Damascus Countdown Read online

  13

  QOM, IRAN

  “Let’s go, let’s go. We’re almost there,” David insisted as they entered the city limits and raced through the ghost town that Qom now was.

  As instructed, Torres pushed the pedal to the metal. And why not? There were no cops. There was no traffic. There were no pedestrians and seemingly no activity of any kind. The streets were empty. The sidewalks were empty. Not a single child could be found on the playgrounds. Not a single shopper browsed in the stores. It was surreal.

  David had been to Qom just a few days earlier—on Thursday, in fact—to meet Javad Nouri. He had met the aide to the Mahdi at the Jamkaran Mosque, in a suburb of Qom. On that day, as on every day, the city had been wall-to-wall people, and the streets had been clogged with every kind of car and truck and cab and motorcycle imaginable. Now everyone—all of it—was gone. The entire population had gone into hiding or had fled the city completely, probably fearing the possibility that one of the Israeli missiles would be nuclear and kill everything within a fifty-mile radius. David had never seen anything like it, and the entire bizarre situation gave him the creeps.

  However, when they reached the entrance to Haqqani Street, where Abdol Esfahani’s parents lived, everything changed again. Normally there would be nothing particularly noteworthy about Haqqani Street. Like many neighborhoods in this part of Qom, it was lined on both sides with cherry trees not yet in bloom bracketing small, two-story, single-family homes, typically owned in this neighborhood by Shia clerics and seminary professors and some of Iran’s more prestigious intelligentsia. The homes had well-manicured lawns with gorgeous rosebushes out front and varying arrays of tulips and forsythias and chrysanthemums. But this was not a normal day.

  To David’s surprise, the street was clogged with people looking and pointing and covering their mouths in shock. Torres slowed the car, and David peered down the street. Once again he could smell jet fuel and smoke, sharper and more pungent than any other place he had been. Smoke was billowing from a house halfway down the street. Flames were shooting twenty or thirty feet in the air. And suddenly he realized what had happened. The Israeli fighter jet they had seen falling from the sky had crashed here. And now, amid the wailing and shrieking of neighbors and onlookers and their children, David heard sirens approaching in the distance.

  “Stop the car,” he ordered and jumped out once Torres had pulled over. “I’m going to find Esfahani. The rest of you find a place to park on the next street. Then fan out into the crowd in a way that allows you to see his parents’ house from all sides. Be discreet, and don’t talk to anyone. None of your Farsi is near good enough.”

  Before Torres could object to the plan, David was sprinting, checking house numbers on both sides of the street until through the thick, black, billowing smoke he could make out the number 119 just two doors down from the house that had been demolished by the burning fuselage of the F-16. He was making his way around the crowd when a secondary explosion from the plane erupted to his left, sending him flying through the air and smashing onto the gravel street. Flames were now shooting a good forty or fifty feet into the air. Molten metal from the plane and burning embers from the house were landing everywhere and starting new fires.

  David pulled himself back up and wiped the soot from his face. He wondered whether the Israeli jet had more ordnance on board, bombs or Sidewinder missiles that were now cooking in the flames and preparing to blow and take out the entire neighborhood. And it was then that he saw the roof of the Esfahani home ablaze.

  Bolting for the front door, he started shouting for the Esfahanis and pounding as loudly as he could on the door, but it was clear no one could hear him. He could barely hear himself. He tried the handle, but the door was locked. He tried kicking it in but to no avail. He looked around. There was no one near him. The crowds that had come to gawk were now screaming and running away. But the sirens were getting closer, and David did not want to be around when the police or the army arrived. He had done nothing illegal, necessarily—nothing obvious or immediate, anyway—but he still didn’t want to be interviewed or interrogated or slowed down in any way. But he absolutely had to find Abdol Esfahani, if he was really there. Or had he come and gone already? Had he already gotten his parents out and left for a safer place? After all this, was David too late?

  Determined to get into the house and find out for sure one way or another, he worked his way around to the side of the house, peering through windows but seeing no one. When he got to the back door, he was fully prepared to pull out his Glock 9mm and blow through the lock. There was no one watching, and few would care even if they were. Any observers would likely assume he was a member of the secret police. But to David’s surprise, the door was not only unlocked; it was open.

  With the top of the house now completely ablaze, David calculated he had only a few minutes before the entire roof collapsed into the second floor, trapping and burning alive anyone who might be up there. So without hesitation he rushed into the ground floor, scanning for any movement, any signs of life.

  “Abdol! Abdol Esfahani!” David yelled. “Are you here? Is anyone here?”

  The house was rapidly filling with smoke, making it extremely difficult not only to breathe but to see.

  “Hello! Is anyone here?” he yelled again.

  With no sign of anyone in the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, or the first-floor bathroom, David raced up the first few stairs, continuing to shout at the top of his lungs, when suddenly, to his shock, he found himself staring up into the bleary, bloodshot, and terror-filled eyes of Abdol Esfahani. Over his shoulder he carried an older woman, clothed in a brown chador, who looked at least eighty years old, if not older.

  “Reza?” Esfahani asked, stunned.

  “Yes, it’s me, Abdol. I came to help you save your parents,” David replied.

  Esfahani just stood there, paralyzed, trying to make sense of this. “How did you—?”

  “No, not now,” David shouted as another explosion erupted nearby. “Is that your mother?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Then let’s go, get her outside. This place is going to blow any second.”

  “But my father is upstairs too.”

  “Just go,” David shouted. “Get your mother out. I’ll go for your father.”

  Esfahani started choking violently.

  “Go, go—don’t wait,” David shouted, and Esfahani finally began moving. “Take her out the back, and get her as far away from the house as you can. Is she breathing?”

  “I’m not sure,” Esfahani admitted as he came rushing down the stairs.

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” David said. “Now run, and don’t stop.”

  When he saw that Esfahani was listening and doing what he told him, David scrambled up to the second floor, dropped to his knees, and pulled part of his shirt over his nose and mouth, trying to find some decent air. But breathing was not his main problem. In his haste to get Esfahani and the man’s mother out of the house, David had neglected to find out which room the father was in. He could hear the fire roaring above him. Ashes and pieces of burning lumber were already falling from the ceiling, which was clearly about to give way at any time. David crawled down the hall and peered into the first bedroom. He couldn’t see a thing, so he sucked in a big gulp of air, jumped to his feet, and began feeling his way across the bed and along the floor only to find no one there. He moved to the hall, dropped to his stomach, and again took several short breaths.

  “Mr. Esfahani!” David shouted at the top of his lungs. “Can you hear me? Where are you? Hello?”

  The house began to rumble and shake. Burning sheetrock was now falling from the walls, and behind him a ceiling light fixture fizzled and popped and then crashed to the floor. He took another few breaths, then jumped to his feet and headed to a second bedroom, where again he felt his way through the smoke-filled darkness for what he now presumed was the unconscious if not lifeless body of an eightysomething-year-old m
an. But he was nowhere to be found in this room either.

  David made it back to the hallway and dropped to his stomach. He put his head as low to the floor as he possibly could, but there was almost no good air left. He began choking. His eyes were watering. The heat was unbearable. His clothing was soaked with sweat. But he started crawling forward, groping with his hands in the darkness as he held his breath and prayed for mercy and God’s favor.

  Suddenly he hit a door, a closed wooden door. He cautiously reached up and felt for the knob with the back of his hand. He found it and winced, as it was blazing hot. He pulled the end of his long-sleeved shirt over his hand and, using that as a sort of oven mitt, turned the knob and fell into what felt like a porcelain-tiled bathroom. He worked his way across the floor and found the bathtub, and there, within it, he found Esfahani’s father. The man was unconscious and covered in wet towels, Abdol’s apparent effort to keep him as safe as possible until he got back. But Abdol was not coming back. No one was coming up those stairs. And if David didn’t get out of this house soon, he was never getting out.

  His air supply was nearly depleted. His lungs were burning. His temples pounded. Sweat poured down his body. But he kept telling himself that as desperately as he needed to inhale, if he did so, he would pass out and die a grisly, fiery death moments later. David willed himself to his feet, pulled the towels off the man, heaved him out of the tub, and slumped him over his shoulder. And then the blazing ceiling collapsed on top of them.

  SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

  Dr. Mohammad Shirazi came down the creaky stairs and padded into the living room in his pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers. He looked around the first floor and, seeing no one, shrugged. Not wanting to trudge all the way back up to his room yet, he lowered himself slowly into his recliner beside the embers of a dying fire. Then he drew from his bathrobe pocket his favorite pipe and some rum-and-maple tobacco, lit up, and soon was leaning back and puffing away, hoping to decompress in the first few minutes he had truly had to himself since his wife’s death.

  It had been such a long day, and it felt good, even at this late hour, to get off his feet and just savor the quiet. He was grateful for all the people who had come to the service. It had been a beautiful one at that, one that truly honored Nasreen for the remarkable wife and mother and friend she had been. She would have liked it, he thought, though she wouldn’t have admitted it. Rather, she would have complained he was making too much of a fuss.

  He was surprised that David had not called, but he didn’t begrudge that. He was proud of his son, off fighting the mullahs of Iran and trying to take down the Mahdi, that wretched beast. Indeed, the only thing that had made this week bearable was the knowledge that his youngest son was fighting the good fight. He was sticking it to the regime in Tehran, and his father couldn’t have been more proud. He just wished he could actually say that to David—even say it face-to-face.

  Dr. Shirazi studied the pipe in his hands and enjoyed the sweet aroma of the smoke. Then he put it back in his mouth and looked at the rows of photographs on the side table near the window and around at all the special decorating touches his wife had added to the room over the years. He smiled at the memories and the faces in the frames, thankful for a very happy marriage. What a history they’d had together. What adventures. But neither he nor Nasreen had ever dreamed that their youngest son would be on an adventure such as this. What would she have said? he wondered. But he knew. He knew all too well, and in a way, there was a part of him that was glad she did not know. She would have been horrified to learn that David was back in the nation they had turned their backs on long, long ago. She had never wanted to go back, and neither had he—not that they could have, of course. They were both wanted criminals in Tehran.

  Dr. Shirazi shuddered to think of the darkness surrounding David. He hoped with every fiber in his being that his boy was safe. In his heart, he knew David was making a difference, and he felt a sense of honor he had never before felt about any of his sons—that his family might be a part of bringing justice to an unjust place, of bringing redemption for millions of people trapped under an evil leadership. For a moment, he considered turning on the television to see the latest news out of the Middle East, wondering if his heart and his imagination could handle what he’d see. Not yet, he thought. He’d check a few headlines later. Perhaps it was best to take the news in small doses.

  Just then he heard the toilet in the first-floor bathroom flush. Then he heard the door open and the creak of floorboards behind him. He set down his pipe and turned his head to see Marseille Harper standing there, a yellow notebook in hand.

  “Oh, Marseille, I was afraid you had left,” he said. “Indeed, I was sure of it. But I’m so glad you’re still here. I came down specifically to see you.”

  14

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  This was longer than the “quick discussion” Murray had expected. It was more of a negotiation, actually, and when it was over, he had what Director Allen wanted: a document signed by Eva Fischer absolving the Central Intelligence Agency of all culpability in unfairly detaining her and denying her access to even a phone call, not to mention a lawyer.

  Eva, in turn, got what she wanted:

  a $100,000 settlement—twice what Allen had initially offered;

  a letter signed by Murray apologizing for “unfair treatment” of her; and

  a transfer to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, where she would be promoted to senior Iran analyst.

  On this last point, Murray had resisted, but Eva had made it clear she wanted no part of working under Jack Zalinsky’s supervision. For her, this was nonnegotiable. Given the fact that the Middle East was in a hot war, she told Murray, she wasn’t inclined to leave government service altogether. But she wanted to work directly for the NSA, translating intercepts of Iranian satellite phone calls and providing analysis of the most important transcripts. In that capacity, she would be willing to interface with the CIA and, when needed, talk to Zalinsky—though she made it clear she preferred to work through Murray—but she wasn’t going to work directly for Zalinsky, she didn’t want to see him, and the less she could hear his voice, or even his name, the better.

  In the end, Murray capitulated to every demand. He was under orders from the director of Central Intelligence to get this deal done, and fast. So he swallowed his pride and signed on the dotted line, and it was finished.

  CAPE MAY, NEW JERSEY

  Another grisly story out of Syria caught Najjar’s attention. On the website of the German magazine Der Spiegel, he found an article headlined “Inside the Syrian Death Zone,” detailing the brutality of the Mustafa regime.

  The article described the horrific scene as Syrian government agents picked off pedestrians with sniper rifles during a busy shopping time. People doing nothing more dangerous than trying to buy a loaf of bread were being shot down in the street. Hundreds of thousands of people in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, were essentially being held hostage, afraid to leave their homes for fear of becoming targets.

  Tears filled Najjar’s eyes as he read. He knew of the evils committed by his own government in Tehran. He had seen such sadism, such unspeakable horrors in his own country. But the press in Iran never reported the crimes of Iran’s neighbors and allies. Overcome by gratitude that he and his family had escaped such barbarism and were safe and free, but also overcome with grief for those still trapped as slaves of evil regimes, he fell to his knees and began to pray.

  “How long, O Lord?” he cried. “How long until you bring justice to such wicked men? How long until you liberate such dear, innocent children? How long until you reveal Jesus to all of them, rich and poor, young and old, men and women, powerful and powerless? How long, O Lord? How long?”

  SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

  Mohammad Shirazi started to get up, but Marseille insisted that he remain seated, and finally he acquiesced.

  “May I sit with you for a moment?” she asked.

  �
��Of course, dear,” he said. “Please sit right over there.”

  He pointed to the slightly worn blue-and-red plaid couch directly across from his recliner, and she nodded and sat down. It was a couch Nasreen had picked. He had never been a fan of the pattern, but he had learned long ago not to interfere in matters of interior design. Shaking his head, he looked up from the couch at Marseille and noticed that her eyes were puffy and a bit bloodshot.

  “What a lovely thing, to have a member of the Harper family in this home again,” he said. “You are a sweet girl, Marseille. You always have been, ever since your dear mother bore you. Nasreen and I fell in love with you the moment we saw you at the hospital. And now look at you; you’ve been an unexpected angel in our time of sorrow. I cannot thank you enough.”

  They were silent for a time, and then he said, “Your mother would have been very proud of you, Marseille. I know your father was.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Shirazi,” she replied. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know I am,” he said. “You forget I knew them a long, long time.”

  “How could I forget?” Marseille asked, smiling somewhat wistfully. “You and Mrs. Shirazi were their best friends in this world. Look, I didn’t want to bother you. I didn’t expect to stay this long. I just wanted to say again how sorry I am for your loss. You two had one of the most special and, dare I say, magical marriages I’ve ever personally had the privilege to witness. I hope someday I’ll have a marriage like that.”

  She suddenly looked embarrassed for saying it, but he was glad she had. He and Nasreen had always wanted to see David and Marseille get married and raise a family together. To him, it was their destiny. They were just taking their own sweet time to realize it. “I have no doubt you will,” he said gently.