Joel Rosenberg - The Twelfth Imam

As bin Laden approached his sixteenth birthday in 1973-and underwent a massive growth spurt that left him six feet six inches tall and 160 pounds-the young jihadist-to-be was again stunned and horrified to see the Muslims of Egypt and Syria decisively defeated by the Jews of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Now the Muslim Brotherhood argument made even more sense: Muslims were being humiliated by the Israelis because they had lost their way. They had forgotten the path of the prophets. How could they ever regain the glory that had once been theirs unless they returned to the teachings of the Qur’an with all that they were?

Often, David lay awake at night, poring over the pieces of bin Laden’s life. He wanted to know this man inside and out. He wanted to be able to pick out his voice in a crowd. He wanted to be able to recognize him at a glance. He wanted to be able to think like him, talk like him, move like him. It was the only possible way, David decided, of penetrating al Qaeda and being drawn into the inner circle, which in turn was the only way of bringing this monster to justice. And what struck David again and again was how young bin Laden had been when he had begun to make his choices.

Bin Laden was just sixteen, David realized, when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and began reading the collected works of radical Sunni author Sayyid Qutb. He was only seventeen when he got married for the first time, to a devout fourteen-year-old Muslim girl who was a cousin of his from Syria. What’s more, bin Laden was only in his young twenties when Ayatollah Khomeini led his Islamic Revolution to victory in Iran in 1979, an event that electrified Sunni radicals who disagreed with Khomeini’s Shia theology but loved his tactics and envied his accomplishments.

During these formative years, David noticed, bin Laden had wrestled with hard questions. Why had he been born? What was the meaning of life? Was his father right-was life about building empires, making billions, and marrying as many women as he possibly could? Or was there something more? What if man was born not to please himself, but to please Allah? What if the path to eternal life and happiness was not in a comfortable life but in a life of jihad?

David despised every choice bin Laden had made. But at the tender age of sixteen, David was beginning to understand why those choices had been made. And it began to make his own choices that much easier.

Montgomery, Alabama

June 2002

Zalinsky pulled up alongside David as he was walking down Main Street.

“Get in,” he told his young protégé.

Glad to see Zalinsky, David complied immediately. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

David knew Zalinsky had been tracking him closely. Just days after David had enrolled in the private boys’ academy in Alabama to finish his high school diploma, he’d found a program installed on his laptop that allowed Zalinsky to read all of his incoming and outgoing e-mails and instant message conversations and to track all Internet usage. He knew the agent had tapped his cell phone and undoubtedly had someone recording his calls and listening to many of them, especially those with his parents and his brothers. He was even aware of a young operative enrolling at the same academy, posing as a transfer student, going to all of the same classes as David, talking to many of the same people.

David didn’t mind the scrutiny. Zalinsky wasn’t just watching David’s back and making sure he didn’t get in trouble again. He was carefully monitoring David’s ability to keep a secret. Would he confide in someone-anyone-his plans with Zalinsky? Was he bragging to anyone that he might join the CIA? Was he a security risk in any other way? The fact that the veteran Agency man was finally making contact had to mean that he was sufficiently convinced that David Shirazi could keep his mouth shut.

Soon they were pulling into Montgomery Regional Airport, a joint-use facility for military, commercial, and private aviation. David had been in and out of the airfield several times, usually on a U.S. Airways Express flight. But Zalinsky wasn’t headed for the commercial side. Rather, he pulled his silver Audi alongside a Cessna 560 Citation V, a sleek business jet that seated eight passengers more than comfortably. Minutes later, they were in the air, just the two of them and their two CIA pilots. David still had no idea where they were going, but he didn’t really care. He was relieved to see that Jack Zalinsky was a man of his word and eager to get started.

“First of all, happy graduation,” Zalinsky said when the pilot turned off the seat belt sign.

“Thanks.”

“You’re the youngest prospective candidate in the history of the Agency. You still want in?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Your security check is complete. It was a little challenging to get it done without letting your family and friends know what we were up to. I told my team to ask questions as if you were applying to work at SunTrust Bank.”

“And that worked?”

“Like a charm.” Zalinsky pulled a black file folder from his briefcase, opened it, and set it on a small conference table in the back of the plane. Inside was a stack of false documents.

David picked up the first one on the pile-a birth certificate. “Reza Tabrizi?”

“That will be your alias,” Zalinsky explained. “In Farsi, reza means ‘to consent or accept.’”

“I know what it means,” David replied.

“Of course you do. Well, anyway, you’ll be a German citizen. Your parents moved from Tehran to Munich in 1975 and became citizens. In 1984, they moved to Edmonton, Alberta. You were born and raised in Canada. Your dad worked in the oil sands industry, but he and your mom were killed in a small plane crash just before you graduated from high school. You have no siblings. Your grandparents died when you were young. You never felt like you fit into life in Canada. So after your parents died, you moved to Germany. You bounced around a bit-Bonn, Berlin, and finally to Munich, where your parents were from.”

David studied the dossier that Zalinsky had prepared on his new life.

“My team created a German passport for you. As you get a little older, we’ll help you get a German driver’s license, European credit cards, an apartment, a car, and so forth.”

“What kind?” David asked.

“What kind of what?”

“What kind of car?”

“As we like to say in the Middle East, we’ll blow up that bridge when we get to it,” Zalinsky replied. “But listen, you’ve already been accepted into a college in Germany with this cover. We want you to pursue a degree in computer science from the University of Munich-they call it Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich there, or LMU. You’ll need to finish becoming fluent in Arabic. When you’re done, we want you to get an MBA to finish the cover. We’ll pay for everything, so don’t worry about the cost.”

“But that will take years,” David protested.

“Exactly,” Zalinsky agreed. “When you get to Munich, you’ll join a mosque-a Shia one, obviously, given your background. We want you to become part of the Shia community there. You need to appear to be a practicing Muslim, fluent in the customs and traditions of Shia Islam. Meanwhile, you’ll also start getting martial arts training through the college. In the summers, we’ll have you doing an ‘internship’ overseas. That’s what your friends and professors will hear. You’ll actually be training with us at one of several facilities. When you’re all done and we think you’re ready, we’ll place you in a job with a company doing business in Pakistan and Afghanistan. You’ll have a perfect cover to be traveling in and out of central Asia. Then, if he hasn’t been caught, you’ll begin hunting Osama bin Laden. There’s just one catch.”