Damascus Countdown (39 page)

Naphtali asked an aide for another cup of café afouk, essentially an Israeli version of cappuccino, and then called Levi Shimon at the IDF war room in Tel Aviv.

“Levi, tell me we’ve heard from Mordecai,” the prime minister began, referring to the code name of their mole inside the Iranian nuclear command.

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“What about Zvi’s operation to take down Omid Jazini? That was supposed to happen hours ago. What happened?”

“The last I heard, Zvi’s men hadn’t checked in,” Shimon said. “He fears something went wrong, but it’s possible everything’s fine and they just need to keep radio silence for longer than expected.”

Naphtali paced in his private office. He was still in great pain from the wounds he’d sustained during the Iranian terrorist attack at the Waldorf-Astoria just eight days earlier. Indeed, it was a miracle he was alive. But at the moment he wondered if it would have been better if he hadn’t survived the attack after all. Then all of this would be someone else’s responsibility, not his own.

“Do you have any good news for me at all, Levi?”

“I wish I did,” Shimon replied. “And actually I regret to inform you that I just learned two more of our fighter jets have been shot down over Iran.”

Naphtali clenched his fists. He couldn’t bear to hear any more heartbreak, but he asked the question anyway. “And the pilots?”

“Both KIA, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“You’re certain?” Naphtali pressed. “Those are both confirmed?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“What were their names?”

“They were brothers, sir. The first was Captain Avi Yaron. He was a squadron leader and highly decorated. His twin brother, Yossi, was a captain as well. Both first-rate pilots. Avi was shot down over Tabriz. We believe he died instantly. There was no indication of an ejection. Yossi’s jet was hit by triple-A fire over Bushehr. He did eject but was captured and executed immediately.”

“Has the family been notified yet?” the PM asked.

“Not yet, sir. I’m just getting the news now.”

“Get me their parents’ phone number,” said Naphtali. “I will make the call myself.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

“And get me some good news, Levi,” the PM added. “Quickly.”

DAMASCUS, SYRIA

General Jazini pulled Esfahani aside. “Have you heard from my son, Omid?”

“No, sir,” Esfahani said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve called him twice,” Jazini said. “He’s not answering his mobile phone. Track him down. I must speak to him at once.”

Esfahani agreed and immediately called Commander Asgari, head of the secret police in Tehran, to send agents to Omid’s apartment and make sure everything was all right.

HIGHWAY 11, WESTERN IRAQ

Not long after skirting Baghdad, they passed through Fallujah and Ramadi and then turned northwest on Highway 12, paralleling the Euphrates River, toward the Syrian border.

As the hours passed during the trek across the desert, David’s thoughts turned again and again to two people—his father and Marseille Harper. It was dawning on him now that it was increasingly certain he would never see either of them again—not in this world, at least—and he began seriously considering taking the risk of calling them before he reached Damascus. He desperately wanted to hear their voices one more time. He wanted to tell each of them that he loved them dearly, that he would give anything to be with them and embrace them. He would not hint to either of them the futility of his mission. He didn’t want his last
acts to violate his oath to the CIA and the American people. Nor did he want to give them reason to fear. He would need to sound strong. Indeed, he needed to
be
strong—for them and for himself.

He was most concerned about his father. The man had just lost his first love, his wife of four decades, and must be struggling emotionally and physically. What’s more, David worried about his father’s spiritual future. He didn’t know Christ as his Savior. Though his father was no longer a practicing Muslim, David wasn’t aware that he had ever heard the gospel before. Certainly, even if his father had heard some Christian teaching or had read some of the Bible, the man had never seriously considered whether Jesus was Savior and Lord. Now that David had made his own decision and was certain that Christ had forgiven him and saved him and that he was going to spend eternity in heaven, he was praying again and again for his father.

There was nothing David could do about his mother now. She was gone, and he couldn’t imagine a scenario in which she had received Christ before slipping into eternity. That fact was a bitter pain he would take to his grave. But he himself hadn’t known Christ personally when he had seen his mother last. He hadn’t known the peril she was in, and in the end he had to leave her fate to a sovereign and loving God. He couldn’t take the burden of her eternal destiny upon himself.

But his father was another matter entirely. Now David knew Jesus Christ was the Truth, and the Truth had set him free. He desperately wanted his father to know Christ as well and to receive Christ as his Messiah and King. David knew he had a solemn obligation to do everything he could to share the Good News of Christ’s love with his father, though at the moment he couldn’t see a way to make that happen.

And then there was Marseille. Just the thought of her made him choke up, and he realized in those moments how deeply and utterly he was in love with her. He had loved her as a boy, as a teenager, and now as a man. He would do anything to get back to her and profess his love to her. Honestly, he had no idea whether she shared that love for him. She certainly cared for him, but there were very few clues as to just how much he meant to her. But he wanted so much to tell her what she meant to him. He wanted to tell her how much he missed her.
The simple fact was, he wanted to propose to her. He wasn’t sure if he could bear her rejection if he was wildly misreading her heart. But all he wanted now was to look into her eyes, take her by the hands, bend down on one knee, and ask her to spend her life with him. Maybe she would say yes. Maybe not. But he had to ask. He had to know. He had to try.

It was a pipe dream at this point, and he knew it. But somehow the very prospect of seeing her again and asking her to marry him—however slim, however unlikely, however ridiculous—gave him some inexplicable measure of hope to keep going, keep looking for a way to accomplish his mission and get back home against all odds.

TEHRAN, IRAN

From the IRGC’s war room ten stories underneath the largest airport in Iran’s capital city, President Ahmed Darazi was coordinating all aspects of the ongoing military and media war against the Zionists. He was working the phones with presidents and prime ministers around the world, urging them to issue strong statements condemning Israel for “murdering our five beloved daughters of Islam.” He also urged them to back a United Nations Security Council resolution the Chinese had drafted and were circulating that would censure Israel and call for draconian economic sanctions to be imposed upon the Jewish State until they ended the war and agreed to pay reparations not only to the families of the five schoolgirls but to all the people of Iran who had suffered as a result of Israel’s preemptive strike.

It was all theater, Darazi and his inner circle knew. By day’s end, if everything went according to plan, the vast majority of Jews in Israel would be incinerated in a nuclear holocaust. But the U.N. resolution was the Mahdi’s idea to keep the Israelis off balance and build international sympathy for the Islamic cause.

At precisely 9:30 a.m. local time in Tehran, Darazi finished a half-hour conference call with all of Iran’s ambassadors around the world, instructing them to keep up the pressure against the Jews by holding press conferences in every capital showing video of the burned bodies of
the five Iranian schoolgirls and calling for boycotts against Israeli goods and services. Then he was given a briefing by Commander Ibrahim Asgari of VEVAK on the status of the Mahdi and Ayatollah Hosseini. With General Mohsen Jazini now operating out of Damascus as the Mahdi’s chief of staff, Darazi had brought the VEVAK commander into the inner circle to help coordinate intelligence and security matters and serve as a direct liaison to Jazini and his men.

“The Ayatollah is almost there,” Asgari began. “We expect him to arrive in the next ten to fifteen minutes.”

“He’s almost at Al-Mazzah?” Darazi clarified, sifting through a binder of the latest classified cable traffic of reports from various IRGC intelligence officers around the world.

“That’s affirmative, sir.”

“Does anyone there know he’s coming?”

“Only General Jazini, sir.”

“Excellent,” Darazi said. “And the Mahdi? What is his status?”

“We just heard from Mr. Rashidi, sir. He says they seem to be on track for a noon arrival.”

“Very good. And the preparations at the Imam Khomeini Mosque? How are they coming along? We haven’t much time.”

“Actually, I just spoke to the watch commander on site,” Asgari said. “The new war room there is now fully operational. We’ve been shifting personnel over there for the past hour, and they are ready for you as soon as you’re ready to depart.”

“You have a helicopter waiting?”

“It just landed upstairs.”

“Then what are we waiting for, Commander? Let’s move.”

HIGHWAY 12, WESTERN IRAQ

David said a silent prayer for his father and for Marseille, then forced himself to stop thinking about them and return to the pressing matters at hand. He and his team began discussing how best to penetrate the Al-Mazzah air base, but it was soon clear they were getting nowhere.

Yet as David and his men kept considering various scenarios—all of which were built on the premise that the president of the United States was not going to authorize any additional help for them to accomplish their mission—David found himself thinking in an entirely new direction, though he said nothing as he continued to drive. Was there a way to make contact with the Israeli government? Was there a way to tell them that the two warheads were at Al-Mazzah and that the Mahdi would be there soon? At this late hour, the only way he could envision stopping the Mahdi from unleashing a second Holocaust was if the Israelis attacked the Syrian air base. If the Mahdi was dead, would any of his underlings really launch 345 nuclear missiles at Israel? Would the Pakistanis let them? It was a gamble, to be sure, but was there a better scenario? David couldn’t think of any.

Going through with it—making contact with the Israelis and giving them top-secret intelligence—would be tantamount to treason. If by some miracle he lived through this nightmare, he could never marry Marseille and live happily ever after in Portland or wherever. He would be sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of his natural life for breaking who knew how many laws.

But did any of that really matter? Didn’t he have a moral obligation to help the Israelis save themselves from another Holocaust? There was no question in his mind that he did. The only question at this point was how he could contact them. The most logical answer was to use Tolik and Gal, the Mossad agents in custody back at the Karaj safe house. But that meant getting Mays involved. Indeed, his entire team would have to know, and David couldn’t send them all to prison. They couldn’t know. None of them. Not Mays. Not Torres. Not Fox or Crenshaw. If he did this, he’d have to go it alone and pay the consequences alone. That much was certain.

By the same token, he couldn’t let Zalinsky or Murray or anyone in the chain of command at Langley know what he was doing. They’d never let him get away with it, and like his own team, he respected them too much to endanger their lives or careers. He didn’t always agree with his superiors, but he respected them enormously.

Making his decision to help save the Israeli people felt almost as
liberating as receiving Christ as his Savior. Indeed, he was certain that somehow the two decisions were related, though he had neither the time nor the training to understand quite how at the moment. He only knew that when he died and went to heaven and stood before the Jewish Messiah in heaven—probably today—he wanted Jesus to know he had done everything in his power to protect the Jewish people.

The critical question was how best to proceed. How could he make contact with the right people in the Israeli government? He didn’t know a soul in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. He’d never even been there, and he couldn’t very well call 411 and ask some operator for the personal phone number of the Mossad chief or the prime minister. Still, as he continued to race through the deserts of western Iraq, David pored over every conversation he’d had with Zalinsky over the years, hoping to remember a name and number of someone he could connect with. Yet he was coming up blank. He thought back through his previous assignments, desperately looking for a scrap he could use in this present moment.

His first posting fresh out of CIA training at the Farm in rural Virginia had been as some assistant to the assistant to the deputy assistant of whatever for an entire year at the new American Embassy in Baghdad. That had been about as boring as he could imagine. Then he’d essentially been a fetcher of lattes for the economic attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Lame. Then he’d been transferred to be a communications and intelligence liaison in Bahrain for a SEAL team assigned to protect U.S. Navy ships entering and exiting the Persian Gulf. It had sounded cool when he first heard about the job, but it hadn’t been nearly as interesting as he’d hoped. Nor had it put him in contact with anyone in the Israeli military or intelligence services. The same was true of his work in Pakistan, hunting down al Qaeda operatives. Looking back, it seemed strange that he hadn’t crossed paths with Israelis, but as best he could recall, he simply hadn’t.