The side street they were on now was narrow and lined on both sides with small homes and parked cars and trucks. Ahmed realized he had never been this far away from the camp, and he began to wonder what the rest of Beirut looked like. He had heard there were beaches. He had heard that the Mediterranean lapped gently along the shoreline and that the waters were warm and tasted salty, and he wondered what that must be like.
Ahmed’s attention was drawn to a silver Mercedes, old and somewhat rusted and parked just a few yards ahead of them on the left. He didn’t know why it caught his eye. It just did. At that moment, the Mercedes exploded in a massive fireball. Flames shot high into the air. Shards of glass and twisted, molten metal flew in all directions. Ahmed’s arms instinctively covered his head, and he leaned right, away from the blast. But just then a green Volkswagen they were passing on the right exploded as well. Then so did the SUV ahead of them and the one right behind them.
The enormous force of the four blasts in rapid succession rocked their own SUV, lifted it, and sent it soaring through the air, flipping it completely over. They landed hard. Every one of the bulletproof windows blew out, and the roof scraped along the pavement, sparks and tongues of flame flying everywhere.
Thick, black, acrid smoke filled the interior. Covered in blood, his own and others’, and choking uncontrollably — gasping frantically for oxygen — Ahmed wanted to scream for his mother but couldn’t. He tried to turn to see her and his father, but he couldn’t move. He strained to hear them but the crackle of the flames and the screams and shouts of people on the streets nearby made it impossible. He was hanging upside down, tied in by his seat belt, which he couldn’t unfasten. He could feel the searing heat. Through his tears he could see the flames licking around the edges of their vehicle. He could see the driver hanging limply, blood pouring from his head. He could see the bodyguard in the front passenger seat shaking violently, an engine part driven deep into his chest. He knew he had to get out of this car as fast as possible or he was going to die. So he tried to turn and see if the Twelfth Imam could help him, but as he did, a pain more intense than anything he had ever felt before went shooting through his neck and down his spine like a thousand volts of electricity. Then everything went silent and black, and little Ahmed lost consciousness.
Miroux slammed on the brakes and bolted from his car.
His camera and notebook in hand, he began running toward the Twelfth Imam’s SUV. What he found when he got there and would relay to the world minutes later was a horror show unlike anything he had ever witnessed before.
The stench of burning human flesh was overpowering. The entire street seemed to be covered in blood, and yet oddly it also seemed like autumn, he noticed. Most of the trees lining the narrow street were now in flames, but the force of the explosions had stripped them bare, and leaves lay scattered everywhere, as if it were October or November and they needed to be raked.
Policemen, militia members, and ordinary citizens came running from everywhere. A crowd started forming, making it difficult for fire trucks and ambulances to reach the scene. Women were sobbing. Several of the men standing nearby looked dazed and confused. Miroux tried to ask people questions about what they had just seen and heard, but few could bring themselves to speak. He started shooting pictures until a soldier ripped the camera from his neck and smashed it to the ground. Then suddenly there was a loud gasp from the crowd, almost in unison.
Miroux turned quickly to see what everyone else was seeing. He couldn’t believe it. Someone was actually emerging from the wreckage. To his shock, he realized it was Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali, covered in soot but apparently uninjured. In his arms he held a small boy, no older than ten or eleven, Miroux figured. The child, too, was alive, though badly bloodied. No one else, it seemed, from the Mahdi’s vehicle had survived. Nor had anyone in the SUVs in front of or behind his.
At first the crowd erupted in applause and cheers that seemed like they were going to go on and on. But then, without warning, everyone grew quiet. One by one, they got down on their knees and bowed to the Mahdi. Miroux tried to write it all down but felt a cold shiver run down his spine. The hair on the back of his neck was standing. Something bizarre was in motion, he told himself. It finally dawned on him: this was not a political story.
16
Najjar Malik tossed and turned continuously.
Trying to fall asleep in a bedroom on the second floor of a beautiful split-level home in a quiet cul-de-sac somewhere in northern Virginia, he desperately missed the company of his wife, Sheyda, their baby daughter, and Sheyda’s mother, Farah, all of whom had defected with him. To the best of his knowledge, they were in another CIA safe house, apparently somewhere in Maryland. He had not been told when they would be reunited. For now, it was nearly as though he had been sentenced to solitary confinement. He’d been told to try to stay upstairs and in his room as much as possible. The bedroom was more spacious than the apartment he’d shared with his small family in Iran. There was a sitting area with two large overstuffed chairs, a basket piled with fleece blankets, and a huge spalike bathroom he couldn’t quite believe was for normal people. Still, he couldn’t say he was enjoying it. If only Sheyda were sitting in one of the chairs, holding the baby and sharing her heart with him.
He had asked for a Bible and been given one. So for now, all he could do was read and pray and think and try not to worry about the future — his own, his family’s, or his country’s — but it wasn’t easy. There was no television, no radio, no computer, and not a newspaper or magazine in his room or anywhere in the house. There was a phone in the kitchen, but it required a code his caretakers would not give him.
Going outdoors was out of the question. Eva Fischer didn’t want him to have any contact with the outside world until their interrogations — she called them “conversations”—were finished, though he couldn’t imagine what else she could ask. They had covered every conceivable topic, and he had done his best to be forthcoming. He had thoroughly studied and exhaustively explained all the information he could find in his late father-in-law’s computer files. He had given them Zandi and Khan. He had given them detailed floor plans of the nuclear facilities not only in Hamadan, but also in Bushehr, Natanz, Arak, and Esfahān, all of which he had been to many times and knew by heart. He had even described the execution of the Arab nuclear expert from the University of Baghdad and explained his theory on why an expert on UD3, or uranium deuteride, was even in Iran.
But it was not Iran’s nuclear weapons that burned Najjar Malik’s heart. The threat of their use against the US or Israel was real and serious, to be sure, and he was genuinely grateful for the opportunity to help the Americans unravel Tehran’s weapons program in any way he could. But what kept him up night after night at this safe house in the town of Oakton, what forced him to his knees in prayer for hour after hour — at least when Agent Fischer wasn’t there to ask him so many questions — was the haunting reality that once again war was coming to the Middle East and that millions of his countrymen could very well perish and spend eternity burning in the fires of hell, with no hope of escape.
Najjar prayed desperately for peace. But the more he prayed, the more he sensed somewhere deep in his soul that the Lord’s answer to this heart cry was “no.” No, the Lord was not going to bring peace, security, or calm to the Middle East. No, He wasn’t going to restrain those who were determined to bring bloodshed. No; not yet; not now.