The Israelis, for their part, kept launching fighter jets and their own missiles against Iranian targets. As far as David knew, Israel had at least succeeded in taking out Iran’s nukes, but this was still all-out war on both sides, and it wasn’t clear to anyone how it was going to end. There didn’t seem to be any part of Iran that was out of the Israelis’ reach, though the city of Karaj, at least, where this safe house was located, had not yet been hit.
Nevertheless, most other strategic Iranian cities had been, and the near-nonstop bombings and missile strikes were taking an emotional toll on people. Most of the power for Tehran and other major cities had been knocked out. Nearly every Iranian TV and radio station was off the air. The Internet was down. Key government buildings, especially in the capital, were now flaming heaps of wreckage. The Ministry of Defense was a smoldering crater, as was the Ministry of Intelligence, the headquarters for VEVAK. Every real or suspected significant nuclear facility in Iran had been hit multiple times, and while the Israelis had clearly taken great pains to minimize civilian casualties, there had certainly been collateral damage. Thousands upon thousands of Iranians were dead and dying. David didn’t know the number, but he was sure whatever it was, it was climbing by the hour.
Most of his contacts, David had to assume, either were working feverishly to obey the orders of the Mahdi and Iran’s top generals to strike back at the Israelis or were huddled with their families in basements and bunkers. Those without satellite phones might not be reachable for the duration of the war, however long it took. But even the ones with satphones — the insiders — weren’t answering. Why not? Wasn’t that the point of having the satphones — so that such key men could be reached at all times regardless of the circumstances? Were they really too busy, David wondered, or was it something else? Were they avoiding him? Was he under suspicion after the near-assassination of Javad Nouri? Were they under orders not to speak to him anymore? He was burning to know the answer. He was desperate to find a lead. But for the moment, he was stuck.
Roger Allen stepped out of the West Wing, got into the bulletproof black SUV waiting for him, and ordered they head back immediately to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, roughly a twenty-minute drive at this time of night with no traffic. He was furious, and someone was going to hear about it. No sooner had they pulled out of the White House gates than Allen picked up his phone and speed-dialed his deputy director for operations, who picked up on the first ring.
“Tom Murray,” said the voice at the other end.
“Tom, it’s Roger. I’m on the way back.”
“How’d it go?”
“How do you think? The president is fit to be tied. He wants to know why he’s not getting hard intel in real time, especially from these satphone intercepts.”
“What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him? I told him of course we’d do a better job. But frankly I’m as angry as he is. Why are the translations and analyses going so slow?”
“It’s the same as we discussed before you left,” Murray replied. “The calls are a treasure trove. But we’re getting more than we expected, faster than we expected, and we’ve got every man on the project we possibly can.”
“Every man, maybe,” the director said. “But not every woman.”
There was a pause. “Sir, let’s not go there,” Murray said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Allen replied.
“You’re talking about Eva Fischer?” Murray asked.
“Of course I’m talking about Eva. Frankly it was idiotic for Zalinsky to lock her up in the first place, and it’s time to stop this nonsense, release her, and get her back to work.”
“Sir, Agent Fischer co-opted a multimillion-dollar intelligence platform. She did it without authorization. And why? To save the life of a friend.”
“No, Tom, to save the life of an agent,” the director shot back. “For crying out loud, she saved the life of Zephyr, who by your own admission is our most effective agent inside Iran, the guy who single-handedly identified the location of the warheads. Come on now, you’re telling me you don’t think Jack overreacted?”
“Jack did exactly what I would have done.”
“Really? Lock up one of our best Farsi speakers and best analysts in the middle of a war with Iran, and for what? For saving our best asset inside the regime?”
“Sir, she compromised our ability to track one of the very nuclear warheads inside Iran that we now can’t find — one that could be headed toward the United States.”
“Enough, Tom,” Allen said. “I want Fischer released immediately, with a full exoneration and a $50,000 bonus as compensation.”
“Sir, I don’t think—”
“That not a suggestion, Tom. It’s an order. I want Agent Fischer released, apologized to, fully reinstated, compensated, and sitting in my office by the time I get back. You’ve got sixteen minutes. I suggest you get cracking.”
7
What had struck Marseille most about the memorial service was how clearly beloved Mrs. Shirazi had been throughout the Syracuse community. She hadn’t known that David’s mom had, for more than two decades, been a loyal volunteer for the American Red Cross or that she’d been a tireless — and apparently quite effective — fund-raiser for the pediatric heart center at Upstate Medical, the hospital where Dr. Shirazi worked. So many of the friends she had made in both places came to show their respects, as did several families whose lives had been touched or whose children had been saved as a result of this dear woman’s efforts. Most touching to Marseille was watching several of Mrs. Shirazi’s closest friends read tributes, some of them successfully fighting back tears, some less so.
None of it, Marseille was certain, had provided the closure the family really needed. To make matters worse, Mrs. Shirazi’s burial would have to wait until sometime in April or early May, since the ground at the cemetery was presently covered with too much snow and was far too cold and hard to dig a grave, all of which meant the family’s raw wounds would be subjected to even more pain in another few weeks when they essentially had to do this all over again.
When the service was over, Dr. Shirazi had invited everyone back to his home. Indeed, he had insisted upon hosting three days of mourning for family and friends. This, it turned out, was an Islamic tradition, which Marseille found curious, since Dr. Shirazi was not a religious man, and neither were his wife or their sons. The Shirazis had long since abandoned Islam, but Marseille sensed that this ritual was far more about tradition than religion. This was about Dr. Shirazi operating on autopilot, doing what he had seen his parents do, and their parents before them, not trying to invent a new family tradition at a time like this. So she had followed everyone else over to the Shirazi house and offered to help serve food and run out for more ice and help in any other way she could. When she wasn’t needed, she just sat in the back of the living room and kept quiet, observing the people coming and going, and praying a lot, sometimes with her eyes open and sometimes with them closed.
She observed that this was not really dissimilar from the tradition of her Jewish friends in Portland who sat shivah for seven days following the death of a loved one. There was something simple, even sweet, about sitting in a family’s living room, saying little or nothing, but just being near them, with them, around them while they grieved for their loved one and she grieved with them. Marseille found herself wishing it was a tradition her family had practiced after the death of her mother. It would have been good, Marseille thought, for her father to sit with friends for seven days and let himself cry and weep and mourn properly. She had been only fifteen then, but she was pretty sure her father had never mourned properly. He had certainly never been able to heal from the gaping wound in his heart. Losing a spouse was obviously different from losing a parent. But maybe sitting shivah — or whatever they called it in Islam — was a good thing to do in either case.