“If you insist. And call me Eva,” she said. “How was your flight?”
He couldn’t begin to tell her. “Too long. But it’s good to finally be here. Do you have a car for me to go to the hotel?”
“Actually, I’m afraid we have a change of plans,” Eva explained, picking up her own suitcase and garment bag.
“What do you mean?”
“You got my text, right?” she asked, handing him his new itinerary. “We’re heading to Tehran.”
“When?”
“Next flight.”
Stunned, David read the paper in his hands. She wasn’t kidding. They were booked on Emirates Airlines flight 975, departing Dubai at 12:10 a.m. and landing in Tehran two hours and ten minutes later. He glanced at his watch. It was already 10:56 p.m. They had to move quickly.
“I don’t understand,” he said as he scooped up his own bags and followed Eva back into a security line. “What’s going on?”
“Last night, the Israelis launched more than four hundred warplanes at Greece in what looks like a massive test run for a strike against Iran,” Eva whispered.
“Four hundred?” David whispered back. “That’s almost half their fleet.”
“Exactly. The Iranians are freaked out.”
“And that’s why we’re going in?”
“Not entirely.”
“Then what?”
“Abdol Esfahani’s office called. He wants to meet us for breakfast.”
Esfahani was a key executive at Iran Telecom and the point man for operationalizing the new contract with Munich Digital Systems. It wasn’t a meeting they could easily blow off, but David wasn’t convinced he and Eva were ready to go into Iran quite yet. Where was Zalinsky? How could he have signed off on such a rapid departure? They were supposed to work here in Dubai for the week. They were supposed to refine their plan, set clear goals, and establish contingencies in case things went wrong, as too often they did. But how much planning could Jack and Eva have actually done without him, given that all weekend she had been with… whom?
“So,” he asked casually, “how was Berlin?”
“Uh, great,” she said, hesitating ever so slightly. “But not nearly long enough, you know?”
With that, David realized Eva hadn’t actually been in Berlin. She had come straight to Dubai with Zalinsky. That was fine, of course. She was the boss. She didn’t answer to him. But how and when exactly was she supposed to fill him in on the plan she and Jack had cooked up? They certainly wouldn’t be free to talk on the flight in, and they’d be trailed by intelligence operatives from the minute they hit the ground in Tehran. This was too big of an operation to rush. The stakes were too high. But they were rushing into it anyway. Why?
And then his thoughts shifted to Marseille and his anxiety spiked again. He couldn’t exactly call her from Tehran.
43
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar got home around 2 a.m. and found the lights on.
Sheyda was asleep on the couch with their tiny daughter snuggled beside her. He slipped off his shoes, quietly set his keys on the kitchen table, put a blanket over his wife and child, and stared at them for a while. They looked so peaceful, so innocent. Did they have any idea of the evil rising around them?
He turned off the lights in the living room and kitchen and stepped into the spare bedroom he used for a home office and library. Switching on his desk lamp, he cleared off his cluttered desk and found a stack of books his father-in-law had lent him several months before but that he had been too busy to read. The one on the top was titled The Awaited Saviour. It was written by Baqir al-Sadr and Murtada Mutahhari, both Shia ayatollahs. Taking the volume in hand, Najjar turned to the prologue and began to read.
A figure more legendary than that of the Mahdi, the Awaited Saviour, has not been seen in the history of mankind. The threads of the world events have woven many a fine design in human life, but the pattern of the Mahdi stands high above every other pattern. He has been the vision of the visionaries in history. He has been the dream of all the dreamers of the world. For the ultimate salvation of mankind he is the Pole Star of hope on which the gaze of humanity is fixed. The Qur’anic prophecy of the inevitable victory of Islam will be realized following the advent of the Mahdi, who will fight the wrong, remedy the evils, and establish a world order based on the Islamic teachings of justice and virtue. Thereafter there will be only one religion and one government in the world.
Najjar continued reading throughout the night. The more he read, the more convinced he became that the arrival of the Twelfth Imam and establishment of his caliphate, or kingdom, was imminent. Were not the signs, described by Shia sages throughout the centuries, coming to pass day by day? The world was becoming more and more corrupt. The global economy was in collapse. A great war was being fought between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The land of Taliqan-an ancient name for a region of Afghanistan-was consumed by war and poverty. Terrible earthquakes were occurring in ever-increasing number and intensity. Apostasy was spreading within Islam. Civil wars and uprisings were prevalent.
Najjar was electrified when he read, “The Mahdi is alive. He visits different places and takes an intelligent interest in world events. He often attends the assemblies of the faithful but does not disclose his true identity. He will reappear on the appointed day, and then he will fight against the forces of evil, lead a world revolution, and set up a new world order based on justice, righteousness, and virtue.”
To the very core of his being, Najjar believed these words to be true. He was absolutely convinced that he had seen the Promised One at least twice in his life, first as a child on the day Ayatollah Khomeini had died, and again in Baghdad the day he saw the Iraqi nuclear scientist kidnapped and his family gunned down in the streets. Najjar had prayed every day since that he would have the opportunity to see the Promised One again. But he had never dared tell anyone of his encounters, not even Sheyda, whom he loved more than life. He feared she would think he was boasting or lying or hallucinating or crazy.
But was it really necessary to prepare the way for the Twelfth Imam by building a nuclear weapon, by annihilating Israel and the United States and other enemies of Islam? Dr. Saddaji obviously believed it was. Najjar, too, had once believed that, but now he wasn’t so sure. Worse, he now feared that by authorizing the beheading of a man who had been forced into the Iranian nuclear program years earlier-a man whose wife and child Najjar himself had seen murdered-Sheyda’s father had become part of the “forces of evil” whom the Promised One was coming to judge. It saddened and sickened him, but what could he do? He couldn’t tell Sheyda. It would shatter her. To whom, then, could he turn?
44
Tehran, Iran
Abdol Esfahani was not a big fish.
In the grand scheme of Iran Telecom’s communications empire, he was a minnow. But at least he was nibbling.
As Iran Telecom’s deputy director of technical operations, Esfahani was in charge of the day-to-day mechanics of turning the company’s ambitious strategic overhaul from concept to reality. He hadn’t negotiated the massive contract between Iran Telecom and Nokia Siemens Networks. Nor had he been involved in the subcontract NSN had inked with Munich Digital Systems. But all of the consultants and technical support teams that NSN already had in Iran ultimately reported to him, as would the MDS teams that were about to arrive in force.
David had no idea what Esfahani wanted to discuss, nor did Eva. He guessed the man simply wanted to look them in the eye, take their measure, and establish clear lines of authority and responsibility before the MDS tech teams arrived. After all, MDS’s role was a critical one: installing state-of-the-art call routers and proprietary software systems capable of handling millions of calls per minute, all of which would also integrate voice, data, and video services through the new fiber-optic and wireless networks NSN was building. The scope of the work was staggering. It was going to be complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. Esfahani no doubt wanted to make sure he was on a first-name basis with the senior Farsi-speaking project managers on the MDS team.