“Why?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. At the moment, it didn’t seem relevant.”
“But now it does?”
“Now I’m wondering why the Mahdi would have taken such a risk,” David said. “Why would he leave whatever bunker the Iranian military has him in to visit the hospital of a junior aide, a body man — a secretary, really?”
“Unless Nouri is a more senior guy than we thought,” said Zalinsky.
“Exactly,” David said. “The Twelfth Imam doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to drop by with a box of chocolates and a vase of flowers and a get-well card. They were talking about something. Nouri knows something that the Mahdi needed to talk about in person.”
“Like the location of the warheads?” Zalinsky asked.
“I don’t know,” David conceded. “Maybe they didn’t discuss the location but did discuss the possible targets. Or maybe something else entirely. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a courtesy call. It was important, and it was timely. Do we have any intercepts from Nouri’s satphone?”
“Let me check.”
David could hear his handler typing.
“We’re horribly backed up on translating the intercepts,” Zalinsky explained as he searched his files. “But the NSA is at least providing me an hourly tally of the number of calls made to or from specific frequencies — that is, specific phones — that we know have been given to specific people. Obviously we know the phone you’re using and the one Dr. Birjandi is using. And unless they’ve changed, we know the phones the Mahdi, Hosseini, Darazi, and Nouri are using, based on the calls we’ve intercepted from them so far. Let’s see, looking at the tally for the last three days, Nouri has only made one outbound call, lasting about six minutes. He’s only received six calls — three of which were from you. Two of the others lasted thirty seconds or less, but one lasted nineteen minutes.”
“Do we have transcriptions of the two longest calls?” David asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Can you ask Eva to make those a top priority?”
Zalinsky hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” David asked.
“You can ask her yourself,” Zalinsky said.
“Why? Isn’t she right there with you?”
“No.”
“Why not? Where is she?”
“Never mind,” Zalinsky said. “I’ll explain later. It’ll take too long to do it now. I’ll get the message to her, and we’ll prioritize those two calls.”
Something didn’t sound right to David, but he didn’t have time to probe. He had a case to make, and he had to make it fast. “Listen, I know this is a long shot. I admit it,” he began.
“Just say it,” Zalinsky insisted.
“We need to grab Nouri.”
“Who’s we?”
“Marco Torres, his team, and me.”
“You want to kidnap Javad Nouri?” Zalinsky asked, the tone of his voice not exactly indicative of confidence in David’s recommendation.
“Immediately.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?” David asked. “To interrogate him, to find out everything he knows.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute here, Zephyr,” Zalinsky replied. “Let’s not go crazy. Let’s get those calls translated. Let’s see what they say. Let’s see if he makes any other calls. And then we’ll go from there.”
“Jack, come on — we don’t have time to wait,” David said, putting all of his cards on the table. “Right now we have no leads, no clues, no trail to follow.”
“What about Birjandi?”
“I talked to him. He’s got nothing.”
“Tell him to go meet with the Mahdi.”
“You don’t think I tried that?”
“And?”
“He won’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“What does it matter?” David asked. “He just won’t.”
“Can’t you push him, persuade him?”
“Believe me, I tried. It’s not going to happen.”
“What about your other sources?” Zalinsky pressed.
“Jack, you’re not listening to me,” David said. “I’ve got nothing. No one is answering their phones. Maybe they’re all in bomb shelters and they’re not getting satellite reception. Maybe they don’t want to talk to me. Maybe they’ve been told not to talk to me. Maybe they’re dead. I have no idea. All I know is Abdol Esfahani is going to Damascus. I don’t know why. Birjandi is refusing to go see the Mahdi. And now we’ve got the location of an apparently senior advisor to the Twelfth Imam. We know where he is. We know that he’s just spoken to the Mahdi. We know he’s in a relatively unsecure facility. I’m telling you we can do this, Jack. We can grab him. We can shake him down. And we can make him spill his guts. That much I know. But time’s a-wastin’.”
“And if you’re caught?” Zalinsky countered.
“I won’t get caught.”
“But if you do, the Iranians will shut down the satphone intercepts immediately.”
“And do what?” David asked. “The Israelis have taken down almost all of Iran’s phone network, at least temporarily. Without the satphones, the Twelfth Imam wouldn’t be able to talk to most of his inner circle.”
“It’s too big a risk.”
“Compared to what? Look, we’ve got a narrow window here, and it’s rapidly closing. We know the nukes are out there. We don’t know where they are. We suspect at least one is going to be fired at the Israelis. The other may be coming to the States, to New York or Washington or L.A. But the president told us to find them, to stop them, using whatever means necessary. I’ve looked at all our options, Jack, and I’m telling you, this isn’t just our best play. It’s our only play. It’s this or nothing.”
There was a long pause, so long David wondered if he had lost his connection to Langley. But finally Zalinsky spoke.
“Where exactly is Javad Nouri right now, right this minute?”
“Tehran University Medical Center.”
“How long will it take you to get there?”
“Assuming we don’t get hit by an Israeli cruise missile or stopped at a checkpoint and arrested for espionage?” David asked.
“Funny.”
“Less than an hour,” David assured him.
“Then do it,” Zalinsky said. “And don’t get caught.”
“Right,” said David. “And I’d be grateful for those transcripts from Nouri’s calls — and a Predator drone if you can spare one.”
“I’ll do my best,” Zalinsky replied. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
David hung up and quickly stepped out of the office, where he found Torres and his men assembled in the living room.
“Saddle up, gentlemen. We have a target.”
Ahmed Darazi stepped into the war room, thick with smoke and tension, looking for the Twelfth Imam, but he was not there. Darazi checked in several of the anterooms but did not find him there either. The Ayatollah had not seen where he went, nor had the top generals, fixated as they were on prosecuting the latest missile onslaught against the Jews. A corporal, however, told Darazi he had overheard the Mahdi say he wanted some fresh air. In disbelief, Darazi and his personal security detail boarded the elevator and departed the underground bunker.
Ten stories up, they disembarked from the elevator and scoured the first floor of the Mehrabad Air Base headquarters, heavily guarded by armed military police. But the Twelfth Imam was nowhere to be seen, inside or out. Darazi boarded another elevator and took it three stories up, and there on the roof he found the Lord of the Age, bowing toward Mecca and finishing his prayers.
The scene around them was surreal. As far as the eye could see, hangars and buildings were on fire. Row upon row of fighter jets were ablaze. Most of the administrative and maintenance buildings were raging infernos. All the runways had been bombed, making it impossible to take off or land. The base — long the home of Iran’s Western Area Command and the 11th and 14th Tactical Fighter Squadrons — lay in ruins. The thundering sound of aircraft taking off and landing had been replaced by the wailing sirens of fire trucks and ambulances streaming in from all directions.