The Twelfth Imam

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  It was a solid argument, David thought. The angel Gabriel thing intrigued him. He hadn’t heard that and wanted to talk to Eva more about it.

  But Zalinsky wasn’t buying it. “Listen,” he said firmly, turning to David, “I want you on the next plane to Munich. Pick up the satphones. It’s going to take a few days. But once you have them, go right back into Iran. Show them you can deliver, ahead of schedule. Then get us nuke sites. That’s the mission. Nuclear weapons sites. Period. Don’t get sidetracked.”

  56

  David checked into Le Méridien.

  The next direct, nonstop flight to Munich was on Lufthansa, but it didn’t depart until 7:35 the following morning. That meant he had to be at the airport by 4:30, which meant he had to leave for the airport at 4:00 and be up by 3:00, which meant he really should try to get some sleep now. But he couldn’t. He was too angry. So he threw on some shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of Nikes and went running instead.

  Zalinsky, he was certain, was making a serious mistake. David knew his mentor had far more experience in the region than he did. But that made it all the more frustrating. Why wouldn’t Zalinsky take seriously the growing importance of Shia eschatology or consider its implications? David didn’t need anyone to tell him that he hadn’t a fraction of the training or wisdom Zalinsky had. But David trusted his gut, and his gut told him to follow the trail of the Twelfth Imam.

  In the meantime, he owed Marseille Harper a call. He just wasn’t sure what to say. Heading north along Sheikh Rashid Road, David ran past the Dubai Creek Golf Club, turned east over the bridge, and wound through several businesses until he reached the football stadium between Tenth Street and Oud Metha Road. There he bought a bottle of water from a street vendor and found a pay phone on the stadium grounds. It wasn’t exactly the quietest place to make the call, but it was the least traceable phone he could find, and for now, that would have to do.

  He was surprised by the butterflies in his stomach and the perspiration on his palms. It bothered him that this girl still had such a hold on him after so long, but she did. As he dialed—slowly—he tried to imagine the sound of her voice and wondered if he would still recognize it. Then the line began ringing, and he was tempted to hang up. It rang again with no answer. The longer it went, the more jittery he became. David wiped the sweat off his brow and took another swig of water. Still no answer. But just when he was about to hang up, the line connected, crackling with static.

  “Hello?” David said. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” a woman’s voice said. The voice was instantly familiar; David’s pulse quickened. “This is Marseille. I’m not in right now, but if you’ll leave me your name, number, and a brief message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.”

  David faltered. “Uh, hi, this is, uh . . . hey, Marseille, this is Rez—sorry, there is some static on the line—anyway, this is David. . . . David Shirazi. . . . I’m calling you from overseas, so I’m sorry for the bad connection. Anyway, I was visiting my parents recently, and they actually just gave me your letter from December as I was leaving for another business trip, and I’m afraid this is the first chance I’ve had to call you back. I’m so sorry to hear about your father, I really am, but I’m glad to hear from you, and yes, I would love to see you in Syracuse in a few weeks. Dinner or coffee or whatever on that Thursday night would be great.”

  He quickly gave her an e-mail address and said that was the best way to reach him for the next few weeks to make definite plans. And with that, he hung up, wondering why he was acting like a complete moron.

  57

  Tehran, Iran

  “I am Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali, Lord of the Age.”

  Everyone gathered in the office of the Supreme Leader—Hosseini himself, the president, the defense minister, and the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—froze. Was this actually the Twelfth Imam before them? They had expected to see him soon, but not this soon. Taking no chances, they immediately fell to the floor, bowing in reverence to the striking young man who had just walked into their meeting unannounced.

  Hosseini sensed his advisors’ shock when he knelt before the newcomer. His advisors had never seen the Supreme Leader bow to anyone. But Hosseini had no doubt who this was. The flowing black robes. The black turban. The handsome, radiant face. The piercing eyes. The wide forehead. The broad chest. The aura of light that seemed to infuse the room. Above all, it was the voice that confirmed it for Hosseini. This was the voice he had heard at the Qaleh, the voice that resounded from the vision of light.

  “Hamid,” said the man, who appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties at most and yet had such a commanding, even mesmerizing presence, “do you remember what happened on the mountain?”

  Hosseini had never been referred to so casually by anyone, least of all by a man half his age. But it was an honor to be addressed directly by the Twelfth Imam.

  “Yes, my Lord,” Hosseini said, his face still pressed to the ground. “You showed me the glories of the kingdoms of the world.”

  “And what did I say to you?”

  “You said, ‘All these things I will give you, if you fall down before me and do my will.’ And I have endeavored to do just that ever since, my Lord.”

  “You have done well,” the Twelfth Imam said. “Now you and the others may rise and take your seats.”

  The men did as they were told.

  “Gentlemen, as I told your Supreme Leader when I appeared to him, the time to establish the global caliphate has come. You have longed for the world to be ruled by Muslims and for Allah. You have prayed faithfully for the reestablishment of the caliphate since coming to power. I am here today to tell you that you need not wait any longer. So long as you obey me without dissent, without questioning or hesitation, you will govern this earth, all of you, at my side.”

  The Imam passed around four typed, single-spaced sheets of paper, one to each of the men sitting at the table. He asked each to read the document and then sign if his conscience would allow.

  I, ___________________________, pledge my full allegiance, devotion, and loyalty to Imam al-Mahdi. I will live for him. I will die for him. I shall carry out his orders quickly and completely and without complaint, so help me, Allah.

  Hosseini took one look at the document and declared without hesitation, “Imam al-Mahdi, I will follow you to the ends of the earth and the end of time.” He took a steak knife from the place setting before him and slit his left palm. He dipped his right forefinger in the blood pouring down his arm and signed his name.

  The others quickly followed Hosseini’s lead. They handed back their documents, then wrapped their bloody hands with white linen napkins.

  “Well done, my servants,” the Mahdi said. “Now listen closely.”

  As Hosseini and the others sat captivated, the Twelfth Imam took the men into his confidence and laid out his plans. He explained that once the Group of 313 was formed, they were to recruit an elite army of ten thousand mujahideen.

  “They do not all have to be Shias,” the Mahdi said, “but they all have to be loyal to me and me alone. And fifty of them should be women.”

  In short order, he said, he must be able to announce a successful Iranian nuclear weapons test. He must announce a military alliance between Iran and Pakistan. He must announce that Iran had pre-positioned nuclear weapons under Iranian control in Lebanon and Syria and make clear to the Jews that any attack on the Palestinians—or any neighbor of the Zionist entity—would result in a War of Annihilation. When this was accomplished, he explained, he would announce plans to establish the headquarters of his global Islamic government in the city of Kufa, in the heart of Iraq. They must work to make all these things happen just as he said.

  Hamid Hosseini was disappointed at this last part, and he assumed the other men were too. He longed for the seat of the caliphate to be located in Iran, not Iraq, for obvious historic reasons. But he didn’t dare say a word. Indeed, he feared his very thoughts would be read
by the Mahdi, exposing his doubts and dissensions. Fortunately, the Mahdi had more to say.

  “Very soon, I will give you authorization to make a formal statement of my arrival to this dark world and to announce that I will travel to Mecca to make my first public appearance.”

  “O Lord, do not be angered by my question, but must you go first to the Saudis?” President Darazi asked, astounding Hosseini with his audacity. “Could you not bless the Persian people first by appearing here in Tehran or in the holy city of Qom?”

  “Do not forget, my children,” the Mahdi said, “I am an Arab, not a Persian. I am a direct descendant of the Prophet, the twelfth in his direct bloodline of succession. It is written that I must first appear publicly in Mecca, and so I must. But do not take this as a slight, my son. The leaders of the Sunni world are corrupt and face judgment. They have never believed in me. They do not believe I am coming or that I have already come. But soon they will see with their own eyes. They will hear with their own ears. And they will worship me, or they will face great judgment. And do not forget, too, that I came to you first. With the help of the Prince of Persia, I have appeared all over your country—in Jamkaran at the well, at the Qaleh last week, and here with you now. I have chosen you, not the Arabs, to form my ruling council, for while you have made many mistakes, you did not betray me. You did not sign a peace treaty with the Zionists, as the Egyptians and the Jordanians did. You did not invite the Americans to occupy your lands, as the Saudis did. You did not ask the Americans to help you form a demonic democracy, as the Iraqis did. The Arab leaders will face a day of reckoning for their crimes, but the Arab people are not the enemy. The Americans and the Israelis are the enemy. It is they who will pay the highest price. Their leaders do not understand what is coming, but they will experience the wrath of Allah soon enough. We must join together, Persian and Arab and Turk and African—all who submit to Allah—as one man.”

  He explained that his appearance in Mecca had to be carefully planned, with his arrival and message broadcast live to the nations.

  “When exactly are we going?” Hosseini asked.

  “You are not going,” the Mahdi told them.

  “None of us, or just not me, my Lord?” Hosseini asked, surprised and embarrassed in front of his colleagues.

  “None of you,” the Mahdi said. “Your presence would be too provocative for the Saudis. It is enough that I go there. It is too soon for you all to come. To achieve the success we need, we must convince the king and the royal family—along with the leaders of the emirates—to attend my arrival.”

  “O Lord, we will work on this immediately,” Hosseini said.

  “Good,” the Mahdi replied. “I want you to work on it personally, Hamid. Call the Saudis directly, before we announce the news publicly. Be respectful and brotherly. Be discreet. But be clear. Tell them I would not look kindly on their refusal to greet me with all the honor worthy of their messiah.”

  “I will do as you say, Imam al-Mahdi,” Hosseini said. “But what if they won’t listen? What if they do not believe me?”

  “They will believe you, my son,” came the reply. “After they see my power and glory displayed, they will believe you. Of this you need have no doubt.”

  58

  Munich, Germany

  David arrived in Munich but was desperate to get back to Tehran.

  He had no interest in watching TV, paying his bills, or reading all the Christmas cards and other assorted mail he’d FedEx’d to himself from the Atlanta airport, not to mention all the other junk mail and magazines that had piled up since he’d been here last. Time was too short. Iran was out of control. He couldn’t prove it yet, but he knew they were closing in on nuclear capability, and he was determined to get back into the action.

  He wondered why the package from Amazon hadn’t arrived yet. He’d been looking forward to reading Dr. Alireza Birjandi’s book on Shia eschatology and had ordered it to be sent to Germany. But it was nowhere to be seen.

  He called Zalinsky to check in but learned his boss was on a secure conference call with Langley. He called Eva to gripe but got her voice mail instead. He logged on to the CIA’s secure intranet system to review the latest transcripts of intercepted calls inside Iran. But of the dozens of calls, none provided any useful information. He cleaned his 9mm Beretta 92FS and wondered how to smuggle it into Tehran on his next trip. But it was all busywork, and it was killing him. He hadn’t joined the CIA to waste time in Germany. They had to get moving.

  He checked his AOL account, hoping at least for word from Marseille, but found nothing. On a whim, he did a search on Facebook. He hoped to find a recent photo or some current information about her and wondered why he’d never thought of it before. But there was no Marseille Harper listed. Then again, neither was he. He checked MySpace and Classmates.com and Twitter but found no sign of her at all. When he simply typed her name into Google, however, he found one link: a story published September 12 of the previous year by the Oregonian, Portland’s daily newspaper, headlined, “Charles D. Harper Commits Suicide.”

  Not believing it could be the same person, he clicked on the link and read the obituary.

  Charles David Harper, an Iran expert who served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, served in various other embassy posts as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. State Department, and later served as a professor of Middle East history at Princeton University, was found dead Saturday afternoon in the woods near his farmhouse on Sauvie Island. Blake Morris of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said Mr. Harper died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He is survived by his only child, Marseille Harper, a schoolteacher in the Portland Public School District, who found his body; and by his mother, Mildred, who resides in a Portland-area nursing home. Sources close to the family say she is suffering from an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s. Mr. Harper’s wife, Claire, died in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.

  Numb, David stared at the screen, wishing he could simply shut down the computer and make the story go away but unable to take his eyes off the words.

  Why had he done it? The date of his death told part of the story, but not all of it. No matter how much pain the man was in, how could Mr. Harper have done that to Marseille? She needed him. She loved him. He was all she had in this world. How could he have abandoned her? And how would she ever erase the image of finding her father in those woods?

  He hadn’t known Marseille was a teacher, but he had no doubt she was a great one, and he hoped somehow she could go on teaching despite all that had happened. He hadn’t known that the Harpers lived on Sauvie Island. He’d never even heard of Sauvie Island. A quick check of Wikipedia revealed that it was the largest island along the Columbia River and lay approximately ten miles northwest of downtown Portland. The island was made up mainly of farmland and boasted barely a thousand year-round residents. “Bicyclists flock to the island because its flat topography and lengthy low-volume roads make it ideal for cycling,” he read. It wasn’t the Jersey Shore, but it did sound like a beautiful place to live.

  He had learned another thing from the article, something that had come out of left field. He had never known that Mr. Harper’s middle name was David. His father had never told him. Nor had his mother. Marseille had never said anything, and he’d never had more than a few brief conversations with Mr. Harper himself. He’d had to read it in an obituary, but in that moment it dawned on him that his parents had named him after the man who had saved their lives. There were no other Davids in the Shirazi family tree. He had been named after Charles David Harper, and now the man was dead.

  Hamadan, Iran

  Najjar Malik lay in bed, unable to move.

  He had awoken with a fever of 104 and a head that felt like it was going to explode. Sheyda did her best to take care of him all morning. She brought him cold washcloths for his face, stomach, and chest. She fed him spoonfuls of ice chips and cold yogurt. She also contacted th
eir doctor and asked him to come over to their apartment for a house call, which he promptly did. By noon, the doctor had already come and gone, having given Najjar antibiotics to fight off whatever infection was presently coursing through his body.

  “Honey,” Sheyda said in a whisper, “I’m going to take the baby over to Mother’s so there’s no risk of her getting sick, okay?”

  “You’re going to leave me?” Najjar groaned.

  “Just for a little bit,” she promised. “Just to drop off the baby and have lunch with Daddy. Then I’ll be right back. Is there anything I can get you at the store?”

  Najjar asked for some ice cream, then closed his eyes and drifted off again. He knew why this was happening but didn’t dare tell her. It was because he had watched that program by the Christians. Allah was punishing him, he knew, and he deserved it.

  59

  It had been too long since he’d had lunch with his daughter.