Joel Rosenberg - The Twelfth Imam

Fortunately, he cleared passport control without being asked any questions. At that moment, his first instinct was to call Marseille and explain the delay in getting back to her. But he couldn’t use his new Nokia cell phone. It was carefully monitored by his friends back at Langley, and this was not a call he wanted Jack Zalinsky or anyone else at NSA or the CIA to track. As he headed to baggage claim, he walked past banks of pay phones and was tempted to stop and use one of them. But this, he hoped, wasn’t going to be a quick call, and Eva was waiting for him beyond customs.

Eva Fischer.

The very name suddenly confused David. For starters, of course, Eva wasn’t even her real name. It was an alias. Neither she nor Zalinsky, he realized, had ever given him her real name. So who was she? Where was she really from? What was she really all about?

Twenty-four hours earlier, Eva had been consuming an awful lot of his thoughts. He’d been looking forward to going to Starbucks with her, to attending a week of briefings with her, to going into Tehran with her, to getting to know her better. He still was, but now it was complicated. How could he even consider a relationship with her if there was a possibility of reconnecting with Marseille? Then again, was that really a possibility? He hadn’t heard from Marseille in years. Who knew what she wanted to talk about? She could be engaged. She could be married. She could have children. And what was all that about church in her note? Had she become religious? Was that why she wanted him to go to church with her back in Syracuse? It made no sense, but then again…

“Mr. Tabrizi, Mr. Tabrizi, over here!”

It took a moment for David to hear the name and realize it was supposed to be his . He turned and saw Eva smiling and waving at him through the enormous crowd in the Dubai International terminal, all waiting for their loved ones just beyond the secure doors. His first thought was that despite being much more modestly dressed than back in Virginia, she looked great, sporting a beautiful green headscarf and a full-length brown dress that covered her legs and her arms. His second thought was that this looked like a woman preparing to head into Iran, not to Starbucks. Nevertheless, he smiled and waved back and was surprised to see her eyes light up with anticipation as they met his.

“Welcome to Dubai, Mr. Tabrizi,” she said, being careful not to shake his hand or have any physical contact whatsoever since they were neither married nor related.

“Thank you, Ms. Fischer. Please, call me Reza,” he replied.

“If you insist. And call me Eva,” she said. “How was your flight?”

He couldn’t begin to tell her. “Too long. But it’s good to finally be here. Do you have a car for me to go to the hotel?”

“Actually, I’m afraid we have a change of plans,” Eva explained, picking up her own suitcase and garment bag.

“What do you mean?”

“You got my text, right?” she asked, handing him his new itinerary. “We’re heading to Tehran.”

“When?”

“Next flight.”

Stunned, David read the paper in his hands. She wasn’t kidding. They were booked on Emirates Airlines flight 975, departing Dubai at 12:10 a.m. and landing in Tehran two hours and ten minutes later. He glanced at his watch. It was already 10:56 p.m. They had to move quickly.

“I don’t understand,” he said as he scooped up his own bags and followed Eva back into a security line. “What’s going on?”

“Last night, the Israelis launched more than four hundred warplanes at Greece in what looks like a massive test run for a strike against Iran,” Eva whispered.

“Four hundred?” David whispered back. “That’s almost half their fleet.”

“Exactly. The Iranians are freaked out.”

“And that’s why we’re going in?”

“Not entirely.”

“Then what?”

“Abdol Esfahani’s office called. He wants to meet us for breakfast.”

Esfahani was a key executive at Iran Telecom and the point man for operationalizing the new contract with Munich Digital Systems. It wasn’t a meeting they could easily blow off, but David wasn’t convinced he and Eva were ready to go into Iran quite yet. Where was Zalinsky? How could he have signed off on such a rapid departure? They were supposed to work here in Dubai for the week. They were supposed to refine their plan, set clear goals, and establish contingencies in case things went wrong, as too often they did. But how much planning could Jack and Eva have actually done without him, given that all weekend she had been with… whom?

“So,” he asked casually, “how was Berlin?”

“Uh, great,” she said, hesitating ever so slightly. “But not nearly long enough, you know?”

With that, David realized Eva hadn’t actually been in Berlin. She had come straight to Dubai with Zalinsky. That was fine, of course. She was the boss. She didn’t answer to him. But how and when exactly was she supposed to fill him in on the plan she and Jack had cooked up? They certainly wouldn’t be free to talk on the flight in, and they’d be trailed by intelligence operatives from the minute they hit the ground in Tehran. This was too big of an operation to rush. The stakes were too high. But they were rushing into it anyway. Why?

And then his thoughts shifted to Marseille and his anxiety spiked again. He couldn’t exactly call her from Tehran.

Hamadan, Iran

Najjar got home around 2 a.m. and found the lights on.

Sheyda was asleep on the couch with their tiny daughter snuggled beside her. He slipped off his shoes, quietly set his keys on the kitchen table, put a blanket over his wife and child, and stared at them for a while. They looked so peaceful, so innocent. Did they have any idea of the evil rising around them?

He turned off the lights in the living room and kitchen and stepped into the spare bedroom he used for a home office and library. Switching on his desk lamp, he cleared off his cluttered desk and found a stack of books his father-in-law had lent him several months before but that he had been too busy to read. The one on the top was titled The Awaited Saviour. It was written by Baqir al-Sadr and Murtada Mutahhari, both Shia ayatollahs. Taking the volume in hand, Najjar turned to the prologue and began to read.

A figure more legendary than that of the Mahdi, the Awaited Saviour, has not been seen in the history of mankind. The threads of the world events have woven many a fine design in human life, but the pattern of the Mahdi stands high above every other pattern. He has been the vision of the visionaries in history. He has been the dream of all the dreamers of the world. For the ultimate salvation of mankind he is the Pole Star of hope on which the gaze of humanity is fixed. The Qur’anic prophecy of the inevitable victory of Islam will be realized following the advent of the Mahdi, who will fight the wrong, remedy the evils, and establish a world order based on the Islamic teachings of justice and virtue. Thereafter there will be only one religion and one government in the world.

Najjar continued reading throughout the night. The more he read, the more convinced he became that the arrival of the Twelfth Imam and establishment of his caliphate, or kingdom, was imminent. Were not the signs, described by Shia sages throughout the centuries, coming to pass day by day? The world was becoming more and more corrupt. The global economy was in collapse. A great war was being fought between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The land of Taliqan-an ancient name for a region of Afghanistan-was consumed by war and poverty. Terrible earthquakes were occurring in ever-increasing number and intensity. Apostasy was spreading within Islam. Civil wars and uprisings were prevalent.