. But you’ll receive more information when you get to Damascus; that I can assure you. Now come, take my hand, and stay close to me. We need to get on the road.”

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  “I need to get out in front of this story,” the prime minister said firmly, but Levi Shimon pushed back hard.

  “Absolutely not,” the defense minister said. “We are in the heat of battle. The Iranians just hit our nuclear reactor. That’s the big story at the moment—the fear that the Iranians have tried to destroy us with our own peaceful nuclear power plant. That’s all the world is talking about right now. We’d be fools to change the narrative.”

  “It was our mistake,” Naphtali countered. “It was my mistake. And I must take responsibility for it.”

  “But not right now, sir,” Shimon insisted. “Right now you and I need to stay focused on the hunt for two loose Iranian nuclear warheads . . . and a new and equally dangerous threat that is rising as well.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sir, I think we have to consider the possibility that Iran is keeping the Syrians in the bull pen until our missile defenses are depleted, at which point they may launch a massive strike with chemical weapons.”

  “Do we have any intelligence the Syrians are considering such a move?”

  “No,” said Shimon, “nothing concrete.”

  “Then why do you bring this up now?”

  “Instinct, sir. When this war began, the Syrians immediately launched three missiles at us. We had anticipated that, and we shot all three of them down. But then they went dark. No more rockets. No more missiles. It doesn’t make sense. Hezbollah has unleashed on us. So has Hamas. Why hasn’t Damascus?”

  “That’s what I keep asking you.”

  “And until now I haven’t had an answer.”

  “But now you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think Syria’s about to unleash everything they have at us, but you have no proof.”

  “Sir, it’s the only move that makes sense,” Shimon insisted. “Tehran and Damascus have a mutual defense pact. The moment we attacked the Iranians, the Syrians began to retaliate. Then they stopped abruptly. Why? Because Gamal Mustafa got cold feet?”

  “Mustafa doesn’t get cold feet.”

  “Of course not,” Shimon agreed. “The man is a ruthless killer. The only reason he stopped shooting was because Tehran told him to stop shooting. And who is the only man in Tehran with the authority to give such an order at the moment?”

  “The Twelfth Imam.”

  “Precisely.”

  “You think the Mahdi is reining Mustafa in?”

  “I do.”

  “For how long?” Naphtali asked.

  “Not much longer, sir,” Shimon replied. “I think we need to consider a massive preemptive strike against Syria’s chemical weapons facilities and missile bases.”

  “Do you have a plan ready to go?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Then let me see it.”

  34

  SARI, IRAN

  It had taken a little more than two hours, but
just before 9 p.m. local time, the school bus carrying the Twelfth Imam along with Daryush Rashidi and their security team finally rolled into the Iranian city of Sari. Nestled between the Alborz Mountains and the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, Sari was the capital of the Mazandaran province. With a population of only about 250,000 people, it was a small, economically insignificant, and militarily unimportant city, which was exactly what they needed. It meant the place wasn’t likely to be closely monitored by either the Israelis or the Americans. But it did have a decent general aviation airfield, and that was why General Jazini had chosen it.

  As the bus pulled onto the airport grounds, Rashidi was struck by just how quiet and sleepy the place seemed. Night had fallen, and the runway lights were on, but not a single plane was taking off or landing, and few cars were in the parking lot. The guard station wasn’t even manned, and Rashidi guessed they didn’t have the budget for any serious security measures. The bus pulled onto the tarmac and drove over to a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet parked outside a hangar on the far end of the field. The plane had been freshly painted to look like a Red Crescent medical transport craft. Rashidi and the lead security officer jumped off the bus first and shook hands with the pilot, who was waiting for them, then waved the Mahdi and the rest of the security team aboard.

  “How far are we from Kabul?” the Mahdi asked Rashidi once they were seated and buckled in on the plush, French-built plane.

  “It’s about 1,500 kilometers from here,” Rashidi said. “If everything goes as we hope, we should be on the ground by midnight.”

  “Very well,” the Mahdi said. “Wake me up when we’re there.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. Can I get you anything before we lift off?”

  “Just dim the cabin lights and keep everyone quiet,” the Mahdi said. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  CAPE MAY, NEW JERSEY

  The waves of the Atlantic lapped rhythmically upon the shore as bitter March winds continued to rattle the house. These were the only constants while everything else in Najjar Malik’s life seemed to change minute by minute.

  The country of his birth was at war, taken over by a madman, a false messiah who was preaching lies and hatred and cruelly leading the people Najjar loved into death and destruction. Syria, meanwhile, seemed about to plunge into the war as well. A madman was running that country too, slaughtering tens of thousands and sending many of them into a Christless eternity. And then there was Israel, whose civilian nuclear reactor in Dimona had just been hit by Iranian missiles and whose prime minister was surely preparing to unleash the nation’s fury back upon Iran. There was no good news anywhere he looked. He knew he personally was in the care of the Good Shepherd, who would not leave him or forsake him, and he continued to urge all who would listen to give their lives to Jesus Christ before it was too late. But the intensity of the battle was taking its toll, and Najjar desperately needed to rest.

  He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and checked his watch. It was 12:30 in the afternoon. He’d been scanning the web for the latest news from Iran, Israel, and Syria for the last four and a half hours. He’d also been tweeting and retweeting the stories he found most important to the 923,178 people who were following him on Twitter. From time to time, he’d send out a Bible verse that he felt was relevant for the moment, and occasionally he answered questions people were sending to him. There wasn’t much he could really communicate in 140 characters, and he continued to be stunned that anyone was listening to anything he had to say, but mostly he was grateful that the Lord had given him the chance to speak the truth to those in the Islamic world who were living in utter darkness.

  At this point Najjar was completely exhausted, not to mention freezing cold. He already had two T-shirts on and a sweater and a hoodie over those, but he still couldn’t get warm, and he couldn’t seem to figure out how to work the house’s central heating system. What he really wanted to do was go upstairs and curl up in bed under lots of blankets and comforters for the next few hours and get some serious sleep, but his stomach was growling, and he decided his first priority was to eat something.

  Stepping into the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and stared into the empty void. The milk was gone. The orange juice was gone. The fruit was gone, and so was the bread. He went to the pantry but didn’t find much else. He’d finished all the tea in the house, all the pasta, and all the rice, and as he looked at the dishes piling up in the sink and the empty jars of peanut butter and jelly and empty boxes and containers of myriad other kinds of food heaped up in the trash, he realized how obsessive he had been for the past few days. He’d been spending most of his time reading the Bible or praying for Sheyda and the rest of his family and for the people of Iran and the Middle East or tracking the war on TV and on the computer, and he hadn’t made much time for anything else.

  Najjar was embarrassed how messy he’d allowed this gorgeous beach house to become, and he wondered what the owners would say if they popped in unexpectedly to see how he was doing. He had never met the couple, friends of the producer at the Persian Christian Satellite Network. Their goal in having him stay here was to keep Najjar out of the hands of the FBI and CIA and to keep him communicating the gospel and the latest war news to the Iranian people via Twitter for as long as possible. Meanwhile, the folks back at PCSN were going to keep replaying his riveting television interview explaining how he, a Shia Twelver and the highest-ranking nuclear scientist in Iran, had come to renounce Islam, become a follower of Jesus Christ, and seek political asylum in the United States.

  When he’d first been told by the producer that they had a place for him to hide away, Najjar had expected a couch in someone’s basement or a little apartment or maybe a condo someplace on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., not far from the TV studio. He certainly hadn’t expected to be put up in a multimillion-dollar beach house all by himself on the Jersey Shore. Yes, it was off-season, and yes, it was bitterly cold in a town largely depopulated, but it was, Najjar knew, a very gracious gift from his Father in heaven, and though flabbergasted, he was deeply grateful.

  He scanned the disaster in the kitchen and made a quick plan. For now, he’d take out the trash and go get some groceries. Then he’d come back, check the headlines, and load the dishwasher. A few loads of laundry couldn’t hurt either, he told himself, and suddenly he missed his precious Sheyda all the more. What was she doing right now? How were the baby and his wife, Farah? Was the CIA taking good care of them? Or were they punishing them for Najjar’s escape? He felt fairly certain that the American government was nothing like his own. Indeed, the mullahs would have hanged or shot his family by now had he left them in their hands. No, he knew the Americans would never do such a thing. Yet he had to admit to himself that he didn’t really know how the Agency handled such situations, and a wave of guilt began to wash over him. How could he have been so selfish? They needed him now more than ever, and in a sense he had just abandoned them. Not literally, of course. It was his CIA handlers who had separated him from his family and locked him up in a safe house. But maybe if he had cooperated more, they would have been reunited by now. Najjar began to wonder again if he should turn himself in.

  Yet with his stomach grumbling more loudly now, he decided it was a bad idea to even consider such a major decision on so little food and even less sleep. So he sent one more tweet, then picked the car keys off the counter, settled behind the wheel of the black Honda Accord parked in the driveway, and carefully backed onto Beach Avenue before heading toward the grocery store he’d seen about a half kilometer away on Ocean Street.

  SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

  Marseille was startled by the unexpected ring of her iPhone. She had just finished saying good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Walsh. She had given them both long hugs and had gotten into her rental car to head to the airport for her flight back to Portland. The identification of the caller was blocked, but Marseille answered it anyway, and every muscle in her body seemed to tense.

  “Hello?” she asked,
desperate for any scrap of news about Lexi and Chris, and even more desperate for news about David, yet fearful what any of that news might be.

  “This is the operations center at Langley looking for a Marseille Harper.”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “Very well, please hold for Deputy Director Murray.”

  Marseille held her breath. A moment later, Murray came on the line.

  “Miss Harper?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Tom Murray.”

  “Oh yes, hi, Mr. Murray,” Marseille replied. “Thank you so much for calling. Honestly, I didn’t really expect a call back from you personally. I know you have a lot on your plate right now.”

  “Well, that’s true, and normally I don’t return calls made at 3 a.m. to my office by people I barely know,” Murray said. “But you seem to be proving an exception to that rule. As I mentioned when we met the other day, your father was a dear friend, as was your mom. So that’s why I wanted to return your call myself once I had some news.”

  Marseille looked at Mrs. Walsh, who clung to her husband while whispering to Marseille, “What’s he saying?” But Marseille motioned for her to wait.

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Murray,” she said. “I’m actually here with Lexi’s parents. We’ve been up all night watching the TV coverage, but they haven’t really been talking about what’s happening in Tiberias. It all seems to be about the missile attack on Dimona.”

  “Yes, the situation in Dimona is dominating everything right now, and I’m sorry about that,” Murray said. “But I’m calling because I have some good news for you.”