All he knew was that as the youngest of the three boys, he had done almost an equally lousy job of being a loving, devoted son. None of them knew the life he was really living. None of them knew he worked for the CIA or that he was spending most of his time inside Iran. They all thought he was a computer programmer based in Munich, working sixteen to eighteen hours a day, traveling constantly, never having a girlfriend, with few serious prospects for getting married and having kids. Not that it mattered much to his brothers, but to his parents it mattered a great deal.
At least he felt guilty about it, David told himself. At least he had actually been home for the past few days, trying desperately to make up for lost time.
Yet he was palpably aware that he was not in control of events. Over the course of the past fifteen minutes or so, he had witnessed his mother slipping into a coma from which, the doctors explained, she would likely never recover. If that weren’t painful enough, it was becoming increasingly clear that he was simultaneously watching his father slip into a deep depression.
“Excuse me, Mr. Shirazi?”
David was startled by the voice of a nurse at the door.
“Me or my father?” he asked.
“Are you David?” asked the older woman running the late afternoon shift.
“I am.”
“You have a phone call at the nurses’ station.”
In all the sadness unfolding around him, David had completely forgotten that he’d turned his phone off when he had entered the hospital just before noon. Cell phones weren’t permitted in the ICU. He thanked the head nurse, patted his father on the back, and whispered that he would be right back. His father, sitting in a chair beside his wife, face buried in his hands, barely responded.
David stepped into the hallway and around the corner. It felt good to stretch his legs, he thought as he reached for the phone, and good too to take his mind off his parents’ troubles, if only for a moment. He hoped it was Azad, telling him he was on the road, that he’d rescheduled the surgeries and was heading north up 81 toward Syracuse, coming to give his younger brother some relief. Even more, he hoped it was Marseille, saying she’d gotten back to Portland safe and sound and wanted to catch up or just check in on his mom. Hers was the voice he needed to hear just then.
It wasn’t to be.
7
“David, it’s Jack — we need to talk.”
Hearing the voice of his mentor and handler caught David off guard.
“Jack? What’s the matter? You sound terrible.”
“Not on this open line. Call me back secure. You know the number. And get somewhere private.”
“Will do — I’ll get right back to you.”
David handed the phone to the nurse and headed quickly for the stairwell, powering up his Agency-issued phone on his way. Never had he heard Jack Zalinsky sound as rattled. Angry, frustrated, ticked off? More times than David cared to remember. But rattled? Not in all the years since Zalinsky first recruited him. You didn’t spend four decades in the Central Intelligence Agency, much less climb the ladder from lowly field operative fresh out of training at the Farm to become clandestine operations manager of the Near East Division, without a cool head and ice in your veins.
David burst out an exit door to the roof and headed toward one of the large air-conditioning units, where he would be unlikely to be seen by anyone on the ground. He punched in a ten-digit clearance code to make his call secure, then speed-dialed Zalinsky’s office number on the sixth floor at Langley.
“Jack, what’s going on?”
“Are you alone?”
“I am.”
“Are you watching the news?”
“No, I’ve been with my mom. Why? What’s happening?”
“You need to get back to Washington immediately.”
“I’m on the first flight out in the morning.”
“No, tonight; something’s happened.”
“What?”
“There’s been an attack.”
“Where?”
“Manhattan.”
David knew immediately it was the fund-raiser.
“The president — is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” Zalinsky said. “Not yet. But President Ramzy is dead.”
David could feel his anger rising. “How? What happened?”
“We’re still piecing it together,” Zalinsky said. He explained the attack and the sequence of events leading up to it as best he understood it at the moment.
“What about Naphtali?” David asked. “Did he survive?”
“Miraculously, the prime minister escaped relatively unharmed — minor burns but nothing serious,” Zalinsky replied.
“Thank God.”
“I know. It’s strange, actually. The president got out of the limo first and was followed by Ramzy. But as it happened, the terrorists fired the RPGs before Naphtali ever got out of the car. One of his Shin Bet guys was standing in front of the open door to the limo. When the first RPG hit, the agent was immediately engulfed in flames, but his body blocked most of the blast and he somehow managed to get the door closed, probably saving Naphtali’s life. The driver immediately pulled away and got out of the kill zone.”
“Where’s the PM now?”
“On a flight back to Tel Aviv.”
“And the Shin Bet agent?”
“Pronounced dead at the scene — one of forty-six, with another twenty-two wounded, most of them severely burned and unlikely to make it through the night.”
David could barely comprehend what Zalinsky was telling him. The casualty count was horrifying enough, but so was the fact that the CIA had just failed the nation again. Another terrorist attack had just been unleashed on American soil — in the heart of New York City, no less — and the Agency not only hadn’t done anything to stop it but hadn’t even known it was coming. What else was coming? Who else was in the country, ready to strike?
These were the first thoughts running through his head, but more followed. David shuddered at the implications of Egypt’s aging, ailing, authoritarian leader assassinated. The government of the world’s largest and historically most stable Arab country had suddenly been decapitated. Who would take over? Would it be a peaceful transition of power? Having spent nearly a year working in Cairo, reporting first to the economic attaché and later directly to the CIA station chief in the Egyptian capital, he knew full well that President Ramzy had never developed a clear or orderly or legal transition plan. The old man had always wanted one of his sons to assume power when he was gone. But few others in the country wanted that — not the majority of the legislature, not the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly not most of the rank-and-file Egyptians. This raised the chilling prospect of a chaotic, even violent transition that risked igniting into a full-blown revolution in a country of eighty million, 90 percent of whom were Muslims, the vast majority of whom were deeply discontent. Such a revolution could be massively destabilizing. It could unravel the three-decade-plus-long peace treaty with the Israelis. It could theoretically bring leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, or others sympathetic to the Radicals, to power. Such forces would almost certainly be willing, even eager, to build stronger alliances with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran to confront Israel. What’s more, a takeover by the Radicals could provide an opening for the Twelfth Imam to try to lure the country — or even force it — to join his emerging new Islamic Caliphate.
The implosion of Egypt after the sudden death of the man they called the Pharaoh on the Nile had long been one of the Agency’s greatest fears. Now they were about to discover how it would all play out, and the timing could not have been worse.