The Tehran Initiative

  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 kno
w 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.

  “You got caught, Navid. You didn’t resist. You didn’t try to escape. Maybe you weren’t really so committed to this mission, like Rahim was. And you were drinking alcohol—lots of it—the night before the attack. That’s right, Navid. At one point you called your hotel with your disposable phone. That was your mistake; we found the number, went to the hotel, and saw your room. I was there myself. And I personally saw the hotel security tapes. I know you checked into that Sheraton. I saw you get into the elevator and push the button for the ninth floor. I saw you key into room 919. I went to room 919, Navid; I saw that you ate everything in the minibar. And you drank everything in the minibar. Had they ever let you be in a room by yourself with a minibar? I’m guessing not. Because you really went to town. Which is fine. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, you all paid your bills with cash. I’m just thinking Allah might not be too pleased. And I’m guessing he was watching. And I guess if I were sitting in the electric chair soon, waiting to pass from one world to the next, I’d be wondering where I was going. Because it’s one thing to be executed in one of the most painful ways imaginable—did I mention your whole head is going to explode into flames?—but that might be nothing compared to what’s coming the moment you leave this world and enter the next.”

  Again she paused for effect. She shook her head so Taylor would keep his mouth shut. She didn’t need an update. She knew exactly what she was doing. She unbuttoned her blouse an extra button and smoothed out the wrinkles of the skirt she was wearing, then stepped around the chair and met the nervous gaze of Navid Yazidi with a gentle smile as she put her blonde hair in a ponytail.

  “I want to be your friend, Navid,” she said softly. “There are people in this building who want to put you in that chair, but I just want you to know that I’m not one of them. I want to help you. But first you have to help me. I don’t want anyone else to die. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, especially you. But they’re only going to give me a few more minutes with you, Navid. And if you don’t help me, then I can’t help you. And then those men who beat you are going to come back in here and do what they do best. So tell me what you know about Firouz. Tell me what you know about his driver, Jamshad. That’s right. We know the names of your accomplices—that’s another mistake you made. You left them both voice messages in their hotel rooms, and you used their real names.”

  * * *

  Oakton, Virginia

  Najjar stared out his bedroom windows.

  He watched some nameless couple and their two children who lived in the house just behind the safe house packing up their minivan with suitcases and beach blankets and all kinds of toys, headed off on a vacation of some kind. The image made him miss his own family all the more. He wanted to play with his daughter. What he wouldn’t give to get away with them on a vacation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a break and gotten away from all the cares of life. His father-in-law had worked him like a slave, and he was constantly exhausted.

  He turned away and flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He couldn’t talk to his family or hold them, much less go on holiday with them. So he began to pray for them. He prayed they wouldn’t worry too much about him or about their future. He prayed the baby was being peaceful for Sheyda, that she and her mother could laugh together and not be too lonely without him. Eventually he drifted off to sleep with their faces crossing his mind’s eye and a prayer on his lips.

  And as he slept, he had a dream.

  “Najjar, do not be afraid,” a voice said. “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you about these things. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. Yes, I am coming quickly. You must speak to the sons of your people. Say to them, ‘If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people, then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand.’”

  Still dreaming, Najjar was careful to remember the words, just as they had been spoken. He somehow knew this was more than just a dream and that he would remember these words even after he awoke. He also realized he knew the sword was coming soon, and his heart quickened at what he sensed was coming next.

  “Now as for you, Najjar, I have appointed you a watchman for the nation of Persia. When you hear a word from My mouth warn them from Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself.”

  20

  Brooklyn, New York

  “Is Rahim really dead?”

  Eva looked
up from the magazine she was reading as she sat patiently in a wooden chair on the other side of the cell. It had been quiet for too long. She was beginning to think Navid Yazidi wasn’t going to take the bait. But now he was nibbling, and Eva was determined to hook him and reel him all the way in.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked, though she had heard every word.

  “Rahim? Is he . . . is he really dead?”

  Eva nodded. “I’m afraid so. Didn’t anyone tell you when they first brought you in?”

  “No.”

  “I thought they did.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “I’m very sorry, Navid,” Eva said gently. “It’s hard to lose a brother, I know. My older brother died four years ago next week. Drunk driver. Never saw it coming.”

  It was a lie. Eva had three sisters, all younger, but not a single brother. But she certainly sounded convincing and empathetic. Navid nodded and hung his head. It was working. The ice was beginning to crack.

  “May I have some water?” he asked, his tone subdued but his eyes pleading with her for mercy.

  “Of course, Navid. Would you like something to eat as well? Have they fed you yet? You must be famished.”

  “No, no, just some water, please.”

  This was a good sign. She got up, knocked three times on the steel door, and stepped out for a few minutes. While she was gone, guards gave the prisoner several sips of water and a few bites of warm pita bread dipped in freshly made hummus, then led the man to the facilities to allow him to relieve himself. Only when Navid was locked down again and given a bit more water and pita did Eva return.