“Sir, I understand, but I’m telling you we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to decapitate the enemy and end this war in the next thirty minutes,” Shimon said. “We have to take it. History won’t forgive us if we don’t. And I must add that we have an unconfirmed but credible report that the Mahdi may be relocating and soon.”
“To the Imam Khomeini Mosque?”
“Perhaps, but the report says he might go to Tabriz.”
“Why Tabriz?”
“We don’t know, sir. We’re still tracking that down.”
Naphtali stared at both men, but Shimon couldn’t quite read him. The prime minister obviously didn’t want to take more international condemnation. It could, after all, lead to U.N. sanctions on Israel for the first time in history. But Naphtali, Shimon knew, was also a patriot and a pragmatist. He might still say yes, and for this Shimon silently prayed to a God he wasn’t sure really existed.
“Where’s Mordecai in all this?” the PM said at last, abruptly changing the subject to the Mossad’s top mole inside Iran’s nuclear program — a mole who had gone dark in the last several days, much to the anxiety of everyone in Naphtali’s War Cabinet. “Have we heard from him?”
“No, sir, we haven’t,” Dayan said.
“So we don’t know if he’s alive?”
“No — the last communiqué was on Thursday morning. He did say that was going to be his last report, but of course we’ve been hoping he would reestablish contact.”
“We have no contact information for him?”
“The protocol was always for him to call us,” the Mossad chief explained.
“And we still don’t know where the warheads are?”
“No, sir, not yet.”
Darazi went upstairs to the main floor and cleared Rashidi and his mysterious trunks through security. Then he strolled around the lobby for a few minutes, staring out once again at the destruction and misery all around him. He was careful to keep his emotions off his face, but internally he was seething. Hour after hour, day after day, the Twelfth Imam was belittling his existence. The Mahdi’s contempt for Darazi’s presence was palpable — and infuriating.
Searching his soul, Darazi tried to see what engendered such hostility. Wasn’t he doing everything he possibly could to serve the Mahdi? Wasn’t he risking his own life and the lives of his family to help destroy the Little Satan and eventually the Great Satan as well? He wasn’t a perfect man. He conceded that right up front. But who was? What sin could he possibly have committed to make the Lord of the Age so agitated whenever they were together?
What bothered Darazi most, however, was not that the Twelfth Imam seemed to despise him so, though that did weigh heavily on his heart and mind. Far more egregious was a thought that Darazi dared not speak aloud and had resisted for days even letting himself actively consider. They were two thoughts, really, and he feared both were heresy. But he couldn’t help himself. They were beginning to dominate his thinking whether he wanted them to or not.
The first was this: Why was Iran losing this war to the Jews? Hosseini and Jazini and the rest of the high command could spin it all they wanted, but that was the truth, wasn’t it? They were losing. Naphtali had fired first and knocked out most of Iran’s nuclear forces. They still had two warheads, to be sure, but they couldn’t even fire them from Persian soil. Why not? Didn’t the Mahdi carry the full weight and force of Allah himself? Wasn’t he a direct descendant and messenger of the Prophet, peace be upon him? Then why was Iran’s air force a smoldering wreckage? Why was Iran’s mobile phone system almost completely down? Why were they cowering in an underground bunker, no better than Osama bin Laden, in his day, cowering in a cave in the Kandahar mountains? The Jews should have been obliterated by now. The Caliphate should be triumphant. That was what the Mahdi had promised, yet thus far it was all talk, all empty promises and mounting casualties.
The second revolved around a deeply troubling conversation that he and Hosseini had had with Dr. Alireza Birjandi over lunch on Wednesday, less than twenty-four hours before the start of the war. Birjandi had not seemed himself, and when they had pressed him to talk about what was on his mind, he was reluctant, at best. But as Darazi thought back on Birjandi’s words, he was increasingly concerned his old friend was onto something he and Hosseini were missing.
“I just find myself wondering, where is Jesus, peace be upon him?” Birjandi had said.
Darazi remembered there was dead silence. It wasn’t a name that often got mentioned in the presence of the Grand Ayatollah and the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet the old man had a point. Darazi himself had given sermons from the ancient Islamic prophecies stating that Jesus would appear and serve as the Mahdi’s lieutenant. So had Hosseini and Birjandi. Yet Jesus had not come, as far as any of them knew.
As though he were now hovering over the conversation, Darazi could see himself shifting uncomfortably in his seat and asking, “What exactly are you implying, Ali?”
“I am not implying anything,” Birjandi had replied calmly. “I am simply asking where I went wrong. You preached that one of the signs preceding the Mahdi’s return would be the coming of Jesus to require all infidels to convert to Islam or die by the sword. You did that because I taught you that. I taught you that because of a lifetime of studying the ancient texts and so many commentaries on the same. Yet Jesus is nowhere to be found.”
Nor was that all. Birjandi had gone on to list five distinct signs that his lifetime of research suggested should precede the arrival or the appearance of the Hidden Imam. The first was the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani, who would attack the enemies of Islam. Darazi thought it was possible this had actually happened; certainly there had been any number of violent attacks against Christians in Yemen in recent years. But the second sign, the rise of an anti-Mahdi militant leader named Osman Ben Anbase, also known as Sofiani, had not occurred.
The third sign, voices from the sky gathering the faithful around the Mahdi, hadn’t happened either. Yes, there were reports of some kind of angelic voice speaking in Beirut after the failed attack on the Mahdi the week before, but that hardly qualified as a host of angels.
The fourth sign was the destruction of Sofiani’s army. But since Sofiani had never appeared, much less raised an army, the fulfillment of this sign didn’t even seem possible. Then there was the fifth sign, the death of a holy man named Muhammad bin Hassan, which Darazi didn’t think had happened either.
“I feel a great sense of responsibility,” Birjandi had said. “I have been studying the Last Things most of my adult life. I have been preaching and teaching these things for as long as you have been gracious enough to give me the freedom to do so. But something isn’t adding up. Something’s wrong. And I keep asking: what?”
Birjandi was right, Darazi thought. Something was wrong. If the prophecies were all from Allah, why weren’t they being fulfilled in their totality? If the Mahdi had truly come, why were there so many discrepancies between the ancient writings and current events? If the Twelfth Imam had truly come, how could he — and the entire Muslim world that was following him — be losing to the Jews?
And then another heretical thought flitted at the edge of Darazi’s mind, if only for a moment before he banished it with all the vigor he could muster: what if the Mahdi had not really come and they were actually being deceived?
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