“This is all we can get,” David concluded. “Matty stays. Tell the guys to suit up in the Iranian uniforms and gear up fast. The rest of us roll out in ten minutes. We’ve already burned too much time as it is.”
Monday, March 14
36
At precisely 12:07 a.m. on Monday morning, March 14, the Falcon business jet carrying the Twelfth Imam, Rashidi, and their small but well-armed security team touched down in Kabul. No one was there to greet them. Almost no one knew they were coming. There was no pomp and circumstance. This was not a state visit. This was a hastily arranged and highly secretive meeting.
Pakistani president Iskander Farooq hadn’t even been told the meeting would be in Kabul. All he was told by a representative of the Mahdi was to get to Kabul quietly and discreetly by 11:30 p.m. on an unmarked jet and accompanied by no more than five bodyguards. At that point, he would learn where to go and what to do next. Farooq had assumed he would be told to fly into an Iranian border town. Instead, upon touching down in Kabul, he and his team had been directed to a large but unassuming compound on the south side of the city. Farooq didn’t know the compound was owned by the largest drug dealer in Afghanistan, the father of Iraq’s speaker of the parliament and a devout Twelver who was an old friend and seminary classmate of Ayatollah Hosseini. Nor was that piece of information necessarily relevant to this meeting. The owner of the home was not there. Nor were any of his family members or servants. Twenty members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had taken over the compound. Most of them had arrived earlier that day and were providing security, while the remainder of the team was there to handle communications, hospitality, and other logistics.
Stepping off the plane, the Mahdi immediately got into a black, bulletproof Nissan SUV with several members of his security detail. Rashidi boarded a second black SUV with the remaining members of the detail. Less than two minutes after their feet had touched the Afghan airport pavement, they were rolling.
Rashidi had never been to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, much less its troubled, war-torn capital. He would never have chosen it for a meeting of this import — or a meeting of any import. Indeed, he had never seen a city more devastated by war or terrorism or poverty than Kabul. Every building he saw looked more devastated than the one before it. They were poorly built to begin with, and almost all were now riddled with holes from machine-gun fire. The roofs of many were partially or completely caved in, some from aerial bombings, and some, the driver told him, from sheer neglect. Dust and filth covered everything, and though many of the buildings looked utterly uninhabitable, people seemed to live and work in all of them.
Normally, the driver said, the streets would be teeming with the wretched refuse of the Afghan tribes. Over the years, Rashidi had seen news reports from Kabul. To him, the men pictured on the streets always looked old, with long, scraggly beards and grimy, dusty clothing. Their eyes seemed sad and weary, though haunted was the word that described them best. The Afghan women he’d seen on television were even more traumatized. They walked around in blue burqas that covered them head to foot, even when it was ghastly hot.
But Kabul was a ghost town at this hour. The streets were dark and empty of people and largely empty of cars and motorcycles, scooters and bicycles, sheep and goats, as well. An armored personnel carrier drove by from time to time, and Rashidi noticed several Afghan military units patrolling various neighborhoods. But mostly all was quiet and unseasonably hot. Even this late at night, the temperature was still in the high nineties, and Rashidi found himself grateful for air-conditioning. He couldn’t imagine how unbearable it must be for the women shopping in the marketplaces during daylight hours, women whose entire faces, noses, and mouths were covered by the blue cloth that looked, at least on television, like some kind of burlap. Rashidi thought of himself as a deeply devout Muslim. He believed strongly in Islamic women being modest in every possible way. But though he’d heard of the burqa culture, he had never seen it for himself, and something inwardly chafed against the notion that a woman who was properly submitting to Allah should have to go this far, especially in a place as brutally scorching as Kabul.
Rashidi glanced at his watch and wondered what the Mahdi was thinking. They were on a very tight schedule and needed to proceed with the utmost haste. But they were running a bit behind, and Rashidi feared another outburst. He was sure the Mahdi was boiling.
At 12:48 a.m., a full eighteen minutes behind schedule, the SUVs carrying the Twelfth Imam and his team finally pulled into the compound, and at precisely one o’clock in the morning, the meeting was under way.
The group gathered in a large and somewhat-ornate dining room complete with an impressive crystal chandelier and a massive rectangular mahogany table. President Farooq had been briefed ahead of time on the proper protocol, and he dutifully got down on his knees and touched his forehead to the ground when the Mahdi entered the room, as did his security men, all of whom had had their weapons and radios taken from them by the Mahdi’s team upon arriving at the compound. The Mahdi did not greet Farooq or shake his hand. Indeed, Rashidi noted with a degree of curiosity and even a touch of disappointment he couldn’t quite understand, the Mahdi barely acknowledged the Pakistani leader at all.
Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali took his seat at the far end of the table. Rashidi quietly slipped into the dining room and took a seat along the wall, just behind the Mahdi and off to his left.
“Get up,” said the Mahdi abruptly, and Farooq complied, though he did not immediately make eye contact.
“Now sit, and let us begin,” the Mahdi added.
Farooq again did as he was told, taking a seat in the chair at the far end of the table, directly opposite the Mahdi. Rashidi couldn’t imagine the Pakistani had ever been treated like this or spoken to so brusquely in the nine years he had been ruling the Islamic world’s only nuclear-armed power.
“Are you ready to join the Caliphate?” the Mahdi asked, seething as far as Rashidi could tell and evidently ready to explode at the slightest provocation. “Your dithering thus far has been noted.”
“Pakistan is ready,” Farooq replied. “Indeed, we are honored to join the Caliphate, and we look forward to your enlightened leadership.”
Rashidi could have sworn he detected an ever-so-slight edge of sarcasm in Farooq’s reply, but he privately rebuked himself for being cynical and then felt a flash of fear when he considered the possibility that the Mahdi knew all that he was thinking. Nevertheless, the Mahdi seemed to welcome Farooq’s support and did not question the man’s sincerity, at least not directly.
“What token do you bring of Pakistan’s desire to be part of the Islamic kingdom?” the Mahdi asked.
Farooq did not hesitate. “We offer you the keys to the kingdom.”
Rashidi quietly gasped. He knew this was what they had come for, but it was hard to believe it was really happening right before his very eyes. There were many in the Iranian high command who privately doubted the Sunni Muslim leaders of Pakistan would ever willingly hand over outright control of their nuclear missiles to a Shia, even if it was the Islamic messiah. The Pakistanis were not Persians. They were not Arabs. Theirs was a rich and proud and complicated history, vastly different from his own.
“You have brought the launch codes?” the Mahdi asked.
“I have, Your Excellency.”
“Have you done so willingly?”
“I have, Your Excellency, with the unanimous vote of the Pakistani Security Cabinet and the full support of all my senior generals. It pleases me to inform you that I am now prepared to turn over to you full control of all 273 of Pakistan’s most advanced ballistic missiles, each of which possesses a nuclear warhead developed by our own A. Q. Khan.”