The Twelfth Imam

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Carrying a bag of bread and cheese, a sack of potatoes, and a case of bottled water that Esfahani had given him from the Iran Telecom regional substation’s supplies, David went up to the front door and knocked several times. It took a few minutes, but the elderly cleric finally came to the door carrying a white cane and wearing dark glasses.

  Esfahani had failed to mention that the man was blind.

  “Is that you, Mr. Tabrizi?” the old man said, his voice sad, his body frail and gaunt. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “It is, but please, call me Reza.”

  “Is that what they’re calling you these days? Very well; please come in.”

  David was a bit startled by that response and was glad Birjandi couldn’t see his reaction. What did the man mean by that? What else would people be calling him?

  “Forgive me for being late,” David said. “I got a bit lost.”

  “That is quite all right,” Birjandi said. “I can’t imagine driving out there at all right now. Of course, I’ve never driven, but still . . .”

  His voice trailed off, and David felt sorry for the old man. “Mr. Esfahani speaks very highly of you,” he said. “It is a great honor to meet you. Thank you for making time to see me on such short notice.”

  “It is nothing,” Birjandi sighed. “Daryush and Abdol speak very highly of you, as well. You seem to have made quite an impression.”

  “Well, they have been very kind to me. Oh, and Mr. Esfahani asked me to bring you these groceries and said he would send more supplies over soon.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Birjandi said. “I’ve known him since he was eight years old. He and Daryush were the best of friends growing up. Did he tell you that?”

  “No, sir,” David said, noting this new clue. “He never mentioned it.”

  “Well, they were very competitive boys,” Birjandi said with a touch more animation in his voice. “I’m sure Abdol can’t stand the fact that Daryush is the boss. It was always the reverse when they were kids. Abdol was smarter, faster, stronger—learned the entire Qur’an by the time he was ten. Not Daryush. I don’t think he ever memorized it. But Daryush . . . Well, let’s just say he was more diplomatic, had more savvy than Abdol. It’s made all the difference. Now come, let’s put the food away; then we’ll go into my study and talk.”

  As they entered Birjandi’s home, David was immediately struck by the sheer number of books that were in the living room alone. Every wall was lined with bookshelves, and every shelf was stacked with so many tomes the shelves themselves were sagging and looked like they might collapse at any moment. Books were piled on the floors and on chairs, together with boxes of scholarly journals and other publications, and David couldn’t help but wonder what a blind man living alone did with them all. Nothing looked dusty or filthy, so he wondered if someone came and cleaned on a regular basis. He certainly couldn’t imagine this poor old man taking care of this home himself. Fortunately, aside from a cracked front window and some noticeable cracks in his walls and ceiling, the house had sustained remarkably little damage from the earthquake.

  David took the supplies into the kitchen, which was cramped but clean. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No garbage in the trash bin. Nor was there any food in the pantry or much of any in the refrigerator. It was no wonder the old man was so thin.

  After instructing David where to put the groceries, Birjandi padded down the hall, and David followed. They ended up in the old man’s study—actually a retrofitted dining room. It, too, had bookshelves lining the walls, sagging with the weight of books, many of which looked fifty or a hundred years old or more. In one corner was a desk stacked with books on tape, along with a large tape player from the 1980s, a set of giant headphones, and an assortment of unopened mail. In another corner stood a television that was on but whose screen was full of snow and static that hissed so loudly it actually hurt David’s ears. Seemingly not bothered by the noise, Birjandi found a well-worn armchair that was clearly his favorite and plopped down in it. Then, much to David’s relief, the old man found the remote on an end table and turned off the TV.

  “Please have a seat.”

  “Thank you, sir,” David said, carefully removing a stack of yellowed newspapers from the 1990s from another armchair. “I have many questions, and Mr. Esfahani said you would be the best man to ask.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence, so long that David wasn’t sure the old man had heard him.

  “We are living in extraordinary times, wouldn’t you say?” David finally offered, searching for a way to begin the conversation.

  “I see days of great mourning,” Birjandi said with a heavy sigh.

  “But at least Imam al-Mahdi has come, right?” David said, his voice upbeat and hopeful. “I’m sure you’ve heard all the reports.”

  “I have no joy in my heart,” Birjandi said.

  “None?”

  “Young man, a very dark day has dawned upon the earth.”

  David was taken aback. Wasn’t this man’s life’s work studying and teaching about the coming of the Twelfth Imam? Why wouldn’t he allow himself a bit of joy? Yes, the day had come with death and destruction. But hadn’t all that been prophesied anyway? Didn’t the old man believe all this suffering was Allah’s will?

  “He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him,” Birjandi said, seemingly out of the blue. “He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child; teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise; follow him.”

  “Is that from the Qur’an?” David asked.

  Birjandi smiled a little and shook his head.

  “From the hadiths?”

  Again the old man shook his head.

  “Something Zoroaster said?”

  “No, it is an ancient Persian proverb.”

  “Well, it sounds very wise.”

  “Which one are you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think.”

  David pondered that for a moment, silently reciting the proverb several times to understand its meaning.

  “I suppose I am the child,” he said finally.

  “Why?”

  “Because I know not, and I know that I know not. That’s why I am here, because I believe you know.”

  “Very good,” Birjandi said. “Then start with this. What Hamadan just experienced was not a natural earthquake.”

  “What do you mean?” David asked.

  “The size. The scope. The timing. Think, Mr. Tabrizi. What triggered all this? Do you really think it was the arrival of Imam al-Mahdi?”

  What was the man talking about? David’s confusion grew still more when Birjandi suddenly rose, excused himself, and said it was time for him to pray.

  “We can talk some more in six hours,” Birjandi explained simply, without apology.

  Six hours? David looked at his watch. It was only three in the afternoon. What was he going to do for the next six hours?

  “Thank you for the groceries,” Birjandi said before he left for his room. “Feel free to have anything you would like. I am not hungry. I don’t have a guest room, but I hope you are comfortable on the couch. There are more blankets in the closet. Take a nap, Mr. Tabrizi. You need the rest. You seem tired. And, I suspect, you could use some prayer time as well.”

  Then he turned and walked away. His bedroom door closed softly behind him. David was startled and a little annoyed. He didn’t want to nap. He didn’t want to pray. He had questions. He had come for answers. But he wasn’t getting any. At least not for the next six hours.

  74

  As the hours passed, there was one bit of good news.

  Wireless service had now been restored for sections near the airport, which meant David’s phone worked and he could use it to get on the Internet. He grabbed his laptop and waited for it to boot up.

  As he did, he
kept thinking about Birjandi’s words. What did he mean that the earthquake wasn’t a natural event? There were only two other possibilities. One was a supernatural event, perhaps connected to the arrival of the Twelfth Imam. But Birjandi had seemed to dismiss that notion, which was odd, given the man’s specialty. The only other possibility was that it was a man-made event. But the only way for man to trigger an earthquake was . . .

  No, David thought, surely that wasn’t possible. Birjandi wasn’t suggesting the earthquake had been triggered by an underground nuclear test, was he?

  Once connected to the Internet, David did a quick search. What he found unnerved him.

  On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted five nuclear weapons tests, triggering an earthquake that measured 5.0 on the Richter scale.

  On October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted a nuclear test in the North Hamgyong province, resulting in a 4.3 seismic event.

  On May 25, 2009, North Korea conducted another nuclear test, resulting in an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.7.

  David was no physicist or geologist. He had no way of knowing for certain. But on its face, it did seem possible that an earthquake could be triggered by a nuclear test or a series of tests. Was that what had just happened? If so, how huge must the nuke have been to trigger an earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale?

  Barred from accessing Langley’s database from inside a hostile country, David continued scouring the open-source articles on previous nuclear tests, looking for similarities and differences. The article that worried him most was an October 2006 piece by David Sanger in the New York Times.

  North Korea said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states.

  The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.

  Since when has a U.N. Security Council warning ever stopped a country from building the Bomb? David wondered.

  The White House and State Department were kidding themselves. The president and the secretary of state and all their muckety-mucks could huff and puff all they wanted, but in the end, negotiations and diplomacy and high-level talks and Security Council meetings were all just words, and words weren’t going to blow the Big Bad Wolf’s nuclear house down.

  David continued reading.

  North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan, and Israel as one of the world’s “undeclared” nuclear powers. India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon. But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its abilities.

  “I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren’t going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese,” a senior American official who deals with the North Koreans said. “In the end, there was just no stopping them.”

  Was there any stopping Iran? Not like this, David thought. The CIA was learning too little. They were doing too little. And too much time was going by.

  He did a quick search of the headlines in the last twenty-four hours. Had there been any indication by the Iranians that they were testing a bomb? He found none. If they had just tested, that may have been a key lesson they learned from the North Koreans: Why announce the test? Why confirm it? Why let the world know they had the Bomb? In this case, why let the Israelis know? Then again, David thought, maybe the Iranians were still going to announce it. Maybe they were just buying time, reviewing the technical data, making sure they really had an operational weapon—or several of them—before telling the world the apocalyptic news.

  David did some more poking around the Internet to double-check his memory on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Sure enough, Iran was one of the 182 signatories to the pact. By signing, it had agreed with all the other signatory states to two central provisions.

  First, “Each State Party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control.”

  Second, “Each State Party undertakes, furthermore, to refrain from causing, encouraging, or in any way participating in the carrying out of any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.”

  By way of enforcement, David knew, the International Monitoring System (IMS) and International Data Center (IDC) had been established. These networks included over three hundred primary and auxiliary seismic monitoring stations worldwide specifically tracking all seismic events and determining whether they were natural or triggered by a nuclear explosion. The difference was fairly simple for experts to discern. In an earthquake, seismic activity was slow at first and then steadily intensified as tectonic plates scraped against one another. But when a nuclear blast occurred, the seismic activity would be incredibly intense at first and then would slow down over a few minutes.

  Which one had just happened at Hamadan? David didn’t know, but he had to get Langley checking. Taking a risk, he decided to use his Nokia to send an encrypted message back to Zalinsky and Fischer. There was a slight chance that the encrypted message would be picked up—not read but noticed—by Iranian intelligence, since it was being sent from an area so close to the epicenter of the quake. But it was a risk he had to take. He typed quickly.

  FLASH TRAFFIC—PRIORITY ALPHA: Request immediate focus on Hamadan earthquake. Stop. Possible nuclear test. Stop. Check IMS/IDC data. Stop. Request immediate CP pass. Stop. Possible link to death of Saddaji. Stop. Also: indications that TTI recruiting army of 10,000 mujahideen. Stop. Source close to TTI says plan is to “annihilate” Tel Aviv, DC, New York, and LA. Stop. Working to get more details. Stop. Will call secure when I can. Stop. Out.

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  Zalinsky was getting frustrated again.

  The Saddaji news had been useful. But was David Shirazi actually suggesting the Iranians had just conducted a nuclear test—the first in the country’s history—in Hamadan, of all places? The notion was ridiculous. The Iranians had their Shahrokhi Air Base about thirty miles north of the city. But they certainly didn’t have nuclear facilities in or around Hamadan.

  Then came the audacity of Zephyr’s suggestion that the United States Air Force dispatch its high-tech WC-135 “nuclear test–sniffing plane”—code-named CP for Constant Phoenix—over Iran. Did he really think the secretary of defense and the joint chiefs of staff were going to authorize an expensive flyover of a hostile country amid such a delicate diplomatic dance with the Iranians? Based on what? speculation? guesses? gut instincts? Zalinsky could just imagine the dressing-down he’d receive from the higher-ups within the CIA, at the Pentagon, and at the White House when the air sample data sent from Constant Phoenix to the Air Force Technical Applications Center at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida came back negative. No radiation. No evidence of a nuclear test whatsoever. He’d be a laughingstock.

  What’s more, “Reza Tabrizi’s” interest in TTI, presumably the Twelfth Imam, was a distraction. It worried Zalinsky, and it disrupted the controlled and careful tone with which he wanted this operation to be carried out. The kid seemed to think this religious fervor was going to boil over into drastic events any minute, but Zalinsky wasn’t convinced anything new was happening in the hearts of these madmen. They were on a steady course to develop nuclear weapons, and his team needed to remain on a steady course to stop them, not to act rashly.

  75

  It was almost 10 p.m. when Birjandi’s door finally opened.

  David, devouring his third book on Shia eschatology from the old man’s shelves, watched him make his way slowly to the kitchen.

  “Wo
uld you like some help?” he asked, setting a hefty tome aside.

  “Yes, son, that would be very kind.”

  Together, they made a pot of tea and set out a plate of naan, Iranian bread that was a favorite of David’s. He was anxious to ask his host about the Twelfth Imam, the earthquake, Iran’s weapons program, and a thousand other things. But as David carried the tray to the study and the two sat down together, he sensed the man was not quite ready to talk about such things. He had to be patient, he reminded himself. He had to pace himself. This was a source and a potentially high-value one at that. He needed to build a relationship, some camaraderie, some trust. Above all, he had to be careful not to offend the man. Birjandi had been described by many as a recluse. David needed to find a way to open him up.

  He smiled as Dr. Birjandi popped a sugar cube in his mouth and then began sipping his tea. It was just the way his father used to drink tea. He hadn’t seen his father do it in many years, but somehow watching Birjandi made David feel homesick. He missed his father, worried for his mother, and felt a sudden hunger for home that surprised him. He looked out the window at the quiet suburban street and saw a young family walking past, the man a few strides ahead of the woman and several children running around them. They sat in silence for a while, and Birjandi seemed to enjoy the quiet. And then, as David took a piece of bread and began to chew it slowly, he had an idea.

  “May I ask you a question, sir?” he began.

  “Of course,” the old man said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Were you ever in love?”

  Dr. Birjandi cleared his throat in surprise. “That was not a question I was expecting when Abdol said you wanted to come over to meet me.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that—”