And then there was the completely surprising reappearance of Marseille Harper, the first and only girl he had ever truly loved. Seeing her again after all these years came with the terrible news that her father had recently committed suicide. David could not imagine Mr. Harper taking his life; it did not seem at all like the man he’d deeply respected since childhood.
David grieved for Marseille. An only child whose mother had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, she was now all alone in the world. That, he figured, was likely the reason she had reached out to him out of the blue after years of silence. But after a wonderful, if slightly awkward, reunion at a restaurant in Syracuse, he’d been urgently called back to Washington. Then he’d been sent to Iran. He was legally prevented from telling Marseille he worked for the CIA, of course, so he had told her his boss was sending him to Europe on an emergency business trip. He’d felt terrible lying to her, but he hadn’t any other choice. He’d called her briefly from Germany, but had he called her from the road since then to comfort or encourage her, like any decent friend would do? No. Had he e-mailed or written her? No. How could he? He wasn’t authorized to make personal calls or send e-mails to family and friends, and all his calls and e-mails were monitored, recorded, and scrutinized by the Agency’s top officials and analysts. Did he really want Zalinsky or any of the senior management at Langley and the NSA scrutinizing his most personal communications? Hardly, and it wouldn’t just be them. Eva Fischer would be in the loop as well, complicating things all the more.
Angry and confused and no longer able to stand the thought of pacing the halls of the tiny flat or staring at a laptop computer screen only to read more depressing news, David decided to get out and get some morning air. He changed into a T-shirt, sweatshirt, and shorts, then grabbed his phone and a Glock 9mm and let his team know he was going for a run. As he stepped outside, he could see dark clouds forming over the city and heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. The temperature hovered in the low fifties, and a strong wind was coming in off the Caspian Sea. David stretched his legs and scanned the area for trouble, for signs of anything amiss, but detected nothing.
He looked down the street to the right and the left, both sides lined with dilapidated high-rise tenement buildings with laundry hanging from each balcony and a forest of satellite dishes stretching as far as the eye could see. The street itself, dotted with potholes, was littered with trash, empty plastic water bottles, and blue and green and pink plastic grocery bags. Everywhere he looked, trash was piled high and had not yet been picked up by a municipality that had effectively shut down since the hour the war began. The stench was worsening and nearly unbearable. A few birds sat atop a nearby dumpster. A few stray cats played in a nearby alleyway. But at the moment, not another soul was visible. So he headed north and began jogging through the quiet, deserted streets, praying desperately for wisdom, for a lead, for a scrap he could pursue before it was all too late.
5
The governments of Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco had just announced they were joining the Caliphate, and Indonesia’s parliament was holding emergency meetings to approve joining as well. These were positive developments, to be sure, but the bitter fact remained that the war was not going as he had planned. Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali, known to the world as the Twelfth Imam, entered a conference room off the main war room in the Revolutionary Guard Corps command center. He ordered an aide to summon Ayatollah Hamid Hosseini, President Ahmed Darazi, and Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh without delay.
“Of course, my Lord,” said the aide. “Anyone else?”
“No, just those three,” said the Mahdi. “And have two armed guards posted outside this door. I do not want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. It shall be done as you wish.”
When the aide left and shut the door, the Mahdi surveyed the room. In the center was a large, rectangular, highly polished mahogany conference table, around which were eight leather executive chairs. On the table were eight phones connected to a central switchboard in another part of the underground complex that could patch calls through to any Iranian military post or to any civilian phone inside or outside the country. The walls were wood paneled but devoid of any paintings or photographs. Instead there were two large flat-screen TV monitors, one at each end of the room, though neither of them was currently turned on, and several enormous maps on the side walls, including one of the Middle East and Persian Gulf region and another of the entire world. Over the door were six digital clocks, displaying the current time in Tehran, al-Quds (aka Jerusalem), London, Washington, Beijing. The sixth clock — the one in the center — was set at the local time of wherever the Mahdi was at any given moment. Since he was now in the IRGC’s command center ten stories underneath the largest air base in Iran’s capital city, the first and sixth clocks read the same: 8:52 a.m.
Dressed in a long black robe, turban, and sandals, the Mahdi paced for a few moments. He hated being confined to a bunker. He needed fresh air. He wanted to pray in the sunshine, bowing toward Mecca. He wanted to be in Islamabad to consummate the deal he’d been cooking up with Pakistani president Iskander Farooq for the past few days. It was close. Very close. He could taste it. But he hated negotiating by e-mail, no matter how secure his aides said it was. He wanted to sit with Farooq face-to-face. He wanted to read the man’s body language and make sure he was as compliant and supportive as his messages suggested.
But the Mahdi needed to step carefully. The stakes were too high for another misstep now. His team had deeply disappointed him. They were making serious mistakes. They had lost the initiative, and they didn’t seem to know how to regain it. The time had come for the Mahdi to step in and reassert his authority. He had been patient long enough, and the price had been steep. Never again.
Not wanting those beneath him to see or sense his agitation, he chose to take a seat at the far end of the table, then folded his hands, closed his eyes, leaned back in the leather executive chair, and waited.
His thoughts quickly drifted to his inaugural address to the Islamic world and to the world at large, delivered in Mecca on Thursday, March 3. It was then he had made his intentions clear. “To those who would oppose us, I would simply say this,” he had warned in no uncertain terms. “The Caliphate will control half the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, as well as the Gulf and the shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. The Caliphate will have the world’s most powerful military, led by the hand of Allah. Furthermore, the Caliphate will be covered by a nuclear umbrella that will protect the people from all evil… We seek only peace. We wish no harm against any nation. But make no mistake: any attack by any state on any portion of the Caliphate will unleash the fury of Allah and trigger a War of Annihilation.”
But the Israelis had called his bluff.
Darazi — Iran’s moron of a president — had insisted to the Mahdi’s face that the Zionists would never strike first. Indeed, Darazi had claimed that the Americans would never allow it. But he was a fool. There was no other way to describe it. He’d been wrong, disastrously so, and this could not be forgotten.
Hamid Hosseini had been more cautious, hedging his bets regarding the possibility of an Israeli first strike, but it wasn’t because the Ayatollah possessed any scrap of wisdom or sound judgment. The man was a coward, pure and simple. He was a sheep, not a shepherd, and his days were numbered.
Faridzadeh was a different story. Iran’s defense minister had operational control not simply of Iran’s military forces but all the forces of the Caliphate. At the moment, that meant primarily the men and arms of Hezbollah and Hamas, both of whom were actively engaged in the war against the Zionists. Ostensibly, Faridzadeh could also direct the militaries of Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Qatar to do his bidding. All of them had joined the Caliphate in recent days. Soon, perhaps within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, he would oversee the forces of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, and possibly Pakistan and Indonesia as well, should everything play out as the Mahdi expected. But was Faridzadeh capable of such enormous power?