There is, to my knowledge, no secret tunnel leading into the mountain, although I’m sure the monks would be happy to talk to you about it.
Susa in Iran is considered to be the burial location for the prophet, Daniel. It is visited frequently by travelers but getting into the country can be tricky, especially for Americans.
Relations between the U.S. and Iran have been poor for decades and it doesn’t seem there is any end of that in sight, which is unfortunate. Iran is a beautiful country and Tehran’s location is unique and breathtaking.
As far as technology and encryption decoding goes, Tara and Alex use a fictional piece of technology I call a hyper quantum algorithmic processing or, HQAP.
The world of quantum computing is not fictional, it is very real and developing at a rapid pace.
With HQAP, people would have the ability to run billions of sequences, codes, and possibilities in a fraction of the time as a normal processor. If you’re wondering whether or not the government is working on this sort of thing, that is anybody’s guess. In my stories, however, the Tommy’s finances enabled him to build computers that could effectively break down highly encrypted databases in a short amount of time.
This goes against the Snowden report. Or does the Snowden report go against HQAP?
I hope this answers some of the questions you may have had for the story. If you’d like to know more, you can always contact me through my website ernestdempsey.net or through Facebook or Twitter.