Eva was right. The Iranians needed thousands of secure satellite phones, not twenty.
“Maybe they simply want to test a new supplier and see if they can get a phone the Russians can’t bug,” Zalinsky mused.
“Or maybe they’re setting up a new unit of some kind,” Eva said.
“What kind of unit?”
“Could be anything-suicide bombers, missile operators, something we should be worried about.”
“That’s encouraging,” Zalinsky said. “Okay, then, what’s the Qaleh?”
“It’s Farsi,” Eva said. “It means fortification or walled settlement. But the question is, what do they mean by it?”
“I have no idea,” Zalinsky conceded. “But you’d better find out.”
Tehran, Iran
Waiting for word from Esfahani, David had been going to prayer five times a day, often at the Imam Khomeini Mosque, though not always. He still wasn’t sure what he believed, but he wanted to believe in a God who would hear his prayers. So he prayed for his parents. He prayed for his brothers. He prayed for his country and Zalinsky and the president. He prayed most of all for Marseille. He asked Allah to bless her, to take care of her, to heal her heart and ease her pain. Yet he doubted any of it was getting through. Sometimes there were “coincidences” that seemed like answers to his prayers. But most of the time he still felt he was talking to the ceiling.
When he wasn’t at the mosque maintaining his cover, he went for long walks. He got to know the city. He visited shops that sold mobile phones, asked lots of questions, and then asked some more. Back in the hotel, he tracked business headlines on his laptop. He sent e-mails to colleagues at MDS. Mostly, he reviewed his cover story, again and again, meditating on every tiny fact until it had truly become a part of him.
But he was dying. For too much of the day, he was sitting in a hotel room in the capital of a country feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons. It was his mission to find a way to stop it, and he was stuck. Alone and out of ideas, he could only wait. He couldn’t talk to Zalinsky. He couldn’t talk to Eva.
The worst part, however, was not the isolation. Or the boredom. Or the feeling of helplessness and frustration at not being able to do more-do anything-to advance his mission, protect his country, and care for his family and friends. The worst part was trying to pretend he was a good Muslim. Deep in his heart, David Shirazi-aka Reza Tabrizi-knew he was not. He believed in God, or at least in some form of divine being in the universe known as “God,” or at least “a god.” He believed this God was a creator, that He had created the heavens and the earth and mankind and him personally. Beyond that, however, he wasn’t sure what he believed.
A shudder ran down his spine. To let such thoughts cross his mind-even if they remained unspoken-was tantamount to apostasy for a Muslim. They were an eternal death sentence, a fast pass to eternal damnation.
Yet how could Islam be true? The purest practitioners of the religion, he reasoned, be they Shia or Sunni, were the ayatollahs and the mullahs. His experiences in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere had taught him that these “holy men” were the most unholy men on the planet. Their minds were filled with thoughts of violence and corruption. The leaders of Iran were the worst of all. They actively denied the Holocaust while planning another. They were trying to obtain weapons capable of incinerating millions upon millions of people in the blink of an eye, and to do so in the name of their god. How could that be right? How could a religion that taught such things be true?
49
David sat up in bed in the dark.
It was 3:26 in the morning. He had not slept a wink. Three full days and nights had now gone by, and he had still heard nothing from Abdol Esfahani. But he couldn’t stop thinking about a particular line in his rant to his secretary the day David and Eva showed up for breakfast.
“Don’t you know how close we are, you fool?” Esfahani had shouted. “Don’t you know how pious we must be? He’s coming at any moment. We must be ready!”
What did Esfahani mean by that? Who was coming? When? And what did it matter? Why did they have to be ready? Why did they have to be more pious?
Could Esfahani be referring to the coming of the Islamic messiah? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely, David thought. Maybe Esfahani had been talking about an Iran Telecom executive or a board member, or perhaps a top official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-a possibility, given that they had just bought a major stake in the company.
Still, David had just gotten an e-mail from Amazon telling him that Dr. Alireza Birjandi’s book, The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah, had been shipped to his apartment in Germany. It reminded him of how little he knew about Islamic End Times theology, but he was getting the sense it was becoming a bigger deal in the dynamic of the region than anyone at Langley-Zalinsky included-was considering.
How many Muslims believed the end of the world was at hand? he wondered. How many Iranians did? How many Iranians at the highest levels of the regime believed it?
As David pondered that, it occurred to him that there was a growing sense in cultures around the world that the end of days just might be approaching and that with it was coming a final, momentous clash between good and evil. Preachers and rabbis and imams and even environmentalists were saying with increasing frequency and intensity that “the end is near.” But rather than laugh them all off as nuts, people seemed to be eating up the message. Even Hollywood was cashing in, making millions from apocalyptic movies.
What did it all mean? David had no idea. But in the privacy of his thoughts, he, too, feared the world was speeding recklessly toward the edge of the cliff. The longer he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the more classified information he gained access to, the deeper his fears became. And if Iran got the Bomb, or-God forbid-if Osama bin Laden did, something told him the implications would be far worse than even Langley’s most dire predictions.
Which prompted another thought.
He had always told himself that he had joined the CIA to destroy radical Islam, to avenge the death of nearly three thousand Americans on 9/11, to avenge the death of Claire Harper, and perhaps even to show Marseille Harper how much he loved her. It was all true, but it had become more than that. He had come to fear that the events of September 11, 2001, would pale in comparison to the death and destruction that would be wrought if the world’s most dangerous extremists gained possession of the world’s most dangerous weapons. He had to stop them. He had to try, anyway. Most Americans had no idea the threats their country faced. But he did, and he’d never be able to live with himself if he didn’t do everything in his power to save people’s lives.
David turned on the lights. He was covered with sweat. What he really needed was a good, stiff drink. But this was Tehran. The minibars weren’t exactly stocked with Smirnoff and Jack Daniel’s. Come to think of it, he realized, his room didn’t even have a minibar.
He got up, went into the bathroom, and opened a bottle of water. Then he turned on the shower-good and cold-stripped down, and stepped behind the plastic curtain.
As the water poured down his body, he half expected to be struck by lightning or felled by a massive heart attack. End of the world or not, if there was a God, and if it really was the God of the Qur’an, then he knew he was doomed. In college, David had faithfully attended a Shia mosque in Munich, studied the Qur’an, and become a part of the Muslim community, just as Zalinsky had required. He knew what he was supposed to believe. But he didn’t. Plain and simple.
Shivering, David finally turned off the ice-cold water, wiped himself down, wrapped up in a towel, and stepped in front of the mirror. His glasses had been replaced by contact lenses years ago. His braces were long gone. He was taller than his brothers now, taller even than his father. But all that was superficial. Who was he now, really? What was he becoming? Where was he going?