The Tehran Initiative (16 page)

18

Brooklyn, New York

Eva shouldn’t have been thinking of David at that moment.

She had far more important matters before her. But she couldn’t help it. The arrest report she was quickly reviewing said the suspect was six feet two inches tall, about 180 pounds, with black curly hair, brown eyes, olive skin, an athletic build, and an apparent Middle Eastern heritage. It made her think of David, to whom she found herself increasingly drawn. She wondered what David thought of her and why, to the best of her knowledge, he wasn’t seeing anyone.

“You ready?” asked Sean Taylor, the FBI agent in charge.

Eva wasn’t, but she said yes. She was letting herself be distracted by a guy, and she cursed herself for it and refocused. Then the massive, vaultlike steel door was electronically unlocked, and she entered the small, cold, barren room alone.

As the locks reengaged behind her, she felt her heart rate quickening. She’d conducted a lot of interrogations over the years, in Baghdad and Fallujah, in Kabul and Marrakesh, at Gitmo and in CIA safe houses around the world. But each encounter had its unique twists. She never knew what was coming. And though she’d never admit it even to her closest colleagues, she got the jitters every time. She didn’t know why exactly. She was in no danger. The suspects were always locked down. This morning there were a dozen armed agents outside the door ready to burst in and help her at any moment. There was just something about being alone in the room with pure evil that she never got used to. She wasn’t a religious person, but sometimes she wondered why not.

The floor of this particular cell, in an unmarked FBI field office in a seedy section of Brooklyn, was tiled with white porcelain, as were the walls. A box about the size of a phone book hung on the far wall, opposite the door. The ceiling was higher than others she’d seen, about twelve feet, with fluorescent lighting and a small video camera recording every sound and movement. That, she reminded herself, had its pluses and minuses.

The suspect was properly shackled and wore a thick black hood and a clean, brand-new orange jumpsuit, like he was already in prison. Wasting no time, Eva stepped behind the man, yanked off the hood, and recoiled at the gruesome mess. She had seen beatings in her years of doing this, but none quite like this. The man’s face was severely bloodied and bruised, as were his arms and hands. His eyes were nearly swollen shut. His hair was matted with blood. He had been under the hood since his capture nearly twelve hours ago. He hadn’t been offered any food or water. He hadn’t been allowed to use a restroom. And for what? Taylor hadn’t gotten a single shred of information out of him and had told Eva to her face that she wasn’t going to get any either. Maybe he was right, but she certainly wasn’t going to follow his lead. It had gotten them nowhere.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Eva began, remaining behind the suspect and not letting him see her face. “We will make sure he has a proper funeral.”

The young man flinched. Eva waited a few moments, letting the words and their meaning sink in. Finally she began talking again, but only in a whisper, just behind his right ear.

“Your brother Rahim was only thirty-two years old. That’s pretty young, isn’t it?”

There was no reply.

“I see Rahim held an Iranian passport. Was employed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Was wanted in six countries—Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Thailand, and Venezuela. We know all about him. We know he was your older brother. We know he recruited you into the Revolutionary Guard. And now you know he was shot dead by the US Secret Service before he even got off a third shot.”

The swollen hands of the unshaven, swarthy young man with jet-black hair and angular features were shaking. Eva wasn’t yet sure if that was sorrow or rage, but she decided to find out.

“Now what about you? We ran your fingerprints through our system and learned quite a bit. We know your name is Navid Yazidi. We know you’re twenty-eight years old. We know you grew up in Tehran. You lived in an apartment on Ghazaeri Street, just off Piruzi, around the corner from Fajr Hospital.”

Eva paused for a moment, then heard Agent Taylor—watching and listening to the proceedings via video from the room directly adjacent to hers—speaking into her earpiece. “His blood pressure is spiking,” Taylor said. “He’s surprised you know all this. Keep going.”

“Even as we speak, Navid, we are sending people to your parents’ apartment to deliver the news of your brother’s death,” Eva said, ignoring Taylor, whom she considered a sadist. “We don’t want them to have to hear it on Al Jazeera.”

* * *

Arlington, Virginia

Marseille turned to the book of Daniel.

The editor’s notes in the margin of her study Bible provided cross-references from 2 Thessalonians 2 to several related passages in the Old Testament book. The first was Daniel 7:25.

He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.

The next was Daniel 8:23-25.

In the latter period of their rule, when the transgressors have run their course, a king will arise, insolent and skilled in intrigue. His power will be mighty, but not by his own power, and he will destroy to an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will; he will destroy mighty men and the holy people.

And through his shrewdness he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence; and he will magnify himself in his heart, and he will destroy many while they are at ease. He will even oppose the Prince of princes.

The third was Daniel 11:36-37.

Then the king will do as he pleases, and he will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will speak monstrous things against the God of gods; and he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done.

He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers or for the desire of women, nor will he show regard for any other god; for he will magnify himself above them all.

Marseille was making notes as fast as she could. As she did, she found herself backing up and reading all the way through Daniel 11 and learned that this future king was described by the prophet as a despicable person who would arise during a time of tranquility and would seize global power by intrigue and by overflowing forces in the End Times. What horrified Marseille most was that Daniel indicated that this future tyrant would eventually “enter the Beautiful Land.” That had to be Israel, she thought. Daniel even wrote that this tyrant would “pitch the tents of his royal pavilion between the seas and the beautiful Holy Mountain.” Did that mean he would set up his global headquarters between the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Mediterranean? At first glance it seemed so. But why would God let that happen? Marseille had no idea. She had been a believer for only a few years. She’d never taken the time to study Bible prophecy, and she felt overwhelmed. One thing, however, was unmistakably clear: this evil dictator, whoever he was, would “go forth with great wrath to destroy and annihilate many.” The only good news Marseille could find came in verse 45: “yet he will come to his end, and no one will help him.” But at the moment, such a promise seemed to offer little solace.

Checking the cross-reference notes again, she turned to Revelation 6:1-4.

Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.

The more Marseille read about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the more fearful she became. For after the white horse bearing a conqueror and the red horse bringing global war came a black horse unleashing global famine and a pale horse with death in so many forms that a fourth of the earth, the text said, would perish. Marseille quickly did the math. If there were nearly seven billion people alive today, that meant something like 1.75 billion people could die in the early years of the Tribulation of which the prophecies spoke. Had that time come? Was the arrival of the Twelfth Imam going to trigger the release of the four horsemen?

She set aside her Bible and notebook and decided to take a break. She ordered some oatmeal with brown sugar and a glass of orange juice from room service and then opened her door to pick up her complimentary copy of
USA Today
, which was waiting in the hallway. Checking the front-page headlines below the fold, she was relieved to see the president was improving and might be released from the hospital in another day or two, though she grieved for the families of the slain Egyptian president and all the others who had perished in the attacks in New York.

As she turned the paper over, she was startled by the lead headline: “Twelfth Imam Miraculously Survives Assassination Attempt, Says Nothing Will Stop Rise of Global Caliphate.” Marseille stared at the large color photo of the unscathed Mahdi carrying a badly burned little boy in his arms. She read how everyone else in the Mahdi’s vehicle and the SUVs in front of him and behind had been killed in the attack; only the Twelfth Imam and the eleven-year-old boy had walked out of the burning wreckage. How was that possible? How had they survived? It made no sense, Marseille thought.

What struck her most, however, were the quotes by the Twelfth Imam toward the end of the article, from the impromptu press conference he had given in Beirut just prior to the attack. “I am calling on all the countries of the world to join the Caliphate. . . . I have come to declare that Islam is the answer to all the world’s ills. . . . Will you truly submit to the will of Allah? Will you live for him? Will you die in his service?”

He added that his would be a purely Islamic government based upon Sharia law. He warned that opposition would not be tolerated and that “to revolt against Allah’s government is to revolt against Allah. And to revolt against Allah has its punishment in our law. . . . It is a heavy punishment.”

The most chilling line of the article was the last, Marseille thought. Asked if he was disappointed that the Israeli prime minister had survived the attack, the Twelfth Imam had simply replied: “The Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation, one way or the other.” The word
annihilation
jumped out at her and drove her again to her knees in prayer.

“What does all this mean, Lord?” she cried out. “What does it mean for me? I’m just a schoolteacher. And hardly a very good one. I feel all alone in the world, Lord, and I fear a great evil is rising. But I love You, and I know You love me. Show me what You want me to do. Please show me what would please You. This is what I want, Father, until You take me home . . . or send Your Son to get me.”

19

Brooklyn, New York

Eva stood behind Navid.

She was still not yet ready for him to see her face. That would come in due time. He was hooked up to all kinds of physiological sensors that were streaming data to the analysts in the next room. They sent her periodic updates through her earpiece, keeping her in control and him guessing.

“We recovered your cell phone, Navid. Prepaid. Disposable. Untraceable. Smart choice. Very smart. Except that you made a little mistake, Navid—just one. But then again, it only takes one.”

“His blood pressure just spiked again,” Agent Taylor said in her ear.

She nodded and kept going. “Now, Navid, I know you want to be a martyr,” she said calmly. “Like your brother. I’m sure you’re very proud of him. I’m sure that you’ve always looked up to him. But he died in action. I oppose everything he stood for and everything he did, obviously. He gave his life for something he believed in. I’ll give him that. You, on the other hand—I’m curious about you. The FBI caught you sitting in a car doing nothing. I mean, presumably you were waiting for the others. You were supposed to drive the getaway car. But you were just sitting there. You didn’t put up a fight. You didn’t try to escape. Of course, you were surrounded by two dozen guys with automatic weapons. But hey, you could have gone down in a hail of gunfire like your brother, shouting,
‘Allahu Akbar!’
I guess I’m just curious why you didn’t.”

She paused a moment, then changed course. “That’s all right. Don’t answer that. We’ll get back to why you gave up so easily in a little while. Let’s focus on your execution.”

“His blood pressure is off the charts now,” Taylor said.

“I’m figuring at this point that you want to go to the electric chair. Heck, you’re probably looking forward to it, which is good, because you will. Believe me, you will die. This is an easy case. You were part of a terrorist team that killed dozens of people, including the president of Egypt. I doubt there will even be an appeal. I give you two weeks, maybe three, before they execute you.”

She was lying, of course. She couldn’t remember the last time the feds had executed anyone with the electric chair. What’s more, she figured they’d be lucky if they could give Navid Yazidi any type of death sentence in less than a decade. More than likely, they would cut him some ridiculous deal in exchange for information. But his reactions were proof he didn’t know any of that. She thought the fact that he was so nervous strongly suggested he’d never seriously considered the prospect of being caught. She guessed he had figured he would likely be killed in action or—more likely, in his mind—somehow slip through the American dragnet and escape capture or punishment entirely because he was a servant of Allah and Allah took care of his own.

Uncertainty clearly unnerved him. So did the prospect of death. That was good. Those were his Achilles’ heels. She needed to exploit them.

“I’m afraid I won’t be there, though, Navid. There’s a lot I can handle, but watching a man be electrocuted to death is not one of them. But you’ll be fine. You want to be a martyr like Rahim, right? You’ll probably be grinning ear to ear when they strap you into the chair.” She stopped talking, and all was quiet, save the hum of the fluorescent lights. She waited awhile for everything to sink in, then continued.