Six minutes later, Behrouz raced by the Golestan Palace and finally screeched to a halt beside the mosque’s main entrance.
“Thanks, Behrouz,” David said, already out of the cab. “There’s another hundred in it for you if you give me your cell phone number and hang around until I need you again.”
The young man, breathless, readily accepted. He scratched out his mobile number on the back of a receipt and gave it to David, who thanked him, entered it into his phone, and dashed inside the gates of the mosque, hoping against hope to find Abdol Esfahani.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zalinsky’s phone chirped.
It was the watch officer from the Global Ops Center at Langley. Zalinsky, in the CIA safe house in Dubai where he had set up his base camp, was instantly on alert.
“Ops Center; go secure,” the watch officer said.
The grizzled old CIA veteran punched in his authorization code. “Secure; go.”
“Two minutes ago, Zephyr entered his first phone number,” the watch officer explained.
That was fast, Zalinsky thought.
“It’s a junior agent with the secret police in Tehran,” the watch officer continued. “He’s already making his first call.”
“Where to?” Zalinsky asked, now on his feet and pacing.
“It’s a local call… Secure, but we’re cracking it; hold on… NSA says it’s a direct line into VEVAK.”
Wow, Zalinsky thought, unexpectedly impressed. He didn’t speak Farsi, but he certainly knew that the Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar-known by its acronym, VEVAK-was Iran’s central intelligence service. Themis and Zephyr just might pay off after all.
The watch officer now patched Zalinsky through to a live feed from the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. A Farsi specialist translated the call in real time.
Caller: Base, this is Car 1902.
Receiver: What’s your status?
Caller: I’m at Imam Khomeini Mosque. Subject just entered.
Receiver: Do you have a visual?
Caller: Negative. This was my first chance to call it in.
Receiver: Why didn’t you follow him?
Caller: He paid me extra to wait here. Should I go after him?
Receiver: Negative. Wait as instructed. Did subject say what he’s doing there? The next call to prayer isn’t for another four hours.
Caller: Subject is meeting someone inside.
Receiver: Who?
Caller: Didn’t say. But it sounded urgent.
Receiver: Why?
Caller: Subject said some business deal would collapse if he didn’t find this guy in time. I think it’s an executive from Iran Telecom. That’s where I picked him up.
Receiver: Roger that. We think it’s Esfahani. We’re sending you additional agents.
Caller: Abdol Esfahani?
Receiver: Affirmative.
Caller: The nephew of the boss?
Receiver: Affirmative.
Caller: Is he in danger? Should I do something?
Receiver: Negative. It probably really is a business deal.
Caller: But you’re sure Esfahani’s going to be okay?
Receiver: Affirmative. We’ll have more agents arriving on scene any moment. Just stay where you are, and let us know when the subject returns to the cab.
Caller: Yes, sir.
With that, the call was over. But Zalinsky’s interest was piqued. Who exactly was Abdol Esfahani related to, and why did it matter so much to these intelligence operatives? It wasn’t possible that Esfahani was related to Ibrahim Asgari, the commander of VEVAK, was it? Zalinsky couldn’t imagine it. Surely he would have known that before now. He quickly logged on to Langley’s mainframe database and ran an extensive search.
After ten minutes, he couldn’t find a shred of information suggesting this was true. But it was clear to Zalinsky that the Iranian intelligence agents on the call he’d just heard believed Esfahani was connected to someone important. Zalinsky wasn’t sure what to make of that exactly. But he began to wonder if maybe Esfahani was a bigger fish than they had thought.
46
Tehran, Iran
It was worse than David had feared.
Hundreds of men were praying. Thousands more were milling about on the grounds of the mosque, talking softly, conducting business, trading gossip.
“Assalam Allaikum”-peace be upon you-he repeated again and again as he worked his way through the crowds, systematically ruling out small groups of individuals and intensifying his prayers that Allah would help him find this needle in the haystack. The good news was that no one seemed particularly interested in the fact that he was there. Nor did anyone seem to care or even sense that he had never been there before. The sheer number of people on the site provided him a measure of anonymity that helped him move about without drawing attention. But that wouldn’t last for long, he knew. Plainclothes agents would be there any moment, watching his every move.
He decided to shift gears. Rather than moving deeper into the mosque, he would withdraw and hide in plain sight. He would wait out front, where the secret police could see him and breathe easier as a result, and where he was least likely to miss Esfahani when he emerged from prayer.
Finding a bench in the courtyard, he sat down, pulled out his phone, and began reviewing his e-mails and scanning headlines on the Internet like any harried European businessman would do. Several headlines caught his attention.
Oil Hits Record Highs on War Fears in Mideast
Pentagon Moves Patriot Missile Batteries into Gulf States to Protect Oil Facilities from Possible Iranian Strike
Iranian Cleric Wants Creation of “Greater Iran”
The last one, an AP story out of Tehran, particularly intrigued him, and he scanned it quickly.
A radical cleric has called for the creation of a “Greater Iran” that would rule over the entire Middle East and Central Asia, in a move that he said would herald the coming of Islam’s expected messiah. Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi said the creation of what he calls an Islamic United States is a central aim of the political party he leads called Hezbollah, or Party of God, and that he hoped to make it a reality if they win the next presidential election.
Scrolling down a bit, another paragraph struck David as curious.
Kharrazi said this Greater Iran would stretch from Afghanistan to Israel, bringing about the destruction of the Jewish State. He also said its formation would be a prelude to the reappearance of the Mahdi, a revered ninth-century saint known as the Hidden Imam, whom Muslims believe will reappear before judgment day to end tyranny and promote justice in the world.
This was the second time in the last several days that David had seen the subject of the Mahdi, or Hidden Imam or Twelfth Imam, come up in a news report. Again he wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he made a mental note to discuss it with Eva the first chance they got.
Moments later, he was relieved to see several plainclothes agents quite obviously, and even a bit clumsily, taking up positions to monitor him. One even came up and asked for the time. David couldn’t resist pointing out that the man was wearing a wristwatch of his own. Embarrassed, the agent slunk off, but the point had been made. The secret police had made it clear they were observing Reza Tabrizi, and Reza Tabrizi, aka David Shirazi, had made it clear he didn’t mind and had nothing to hide. Both sides seemed to relax.
Seemed, however, was the operative word. Inside, David was a wreck. If he didn’t find Esfahani quickly, the entire operation would be over before it had even begun.
And then a new e-mail arrived in his box. It was a headline forwarded to him by Zalinsky through an AOL account under one of his many aliases. It indicated that Iran’s deputy defense minister had just met at the Kremlin with his Russian counterpart. Moscow was promising to install the S-300 system by summer, just six months away.