The Twelfth Imam (14 page)

30

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

“You’re going to Iran,” Murray said.

The sentence just hung in the air for a few moments.

David Shirazi stared at Murray in disbelief, then at Zalinsky, and back to Murray. “When?”

“Seventy-two hours,” Murray said. “Your code name is
Zephyr
.”

God of the west wind?
They had to be kidding.

“What’s the mission?”

“Jack and Eva here will walk you through the specifics,” Murray explained. “But the short version is this: we need you to penetrate the highest levels of the Iranian regime, recruit assets, and deliver solid, actionable intelligence that can help us sink or at least slow down Iran’s nuclear weapons program. We’re currently positioning NOC teams throughout the country ready to sabotage facilities, intercept shipments, you name it. What we don’t have is someone inside giving us hard targets.”

David tried to process what his boss was saying, but it was such a radical departure from what he had been doing that he couldn’t imagine it working. Sure, his family was Iranian, but he had never set foot in the country. Yes, he spoke Farsi, but so did eighty million other people in the world. What’s more, he’d just spent the last several years studying Pakistani, Afghani, and al Qaeda leaders, organizations, and cultures. He was increasingly an expert in such matters and thus increasingly valuable in an intelligence agency that still hadn’t caught bin Laden all these years after 9/11. As for Iran, he neither understood the first thing about Persian politics nor really much cared.

“I’m sorry, sir,” David said after a few more moments of reflection. “That’s not what I signed up for.”

“I beg your pardon?” Murray said, clearly in no mood for a discussion on the topic.

“Sir, with all due respect, I was recruited to hunt down Osama bin Laden and bring you proof of his death,” David told the Agency’s number-two official with a depth of conviction that surprised even him. “That’s what I was trained for. That’s what I’m finally getting the chance to do. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I was born to do. I’m sure you have your reasons, and I’m grateful that you would consider me, but I’m not interested in changing assignments. You’ve got the wrong guy. It’s just that simple.”

The look on Tom Murray’s face said it all. The man was not happy. “Agent Shirazi, I really couldn’t care less why you think you were recruited for this Agency,” he explained through gritted teeth. “We bought you. We trained you. We own you. Period. You got it?”

This was no time to argue, David concluded. “Yes, sir.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Murray got up, stretched his legs, and walked over to a window overlooking snow-covered woods. “Osama bin Laden is still a serious threat to this country and our allies. Don’t get me wrong—I do want his head on a platter, and this Agency is going to get it done on my watch. But while in public this administration is focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the director and I believe the most serious threat to our national security and that of our allies in the Middle East at the moment is Iran. We know the Iranians are rapidly enriching uranium. We know they are planning to use that uranium to build nuclear weapons. We know time is running out. And if we don’t stop the Iranians from building the Islamic Bomb, do you have any idea what’s going to happen?”

David took a deep breath and glanced at Zalinsky, who was still stone-faced; then he looked back at Murray.

“Well, Shirazi,” Murray pressed, “do you?”

David shifted in his seat. “Well, sir, I’d say the mullahs are probably going to try to rebuild the Persian Empire under the cover of a nuclear umbrella,” he ventured. “And I’d guess they’ll try to blackmail the Saudis and the Iraqis to do their bidding.”

“Or?” Murray asked.

“Or Iran will try to drive up the price of oil to unheard-of levels and try to bankrupt the West.”

“Or?”

“I guess that, uh, well . . . Iran could try to give a small, tactical nuke to al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or some other terrorist organization who could try to sneak it into Tel Aviv or Haifa and take out an Israeli city.”

“Or?”

David didn’t like where this was headed. “Worst-case scenario? Iran could try to launch a barrage of ballistic missiles—fitted with nuclear warheads—over Syria, over Iraq and Jordan, and into the major cities of Israel to ‘wipe the Zionist entity off the face of the earth,’ as they have promised to do for years.”

Murray nodded but asked one more time, “Or?”

This time, David drew a blank. “I’m sorry, sir, isn’t that all bad enough?”

“It is,” Murray said. “But aside from the fact that the creation of the Persian Bomb will force the Arab states into a nuclear arms race so they have the Bomb, too, you’re still missing one catastrophic scenario.”

“What is that, sir?”

Murray picked up a remote control off the conference table and pushed a button. “The most immediate—and arguably most likely—scenario is that Iran will never get the Bomb.” All eyes were riveted to the digital display. “Instead, the Israelis, hoping against hope that they can neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat before the ayatollahs are truly able to destroy their country, will launch a massive preemptive strike.” On the screen, missiles were suddenly flying in every direction throughout the Middle East as Israel struck first followed by the retaliation of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Not a single country in the region remained unaffected. The simulated Iranian response to Israel’s first strike showed Persian missile strikes against every major Israeli city, but also against oil fields, refineries, and shipping facilities throughout Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab emirates in the Gulf. At the same time, Iranian missiles were hitting cities and military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel, meanwhile, was not simply being hit by hundreds of Iranian missiles, but also by tens of thousands of missiles, rockets, and mortars from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. With Israeli missiles and fighter jets firing back, it was clear the entire region was going to be set on fire.

Murray hit another button, enlarging the scope of the digital map, and David saw flashes in cities throughout Europe as well as the Middle East. These, the deputy director for operations explained, represented suicide bombers being unleashed en masse. Then David noticed a series of digital counters in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, estimating casualties from the entire conflict. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would die, David realized—Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Millions more would be wounded or left homeless by the devastation. And not only would the Middle East and Europe be affected, the United States would be as well. It was almost impossible to imagine sleeper cells not being activated, hitting Americans and Canadians with a blizzard of terrorist attacks.

While David was still focused on the casualty projections, Zalinsky evidently decided it was time to broaden the young man’s perspective. “As bad as the human toll would be, it would not be limited to death and injury,” he explained. “The economic analysts over in the directorate of intelligence tell me they would expect oil prices to skyrocket in this scenario.”

“How high?” David asked.

“No one really knows—two hundred dollars a barrel? three hundred dollars a barrel? Maybe more.”

Such a dramatic spike in oil prices—overnight but also sustained for months and possibly years on end—could sink an already-fragile global economy. Soaring energy prices could quickly trigger hyperinflation, David surmised. Skyrocketing prices would send the cost of many goods beyond the reach of the poor and lower middle class. Millions would be pushed into poverty. People would stop spending on almost anything but food and basic staples, triggering massive business failures. Tens of millions of people would soon be out of work. As the dominoes fell, a global depression could ensue. And this, of course, was assuming the conflict was simply a conventional war, not one that actually went nuclear. David wasn’t sure that was a safe assumption, but the point wasn’t lost on him.

He glanced at Eva. At the moment, she was looking down, jotting notes, but she clearly wasn’t reacting to all this with much emotion. Assuming she was a thinking, feeling, rational person, that could mean only one thing: she had heard this information before. She had already run the various scenarios and processed them at length.

Then another thought dawned on him. He wasn’t going into Iran alone; Eva was going with him. She wasn’t an Agency analyst. She was a NOC operative. Zalinsky said she had helped construct some of David’s cover stories in the past, but if she were simply helping design his new assignment going forward, why would Murray and Zalinsky have her in the room? There was no other reason than for the two of them to become acquainted prior to embarking on a mission that might cost both of them their lives.

David looked back at the images flickering on the display and knew in that instant that his dream of killing Osama bin Laden and avenging the death of Marseille Harper’s mom was evaporating in front of his eyes. But to his surprise, he wasn’t angry or depressed. Rather, he found himself unexpectedly exhilarated. His country needed him. He was one of the few Persian Americans in the CIA’s clandestine services. He spoke Farsi like a native. He would have an airtight cover story. He didn’t yet know exactly how Murray was going to use him, but he’d learn soon enough. The bottom line was clear. He was heading into Iran. His mission was to stop the ayatollahs before they got their hands on the Bomb. Before the Israelis took matters into their own hands. Before Armageddon. Better yet, he was going with a beautiful, intelligent girl he looked forward to getting to know. All that, and he was leaving in seventy-two hours.

The phone rang.

The DDO answered it, then turned to the others and said, “Another massacre in Yemen—I need to take this. Jack, I trust you and Eva can proceed from here.”

Zalinsky nodded and quietly signaled David and Eva to gather their papers and follow him back downstairs to the Near East Division.

31

Back on the sixth floor, they signed out a conference room.

Zalinsky ordered some Chinese food from the commissary, and the three of them locked themselves away for the rest of the day. Only then did Zalinsky hand David and Eva a thick briefing book on the mission ahead of them.

“Memorize it, both of you,” Zalinsky said when they had finally settled in. “I’m sure you’ve already figured this out, David, but Eva is going in too. Her cover will be the MDS project manager. In reality, she’ll also be running the Agency’s operation on the ground and reporting back directly to me. Her code name is
Themis
.”

The Greek goddess of divine law and order?
She was going to be insufferable, David concluded.

Zalinsky, however, didn’t give David time to ponder the implications. He cut straight to the bottom line. “Time is of the essence. I can’t stress this enough. I’ve talked to all of the Agency’s best Iran analysts in the intelligence directorate. Most believe Tehran could have functional nuclear weapons in two to three years. Some say it will take them longer. But the problem is, the Israelis don’t trust our analysis. They’re worried we’re making another catastrophic error of judgment.”

“You mean 1998—India and Pakistan,” David said.

Zalinsky nodded. “We knew both countries had been racing to build the Bomb for decades, but we were caught completely off guard when they both tested nukes within days of each other. We had no idea they had crossed the nuclear finish line and built dozens of nuclear weapons until it was too late to do anything about it. And that’s just one example. The Agency had no idea the Soviets were so close to testing their first nuclear weapon in 1949 until the test actually occurred. And don’t forget Saddam Hussein in 1981; we didn’t realize just how close he was to building nuclear weapons until the Israelis took out the Osirak nuclear reactor just before it went hot.”

“And then there’s Iraq again in 2003,” Eva chimed in.

No kidding,
David thought. Arguably the Agency’s most disastrous mistake to date was having convinced President George W. Bush that Iraq had large and dangerous stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction—and that the case for proving it to the international community was, in the now-infamous turn of phrase by the director of central intelligence at the time, “a slam dunk.” To be sure, some WMDs were found in Iraq after the liberation of the country by U.S. and coalition forces. But the weapons that were discovered were neither the types nor quantities of WMDs the U.S. and the world had expected to find. Nor were they the types and quantities the CIA had warned about. As a result, the credibility of the CIA and her sister agencies throughout the American government had been so badly damaged that they still had not fully recovered.

“So the problem,” Zalinsky concluded, “is that we now have to be very careful about assessing the WMD capabilities of enemy nations, Iran included. The analysts in the CIA’s intelligence directorate are terrified of making mistakes and of being accused of overstating what they know. So they hedge their written and oral assessments. No one wants to sound too concerned about Iran getting the Bomb for fear of looking like they’re goading the president into another war.”

“So let me get this straight,” David said. “The Israelis think we blew the call in the past by not realizing just how close Saddam and India and Pakistan and others were to getting the Bomb. And the Israelis think we blew the call a few years ago by thinking Saddam was closer to building the Bomb and stockpiling WMDs than he really was. So when our best analysts say Iran is still several years away from getting the Bomb, the Israelis think we’re smoking crack?”

“Let’s just say they’re not brimming with confidence,” Zalinsky said. “But it’s even worse than that.”

“How so?”

“A few weeks ago while you were in Karachi, David, and you, Eva, were in Dubai, I had lunch in Jerusalem with Israel’s top spook at the Mossad. He told me, look, the world already knows Iran is building nuclear facilities. The world already knows they’re training nuclear scientists and enriching uranium at a breakneck pace and building ballistic missiles that can reach not only Israel but Europe as well. The world has already heard the Iranian leadership repeatedly threaten to annihilate Judeo-Christian civilization and wipe Israel and the U.S. off the map. So why isn’t the world taking decisive action to stop Iran from getting the Bomb? Why isn’t the U.S. building a coalition to invade Iran and change this fanatical regime? The world, he noted, went to war with Iraq in 2003 with far less evidence. I told him there is simply no appetite—and no money—in the U.S. or Europe or anywhere for another war in the Middle East. So he asked, doesn’t Israel, then, have not only the legal right but the moral responsibility to go to war with Iran now, if the world is just going to sit on its hands and do nothing?”

“I hear his point,” David said. “But given the fact that a war between Israel and Iran could set the region on fire and seriously impact the global economy, do we really want Israel to be deciding the fate of the region and the world all by itself?”

“No, we don’t,” Zalinsky said. “And that’s what I told him. That’s why the secretary of defense is en route to Tel Aviv as we speak to warn the Israelis not to take matters into their own hands. That’s why President Jackson has had no less than three phone conversations with Prime Minister Naphtali in the past month urging him to let us ramp up covert efforts rather than drag the world into a war no one wants. Which brings the three of us to this room. Last week the president quietly signed a highly classified national intelligence directive. It authorizes the CIA ‘to use all means necessary to disrupt and, if necessary, destroy Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities in order to prevent the eruption of another cataclysmic war in the Middle East.’”

Zalinsky then reached into his briefcase, pulled out a copy of the directive, and slid it across the table for David and Eva to read for themselves.

As David read the one-page document, Eva asked, “How much time does the Mossad think they have before Iran has an operational nuclear weapon?”

Zalinsky took back the “eyes only” directive and returned it to his briefcase, then answered the question. “They’re convinced Iran will have the Bomb by the end of the year . . . and an operational warhead by the end of next year.”

David tensed. Even if the Israelis were wrong, even if they were being too pessimistic, their assessment could mean only one thing—if the U.S. did nothing, the Israelis were going to launch a massive strike against Iran, and soon.