Birjandi was ready to suffer and die for Christ. Indeed, he was old and tired and eager to leave this corrupt world behind. He longed to enter eternity and be in the presence of his Lord and Savior, to be healed of his blindness, to really see Jesus face-to-face, to really hear his voice and worship at his feet. The truth was, Birjandi dreamed about it more and more. He couldn’t wait to get home to glory, where he not only would be with the Lord but would finally be reunited with his beloved wife, Souri, who had already been called home to heaven and was waiting for him there. What had she experienced already? He longed to see her face and hear her voice and walk with her hand in hand. He yearned to worship Jesus at her side and to find out everything she had learned about the Lord in the time that they had been apart.
But as ready as he was, he couldn’t help but wonder if these young men he’d been investing in were really ready to be tortured and executed for their faith in Christ. Would they hold up under such pressure, or would one — or all — crack and deny Christ rather than face execution? He loved them dearly, and he was deeply impressed by their hunger for the Word of God and their passion to share their faith. They had already taken bold, daring risks for the sake of the gospel. But were they truly ready for martyrdom? They said they were, but Birjandi was not yet certain.
As the pressure in his ears began to lessen, Birjandi could feel the helicopter start its long, slow descent. Eventually, he felt the aircraft touch down, the engines shut off, and the whirring rotors slow to a halt. Then he heard the side door slide open and soon felt someone taking his hands and helping him down onto the tarmac.
“Where are we?” he asked the Revolutionary Guard officer assigned to him.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Birjandi. I’m afraid I’m not authorized to say,” the officer replied.
“You think this blind old man is going to run off?” Birjandi asked.
“No, I guess not,” said the young man, carefully guiding Birjandi across the tarmac to a waiting truck. “But I have my orders.”
“To maintain strict operational security.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you do understand who I am, right, son?”
“Yes, of course, Dr. Birjandi. I know everything about you.”
“So you know that the Ayatollah and the president and I are very close friends.”
“Of course, sir. Everyone knows that.”
“And you understand that I have been invited to this meeting at the Mahdi’s personal request, right?”
“Yes.”
“You understand all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then let me ask you, son,” Birjandi said, folding up his white cane. “If the Mahdi trusts me, shouldn’t you?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you; it’s just that…”
“It’s just that what?” Birjandi asked.
“Well, I… It’s…”
“Believe me, young man, I understand the need for operational security. But even if I were inclined to tell someone, whom would I tell? You took away my suitcase. You can see I am not holding a satellite phone. The only people with me are you and your fellow guards and the pilot. Presumably they already know. And besides, how would I even know you’re telling me the truth?”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Birjandi said. “Listen, son, I hope you never have the misfortune of going blind. But if you do, it is a very lonely existence. And somewhat unnerving, disorienting. Unless you’re home in your own house, in your own bed or your own chair, eating food you’ve prepared for yourself, you never quite feel secure. You never really know where you are, who is with you, or what is happening around you. You do your best, mind you; you do your best. But it’s nice every now and then to have some idea of what’s happening. It can’t completely give you peace, but it takes away some of the loneliness, some of the anxiety — for me, anyhow. But then again, I’m just an old man.”
The young officer was quiet for a moment as he mulled the obvious logic of Birjandi’s point. “Very well,” the officer, whom Birjandi guessed was no older than thirty, finally said. “We have just landed on a small military base near Piranshahr.”
“Near the Iraqi border?” Birjandi asked.
“Yes, you know of it?”
“Of course,” Birjandi replied.
“But how?” the officer asked.
“My wife had an aunt who lived here once, but that was many years ago,” Birjandi said. “I remember stories of Piranshahr from the war with Iraq back in the eighties. But I don’t understand. What are we doing here? I thought we were going to Tehran.”
“No, it’s too dangerous to take you to Tehran,” the officer said. “The Israelis are bombing the daylights out of Tehran.”
“Not every neighborhood,” Birjandi protested. “Surely there are secret centers from which the leadership is running the war.”
“True, but my orders were to bring you here, transfer you to a vegetable truck, and drive you across the border to Erbil.”
“Erbil?”
“Yes.”
“The Erbil in Kurdistan?”
“Yes.”
“Iraqi Kurdistan?”
“Exactly.”
“But why?”
“I’m just following orders from General Jazini.”
“Mohsen Jazini?”
“Yes, and I assume you know him, too?”
“We’ve met a few times, but no, I wouldn’t really say I know him. But he’s the one who developed this plan?”
“As far as I know,” the officer said. “Anyway, from Erbil we’ll fly you in a medical transport plane to a military base outside the city of Homs in Syria, and from there, you’ll be driven to a military base in or near Damascus.”
“Damascus?” asked Birjandi, genuinely perplexed. “What on earth for? I thought—”
But Birjandi stopped himself in midsentence. The beginning of an idea had just come to him, and he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him earlier.
“That’s all I can tell you, Dr. Birjandi,” the officer said, not noticing the old man was now deep in thought. “Actually, that’s much more than I’m supposed to tell you. But you’ll receive more information when you get to Damascus; that I can assure you. Now come, take my hand, and stay close to me. We need to get on the road.”
“I need to get out in front of this story,” the prime minister said firmly, but Levi Shimon pushed back hard.
“Absolutely not,” the defense minister said. “We are in the heat of battle. The Iranians just hit our nuclear reactor. That’s the big story at the moment — the fear that the Iranians have tried to destroy us with our own peaceful nuclear power plant. That’s all the world is talking about right now. We’d be fools to change the narrative.”
“It was our mistake,” Naphtali countered. “It was my mistake. And I must take responsibility for it.”
“But not right now, sir,” Shimon insisted. “Right now you and I need to stay focused on the hunt for two loose Iranian nuclear warheads… and a new and equally dangerous threat that is rising as well.”
“What’s that?”
“Sir, I think we have to consider the possibility that Iran is keeping the Syrians in the bull pen until our missile defenses are depleted, at which point they may launch a massive strike with chemical weapons.”
“Do we have any intelligence the Syrians are considering such a move?”
“No,” said Shimon, “nothing concrete.”
“Then why do you bring this up now?”
“Instinct, sir. When this war began, the Syrians immediately launched three missiles at us. We had anticipated that, and we shot all three of them down. But then they went dark. No more rockets. No more missiles. It doesn’t make sense. Hezbollah has unleashed on us. So has Hamas. Why hasn’t Damascus?”