Joel Rosenberg - The Twelfth Imam

“Malik knows?”

“We’ll see, but he’s our best shot.”

“So how do we find him?”

“At the moment, I have no idea,” David admitted. “Do you?”

“No,” Zalinsky said. “But I’m going to put a special ops force on standby. If you can find him, we need him alive. Get him to a private airstrip; use any means necessary. We’ll get him out. I promise.”

“Any means?” David asked, just to be clear.

Zalinsky wasn’t taking any chances. “Any means necessary,” he repeated, and the line went dead.

Najjar was worried as he entered the tiny motel room.

He put down the bag of groceries he was holding, then quickly locked the door behind him and pulled the drapes shut. He kept telling himself he was supposed to be “strong and courageous,” but the truth was that fear was getting the better of him. If the Israelis could get to Dr. Saddaji, they could certainly get to him. The Americans couldn’t be far behind. And how soon until Iranian intelligence began suspecting he was on the run? Maybe they knew already.

Four days had gone by since they’d arrived in Tehran. Najjar had been crisscrossing the city looking for a Bible for him to read with his wife and mother-in-law. Everywhere he went, he heard footsteps behind him. He feared someone was waiting for him around every corner. At any moment, he imagined a car would come screeching to a halt, and men with guns and masks would jump out, seizing him and putting a bullet through his skull or forcing him into the trunk to be taken somewhere and beheaded. He’d seen it happen to others. He had no doubt they could do it to him. Every time he came back to the motel room, he feared Sheyda and Farah and the baby would either be dead on the floor with their killers waiting for him or bound and waiting to be killed in front of his eyes.

Najjar was haunted by the sober, bitter truth that he was a target, and thus so was his family. And the two women he loved were still haunted by the sudden and horrific death of Dr. Saddaji, a man they practically regarded as a saint. At some point, Najjar would have to tell them the truth, but he couldn’t do so now. Sheyda and Farah were grieving. It was natural. He didn’t blame them for it. It could hardly be otherwise. But Najjar worried it was only a matter of time before they were going to ask why he wasn’t shedding tears over the loss.

Sheyda still had no idea her father had been the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Farah hadn’t the foggiest notion her husband had been planning a second holocaust while working for a regime that denied the first had ever even happened. Neither of the women had any idea that Dr. Saddaji’s laptop-the one Najjar had stolen out of his home office and now had hidden in the motel closet-contained details about Iranian weapons. Was he actually going to tell them? He couldn’t imagine how.

“Did you find a charger for your phone?” Sheyda asked as Najjar unpacked fresh-baked bread, cheese, pomegranates, and some bottles of water.

“Yes,” he told her, coming over to kiss her on the forehead. “But that’s not all-look.”

He pulled out a copy of the Bible in Farsi, and his wife lit up instantly.

She immediately took the Bible from his hands, kissed it, and examined it with great reverence. After a moment, she looked at Najjar. “Where did you get this?”

He grinned. “You’ll never believe me.”

“Tell us,” Sheyda said, her face filled with joy.

“I was coming back to the motel after visiting five different bookstores. No one admitted to having a Bible, and I was becoming convinced I’d never find one. I was praying and asking Jesus to help me, but I kept getting more and more discouraged. But then I stopped by an electronics shop to pick up a charger for the phone. The owner took one look at me and said, ‘I have what you want.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘I have what you’re looking for.’ I told him I was looking for a cell phone charger, and he said, ‘Yes, yes, but I have your other item as well.’ By now I was totally confused. He left me standing there and disappeared into the back somewhere, and when he returned, he was holding this Bible. I tell you, I almost turned around and ran out of the shop! He told me his family had been followers of Jesus for several years but had never had a Bible of their own until just a few weeks ago, when he received a shipment of electronics supplies for the store. Hidden in the bottom of the box were two Bibles. He took one home and had been praying about what to do with the other one, when just before I came into the store, he felt the Lord speaking to his heart that the next customer would be looking for a Bible. And a second later, I walked in.”

“Thank You, Jesus!” Sheyda said, tears in her eyes. “I can hardly believe it!”

“I said you wouldn’t,” Najjar said.

“Would you read to us, Mother?” Sheyda asked as the baby began to cry. Sheyda picked her up from the bed to nurse her again.

“Yes, of course,” Farah said. “Let me find those passages Jesus told us to read. Deuteronomy 14 was one of them, right?”

“Actually, it was chapter 13,” Sheyda said.

Najjar was eager to hear the words from the Bible, but he took a moment to plug in his phone, thinking he should check his voice messages. Then he sliced open several pomegranates in their little kitchenette and shared them with Sheyda and Farah. None of them had had much of an appetite for the past few days. But the fruit tasted wonderful and picked up their spirits.

Farah, meanwhile, turned to the table of contents. She had never seen a Bible in her life and had certainly never held one. None of them had. But after a few minutes of fumbling through the pages, Farah found the chapter and began reading.

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.”

Sheyda listened to the words and turned to her husband. “Those verses are speaking to you, don’t you think?”

“They could be,” he replied.

“Of course they are. When the Twelfth Imam appeared to you those times as a boy, he was predicting your future, right?”

Najjar nodded.

“And those predictions came true.”

Najjar nodded again.

“But that doesn’t mean the Twelfth Imam was speaking for God, right?” Sheyda continued. “Just the opposite-the Twelfth Imam was trying to take you away from the Bible, away from the One True God. But Jesus was merciful to you. He appeared to you to counter the Twelfth Imam, and now He’s explaining to you that He was testing you back then.”

“But I failed the test,” Najjar said. “I followed Islam all those years. I believed in the Twelfth Imam all those years.”

“But you don’t now, my love,” Sheyda said, comforting him. “Now you know the Twelfth Imam is a false prophet, because God has opened your eyes. And I think He is calling you for something very important.”

“What’s that?”

“I think you’re supposed to help people understand what’s true and what isn’t so they have the chance to be set free as well.”

Najjar wasn’t sure about that. He hoped she was right. But at the moment he was so filled with regret for the life he had lived for so many years-so many wasted, lost years-that it was hard to think of anything else.