The Twelfth Imam

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “Oh, my goodness,” Mina said, noticing him wince, “you’re bleeding.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, stepping back into the reception area. “I’ll get something for it at the hotel.”

  “No, no,” Mina said, rushing to her desk and pulling out a first aid kit. “You could get an infection. Here, use this.”

  She handed him a tube of antibiotic ointment, and as she did, she actually looked him in the eye, if only for a moment. He smiled and thanked her. To his amazement, she smiled back. The poor woman looked like she never got out of the office. She was small and pale and somewhat frail, but she was sweet and he felt bad for her, trapped in a job she had to hate, verbally abused by a boss who was impossible to respect.

  “Again, I’m so sorry for the trouble we caused you today,” he said, finishing with the tube of ointment and giving it back to her.

  “The error was mine,” she said softly. “I should have called ahead and gotten all of the details. It’s just that the meeting came up so fast, and, well . . . anyway, it was my fault.”

  She looked at him again, and when she did, David shook his head and whispered, “It wasn’t your fault, Mina. It was all mine. And I’m probably going to get fired for it.”

  “No,” she whispered back, sounding pained at the prospect. “Would they really fire you?” She handed him an adhesive bandage.

  “If I blow this contract, they will,” he said. “Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you could help me.”

  Mina looked away, terrified of being caught doing something else wrong. David suspected she would be severely punished for her transgressions today, and his heart went out to her.

  The elevator bell rang again. More staff stepped off and headed to their cubicles. Mina greeted several of them, backing away from David as she did. He slowly put on the bandage, trying to buy as much time as he could, but it didn’t seem to matter. They had passed the point of no return. He really had to go.

  He nodded good-bye, then stepped to the elevator, pushed the button, and silently begged Allah for mercy. The wait seemed like an eternity. He tried to imagine the coming conversation with Zalinsky, trying to explain how he and Eva had blown a mission that offered the last shred of hope of averting an apocalyptic war between Israel, Iran, and the rest of the region. But it was too painful.

  The bell rang. The door opened. Still more of Esfahani’s staff poured out, and David stepped in. He hit the button for the ground floor and smiled at Mina one last time. The elevator doors began to close, but just before they did, a woman’s hand came through and held the doors ajar for a moment. It was Mina’s hand, holding a business card. Startled, David took the card, and Mina withdrew her hand. The doors closed. The elevator began to descend to the ground floor.

  David looked carefully at the card. It was Esfahani’s, showing two different mobile numbers, plus his direct office line, general office line, fax number, and telex number. On the back was a handwritten note.

  Imam Khomeini Mosque, it read, Naser Khosrow Avenue.

  David couldn’t believe it. He had one more shot.

  45

  Outside the Iran Telecom building, David tried to hail a taxi.

  But in Tehran’s cacophonous morning rush hour traffic—bumper to bumper for blocks on end—that was nearly impossible. He suddenly understood why one of the city’s recent mayors had been elected after boasting of having a doctorate in traffic management.

  Once again he found himself begging Allah for mercy. He was desperate and reasoned that this wasn’t a selfish prayer. This was a battle of good versus evil. He was trying to stop a catastrophic war and the deaths of millions, and he needed all the help he could get, divine or otherwise.

  David had no idea how far away Naser Khosrow Avenue was, but he was determined to get to the mosque before Esfahani left. His heart raced. But he knew he had to look calm, for he was not alone. And the delay in finding an available cab, he concluded, was good in the grand scheme of things. It gave the Iranian surveillance detail assigned to trail him—half of whom had already been forced to follow Eva back to the Simorgh Hotel—enough time to prepare for his next move.

  On this topic, Zalinsky had been crystal clear back at Langley: for the first few weeks in Iran, he and Eva—like all foreigners—would be suspected by the Iranian intelligence services as spies for the Mossad or the CIA or the BND, Germany’s federal intelligence service. They would be followed everywhere. Everywhere they went would be monitored and logged in a file by the secret police. Everyone they met with would be noted, and some would be interviewed or interrogated. Their hotel phones would be tapped. Their rooms would be bugged. Their cell phones would be monitored. They would be photographed surreptitiously and constantly. Their mission, therefore, was to act normal. To relax. Blend in. Play the part of an MDS consultant and nothing else. This was not the time to play James Bond or Jason Bourne. This was not the time to evade their tails and get their handlers curious, much less worried. They were already pushing the margins with Eva leaving early and David taking a cab rather than their hired car (whose driver surely worked for the secret police). They couldn’t afford any more irregularities.

  By the time David was finally able to flag down a cab, he was certain that the driver worked for the secret police. He was too young and looked far too nervous to be a simple taxi driver.

  “Hey, buddy, listen. I need your help,” David said in Farsi, tinged with a little more of a German accent than usual. “What’s your name?”

  “Behrouz,” the young man said hesitantly.

  “Behrouz?” David said. “That means lucky, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good; so listen, Behrouz—today is your lucky day.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If I don’t get to the Imam Khomeini Mosque and find my client before he finishes praying, my company’s fifty-million-euro contract is going to be flushed down the toilet, you know what I’m saying?” David pulled out his wallet and tossed a crisp one-hundred-euro bill on the front seat.

  The young man’s eyes went wide when he saw the money. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and David pleaded with him to help. Behrouz then glanced at his mobile phone sitting next to the euro note. David assumed the kid was supposed to call something like this in. But it wasn’t like his suspect was going to get away, right? He and Behrouz were going to be together for the entire ride.

  “No problem,” the kid said, finally mustering up his courage. “But you might want to put on your seat belt.”

  David did, and they were off. Behrouz gunned the engine and hopped the curb, terrifying pigeons and pedestrians alike and unleashing an avalanche of curses from several clerics trying to cross the street. Not seeming to care in the slightest, the kid ran a stoplight, barely missing an oncoming bus, and took a hard right at the next intersection. This kid was good, David thought, half-wondering if he should hire him as his driver full-time.

  On a straightaway, David caught his breath, pulled out his phone, and did his homework. He dialed up a quick Internet search for the Imam Khomeini Mosque and immediately found a map, a satellite photo of the enormous compound, and a brief description of the site, courtesy of Google. The Imam Khomeini Grand Mosala Mosque was the largest mosque in the world. The two minarets stood at 136 meters, and the mosque compound covered 450,000 square meters.

  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.

  This wasn’t good. The S-300 was Russia’s highly advanced surface-to-air missile defense system. The Iranians had paid more than $1 billion for the system several years earlier, but Moscow had repeatedly delayed its delivery and deployment, citing technical challenges.

  In truth, David knew, there were no glitches. The system worked perfectly. And once it was set up around all of Iran’s known nuclear research and power facilities, it would be able to protect them from a U.S. or Israeli first strike. But the very introduction of the S-300 into the Iranian theater could accelerate an Israeli preemptive strike by convincing the leaders in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that if they didn’t hit Iran before the S-300 became operational, their chances of s
uccess would suddenly be radically diminished. It was probably why the Israelis had just launched such a massive war game with Greece. Athens, after all, was about twelve hundred kilometers from Tel Aviv, almost the same distance as Tehran was in the opposite direction.

  Put simply, the S-300 was a game changer. If this report was accurate and Russia really was planning to install the system by August, then what little time the U.S. had to stop Iran from getting the Bomb and to prevent a horrific regional war had suddenly been cut much shorter.

  Just then, David caught the profile of a short, thin, balding man walking quickly out the front door of the mosque. The man was several hundred yards away, but he certainly looked like Abdol Esfahani. David jumped up and made the intercept not far from the front gate of the compound.

  “Mr. Esfahani, sir, please—do you have a moment?” David said in perfect Farsi, sans the German accent.

  It was clear from his befuddled expression that Esfahani had no idea who David was.

  “Please forgive me for intruding on your pious thoughts, sir, but I just finished praying myself, and I looked up and couldn’t believe my good fortune,” David continued. “I was pleading with Allah to give me a second chance to meet you so I could have the opportunity to apologize for the dreadful faux pas my company made this morning. And here you are, a ready answer to my fervent prayers.”

  Esfahani looked skeptical. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Sir, I am Reza Tabrizi,” David said, putting out his hand to shake Esfahani’s.

  Esfahani said nothing and did not return the gesture.

  “From MDS.”

  That name finally registered. The man darkened. “I have nothing to say to you,” Esfahani said, walking away briskly.

  David, however, ran a few steps ahead of the man and cut off his exit.