Joel Rosenberg - The Twelfth Imam

If you can’t get together, or if you don’t want to, I’ll certainly understand. And I’m sorry for rambling on like this. I didn’t mean to. I just meant to say I’d like to see you again if possible. It would be good to catch up and tell you things I should have said earlier, if you’re okay with that. Thanks, and please say hi to your folks for me.

She closed the letter by including her mobile number and her e-mail address, then signed her name. No “Your friend, Marseille” nor “Sincerely yours, Marseille.” And there was certainly no “Love, Marseille.”

Just “Marseille.”

Still, she had written. And her letter was actually friendly. She didn’t seem to be trying to drive the knife deeper into his heart, which came as no small measure of relief. To the contrary, she wanted to see him again. David could hardly believe it.

He read the letter again and then a third time, though he had memorized it after the first pass. He was glad to hear she’d gone to college, glad she had a dear friend she cared so much about that she was willing to travel across the country to be with her on her special day. But he felt terrible for the loss of her father. Marseille and Mr. Harper had been so close for so long. Now she was all alone in the world. She didn’t sound bitter, though she did say her life had been “difficult” and “complicated” and “painful” in ways too hard to write about. David wondered what other sadnesses had befallen her in the years since he’d seen her last.

It was hard to describe his own emotions at that moment. He turned and looked out the window at the darkness below and felt a lump forming in his throat. He had missed Marseille for so long, and he had eventually given up hope of ever hearing from her, much less seeing her again. To suddenly know that she was alive, that she was as well as could be expected under the circumstances, that she thought of him fondly and even that she missed him meant the world to him.

It was all good, amazingly good, except for one problem: Marseille was coming to Syracuse in less than a month, and as far as she knew, he had completely blown her off. He hadn’t known about the letter or the invitation or the visit. But she didn’t know that. All she knew was that he hadn’t even had the decency to write or call or e-mail back and say, “Good to hear from you, but I’m afraid I’ll be in Iran that weekend.” Or “Thanks for the note, but I wouldn’t want to see you again if there was a gun to my head.” Or “You’ve got to be kidding me. You blow me off for how long, and now you want to have coffee?” Or “Thursday works for me, and by the way, are you seeing anyone?”

Something- anything -would have been better than nothing. But she hadn’t heard from him at all in nearly two months. He felt terrible. He had to fix this, and fast.

Negev Desert, Israel

Captain Avi Yaron muted his radio and closed his eyes.

“Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha olam,” he prayed, “she hehiyanu v’kiy’manu v’higi’anu la z’man ha ze.”

Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.

With that, he throttled up his engines, carefully veered his F-15 out of its underground bunker, taxied onto the tarmac, and waited for clearance. Behind him, thirty-seven more F-15s and F-16s fueled up, revved up, and got in line. This was it. The night for which they had been waiting, preparing, and hoping over the past six months.

Yaron looked out at the beehive of activity across Hatzerim Air Force Base, not far from the ancient city of Beersheva, in the heart of the Negev Desert. Most people who knew anything about the place thought of Hatzerim as the home of the Israeli Air Force Museum. Only a handful of people even in Israel knew the IAF had been secretly retrofitting the facilities to house several new air attack wings.

Yaron’s hands were jittery. Were the intel guys right? Was there really a narrow window when neither Russian nor American spy satellites were in position to watch them? How could they really know precisely what time that window opened and shut?

He hated to wait. He was desperate to fly, desperate to engage the enemy, drop his ordnance, and save his people. But life in the Israeli Air Force these days seemed all about waiting. The pilots waited for the green light from the commanders. The commanders waited for the generals. The generals waited for the minister of defense. The defense minister waited for the prime minister. The prime minister waited for the president of the United States.

What if they waited too long? What if Iran got the Bomb and set into motion another holocaust?

The time for waiting was over, Yaron believed. It was time to strike first.

He checked his instruments. Everything was ready, as was he, and as he waited for permission to launch, his thoughts drifted to Yossi, his twin brother. He checked his watch. He could picture Yossi in his F-16 at that very moment, taxiing out to the tarmac at Ramat David Air Base in the north, not far from Har Megiddo, from whose name came the term Armageddon. He wished he could shout a shalom to him, but radio silence was the rule of the day, and it was inviolable.

Just then the ground crew gave him the signal. It was go time.

Yaron didn’t hesitate. He put the pedal to the metal and took his Strike Eagle to forty-eight thousand feet in less than a minute. Behind him, the skies filled with fighter jets, long-range bombers, and fuel tankers. A devastating armada had just been unleashed for the twelve-hundred-kilometer flight, the longest mission in which any of these young pilots, navigators, and weapons systems officers had ever been engaged.

Tehran, Iran

The Bell 214 Huey took off just after evening prayers.

As it gained altitude, the Iranian military helicopter gently banked north and headed for the Alborz Mountains, site of the Supreme Leader’s heavily guarded retreat complex on Mount Tochal. At 3,965 meters, Tochal was the second-highest peak in the range and was well away from the smog and the noise and the congestion of the capital and from all the palace intrigues and political machinations that increasingly vied for his attention and sapped his strength.

Haunted by growing fears of an imminent Israeli attack, the graying, bespectacled Hamid Hosseini, now seventy-six, looked out over the twinkling lights of Tehran, a city of eight and a half-million souls. He had never imagined rising to the heights of his master. He had never sought to be the nation’s Supreme Leader. But now a great burden rested on Hosseini’s shoulders. He wished he could sit with his master and pray and seek Allah’s counsel together, as they had done on so many occasions over the years. But it was not to be. There was a time in a man’s life when he no longer had the blessing of his mentor’s attention or wisdom or even his presence, a time when a man had to make fateful decisions on his own, come what may. This was one such moment, and Hosseini steeled himself for what lay ahead.

Upon landing at the retreat site, an aide slipped the Supreme Leader a note, informing him that his guests were waiting for him in the dining room. Hosseini read the note but would not be rushed. Flanked by his security detail, he headed first for his master bedroom, instructed the aide to give him some time alone, then closed the door and sat on the bed.

His mind was flooded with questions. They had all been asked and answered before, some of them dozens of times. But they had to be asked once more. Were they truly ready? How long would it take? Were they certain they would be successful? Could they guarantee complete secrecy? Moreover, if they were discovered before they were ready, could they survive the repercussions?