Damascus Countdown (29 page)

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

“I have come to reestablish the Caliphate.”

The haunting words of Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali spoken during a phone call just a few days before still echoed in Iskander Farooq’s ears as he stood beside the landing pad in the immense dust storm created by the descending military chopper that had come to whisk him away on a last-minute, unplanned, ill-timed trip to certain disaster.

“I have come to bring peace and justice and to rule the earth with a rod of iron,” the Mahdi had said that day. “This is why Allah sent me. He will reward those who submit. He will punish those who resist. But make no mistake, Iskander; in the end, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that I am the Lord of the Age.”

It was hard to believe, but it had only been a week since the so-called Promised One had threatened Farooq, his family, and his government, demanding that he acquiesce. Farooq remembered waking up that Sunday, the sixth of March, dreaming up many interesting projects to discuss with his advisors. Then, in an instant, everything had changed.

Every fiber of his being told him to resist. But more than a quarter of a million Pakistanis were demonstrating outside the gates of the palace.
“Give praise to Imam al-Mahdi!”
they had shouted again and again.
“Give praise to Imam al-Mahdi!”
He had feared they would overrun the place. And there was the Mahdi, pushing, pushing.

“What say you?” the Mahdi had asked. “You owe me an answer.”

What was he supposed to have done? He was horrified that Tehran had suddenly become the seat of a new Caliphate. Neither he nor his father nor his father’s father had ever trusted the Iranians. The Persian Empire had ruled his ancestors, stretching in its day from India in the east to Sudan and Ethiopia in the west. Now the Persians wanted to subjugate them all over again.

Everyone he knew, it seemed—everyone but him—had been bewitched. They all believed this Mahdi was the messiah, the savior of the world.

The chopper landed, and several members of the Pakistani Air Force helped the president inside and into his seat. As Farooq put on his seat belt and prepared to take off for the short hop to New Islamabad International Airport in Fateh Jang, west of the palace, he stared out the window, unable to believe this was really happening. The world had gone mad. The crowds had grown daily. Now his palace guard estimated upwards of half a million Pakistanis surrounded the presidential compound, clogging traffic for miles in every direction. They were still chanting,
“Blessed be Imam al-Mahdi,”
and
“Join the Caliphate now.”
They were even threatening to burn the palace to the ground if he didn’t move fast to form an alliance with the Mahdi. His Sunni-dominated Cabinet, meanwhile, had actually threatened to have him arrested and tried for treason if he didn’t immediately join the Caliphate and hand Pakistan’s launch codes over to this Shia “messiah.”

Farooq had resisted, argued, and delayed as long as he could, but to no avail. Even his wife and children had begged him to make the deal and get it over with before they all met their grisly deaths. What more could he do? He was set to meet the Twelfth Imam face-to-face at half past midnight tonight.

The day of reckoning was at hand.

HAMADAN, IRAN

“. . . so, Father, we pray for our dear friend and brother Dr. Birjandi, that you would protect him and that you would fill him with your Holy Spirit and that you would use him to say whatever you want him to say and do whatever you want him to do, no matter what the cost. We pray these things in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was and is and is to come. Amen.”

Dr. Birjandi, packed and dressed in the black robes and black turban he used to wear when he taught at the seminary in Qom, reluctantly lifted his head as Ali and Ibrahim finished praying with him. Even now he could hear the faint echo of a helicopter approaching in the distance. He loved these men so much. He didn’t want to leave them and certainly not for an “emergency meeting” with the Twelfth Imam. But despite all his protestations that he would never go to such a meeting, the die now seemed to be cast. He had pleaded with the Lord to let this cup pass from him, but short of a miracle, in the next few minutes he would be picked up by Revolutionary Guards with orders to take him to some secure, undisclosed location for a face-to-face meeting with the personification of evil.

And yet now, strangely, after so much prayer and angst, Birjandi actually did not feel anxious. Rather, he felt a peace that surprised him. He knew the Lord had a good and perfect plan for his life, and maybe these boys were right. Maybe the Lord was about to give him the opportunity to share the gospel with Hosseini and Darazi.

“Thank you so much, boys,” he told them. “I am forever grateful. But now you must go, before they get here. Please, there is not much time.”

“But we want to stay with you,” Ibrahim said. “We are not afraid.”

“I know, and I am so grateful, my son, but you must not be connected to me. Not now, not today,” Birjandi said. “Your courage is admirable, and it is from the Lord. But use it to share the gospel with your families and friends. Use it to start house churches and teach the Word throughout this nation. Use it to advance the Kingdom of Jesus,
and I will see you in heaven, when all is well. Now go. Both of you. If you love me, you must leave right now.”

Birjandi could hear the chopper approaching from the northeast. By God’s grace, it was coming a little later than he had expected—later, at least, than Hosseini had said. The delay, whatever the reason, had given him a few minutes to put some clothes and a toothbrush and toothpaste in a small suitcase and to get the satellite phone David had given him and hide it under his robes. It had also given the three of them a few moments to pray together one last time, and for this he was grateful.

They stood, and Birjandi took his cane and walked them to the door. “Now, quickly, both of you, give me a kiss good-bye.”

Ali turned and gave the old man a bear hug and then kissed him on both cheeks. Ibrahim did the same, though he held on longer, despite the fact that the chopper was less than a quarter mile away and coming in fast. They said nothing. There was nothing more to say. But Birjandi could feel the tears running down their cheeks. They knew this was the last time they would see him. He knew it as well.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

Levi Shimon and Zvi Dayan arrived in unmarked, bulletproof cars with heavy security. They were immediately ushered into the prime minister’s spacious, wood-paneled office, where Naphtali was finishing up a call with the U.N. secretary-general.

“Absolutely not,” said Naphtali, pacing the room and red in the face. “That is completely inaccurate. . . . No, that’s simply not true. . . . I . . . Mr. Secretary-General, I can assure you that at no time have Israeli forces purposefully attacked unarmed civilians either in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Gaza. . . . No, to the contrary, we are hitting legitimate military targets in self-defense. . . . How can you say that? . . . No, that’s—sir, we are under attack from missiles and rockets and mortars that are being fired indiscriminately at our innocent civilian populations, and yet you have not issued a condemnation of our enemies but rather persist in portraying us as the aggressors. Well, I reject that characterization. . . . Mr. Secretary-General, again I direct your attention to the illegal testing by Iran of a nuclear warhead a few weeks ago in direct violation of a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions, combined with the repeated illegal statements by Iranian leaders and by the Mahdi inciting the forces of their Caliphate to genocide against my people. . . . No, that is precisely the point—this is cold, hard, international law—the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which went into force on January 12, 1951, in which incitement to genocide is specifically outlawed in Article 25(3)(e) of the Rome Statute.”

The sixty-three-year-old Shimon was antsy. He took a seat when Naphtali motioned for him and Dayan to do so, but he was in no mood to sit quietly. Too much was happening and much too fast for his liking. He already hated being away from the IDF war room in Tel Aviv to come all the way to Jerusalem for a face-to-face meeting, but it couldn’t be helped. The situation was as sensitive as any in his forty-five years in public life since joining the army at the age of eighteen. He needed the prime minister’s ear, and he needed it right now, and it was all he could do to not stand up, walk over to the PM’s phone, and hang up on the secretary-general.

“You are certainly entitled to your opinion, Mr. Secretary-General,” Naphtali replied, “but you are not entitled to your own facts. We . . . No, again, that is not accurate. Look, that’s just . . . Good sir, let me make this as plain as I possibly can. My country is facing annihilation from an apocalyptic, genocidal death cult. We will defend ourselves as we see fit, as we have a right to do under the U.N. charter. Need I remind you of chapter VII, article 51? Let me quote it for you, as you have obviously forgotten either its words or its meaning. ‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.’ . . . What do you mean we weren’t attacked first? What do you call Iran’s attack on my life in New York City last Sunday, an attack that killed President Ramzy of Egypt and nearly killed President Jackson and did kill several dozen others? . . . Okay, look, this isn’t going anywhere. Let me simply restate my objection to where the Security Council is headed on this and ask you, humbly, to reconsider. . . . Very well. I look forward to hearing from you then. Good day, sir.”

The moment the prime minister hung up the phone, Shimon could see he and Dayan were about to get an earful, but there simply wasn’t time. He stood and stepped toward the PM’s desk.

“Asher, you need to listen to me,” he said as firmly as he could. “As much as I’d like to let you vent about that call, I need you to listen to me very carefully.”

Naphtali was clearly taken aback by his defense minister’s forceful manner, but as far as Shimon could tell, he didn’t seem offended. Shimon wouldn’t really have cared if he was. Not now.

“Of course. How can I help you, gentlemen?” Naphtali replied, a bit sarcastically.

“Zvi, tell him,” Shimon said.

The Mossad director stood as well. “Mr. Prime Minister, for the last several days, my men and I were pretty confident we knew where the Twelfth Imam was,” he began. “Somewhere on the Mehrabad Air Base, just outside Tehran. That’s why we strongly recommended you authorize repeated air strikes and cruise missile strikes on the military portions of the facility, not the civilian airport.”

“Yes, of course,” said Naphtali. “I’ve read your reports. And I’ve authorized everything you’ve asked for.”

“Yes, sir, and it’s had a real impact on neutralizing the Iranian Air Force,” Dayan continued. “But I can now report to you that my men and I have pinpointed the Mahdi’s precise location.”

“Where?”

“He’s on the grounds of the air base, but not on the military side,” Dayan said. “It turns out that he and his senior team are actually working from a facility on the civilian side of the airfield. We’ve learned that the war room for the Revolutionary Guards is located beneath a three-story administrative building connected to the main terminal at Imam Khomeini Airport.”

“You’re sure?” the PM asked.

“One hundred percent,” said the Mossad chief.

“Don’t tell me you want to hit it?”

The defense minister took that one. “Absolutely, and now, sir. We’ve got an armed drone keeping surveillance on the location. We’ve got a squadron of fighter jets racing to Tehran right now, each carrying bunker-buster bombs. They should be in range in the next thirty minutes.”

“You want me to bomb Iran’s civilian airport?” Naphtali asked incredulously. “Were you not listening to that call with the secretary-general? We’re already being accused of war crimes. We’re being accused
of attacking innocent civilians. We’ve got radioactive clouds spreading across Iran into civilian areas because of the strikes we’ve already made on their nuclear facilities. We can’t just hit their airport, Levi. The whole world will turn against us.”

“Sir, I understand, but I’m telling you we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to decapitate the enemy and end this war in the next thirty minutes,” Shimon said. “We have to take it. History won’t forgive us if we don’t. And I must add that we have an unconfirmed but credible report that the Mahdi may be relocating and soon.”

“To the Imam Khomeini Mosque?”

“Perhaps, but the report says he might go to Tabriz.”

“Why Tabriz?”

“We don’t know, sir. We’re still tracking that down.”

Naphtali stared at both men, but Shimon couldn’t quite read him. The prime minister obviously didn’t want to take more international condemnation. It could, after all, lead to U.N. sanctions on Israel for the first time in history. But Naphtali, Shimon knew, was also a patriot and a pragmatist. He might still say yes, and for this Shimon silently prayed to a God he wasn’t sure really existed.

“Where’s Mordecai in all this?” the PM said at last, abruptly changing the subject to the Mossad’s top mole inside Iran’s nuclear program—a mole who had gone dark in the last several days, much to the anxiety of everyone in Naphtali’s War Cabinet. “Have we heard from him?”

“No, sir, we haven’t,” Dayan said.

“So we don’t know if he’s alive?”

“No—the last communiqué was on Thursday morning. He did say that was going to be his last report, but of course we’ve been hoping he would reestablish contact.”

“We have no contact information for him?”

“The protocol was always for him to call us,” the Mossad chief explained.

“And we still don’t know where the warheads are?”

“No, sir, not yet.”

TEHRAN, IRAN

Darazi went upstairs to the main floor and cleared Rashidi and his mysterious trunks through security. Then he strolled around the lobby for a few minutes, staring out once again at the destruction and misery all around him. He was careful to keep his emotions off his face, but internally he was seething. Hour after hour, day after day, the Twelfth Imam was belittling his existence. The Mahdi’s contempt for Darazi’s presence was palpable—and infuriating.

Searching his soul, Darazi tried to see what engendered such hostility. Wasn’t he doing everything he possibly could to serve the Mahdi? Wasn’t he risking his own life and the lives of his family to help destroy the Little Satan and eventually the Great Satan as well? He wasn’t a perfect man. He conceded that right up front. But who was? What sin could he possibly have committed to make the Lord of the Age so agitated whenever they were together?

What bothered Darazi most, however, was not that the Twelfth Imam seemed to despise him so, though that did weigh heavily on his heart and mind. Far more egregious was a thought that Darazi dared not speak aloud and had resisted for days even letting himself actively consider. They were two thoughts, really, and he feared both were heresy. But he couldn’t help himself. They were beginning to dominate his thinking whether he wanted them to or not.

The first was this: Why was Iran losing this war to the Jews? Hosseini and Jazini and the rest of the high command could spin it all they wanted, but that was the truth, wasn’t it? They were losing. Naphtali had fired first and knocked out most of Iran’s nuclear forces. They still had two warheads, to be sure, but they couldn’t even fire them from Persian soil. Why not? Didn’t the Mahdi carry the full weight and force of Allah himself? Wasn’t he a direct descendant and messenger of the Prophet, peace be upon him? Then why was Iran’s air force a smoldering wreckage? Why was Iran’s mobile phone system almost completely down? Why were they cowering in an underground bunker, no better than Osama bin Laden, in his day, cowering in a cave in the
Kandahar mountains? The Jews should have been obliterated by now. The Caliphate should be triumphant. That was what the Mahdi had promised, yet thus far it was all talk, all empty promises and mounting casualties.

The second revolved around a deeply troubling conversation that he and Hosseini had had with Dr. Alireza Birjandi over lunch on Wednesday, less than twenty-four hours before the start of the war. Birjandi had not seemed himself, and when they had pressed him to talk about what was on his mind, he was reluctant, at best. But as Darazi thought back on Birjandi’s words, he was increasingly concerned his old friend was onto something he and Hosseini were missing.

“I just find myself wondering, where is Jesus, peace be upon him?” Birjandi had said.

Darazi remembered there was dead silence. It wasn’t a name that often got mentioned in the presence of the Grand Ayatollah and the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet the old man had a point. Darazi himself had given sermons from the ancient Islamic prophecies stating that Jesus would appear and serve as the Mahdi’s lieutenant. So had Hosseini and Birjandi. Yet Jesus had not come, as far as any of them knew.

As though he were now hovering over the conversation, Darazi could see himself shifting uncomfortably in his seat and asking, “What exactly are you implying, Ali?”

“I am not implying anything,” Birjandi had replied calmly. “I am simply asking where I went wrong. You preached that one of the signs preceding the Mahdi’s return would be the coming of Jesus to require all infidels to convert to Islam or die by the sword. You did that because I taught you that. I taught you that because of a lifetime of studying the ancient texts and so many commentaries on the same. Yet Jesus is nowhere to be found.”

Nor was that all. Birjandi had gone on to list five distinct signs that his lifetime of research suggested should precede the arrival or the appearance of the Hidden Imam. The first was the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani, who would attack the enemies of Islam. Darazi thought it was possible this had actually happened; certainly
there had been any number of violent attacks against Christians in Yemen in recent years. But the second sign, the rise of an anti-Mahdi militant leader named Osman Ben Anbase, also known as Sofiani, had not occurred.

The third sign, voices from the sky gathering the faithful around the Mahdi, hadn’t happened either. Yes, there were reports of some kind of angelic voice speaking in Beirut after the failed attack on the Mahdi the week before, but that hardly qualified as a host of angels.

The fourth sign was the destruction of Sofiani’s army. But since Sofiani had never appeared, much less raised an army, the fulfillment of this sign didn’t even seem possible. Then there was the fifth sign, the death of a holy man named Muhammad bin Hassan, which Darazi didn’t think had happened either.

“I feel a great sense of responsibility,” Birjandi had said. “I have been studying the Last Things most of my adult life. I have been preaching and teaching these things for as long as you have been gracious enough to give me the freedom to do so. But something isn’t adding up. Something’s wrong. And I keep asking: what?”

Birjandi was right, Darazi thought. Something was wrong. If the prophecies were all from Allah, why weren’t they being fulfilled in their totality? If the Mahdi had truly come, why were there so many discrepancies between the ancient writings and current events? If the Twelfth Imam had truly come, how could he—and the entire Muslim world that was following him—be losing to the Jews?