Zvi Dayan paled and sank into a chair. “What have we done?”
33
David ordered the two Israelis to stay quiet and directed his men to keep their weapons trained on them. Then he headed down the hall to the bedroom.
“What’ve you got?” he asked as he reached Fox.
“Boss, we’ve hit the mother lode,” Fox replied, hunched over Omid’s laptop.
Keeping his voice low so the Israelis wouldn’t overhear them, Fox explained that he had already bypassed the computer’s multiple layers of security and was now downloading the entire hard drive. Then he pointed to the text on the screen, whispering that this was the file on which Omid had most recently been working.
David was stunned. Before him was a detailed security plan to quietly move Omid’s father, General Mohsen Jazini, from the IRGC command center in Tehran to the Tabriz Air Base. When David scrolled down a few pages, he found that the plan then involved moving the general from Tabriz to a Syrian military base on the outskirts of Damascus. The plan included maps, routes of travel, backup routes, the types of vehicles they were using (including a brief explanation of why it would be better to use Red Crescent ambulances than military vehicles), license plate numbers, names of all the security men that would be assigned to Jazini, and satphone numbers of the key people involved in the operation.
When David had finished skimming this document, Fox opened another recently updated file, revealing a memo written by Jazini to his security team explaining that they were to work closely with a Syrian general named Hamdi to set up an operations center capable of coordinating IRGC actions and directing the launch of short-range ballistic missiles.
As David kept reading, his mouth grew dry. The memo explained that at least one of the two remaining nuclear warheads would be taken to this new operations center, attached to a ballistic missile, and then fired at Israel from Syria. Toward the end, there was a cryptic reference to a “special guest” that would be arriving at the Syrian base shortly and that everything must be done to be ready for that guest, though Jazini didn’t explain who or what the guest was. Was he referring to an actual person, David wondered, or to the warhead itself? He glanced at his colleague, but Fox just shrugged.
“How fast can you upload all this to Langley?” David whispered.
“I can’t do it from here,” Fox replied. “I mean, I could, but it wouldn’t be secure. We really need to take this back to the safe house and send it from there.”
“Then let’s get moving,” David said.
In his heart, Daryush Rashidi was stunned and relieved by how effective their plan had been so far.
With the help of Allah, Rashidi had gotten the Twelfth Imam safely out of Tehran. They were now heading north on a highway that was nearly deserted of all traffic. They were far from any military bases or places of interest to Israeli or American satellites or spies. If everything worked as planned and they didn’t encounter any significant delays, he would have the Mahdi out of the country and sitting with the Pakistani president in the next few hours. Yet suddenly the Mahdi became enraged.
“How could this have happened?” he fumed. “How could the filthy Jews have known where I was?”
Rashidi was about to respond, but the Mahdi continued his rant, his face flushed with anger.
“This is a major breach of security. I was told my departure would be secret. I was told all of my travel plans would be kept secret. Only a handful of people knew what was happening. But the Zionists knew. And if they knew I was leaving the airport command post in that fire truck, what else do they know? Who is leaking this information? Who is the mole in our operation? There is a traitor in our midst, and when I find him, he will burn in the fires of hell for all eternity.”
Rashidi was aghast. He wanted to remind the Mahdi that General Jazini’s plan had anticipated the possibility of an Israeli drone picking up the Mahdi’s trail at the airport and following the fire trucks into the city. That was precisely why Jazini had planned for the switch in the Tohid Tunnel. That was precisely why the school bus had been waiting for them. Jazini’s plan had accounted for everything, and it had worked brilliantly. The Mahdi’s life had been spared. The Israelis had killed the five schoolgirls instead. The international media was going to have a field day with that. Israel was about to pay dearly in the court of public opinion. How could the Mahdi be angry with any of that? Yet he was. He was raging at both Rashidi and the head of his security detail, but neither man dared answer any of the Mahdi’s questions. Answering any of them, Rashidi realized, was a fool’s errand and possibly a death sentence. So they endured the ferocious tongue-lashing the Mahdi was spewing forth and tried their best not to make eye contact.
In the end, one practical decision actually emerged from the Mahdi’s rant, but even that made little sense to Rashidi. The Mahdi was suddenly intensely suspicious that the Israelis might somehow be intercepting their supposedly secure satphone calls. Thus, the Mahdi said, he would no longer be using any of the phones they had with them. Instead, he said Rashidi would now communicate the Mahdi’s instructions to his key lieutenants and then carefully pass their messages back to him. The Mahdi was adamant on the point, but why? If the satphones had really been compromised as the Mahdi suggested, why should any of them be used? Shouldn’t all the satphones be discarded? How would it really help to have Rashidi tell people that he was giving direct instructions from the Mahdi? Why would people believe him? And if the Israelis were listening, they weren’t really going to be fooled, were they?
Still, Rashidi was as certain the satphones were not compromised as the Mahdi now seemed certain that they were. The problem, Rashidi believed, was that the Mahdi had never met Reza Tabrizi. He didn’t know what a fine and devout Twelver Reza was, how committed he was to their cause, and how trustworthy Reza was as a result. Rashidi was sure that if the Mahdi met Reza and began to get to know this faithful Muslim foot soldier the way he did, the Mahdi’s fears would be relieved.
David ordered Torres and Crenshaw to get the Israelis downstairs and into the van while Fox finished downloading the hard drive. Meanwhile, he filled a duffel bag with Omid’s mobile phone, wallet, ID badge, calendar, and various files. Then he photographed every room in the apartment and soon found himself in Omid’s walk-in closet. Hanging there were a half-dozen IRGC uniforms, all freshly laundered and neatly pressed. On the floor lay three pairs of freshly polished black boots. David pondered that for a moment. These could come in handy, he decided, and he quickly found a suitcase to load them all into.
Five minutes later, they were ready to go. David radioed Zalinsky and gave him a quick update on what they’d found and why they were heading back to the safe house. Zalinsky agreed and urged David to get back to Karaj as fast as possible while he worked with the Global Ops Center staff to figure out what to do with the Israelis and also tried to come up with a way to get David and his team to Damascus.
Birjandi was still trying to imagine why on earth the Twelfth Imam wanted to see him at all, much less now, in the middle of a war the Iranians seemed to be losing. Did the Mahdi and the others at the top know about his conversion to Christianity? Were they watching his house? Were they listening to his conversations? Did they know of the young men he was discipling and their decision to renounce Islam and follow Jesus? Were Ibrahim, Ali, and the others about to be rounded up and martyred?