The Tehran Initiative (47 page)

“Roger says you have news.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, what couldn’t wait until morning?”

“We’ve received a report from our man in Iran.”

“Zephyr?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And?”

“He has another senior nuclear scientist in custody—Tariq Khan, nephew of A. Q. Khan, the father of the—”

“—the Pakistani Bomb, yeah, I got it—so what?” the president snapped.

“Khan gave up what he knows—the locations of the warheads, the missiles. We have everything, sir.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it’s all confirmed?”

“Well, we’re working to verify it all now, sir. But several of the key facts he gave us check out 100 percent. And other critical pieces he gave us confirm other inside sources we have. Bottom line: we believe we’ve got what we need, Mr. President.”

“For what?” Jackson asked.

“Well, for an air strike, sir.”

“An air strike?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now the CIA is giving me policy advice.”

“No, sir. I’m just saying that—”

“I know what you’re saying, Mr. . . . What did you say your name was?”

“Murray, sir—Tom Murray.”

“Right, whatever. Listen, I’m the commander in chief. You’re a spy. You give me data. I make the decisions. Not you. Not Langley. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you think I’m going to launch a new war in the Middle East with one source?”

“With all due respect, sir, it’s not just one. It’s the latest one.”

“Right, right, but in terms of nailing down the precise locations of these warheads, how do we know this guy isn’t lying? You tortured him, right?”

“Not exactly.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not, sir. But, yes, Khan was wounded in the operation.”

“Wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Severely, I imagine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In a cross fire?”

“No, sir.”

“By one of our agents?”

“Yes.”

“Tortured, then.”

“Disabled.”

“Disabled?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have a full report for you in the morning. The point is—”

“The point is he would have said anything to keep this Zephyr guy from putting a bullet through his head.”

“As I said, Mr. President, many of the key details have already been verified or corroborate what we know from completely independent, unrelated sources. And as the director’s memo to you earlier today stated, the evidence is mounting that the Twelfth Imam is preparing for imminent attacks against Israel. We don’t have much time, Mr. President. If we don’t act quickly on the information we have, it could all be useless to us after a few days.”

“Well, I need more.”

“More?”

“Yes, Mr. Murphy, more. Did you see the Twelfth Imam’s speech?”

“I read the transcript.”

“Then you know he’s reaching out to us,” the president said, pacing about the room now. “He’s clearly saying he wants peace. He’s telling us to keep the Israelis contained until we can talk on the phone and in person at the UN next week. And he’s right. There’s too much at stake here. I’m not going to let the Israelis drag us into a war. And I’m sure not going to start a war based on a single source.”

“It’s not just Zephyr and Khan, Mr. President. There’s Chameleon as well.”

“Chameleon is secondhand. It’s hearsay.” Jackson sniffed. “Khan might be legit. I’ll grant you that. But there’s another scientist, too, isn’t there? What’s his name?”

“Jalal Zandi.”

“Right, Zandi—isn’t he just as important as Khan?”

“We believe so, yes.”

“Then get him, too. Get them both. Let’s see if their stories match. Only then will I decide if there are going to be any air strikes.”

The president said good night and walked out, and Murray stood there alone, looking over the South Lawn and at the Washington Monument, lit up in the distance. He had no words to explain how disoriented and alone he felt at that moment. He and his team had risked their lives to give the president the best chance at stopping a nuclear holocaust, and the man had kicked the can down the road. What’s more, he had now given them a near-impossible task that would put more American lives at risk, not to mention all of Israel. How had the character of American leadership sunk this low?

* * *

Lashkardar Protected Area, Iran

“Mr. Shirazi, my name is Torres. I’m your ride home.”

Marco Torres broke out in a wide grin and shook David’s hand. David gave the special forces team leader a bear hug in return and started breathing again. The two men stood in front of the cabin and compared notes, while a medic attended to Khan inside the cabin.

Torres was six foot three, twenty-nine years old, and a former Marine sniper from San Diego. He’d joined the CIA after two tours in Afghanistan. Torres apologized for how long it had taken him and his team to get into the country from Bahrain, link up with their Agency contacts, and track him down, but for David, there was no need for apologies and no time for small talk. He was glad to see so many friendly faces and so much firepower, and it was time to get moving.

“Our orders are to get you and Mr. Khan to the safe house in Karaj and then fly you out in the morning,” Torres said.

“Well, your orders have changed,” David replied. “Have your second squad take Khan, fix him up, and get him out of the country for further interrogation. The rest of you need to hustle. We’re going to Qom.”

* * *

The Qaleh, Iran

The Twelfth Imam gathered with his inner circle.

Javad had made certain they were all assembled on the porch of the Qaleh. Now they were sipping tea and discussing what might have happened to Tariq Khan and what this meant for the rest of their war plans, but when the Mahdi came out, they all bowed to worship him until they were released.

“Gentlemen, as I told Javad here, I am not worried about Mr. Khan,” the Mahdi began. “He was expendable. Allah’s plans cannot be thwarted. So you needn’t worry. Mr. Khan is not why I have gathered you. The bigger issue is Jerusalem. Namely, what shall be done with it?”

Javad noticed the surprise in each of the men’s eyes. He saw Darazi look to Hosseini and then over to Faridzadeh. As he expected, however—indeed, as the Mahdi had privately predicted to Javad just moments earlier—Hosseini was the first to speak, and he took no position at all.

“It does not matter what we believe, my Lord. What is Allah’s will concerning the future of Jerusalem?” the Supreme Leader said.

“I’m not asking for your advice or your recommendations,” the Mahdi said. “I’m asking for your understanding from all the ancient writings about the future of Jerusalem.”

The men seemed taken aback by the question, but at the Mahdi’s urging, they took a few minutes to discuss it among themselves. When they were finished, Hosseini spoke again.

“Well, of course, Jerusalem is not spoken of directly in the noble Qur’an,” the Ayatollah said, looking weary and heavy laden with the magnitude of events now unfolding around them. “But we do see it alluded to in the blessed Night Vision, when the angel Gabriel took the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, on the winged, horselike beast for a journey unlike any other. In Sura 17, verse 1, we read, ‘Glory to God, who did take His servant for a journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque whose precincts we did bless, in order that we might show him some of our signs: for He is the One Who hears and sees all things.’ The ancients clearly taught that the Sacred Mosque—Al-Masjid Al-Haram—was the holy Kaaba located in Mecca, while the Farthest Mosque—Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa—was the ‘mosque in the corner,’ or the holy house in Jerusalem, where today stands the Al-Aqsa Mosque alongside the Dome of the Rock. That is the location where Muhammad, peace be upon him, knelt twice and prayed to Allah, and then he was taken up to the Seven Heavens to confer with the saints.”

“Very good,” the Mahdi said. “Continue.”

“Not all of the ancients, however, believed that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was in Jerusalem. Some said it was actually in heaven.”

“Who?”

“The Sixth Imam, Ja’far Ibn Muhammad Al-Sadiq, for one.”

“Precisely. And what did he say?”

“Well, he was once asked, ‘What about the Al-Aqsa Mosque?’ And someone said, ‘They say it is in Jerusalem.’ But his response was curious. He said the mosque in Kufa was superior to the mosque in the corner.”

“Was it superior?” the Mahdi asked.

“Only you would know, my Lord; aren’t you going to reign from Kufa? Isn’t that where we are all eventually going, not long from now?”

“Very good, my son,” the Mahdi said to Hosseini. “A very discerning answer. The rest of you would do well to learn from your brother Hamid. He is a good man and a good student. Now, I ask you, Ahmed, what are the implications of such truths?”

To Javad, the president looked petrified. He boasted of being a great scholar of Islam, but he was quaking now under the Mahdi’s tutelage.

“We are to conquer Jerusalem, are we not?” Darazi said. “Are we not to reclaim it for Islam and rule it forever?”

“No,” the Mahdi said with a vehemence that sent a chill through all of the men, Javad included. “You were not listening, Ahmed. You were not paying attention. Jerusalem means nothing to me, nor to my forebears. It was never the center of Shia Islam. It was never even the center of Sunni Islam. It is holy only to the Jews and the Christians, not to us. We conquered it once but never again. Jerusalem must be crushed, not conquered. It must be vanquished, not reclaimed. Islam was born in Mecca and Medina, but it came to full glory in Kufa in Iraq, the apple of Allah’s eye. Jerusalem has been infected forever with the stains of the Zionists. Those who have taught otherwise have been misled or were misleaders themselves. The future of Jerusalem, gentlemen, is fire and bloodshed, and now we are just hours away.”

56

Tel Aviv, Israel

An aide slipped a message to the director of the Mossad.

He glanced at the heading, then immediately handed the note to Levi Shimon, who sat back in his chair with an astonished expression.

“What is it, Levi?” the prime minister asked.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Shimon said.

“What?”

“It’s from Mordecai. It’s everything we asked for.”

“What does it say?”

Shimon read the message in its entirety, slightly less than two pages. In it, Mordecai provided precise details—including GPS coordinates—on all the warheads’ current locations and what kind of missiles they were attached to or about to be attached to. Then he begged for mercy for himself and his family, saying he did not want to end up “like the others” and that “that’s not what I signed up for.” He concluded by warning them in no uncertain terms: “I can guarantee you the warheads are where I say they are as I speak. But I can make no guarantees where they will be even a few hours from now. Events are moving rapidly here. I fear I will soon be exposed. This will be my last communiqué. I have done all that I promised, but I cannot do any more.”

Naphtali looked around the table. Every man was as stunned and sobered as he was. Most concerning was the report of two nuclear cruise missiles on some of the five Iranian vessels just off of Israel’s shores. They’d known it was a possibility but had no direct evidence of it, nor any indication from the Americans, who had far more sophisticated means to determine if a ship was carrying nuclear material. He turned to Shimon. “Levi, I need your assessment.”

“This is deeply disturbing, Mr. Prime Minister,” Shimon said, scanning the message again. “If this is disinformation planted by the Iranians, then they have to know they are inviting a preemptive attack. But I don’t believe that. Far more likely this is the real thing. It was clearly communicated by a man under extreme stress. He’s cutting off all contact, which suggests he’s either going into hiding or thinks they’re onto him. We’re not going to get another chance like this. I think it is time to go. I don’t see that we have a choice now.”

“Any dissent?” Naphtali asked the others.

He got none. They were all in agreement.

“Then this is it, gentlemen,” Naphtali said, his voice calm and firm. “We have supported American and European diplomacy toward Iran. We’ve supported multiple rounds of international economic sanctions against Iran. We’ve encouraged our allies to take covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program, and to their credit, several of them have taken significant action. We have launched multiple covert operations of our own, some of them successful, some of them less so. I think history will show we did everything we could. We forced the Iranians to take almost three decades to build the Bomb, when it took us less than eight years. We urged the world to do more to stop Iran. We especially urged the Americans, up to and including the last few days. But there comes a time in every nation’s destiny when it must act alone for its own survival. This is one of those times. I say this with neither joy nor malice. It is simply a fact. We are out of other options, and we are out of time. We must act in defense of the Jewish people and in defense of all of humanity. The world will hate us for what we are about to do, but I for one will be able to lay my head on my pillow every night in peace until I rest with my fathers, knowing I did the right thing. I hope you will too. I hereby authorize the commencement of Operation Xerxes. May the God of Israel be with us.”

* * *

The Qaleh, Iran

“My Lord, may I say something?”

Mohsen Jazini lowered his head and did not make eye contact until he was called upon.

“Yes, of course, Mohsen,” the Mahdi said. “What is it?”

“I realize that you are not concerned about the disappearance of Tariq Khan, and of course I fully respect—and agree with—your reasons, Your Excellency,” Jazini said. “Still, until we know more, it would be safer if you were in one of the fully secure underground command centers in Tehran rather than up here.”

“You mean
you
would feel more secure,” the Mahdi said without expression.

“Allah is with you, without question, my Lord,” Jazini replied. “But I am concerned that we pose too great a target all together and exposed like this. It doesn’t strike me as prudent, but of course I completely defer to you, Your Excellency.”