Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Going through with it—making contact with the Israelis and giving them top-secret intelligence—would be tantamount to treason. If by some miracle he lived through this nightmare, he could never marry Marseille and live happily ever after in Portland or wherever. He would be sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of his natural life for breaking who knew how many laws.

  But did any of that really matter? Didn’t he have a moral obligation to help the Israelis save themselves from another Holocaust? There was no question in his mind that he did. The only question at this point was how he could contact them. The most logical answer was to use Tolik and Gal, the Mossad agents in custody back at the Karaj safe house. But that meant getting Mays involved. Indeed, his entire team would have to know, and David couldn’t send them all to prison. They couldn’t know. None of them. Not Mays. Not Torres. Not Fox or Crenshaw. If he did this, he’d have to go it alone and pay the consequences alone. That much was certain.

  By the same token, he couldn’t let Zalinsky or Murray or anyone in the chain of command at Langley know what he was doing. They’d never let him get away with it, and like his own team, he respected them too much to endanger their lives or careers. He didn’t always agree with his superiors, but he respected them enormously.

  Making his decision to help save the Israeli people felt almost as liberating as receiving Christ as his Savior. Indeed, he was certain that somehow the two decisions were related, though he had neither the time nor the training to understand quite how at the moment. He only knew that when he died and went to heaven and stood before the Jewish Messiah in heaven—probably today—he wanted Jesus to know he had done everything in his power to protect the Jewish people.

  The critical question was how best to proceed. How could he make contact with the right people in the Israeli government? He didn’t know a soul in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. He’d never even been there, and he couldn’t very well call 411 and ask some operator for the personal phone number of the Mossad chief or the prime minister. Still, as he continued to race through the deserts of western Iraq, David pored over every conversation he’d had with Zalinsky over the years, hoping to remember a name and number of someone he could connect with. Yet he was coming up blank. He thought back through his previous assignments, desperately looking for a scrap he could use in this present moment.

  His first posting fresh out of CIA training at the Farm in rural Virginia had been as some assistant to the assistant to the deputy assistant of whatever for an entire year at the new American Embassy in Baghdad. That had been about as boring as he could imagine. Then he’d essentially been a fetcher of lattes for the economic attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Lame. Then he’d been transferred to be a communications and intelligence liaison in Bahrain for a SEAL team assigned to protect U.S. Navy ships entering and exiting the Persian Gulf. It had sounded cool when he first heard about the job, but it hadn’t been nearly as interesting as he’d hoped. Nor had it put him in contact with anyone in the Israeli military or intelligence services. The same was true of his work in Pakistan, hunting down al Qaeda operatives. Looking back, it seemed strange that he hadn’t crossed paths with Israelis, but as best he could recall, he simply hadn’t.

  He began to wonder if he should have brought Tolik Shalev along for this mission, though he quickly ruled it out again. Still, if he could talk to Tolik in private . . .

  Then David remembered something Tolik had said almost offhandedly before they’d set out for Syria. Tolik had alluded to the fact that Israel’s mole inside the Iranian nuclear program had “called in” the precise locations of the warheads, allowing Naphtali to order precise air strikes. Was it possible, David wondered, that the mole could have had access to one of the satphones David himself had supplied to the Mahdi through Abdol Esfahani and Javad Nouri? Was it possible that the mole had used one of those satphones to make contact with his Mossad handlers? He would have had to, David concluded. How else could he have been certain the Iranians wouldn’t be listening in on his call?

  Still, if that were really true, that would mean the NSA had a recording of the call, wouldn’t it? Did the team at Fort Meade actually have it buried in mountains of recordings they were ill-equipped to process fast enough and thoroughly enough? Had it been translated? Had it been analyzed? If not, could they find it?

  The faster David processed the questions, the faster he seemed to drive. But he certainly wasn’t worried about getting pulled over by an Iraqi police officer. They were miles from civilization and cruising across the desert at nearly a hundred miles an hour. In another hour or so, they would be at the Syrian border. But then what?

  David’s pulse quickened at the possibility of establishing contact with the Mossad, but first he had to carefully and delicately extract the right information from the NSA supercomputers. How? His only contact on the translation team was Eva Fischer. Did he dare bring her into his plan? He didn’t want to harm her, either. Perhaps there was a way to get the information from her without making her privy to how he was going to use it.

  He had to call her, he decided. He had to try, at least. But he could only make the call when the rest of his team wasn’t listening. Which meant he had to make the call when he—or the others—were out of the car. Which meant he couldn’t call Eva until they got to the next town and stopped again for fuel and bathrooms. Yet the next town wasn’t for another eighty kilometers, and David wasn’t sure he could wait until then.

  41

  DAMASCUS, SYRIA

  The knock on the door came on time and as expected.

  “Just a moment,” Dr. Birjandi said, reaching for the satphone on the nightstand next to his bed and hiding it under his robes. He felt strongly that he needed to call David and let him know where he was and what was happening, but he was certain his room was bugged. His only chance to make the call, he concluded, was somewhere else on the base. The risk, of course, was that he could never be certain he was truly alone at any given moment, but if the Lord wanted him to make the call, Birjandi knew he would find a way where there was no way.

  Birjandi walked slowly to the door of his room and felt for the handle.

  “Please forgive an old man,” he said, finally opening the door. “I’m not as spry as I once was.”

  He fully expected some young Syrian military aide to gather him for breakfast, but to his surprise it was actually someone he knew.

  “Sabah al-khayr,” said the familiar voice.

  “Sabah al-noor,” Birjandi replied, then added, “Abdol, is that you?”

  “It is, indeed, Dr. Birjandi,” Esfahani replied. “I’m impressed by your memory.”

  “At my age, me too,” Birjandi quipped.

  Esfahani chuckled. “Forgive me for not greeting you and talking to you more last night when you arrived, Alireza, but I assumed you would be fatigued from the journey.”

  “That is quite all right. There is nothing to forgive. And indeed I was fatigued.”

  “May I escort you down to breakfast?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Birjandi. “I have decided to fast today, if that is all right. But I would be honored to join you. Will it just be you?”

  “No, there are several, actually, who are looking forward to spending time with you, including General Jazini and General Hamdi. They are eager to meet the world’s leading expert on Shia eschatology.”

  “Whatever for?” Birjandi demurred. “The end has come. The words of the ancient prophets are coming true before our very eyes.”

  He meant the words of the Bible, of course, not the words of the Qur’an or other Islamic writings, but for the moment the ambiguity helped him maintain his cover. The question was, how much longer should he wait before revealing himself as a true follower of Jesus Christ, not the Twelfth Imam? As he walked, Birjandi silently prayed John 12:49, that the Father would command him “what to say and how to say it,” just as the Father had commanded Christ himself.

  After a long night of prayer, Birjandi was at peac
e about what was coming. He was ready to see the Lord face-to-face and eager to share the gospel with everyone on this base before he departed. He had no idea whether he could persuade anyone to renounce Islam and follow Jesus as he had done, but he was determined to try.

  As they made their way down the hallway and onto an elevator, Birjandi looked for a way to begin a spiritual conversation, but once Esfahani had started talking, he would not stop. He went on and on about how thrilled he was to have been chosen for this assignment, to be on the advance team for the Mahdi’s visit, and to actually be on the front lines when history was made.

  “The world will remember this day forever,” Esfahani said proudly.

  “It will, indeed,” Birjandi replied, though his heart grieved for this young man, for how blind he was and how close he was to perishing forever.

  Lord, may I share the Good News of your Son with him right now, on this elevator? Birjandi prayed, but the answer he received was no, he must wait; the time was not yet right.

  HIGHWAY 12, WESTERN IRAQ

  David and his team were coming up on a medium-size town called Al Qa’im, at the far edge of which they planned to cross the border into Syria. Noticing a small shop selling fruit, snacks, water, soda, cigarettes, newspapers, and the like, David pulled in and told his team they had five minutes and no more. He was going to find a toilet. He’d be right back.

  While his men bought some provisions and were glad to stretch their legs, David did track down a toilet room so filthy he couldn’t bear to enter it. He found some bushes and relieved himself, then powered up his satphone and speed-dialed Eva.

  “Fischer.”

  “Eva, hey, it’s me—but don’t say my name out loud.”

  “It’s okay, David; I’m by myself.”

  “Fine, listen; I need a favor, and I need it fast.”

  “Sure, what’s up? Are you okay? Where are you right now?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, but I can’t really say anything else,” David replied. “Listen, I need you to hunt down a phone call that would have been made last week, probably Wednesday or Thursday.”

  He quickly explained precisely what he was looking for. “Can you do that for me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Eva said. “But why do you need it?”

  “I’m working on a hunch,” David explained. “But I don’t want Jack or Tom or anyone else there to know about it until I can verify it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think they’ll get it,” he said. “Not at first.”

  “Won’t get it, or won’t approve it?” Eva asked.

  “No comment,” he said.

  “So you’re going rogue.”

  David sighed. She was onto him. “Will you help me?”

  “Of course,” she said. “What are friends for?”

  “You’re a great friend, Eva; thank you. Now one more question,” David said. “Can you tell me how many other NOC teams are out here in the field with us, and do you know if there’s a way I can link up with any of them?”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Eva?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you hear my question?”

  “Yeah, I heard it.”

  “Well?”

  “You want the official answer or the real answer?”

  “Both.”

  “The official answer is, ‘The administration is doing everything we can to bring peace to the Middle East and protect the U.S. and our allies from any threat of an Iranian nuclear arsenal,’” Eva said.

  “And the real answer?”

  “The real answer is you’re on your own, my friend.”

  David was startled.

  “There’s no one out here with us?”

  “They pulled everyone out.”

  “Except us.”

  “Right.”

  “Then why keep us in the field?”

  “So the president can tell the Israelis with a straight face that he’s got men risking their lives to stop Iran.”

  “But in reality he’s cutting us loose.”

  “Your words,” Eva said. “Not mine.”

  “Thanks for the brutal honesty.”

  “My pleasure,” Eva quipped. “Now listen, don’t get yourself killed. You owe me big-time, and if you’re dead, I won’t be able to collect.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  “You’d better.”

  They hung up quickly, and sixty seconds later David was back in the driver’s seat, leading his team to the Syrian border.

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  Prime Minister Naphtali was infuriated by the Iranian propaganda offensive. But two could play this game, and he decided to turn the tables. He called in the foreign minister, his communications director, and his chief spokesman and told them to immediately release all the details of the grisly deaths of the young American couple honeymooning in Tiberias who had been killed by an Iranian missile.

  “What were their names again?” he asked.

  “Christopher and Lexi Vandermark,” said the communications director.

  “Do you have all the details of their itinerary?” the PM asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Their passport photos from when they entered the country?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you edit together some of the videos you retrieved from security cameras close to the hotel, showing the hotel being hit by the missile and then collapsing?”

  “My men are working on it now.”

  “How soon will it be ready?”

  “Twenty minutes. Half hour tops.”

  “Good, and is there footage of the Vandermarks being pulled from the rubble?”

  “There is.”

  “Use that, too,” Naphtali said. “Just don’t use any explicit footage of their faces or any close-ups. We don’t want to offend the American people. We want to infuriate them with the actions of the Iranians. We want to make this war real and personal to them. But it’s late in the States now. Everyone is in bed. Give this material to the Jerusalem bureau chiefs of the major American networks and the New York Times and Washington Post and L.A. Times. Embargo the video until tomorrow morning. But make sure it’s the major story every American sees and hears about and reads when they first wake up. And draft a statement for me to release to the press, expressing my condolences to the families of the couple and to the American people and expressing my determination to bring the killers of the Vandermarks to justice.”

  DAMASCUS, SYRIA

  The Iranian and Syrian generals warmly welcomed Dr. Birjandi and asked him and Esfahani to join them for breakfast. They explained what an impressive spread of food had been laid out for such a close friend of the Ayatollah and a special guest of the Mahdi. Birjandi, however, declined to partake of the lavish buffet, saying he was grateful for all the trouble they and their staff had gone to but that he wanted to fast that day to be close to God and most attentive to his will. He did not intend to impress them or draw undue attention to himself or his piety, but his words had that effect anyway. Jazini and Hamdi decided to fast for the day as well, and when they did, Esfahani eagerly followed suit.

  “We just checked on the good Dr. Zandi,” Jazini said, shifting gears. “He and his team have been working since well before dawn. They seem to be ahead of schedule. At this point, it looks like the first warhead could be attached by as early as one o’clock this afternoon, perhaps two at the latest. Then, inshallah, they will begin working on the second warhead. Zandi believes that one could be done by dinnertime.”

  “But he remains insistent that the two warheads stay together,” General Hamdi said. “I still recommend you move the second warhead to Aleppo the moment the first one is attached to the Scud and send Zandi and his team to attach it to another Scud up there. We cannot be too careful.”

  “I fully agree,” Jazini said. “In fact, I’ve already ordered the transport of the second warhead, Dr. Zandi’s reservations notwithstanding. It is current
ly en route to its launch location. Zandi will go there as soon as the first warhead is attached. I will update Imam al-Mahdi on our progress when he arrives around noon.”

  Then Jazini turned back to the octogenarian professor. “In the meantime, I have so many questions for you, Dr. Birjandi. Do you mind?”

  Birjandi was burning to call David. The time remaining before these warheads were ready to fire was shrinking rapidly, and David was the only person he knew who could do anything to stop the Mahdi and his forces before it was too late. But there was nothing he could do now, Birjandi realized, except answer these men’s questions and try to win their trust.

  “I would be delighted to answer your questions,” he said as cheerfully as he could under the circumstances. “Where would you like to begin?”

  AL QA’IM, IRAQ

  David asked Torres to give the team one final briefing on the details of Omid Jazini’s memo so they would all be ready when they got to the Syrian border. Besides showing their IDs to the border guards, Omid’s instructions to all of the Revolutionary Guards entering Syria included a series of authentication codes they would need to recite from memory and answers to a number of challenge questions they could be asked by the Syrian officials standing post. Given how slim their chances of succeeding in their mission were anyway, the last thing David wanted was to be detained or arrested at the border. They had to be ready for any eventuality, but the goal—first and foremost—was to get in without incident. They had already memorized the codes and protocols, and now they reviewed everything as Torres walked them through the procedures for the last time.