“Our commanders want to know, should they continue to engage the enemy? Should they press the offense?” Shimon asked Naphtali.
The prime minister considered that for a moment, but in the end he said no. Iran and Syria had been dealt a death blow. The Twelfth Imam was now dead. The Ayatollah — Iran’s Supreme Leader — was dead. So was Syrian president Mustafa and most of the Caliphate’s top military leaders and political advisors. The heads of two snakes had been cut off.
Nothing in the region would ever be the same. Tehran, Naphtali believed, would never be in a position to fund and supply Hezbollah and Hamas again. Nor, clearly, would Damascus. The horror of what had just happened would take time to sink in fully, but Naphtali was willing to bet an enormous sum that as the flow of funds and weapons to these terrorist organizations dried up, so would their spirit and the threat they had once posed. Out of the fire and the smoke, a new world was being born, Naphtali realized, a world in which Israel’s most dangerous enemies had just been dramatically neutralized in the blink of an eye.
It was cold and dark, and northern Virginia was being pounded by a torrential rainstorm. Najjar Malik had woken up several times throughout the night to immense claps of thunder that made the windows and the walls shake. But though the rain and the thunder would still not let up, now he woke to the sound of someone knocking on the bedroom door.
“Just a second,” he said as he sat up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and tried to remember where he was and what time it was.
Najjar looked over at his beloved wife, Sheyda, snuggled up beside him, then at their baby nestled in the crib beside their bed. And then it all came back. He was once again in the custody of the CIA. He was back at the safe house from which he had escaped. There were more armed guards in the house now. There were bars on the bedroom windows and more surveillance cameras in the hallways and in the trees front and back, allowing the Agency to make certain none of them tried to slip out of their grasp again. It was a prison, basically, but at least he was finally back together with his family.
Najjar forced himself out of the warm bed, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. He threw on some blue jeans and a T-shirt and opened the door. His mother-in-law, Farah, bundled in a thick blue bathrobe, was standing there looking quite anxious.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You have a visitor,” she said. “Someone from the Agency. I think something is wrong.”
Najjar suppressed a smile. Of course their visitor was from the Agency. All their visitors were from the Agency. No one else knew where they were, and some of the people who were looking for them wanted them dead. Najjar nodded to the armed guard in the hallway, then rubbed his eyes again and headed downstairs, saying good morning to the guard at the bottom of the stairs as well as the two in the kitchen.
To his astonishment, Eva Fischer was standing there, looking pale and stricken.
“Agent Fischer, what a surprise,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “Can we sit down and talk?”
“Of course,” he said, then turned to Farah. “Would you mind making us some coffee?”
“I already have a pot brewing,” she replied. “I’ll bring it over when it’s done.”
Najjar and Eva went into the family room. She took a seat on the couch. He sat down in a large, overstuffed chair.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s brought you all the way out here to see me?”
“There’s been an explosion,” Eva began. “A detonation, actually.”
Najjar tensed, not wanting to hear what was coming next. But Eva told him anyway. She could not share classified details, of course, but she told him what was being reported on the news. The Agency had denied the Maliks access to television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. Until his debriefings and the criminal investigation into his recent activities were completed by the Agency and the FBI, the U.S. government didn’t want Najjar or his family to have contact with the outside world or much knowledge of it either. So this was the first Najjar had heard of the Damascus tragedy.
“The devastation is beyond anything you or I can comprehend,” Eva said. “Damascus is no more.”
Najjar sat for a moment without speaking, trying to process all that he was hearing.
“So,” he said quietly at last, “the prophecies came true.”
“What do you mean?”
“The prophecies — you know, in the Bible, the ones in Isaiah and Jeremiah that say in the last days Damascus will be obliterated as a city — they just came true.”
Eva clearly had no idea what he was talking about, and she asked him to explain. He did so, but he had questions of his own. Having been one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists for years, Najjar asked for more technical details about what the Agency had ascertained about the cause of the blast. Eva bent the rules a bit and told him what she knew. She made it clear that there was no evidence this was an Israeli nuclear strike. Rather, she said, it appeared that the warhead detonated moments after the Scud-C lifted off. She gave a few more details. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for Najjar to posit a theory.
“This was deliberate,” he told her.
“What do you mean?”
“Nuclear warheads don’t detonate during launch unless the man who built them is either an idiot or a suicide bomber,” Najjar said. “None of the scientists on Dr. Saddaji’s team were idiots. They were brilliant, brilliant men. But none of them besides Tariq Khan had been recruited by Saddaji to be part of building bombs.”
“So what are you saying?” Eva asked.
“I’m saying one of those men knew he had the chance to take out the entire Iranian and Syrian leadership in one shot and stop the Mahdi’s nuclear weapons nightmare at the same time,” Najjar said. “And he took it.”
It was a radical theory — one Eva said the top officials at the CIA had not even considered in these early hours. She pursued it for several minutes, peppering Najjar with one question after another until Najjar abruptly changed the topic.
“So does this mean Reza Tabrizi will be coming home soon?” he asked. “The man saved my life and my family’s lives. I would very much like to see him again. I would like to say thank you.”
The question hung in the air for a while. Eva looked away and said nothing. Farah came into the room and set a tray before them with two mugs of hot black coffee, along with a small pitcher of creamer, a bowl of sugar, and some spoons.
“Is that not possible?” Najjar now asked. “Is that against the rules?”
“No, it’s not that,” Eva said finally. “It’s just…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
“What?” Najjar asked. “If it’s not against the rules, then what?”
Eva picked up one of the mugs and took several sips. “Najjar, I’m not sure how to say this the best way,” she began. “So I’m just going to be straight with you. Reza is… I’m afraid Reza is missing, and…”
“And what?” Najjar pressed.
“And presumed dead.”
Najjar gasped, as did his mother-in-law. She knew all the stories of what Reza Tabrizi had done for them. Indeed, she — like all of them — had been praying night and day for Reza’s soul as well as his safety.
Just then Sheyda came downstairs, still wearing her pajamas but wrapped in a thick gray sweatshirt. “What happened to Reza?” she asked, coming around the corner and taking a seat next to Eva. “I don’t understand. Where is he now?”