David was now forty-one thousand feet over the Atlantic.
Upon Director Allen’s orders, he was heading back into Iran aboard the Agency’s Citation. But to get there, he had to make sure it didn’t appear as if he had just been in the US, much less kibitzing at CIA headquarters. Thus, he first had to return to Munich, reassume his identity as Reza Tabrizi, and only then catch two Lufthansa flights, first to Frankfurt, and then into Tehran.
For the last several hours, David had been poring over transcripts of Eva’s interrogations of Dr. Najjar Malik. He’d dutifully read the five-page summary that Eva had written for Allen and the NSC. But as much as he respected Eva, he wasn’t interested in her analysis. He wanted to study every page of the transcripts for himself so he could draw his own conclusions. David found every word of the transcripts riveting, and he wished he’d been there with Eva for any or all of the sessions.
Malik had not been captured. He wasn’t being forced or pressured to tell the American government what he knew. He was a defector. He had been eager to leave Iran. He felt betrayed and deeply hurt by Dr. Saddaji and the Iranian government, and he wanted them exposed. The more he read, the more convinced David became that Malik had answered every single one of Eva’s questions as honestly and thoroughly as he could. He was impressed by the fact that when Malik didn’t know the answer to something, he just said so. He didn’t seem to be trying to impress anyone with his knowledge. He didn’t seem to be trying to say he knew more than he really did. Unless he was a world-class liar, Malik seemed to be telling them the truth, and one truth was crystal clear: they needed to hunt down and bring in Jalal Zandi and Tariq Khan as rapidly as possible, for at the moment they held the keys to the kingdom.
As useful as that information was — and it was very useful indeed — David was struck even more by Malik’s personal story. The scientist had been remarkably candid about his conversion from being a Twelver to being a follower of Jesus Christ. Eva had rightly pressed into his conversion, asked lots of questions, and gotten lots of details.
The CIA’s reactions were mixed. Zalinsky and Murray were clearly put off by all this spiritual talk. For them, Malik’s depiction of his encounter with Jesus on the road to Hamadan called into question the validity of everything else he said. Murray went so far as to mock Malik’s claim of seeing a vision of Jesus. But for David, the opposite was true. Everything else Malik had told them had proven to be accurate. Indeed, they were basing much of their current strategy on what they’d just learned from him and from his interpretation of the files on Saddaji’s computer. Didn’t that enhance the credibility of Malik’s spiritual claims? They were strange, to be sure. It wasn’t often one met someone who claimed to have met God face-to-face, and David privately conceded that in another context he might have dismissed Malik as well. But what about Sheyda? She claimed to have seen Jesus too. So did Farah Saddaji, Sheyda’s mother. And what about Dr. Birjandi back in Iran? He was arguably the most respected authority on the Twelfth Imam in all of Iran, probably the world, yet he had told David point-blank that he and his wife, before her death, had renounced Islam and become followers of Jesus. Could they all be crazy?
David needed a break. He got up, went to the back of the plane, and made himself a cup of coffee. Then he returned to his seat, buckled up again, leaned back, and shifted gears. His thoughts turned to Marseille, and he replayed her phone message in his mind.
“Hey, David, it’s Marseille. Hope you’re good. I really enjoyed breakfast with you. It was so great to see you again and to talk with you and give you a hug. I knew I missed you. Guess I didn’t even fully realize how much until I was sitting with you again after all these years. Anyway, I hope your business emergency gets worked out. I’ll be praying everything goes better for you than for me right now. I’m stuck here in DC. All the flights out to Portland are canceled due to the storm. So I’m at a hotel for a few days with nothing to do. I’d love to talk again. Call me when you get a chance. And let me know how your mom is doing. I’m praying for her. See you. Bye.”
David had wanted to call her before takeoff, but it was the middle of the night and he didn’t want to wake her up. Nor had he wanted his call to be picked up by the NSA. He felt sensitive enough about this relationship. The last thing he needed was the US intelligence network eavesdropping on his personal life. At this point, the best he figured he could do was call her from a pay phone in Germany before heading back into the abyss that was Iran.
17
Eva Fischer was on a CIA jet to New York.
Her mission for the next twenty-four hours was to link up with the FBI team interrogating the only suspect they had in the attempted assassination of the president and help the Agency determine who exactly was responsible for the attack and what they might be plotting next.
Midflight, Eva received an urgent flash-traffic message from Zalinsky and learned for the first time of the attack against the Twelfth Imam in Beirut. Zalinsky also forwarded links to the latest stories off the wires and ordered her to log on to a secure conference call with him at Langley. The message indicated that David, on his way to Iran, had received the same directive. Both complied immediately.
Zalinsky briefed them on what he knew, which so far was precious little more than what the media was reporting.
“The stop they made in the refugee camp,” Eva said. “You’re saying that was unscheduled?”
“That’s right,” Zalinsky said.
“So they weren’t scheduled to be on the street they were going down when the attack happened?”
“Not that we’re aware of.”
“Then how could someone have known to plant all those car bombs and IEDs in that particular place to go off at that particular time?”
“No idea,” Zalinsky conceded. “None of us here have come up with any viable explanations.”
“What if they weren’t car bombs or IEDs?” David said.
“What do you mean?” Eva asked.
“What if the attack was designed to mirror the attacks in Manhattan?” David continued.
“Not possible,” Zalinsky said. “We’ve been monitoring all police and military radio traffic in Beirut. There’s no indication of RPGs, grenades, nothing like that. The Lebanese intelligence services have canvassed the entire neighborhood. They’ve talked to hundreds of witnesses. No one saw anything out of the ordinary. And believe me, the police were out in full force. If someone had fired at the motorcade, someone would have seen something. And besides, I’m looking at live Keyhole satellite images of the scene. These were car bombs, David. You should see the craters that they left. RPGs and grenades don’t leave craters like this.”
“What if it was a drone attack?” David said.
Eva hadn’t considered that before, but she was intrigued.
“Think about it,” David continued. “What if someone was using a UAV to track the Twelfth Imam’s movements in real time?”
“Go on,” Zalinsky said.
“They would have seen him enter the camp. If they were a terror group, they probably would have attacked right then. But if it was a foreign intelligence agency…”
“They wouldn’t have wanted all the collateral damage,” Eva said.
“Exactly. Too many civilians. So what if they waited for the motorcade to leave the camp and then saw him head through a residential area? Risks there, too, but more if they waited for him to get to the stadium.”