David suddenly remembered his meeting in Qom. The road he was on would get him there eventually. He was a little more than an hour away. But he certainly couldn’t go now, not with Khan and Yaghoubi and with a car that had been shot to pieces. He speed-dialed the MDS technical team leader and apologized profusely.
“Look, I’m very sorry, but something has come up,” he said. “I’m going to be late, probably this afternoon at the earliest… You sure?… Okay, I’ll check in when I’m almost there and give you an update… I know, I owe you… What?… Very funny… Okay, see you soon — bye.”
He hung up and kept driving. About fifty kilometers outside of Arak, he saw an exit for the Lashkardar Protected Area, one of Iran’s national forests. Seeing no cars behind or in front of him at the moment, he took a left and headed north for about fifteen minutes, past five or six impoverished homesteads, until he found the forest and a parking lot nestled alongside a row of small, rustic cabins surrounded by thousands of pine trees and hiking trails leading off in every direction. The lot was empty. It was far too early in the season for camping. So David parked and told Khan to stay quiet.
He rechecked the pistol, making sure it was fully loaded, then moved quickly to the first cabin. It was empty. So were each of the others, though all of them were locked. He kicked through the door of the cabin nearest the Peugeot, then ran back to check on his two prisoners. He had no idea what he was going to do with Yaghoubi. He just hoped he didn’t have to kill him.
Switching off the safety, he prepared to pop the trunk with his keys. It was the first chance he’d had to see how much damage had been done by the gun battle at the hotel, and he counted no fewer than seven bullet holes in the crumpled bumper and the badly dented trunk. Now he aimed the pistol, stepped back a few feet, and hit unlock. The trunk slowly opened, and David braced himself for Yaghoubi’s move. But the man didn’t stir.
“Come on, let’s go — out,” he said.
But the man still did not move, and then, as David looked more closely, he realized that Yaghoubi had been hit several times by bullets that had penetrated the back of the car. He checked for the man’s pulse, but there was none. He felt a twinge of guilt, or at least sorrow for the man, then realized that Yaghoubi had ended up serving as a human shield. Had he not been in the trunk, those rounds might very well have killed Tariq Khan.
Was it time to call up the Reserves?
The debate around the table had been raging for a quarter of an hour and was still unresolved. The proponents held that there was no time to waste. If they were going to launch Operation Xerxes in the next forty-eight hours and the Israeli people were going to be subjected to a massive missile attack as retaliation, then the prime minister had to order a full mobilization within the hour. They needed to get the Reservists on the road and to their bases before missiles were inbound or risk having key bases undermanned and key positions poorly defended amid a full-blown war.
The opponents — led by the foreign minister — said they should wait a bit longer so as not to take actions that would look provocative to the Mahdi or the rest of the world. To buttress his case, the foreign minister read cables from the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans, the French, and the British, all strongly warning Naphtali and the Israeli government not to launch or provoke a new regional war lest they risk condemnation by the UN Security Council. The American secretary of state, he added, wasn’t being quite as blunt but was warning Jerusalem not to take any “noteworthy action” without “consulting us.”
The vice prime minister was incensed by the threat of UN action, calling it meaningless blather and downright anti-Semitic. This was seconded by several others, but not by Naphtali.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” the prime minister told his colleagues. “No matter what we do, the world is going to condemn us and say it’s our fault. This is nothing new. That’s not the question here. And I’m sad to say, I am bracing for the Americans turning against us as well — not the people, probably not even Congress, but the president for certain. The weight of his administration will be soundly against us. The only question for those of us sitting here is whether we want the Jewish people to survive the Islamic nuclear onslaught or be remembered as the people who weren’t ‘too provocative’—when perhaps they should have been a little more.”
He had decided. He was calling up the Reserves, effective immediately. He would let the defense minister decide which ones and how many, but the number had to be significant, though they would put out a statement saying it was purely for defensive purposes.
David checked his watch.
He didn’t have time to regret this man’s death. He opened the back door and helped Khan out. There was blood everywhere. Khan couldn’t stand upright. David tossed the pistol on the grass near the cabin and put Khan’s arm around his neck, then essentially dragged him across the pavement, through the grass, and into the cramped hut, setting him in a weathered wooden chair. Then he stepped outside, picked up the pistol, reentered the cabin, and opened the window shades to let in the morning sunshine. It was time.
“Talk,” he said in Urdu.
“No,” Khan replied in English.
David aimed the pistol at the man’s other knee. “Talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Khan shot back, again in English. “You are CIA, but you’re probably a Jew. May you all die and go to hell.”
“Right now, I’m the only friend you have, Tariq. Now, I can get you out of this country alive. Or I can let your Farsi-speaking friends find you bleeding out by the side of the road, with a mobile phone in your pocket filled with Mossad phone numbers, Hebrew e-mails, and details of a Swiss numbered account with cash transfers coming in from Tel Aviv. How do you think the Mahdi will like it when he finds out you’re the Israeli mole, that you’re the one who gave up Saddaji?”
“That’s a lie! I have never worked for the Jews, and I never would!”
“That’s not how it’s going to look, Tariq. Your cell phone is off right now. No one knows where you are. But they’re all looking, and when I turn it back on and download everything I just told you, they’re going to be here in less than ten minutes. You don’t think they’re going to wonder why your phone was off for the last hour or so?”
“Then kill me,” Khan insisted.
David smiled. “Nice try, Tariq. I have no intention of killing you. I’m going to let the Revolutionary Guard do that, after they’ve tortured you far worse than anything I could dream up. You’ll be begging them to believe that I work for the CIA, but all the evidence is going to prove to them you’re lying.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Khan said, his flash of anger now giving way to fear. “I have a family. For Allah’s sake, I have children.”
“Two daughters, of course. And guess where they’re about to get their college tuition this semester? A bank in Haifa, that’s right. And imagine what Iranian intelligence is going to do when they realize the Israelis are taking care of your family.”
“Please don’t. Please. I beg you — kill me, but don’t do anything to my family.”
“I’m not doing anything to your family, Tariq. It’s your choice what happens from this point forward. I’m just saying in ten seconds you’re not going to have a second kneecap unless you start cooperating. It’s up to you.”