Joel Rosenberg - The Twelfth Imam

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.”

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.