“You’re saying my father came up with this idea?” Marseille remembered asking David when he was finished.
“Actually, your mom helped quite a bit,” he’d replied.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “How would my parents even know…?”
She closed her eyes, and it was as though she were fifteen all over again. She could hear the wind rustling through the pines and see the dark thunderclouds gathering overhead. She could still feel the temperature dropping as the next storm front came in, and she would never forget any detail of the dilapidated A-frame cabin they’d found in the woods, their own private hideaway from their fathers and David’s brothers and the others during the days they spent in the north.
David had explained that D-day was set for January 28, 1980.
“Zalinsky got the team to the main airport in Tehran. They were going through passport control, and my parents were absolutely terrified. They weren’t convinced your parents’ plan was going to work. But your father and Mr. Zalinsky kept insisting that if the tickets and passports said they were Canadians, then the guards at the airport would accept it. And they did. So before Khomeini’s thugs knew what was happening, your parents, mine, and the others were taking their seats on board Swissair flight 363, heading for Toronto via Geneva.”
Marseille felt her eyes misting. She had finally gotten the story she’d always wanted to hear, but she had never been able to talk about it with her mom. That very Tuesday morning when their fishing party was supposed to be picked up from the island in the middle of the desolate Gouin Reservoir, deep in the interior of the province of Quebec, had been September 11, 2001. Under orders from Osama bin Laden, nineteen Middle Eastern terrorists had hijacked four American civilian jetliners. They’d flown two of those planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Marseille’s mother had worked in the South Tower and had perished in the attack.
She’d never been able to talk about it with her father, either. After his wife’s death, he had emotionally imploded, quit his job, sold their family home in Spring Lake, New Jersey, and moved them to his parents’ farm just outside of Portland. She’d never seen her friends again. She’d been forbidden to have any contact with David. She’d lost not only her mother but her childhood and her past, and it had left a gaping wound from which Marseille had never fully healed. And then her father had committed suicide — on September 11, just last year — and she was essentially all alone in the world. Free from her father’s consuming and debilitating pain, but alone nonetheless.
Now she was on a personal quest of sorts to make sense of it all, to get answers, to find closure, and to figure out where she was going to go from here. Reconnecting with David was part of the journey. She didn’t think she’d have had the courage to reach out to him on her own. But then fate stepped in. A wedding was planned. Her best friend from college wanted her to be a bridesmaid. In Syracuse, of all places. It gave her a reason to see David again after all these years, and to her astonishment and relief, he had graciously accepted her invitation. It was a step, and a good one. But that was not all.
Unraveling the mystery of her father’s secretive past had to be part of the quest as well. After his death, she had taken care of his estate and sifted through his personal papers. In doing so, she had come across a key to a safe-deposit box she’d never known he had at a bank in downtown Portland. Upon opening the box, she’d been surprised to find it empty but for one yellow piece of paper. Written on CIA stationery was a letter of commendation for Charles Harper for his valor under fire in Iran. It mentioned the crisis of 1979, thanked him for his crucial work for the Agency, and was signed, Tom Murray, Director of the Near East Division. She had shown it to David at breakfast that morning. She had wanted his thoughts, his advice, but they’d been interrupted by an emergency call from his boss, and suddenly he’d had to leave.
Marseille reached into her pocketbook and pulled the paper out again. She’d memorized it by this point, but she read it again several times. Then she turned back to her laptop and googled Tom Murray CIA and was stunned by what she found: Thomas A. Murray was not only alive and in Washington, but he was still on active duty at the CIA and was now the deputy director for operations.
She picked up the phone and hit redial.
“CIA switchboard. How may I direct your call?”
22
“Mr. Murray?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tom Murray — his headset on, pacing his office overlooking the CIA’s Global Operations Center — could see his secretary sticking her head through his door, trying to catch his attention. But he quickly held up a hand and made her wait. Whatever she had, he had no doubt that Zalinsky’s call was far more important.
“What time did it happen?”
“Sunday morning, Islamabad time,” Zalinsky said.
“Saturday night our time?”
“Correct.”
“So why am I just hearing about it now?”
“NSA says they’re all backed up. They intercepted the call. They recorded it. But no one had time to translate it until about an hour ago.”
Murray cursed under his breath. The American taxpayers were spending $80 billion a year on intelligence. They had a right to better than this. “You’re sure it was to Farooq?”
“Absolutely. NSA confirms it was his personal cell phone number. My team says voice analysis confirms it was definitely his voice.”
“So just to be clear, Jack, you’re telling me that Iskander Farooq, the president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan — the Sunni Islamic Republic of Pakistan — received a direct phone call from the Twelfth Imam?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re saying Farooq is giving serious consideration to the Mahdi’s ‘invitation’ for Pakistan to join the Caliphate?”
“Correct.”
“And that Farooq seemed inclined to agree but has a few last questions that he would like to discuss in person, face-to-face, not over the phone?”
“That was my impression.”
“And you’re saying the entire call was in Urdu, not Arabic?”
“Well, most of it. Some was in Panjabi.”
“Did we even know the Twelfth Imam was fluent in either Urdu or Panjabi?”
“No, sir, we did not.”
“And our translation is accurate?”