The Tehran Initiative (18 page)

She wasn’t especially political, but she didn’t trust Jackson. She sensed weakness in him or, more precisely, an odd combination of arrogance and indecisiveness. He acted like he understood the Muslim world, but did he really? He said he would never let US national security interests in the Middle East be threatened, but was that really true? Why wasn’t he doing anything to stop the rise of the Twelfth Imam? Why wasn’t he doing something decisive to stop the rise of this new Caliphate? Why hadn’t he done more to stop Iran from getting the Bomb? Now that they did have the Bomb, was he going to do something? Anything? Now that he’d almost been killed—presumably by Mideast terrorists, if the early media reports were accurate—was he going to retaliate?

She didn’t want another war in the Middle East. Nobody she knew did. But America was under attack and being run out of the region. America’s leaders looked weak and feckless. That didn’t strike Marseille as a formula for peace. It struck her as blood in the water, and she was certain the enemies of the United States could smell it and were preparing to strike again. Was there any doubt that the Iranians were going to use the Bomb now that they had it? Not in her mind. At the very least, she figured they would give some of their nukes to Hamas or Hezbollah or al Qaeda or some other terrorist group to attack Israel and the United States. It was just a matter of time. Why wasn’t the president doing anything to stop that?

She suddenly realized she was thinking like her father—like both of her parents, actually. That’s how they used to talk around the dinner table when she was growing up, she recalled. They were always interested in her classes and her plays and musicals and the boys that caught her eye. They always seemed to have time to listen to her, and they loved to encourage her and came to every school event or activity to which she invited them. But their world was geopolitics and economics. They were always quizzing her on the names of countries, the names of their leaders, the names of their currencies. They were forever teaching her obscure little tidbits of history.
Who was the head of the KGB under Brezhnev?
Yuri Andropov.
Yasser Arafat claimed to be born in Jerusalem, but he wasn’t. Where was he really born?
Cairo.
What was another name by which Arafat was known?
Abu Ammar.
What world leader was recorded in the
Guinness Book of World Records
for having the largest funeral in history?
The Ayatollah Khomeini, with nearly twelve million people attending.
Where was he buried?
In Qom, the religious capital of Iran.
What’s the Turkish currency called?
The lira.
What’s the Iraqi currency called?
The dinar.
What’s the largest country in Africa?
Sudan.
What’s the most beautiful city in France?
Paris, she would always say, but her parents always said Marseille.

She wondered what her father would have been thinking if he were still alive, and she felt a lump forming in her throat. What would he have advised the president to do about the Twelfth Imam? What would he have advised the president to say to Israel? Had he ever had that chance? she wondered. Had he ever met an American president while working for the CIA under the guise of working for the State Department?

Shifting gears, she checked her watch, then set up her laptop, logged on to the hotel’s wireless network, and clicked over to the Weather Channel’s website. The lead headline did not bode well: “Monster Storm Rips through Midwest, Northwest: 125 Million Americans Affected, 10,000 Domestic Flights Canceled, Governors of 16 States Declare Emergencies.” Portland, she read, had been hit with more than a foot and a half of snow overnight. Winds were gusting up to fifty and sixty miles an hour, making temperatures feel subzero and bringing the city to a complete standstill. Denver had more than two feet of snow, as did Chicago. Forecasters said more was coming over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. She wasn’t getting home. That much was clear.

So was her next step. It was now a few minutes after 9:00 a.m. So she picked up the phone in her room, dialed nine, and then dialed Langley.

“CIA switchboard. How may I direct your call?”

“Yes, I’m trying to track down a gentleman who works there by the name of Jack Zalinsky.”

“One moment, please.”

Marseille’s pulse quickened. Was she really about to talk to the man who had saved her parents’ life? She had so many questions for him. Would he be willing to give her answers? Would he even be allowed to?

The receptionist came back on the line. “I’m sorry, but we have no one by that name.”

Caught off guard, Marseille tried to keep the woman on the line. “How about John Zalinsky or possibly James?”

“I’m sorry, nothing.”

“Could I have the personnel department?”

“Sure, one moment and I’ll transfer you.”

That, however, was a dead end as well. She explained who she was and how her family knew Mr. Zalinsky, but the young man in the personnel office said he was looking in the Agency’s database, and there had never been anyone there by that name.

21

Oakton, Virginia

It was true, Najjar thought.

War was coming. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know when. But the Lord was calling him to warn his people and tell them the truth. That much he knew. He also knew the Lord Jesus was coming back soon, which meant he had to move fast.

Najjar was fully awake now. All fear had left him, as had all fatigue. He was pacing his room again, trying to come up with a plan. Was he supposed to go back to Iran? Was that what the Lord wanted? He would be arrested immediately upon arrival at Imam Khomeini International Airport. Maybe the Lord wanted to use his trial for him to speak to his nation. But what if the trial wasn’t televised? What if the war started before the trial did? Was it faith or foolishness to put his fate into the hands of the Iranian intelligence services? And what about his family? Was he really going to leave them behind? He loved Sheyda more than life itself. He was willing to obey Jesus no matter what. Still, something in his spirit didn’t feel right. He didn’t really believe the Lord was asking him to leave them. What, then? How was he supposed to proceed?

* * *

Arlington, Virginia

Frustrated, Marseille googled
Jack Zalinsky CIA
.

Nothing.

She tried
John Zalinsky
and
James Zalinsky
. Still nothing. She tried
J. Zalinsky
and other possible spellings of
Zalinsky
but still found nothing. Something didn’t add up. She was absolutely certain she had the correct name. She had written it in her diary the same day David told her the story long ago when they were teenagers.

She looked up from her laptop and out the window at a line of planes on approach to Reagan National Airport. The morning was dark and gray. A light freezing rain was pelting the capital and building up a thin sheet of ice on the roads and on her window.

She could still recall begging David to tell her the story of how their parents had met in revolutionary Iran in 1979 and how their parents had helped each other during their escape when the Shah was toppled and Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power and the American Embassy was captured and its staff taken hostage. Her parents had been annoyingly resistant to talking about that period of their lives, even though she’d asked them time and time again for more details. At that point, she knew only the basics—that at the age of twenty-six, her father, Charlie Harper, had been a junior political officer for the State Department, fluent in Farsi, newly assigned to the US Embassy in Tehran in September 1979. She knew her mom, Claire, had been an assistant to the economic attaché at the embassy. She also knew her parents were then newlyweds in a new country, full of adventure with no kids, no debts, and lots of freedom. In the first few months in Tehran, they’d become friends with their next-door neighbors, Mohammad and Nasreen Shirazi. He was an up-and-coming cardiologist with his own clinic. Nasreen had worked for the Iranian Foreign Ministry under the Shah as a translator and later became a translator at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran. But that was it. That was all they would say.

She’d been electrified when she discovered that the Shirazis’ youngest son knew the rest of the story, and to this day—despite all they’d been through—she still vividly recalled David’s kindness at finally telling her the story that her parents had never shared.

He’d begun by explaining how Marseille’s mother had vetoed at least three different plans that the CIA and the State Department had drawn up, schemes that in her view ranged from the impracticable to the suicidal, and to Marseille’s amazement, he explained how her father had actually devised the plan that was finally accepted and executed. The Harpers and the Shirazis, along with the other American FSOs, would be given false Canadian passports. This would take a special, secret act of the parliament in Ottawa, since the use of false passports for espionage was expressly forbidden by Canadian law. They would also be given false papers that identified them as film producers from Toronto working on a new big-budget motion picture titled
Argo
, set in the Middle East, in conjunction with a major Hollywood studio. Their cover story would be that they were in Iran scouting locations. The CIA would set up a front company in Los Angeles called Studio Six, complete with fully operational offices, working phone lines, and notices in the trade papers announcing casting calls and other elements of preproduction. The Americans and the Shirazis would then further develop and refine all the details of their cover stories, commit them to memory, and rehearse them continually. Eventually, the CIA would send in an operative named Jack Zalinsky to go over the final details and to see if they were ready for any interrogation they might encounter. When the time was right, Zalinsky would take the team to the airport and try to get them through passport control without getting caught—and hanged.

“You’re saying my father came up with this idea?” Marseille remembered asking David when he was finished.

“Actually, your mom helped quite a bit,” he’d replied.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “How would my parents even know . . . ?”

She closed her eyes, and it was as though she were fifteen all over again. She could hear the wind rustling through the pines and see the dark thunderclouds gathering overhead. She could still feel the temperature dropping as the next storm front came in, and she would never forget any detail of the dilapidated A-frame cabin they’d found in the woods, their own private hideaway from their fathers and David’s brothers and the others during the days they spent in the north.

David had explained that D-day was set for January 28, 1980.

“Zalinsky got the team to the main airport in Tehran. They were going through passport control, and my parents were absolutely terrified. They weren’t convinced your parents’ plan was going to work. But your father and Mr. Zalinsky kept insisting that if the tickets and passports said they were Canadians, then the guards at the airport would accept it. And they did. So before Khomeini’s thugs knew what was happening, your parents, mine, and the others were taking their seats on board Swissair flight 363, heading for Toronto via Geneva.”

Marseille felt her eyes misting. She had finally gotten the story she’d always wanted to hear, but she had never been able to talk about it with her mom. That very Tuesday morning when their fishing party was supposed to be picked up from the island in the middle of the desolate Gouin Reservoir, deep in the interior of the province of Quebec, had been September 11, 2001. Under orders from Osama bin Laden, nineteen Middle Eastern terrorists had hijacked four American civilian jetliners. They’d flown two of those planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Marseille’s mother had worked in the South Tower and had perished in the attack.

She’d never been able to talk about it with her father, either. After his wife’s death, he had emotionally imploded, quit his job, sold their family home in Spring Lake, New Jersey, and moved them to his parents’ farm just outside of Portland. She’d never seen her friends again. She’d been forbidden to have any contact with David. She’d lost not only her mother but her childhood and her past, and it had left a gaping wound from which Marseille had never fully healed. And then her father had committed suicide—on September 11, just last year—and she was essentially all alone in the world. Free from her father’s consuming and debilitating pain, but alone nonetheless.

Now she was on a personal quest of sorts to make sense of it all, to get answers, to find closure, and to figure out where she was going to go from here. Reconnecting with David was part of the journey. She didn’t think she’d have had the courage to reach out to him on her own. But then fate stepped in. A wedding was planned. Her best friend from college wanted her to be a bridesmaid. In Syracuse, of all places. It gave her a reason to see David again after all these years, and to her astonishment and relief, he had graciously accepted her invitation. It was a step, and a good one. But that was not all.

Unraveling the mystery of her father’s secretive past had to be part of the quest as well. After his death, she had taken care of his estate and sifted through his personal papers. In doing so, she had come across a key to a safe-deposit box she’d never known he had at a bank in downtown Portland. Upon opening the box, she’d been surprised to find it empty but for one yellow piece of paper. Written on CIA stationery was a letter of commendation for Charles Harper for his valor under fire in Iran. It mentioned the crisis of 1979, thanked him for his crucial work for the Agency, and was signed,
Tom Murray, Director of the Near East Division
. She had shown it to David at breakfast that morning. She had wanted his thoughts, his advice, but they’d been interrupted by an emergency call from his boss, and suddenly he’d had to leave.

Marseille reached into her pocketbook and pulled the paper out again. She’d memorized it by this point, but she read it again several times. Then she turned back to her laptop and googled
Tom Murray CIA
and was stunned by what she found: Thomas A. Murray was not only alive and in Washington, but he was still on active duty at the CIA and was now the deputy director for operations.