He knew the Agency had invested heavily in his training. He knew that Zalinsky and Murray and Director Allen were counting on him to do everything possible to protect the people and interests of the United States from all threats, foreign and domestic, and particularly from the regime in Iran. What’s more, he had taken an oath. He had given his word to his country.
But now his parents needed him to stay. He didn’t want to disappoint them — particularly his father — yet again. They deserved better.
And then there was Marseille. It already felt like a lifetime ago, but he had eaten breakfast with her that very morning, after so many years, after so much history, and he still couldn’t quite believe it. Just seeing her come into the restaurant all bundled up against the late-winter chill with her red scarf and turtleneck sweater had stirred up emotions he had long tried to suppress. When he closed his eyes, he could vividly picture her, looking more like a graduate student than the elementary school teacher she had become. She had endured so much pain in the years since he had seen her last. Yet with those large green eyes and that dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, Marseille was more beautiful than he’d remembered or imagined, and he missed her already. It embarrassed him to admit such a thing, if only to himself, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to talk to her again. He wanted to hear her voice. She’d invited him out to Portland, and he wanted to go. To see her again. To spend some real time with her. To see if something was possible between them. There had been a warmth in her eyes and a tenderness in her embrace that had surprised him. He would never forgive himself if he didn’t find out for certain who she really was now and what she really wanted.
There was no time, of course, to ponder any of this, certainly not on the roof of Upstate University Hospital. But the notion of going back to his mother’s room, pulling his father aside, and telling him there was an “emergency at work” and that he needed to leave town immediately made him physically ill. What fictional emergency could he possibly concoct in the next two minutes that would persuade his father he really had to leave at a time like this?
David knew he was stalling, but he wasn’t sure what to do next. He stared down at his phone and was tempted to call Marseille, just for a moment, just to make sure she had gotten back to Portland okay. If she seemed eager — or even simply willing — to talk a little longer, well, that would be good too. And maybe a sign. At least she would know how he felt right now. She would know what to say to him. After all, she hadn’t lost only one parent; she’d lost two.
David thought better of it and abruptly put the phone away. This was not the time or the place. He had to stay focused. He glanced at his watch and winced. He needed to be at Hancock Field in less than an hour, and he still needed to get back to his parents’ house to pack.
He headed back downstairs. As he approached his mother’s room, he could see his father sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth in an almost-hypnotic rhythm. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was just sitting there, staring at his beloved wife, who lay in her bed motionless and hooked up to all kinds of life-support systems. The entire scene was hard to bear, but it was the vacant look in his father’s eyes that pained David most of all.
His parents had been married for more than three decades, and they were inseparable. It seemed like nearly every kid David had grown up with had divorced parents. But throughout all of his own trials and mistakes and disappointments growing up, one thing he had always been able to count on was the deep and abiding love of his parents. Mohammad Shirazi had been born in 1952, just a year before Nasreen Vali, in adjacent towns. They had both grown up in Iran under the Shah. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, but their parents loved them and had chosen carefully and wisely. Mohammad and Nasreen had spoken their vows in the early seventies and escaped from Iran together during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, losing all of their material possessions, including a thriving medical practice, in the process. When they’d arrived in the US, they’d had to rebuild their lives from scratch, but they had done so without complaining. Mohammad had studied hard to get his American license to practice cardiology. The couple had made friends, bought a home, raised three sons, put them all through college, and lived the American dream without a handout from anyone. They were proud of that. They had done it themselves. They had done it together. They were more in love today, David was certain, than ever before, and it was clear his father couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.
Would she be lost forever? Would they ever see her again? None of them had ever taken religion seriously. Though born Shia Muslims, David’s parents had always prided themselves on their rejection of Islam. Now his mother was about to find out the truth about heaven and hell. David suddenly felt cold and scared in a way he’d never felt before. He was staring into the abyss, without a single answer, without a single shred of hope.
Abruptly he realized his decision had become clear. He could no longer lie to his father. Whatever the consequences, David was going to tell him the truth. Not all of it. He would not betray state secrets or operational security. But his father had to know that his son worked for the Agency. He had to know David was fighting against the great evil that had driven them from their beloved land of Persia in the first place, the very evil that had cost them so dearly before and might very well cost them even more. He had to know why his son was leaving tonight. David wasn’t sure his father would believe him, but he needed to try.
“Hey, Dad,” he whispered, poking his head in the door, “can I talk to you about something?”
Tehran was eight and a half hours ahead of central New York.
Hamid Hosseini, Iran’s Supreme Leader and Grand Ayatollah, finished his early-morning prayers. He had been caught off guard by Javad Nouri’s predawn call informing him of the Twelfth Imam’s sudden and unexpected decision to visit Beirut rather than return directly to Iran. But who was he to question the Lord of the Age?
Hosseini asked Allah to bless every detail of the Mahdi’s trip, to give him safety and success, and to give him the infinite wisdom needed to build the Caliphate longed for by a billion Muslims. Then he rose to his feet, left the small mosque in the palace without saying a word, made the short walk with his bodyguards back to his enormous corner office, and shut the door behind him. He planned to stay in seclusion for the next several hours.
Pulling out an unmarked folder, he began reviewing the latest assessment from his chief of intelligence. The good news was that Iranian scientists had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and now had a small but significant stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) ranging from 95 to 98 percent purity. As a result of such efforts, design teams had finally completed building nine nuclear warheads and had tested one just two weeks previously.
Hosseini was not a physicist, and he skimmed over much of the technical detail contained in the report. But the bottom line was clear enough. The warhead had worked perfectly. The blast yield had been extraordinary. The design they had bought years before from A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, had been a good investment after all. They weren’t ready to attach any of the warheads to the high-speed ballistic missiles they had built themselves or bought from the North Koreans. Indeed, the report indicated the team still felt they were many months away from perfecting a missile delivery system. But that was okay. For now, Hosseini concluded, he had what he needed. What’s more, the report promised him that within roughly another three weeks, six more warheads would be built and ready for use.
Not all the news was good, however.