David’s father wasn’t quite so direct, but it was abundantly clear that he, too, wanted his son to slow down and settle down. David certainly understood why. His parents were rapidly approaching retirement age. The whirlwind of raising three high-octane sons was over. The house was empty. No one was around to break any lamps or hit any baseballs through the front windows-or the neighbors’ windows. No one needed to be rushed to the hospital for stitches anymore. A box of cereal in their house now lasted them a month, not a day. They only needed to buy a quart of milk a week, not four gallons. Everything was different. They were lonely. David promised to be in touch more and privately vowed to do better.
Just then, David’s phone vibrated. Waiting for him was a new text message. Eva Fischer was en route to Dubai. Zalinsky was as well. They had breaking news, so “DBL,” she wrote. Don’t be late.
David’s pulse quickened. It was time to get into the game. He apologized to his parents and excused himself to check his BlackBerry for the status of his flights. Despite a massive snowstorm heading across Lake Ontario from Canada by nightfall, all flights at the moment appeared to be running on time. He was booked on Delta flight 5447, leaving Syracuse’s Hancock Field at 5:33 p.m. and arriving in Atlanta at 8:06 p.m. That should get him out of central New York before the brunt of the storm hit, and for that leg, he would be traveling under his real name. Once in Atlanta, however, he planned to switch to his German passport and his alias-Reza Tabrizi-and catch Delta flight 8. That would depart at 11:20 p.m. and arrive in the largest city of the United Arab Emirates at 9:25 p.m. the following evening.
David checked his watch, then apologized to his parents again and told them it was time for him to go. That’s when his mother explained the driving force behind her request.
“Davood?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Honey, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I’ve been diagnosed with stage III stomach cancer. We didn’t want you boys to worry about me, but you showing up like this so unexpectedly seems like a gift. So I wanted you to know.”
The news stunned David. As he listened to her describe the symptoms she had been experiencing in recent weeks and the various tests the doctors were running and the aggressive treatment plan they were recommending and her fears of dying, all of David’s guilt came rushing to the fore. He desperately wanted to stay, to listen, to care for both his parents as they headed into this terrible storm. But he had to leave.
They begged him to reschedule his flight, to call his boss, to explain the situation. But he couldn’t. He could see the pain and deep disappointment in his mother’s eyes in particular, and he grieved for her. His excuse for having to leave sounded so lame under the circumstances, but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t tell them the truth.
As David stood on the front steps of his childhood home in an increasingly heavy snowfall and hugged his parents good-bye, Nasreen Shirazi began to cry.
“Mom, please, don’t,” David said, his suitcase in hand, the car running.
“I can’t help it,” she said in Farsi, sniffling. “I love you, Davood.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“Remember when I used to walk you by the hand to the bus stop when you were a little boy?”
“Mom, really.”
“Remember when you came racing home every day with a backpack filled with notes and papers and goodies for me? Remember when you couldn’t wait to tell me about everything you had done that day?”
“Mom, it’s going to be all right,” he assured her. “Dad knows the best doctors in the world. They’ll take great care of you. And I’ll find a way to come back soon to visit you and cheer you up. But if I don’t leave right this second, I’m going to miss my plane. And I really have to go.”
“Fine,” she said. “Go. Who am I to stand in your way?”
David felt worse than ever. He kissed her on the cheek, gave his father a hug, and was in his car when his mother suddenly began calling after him.
“David, David-wait! Before you go, I totally forgot-I have something for you!”
She turned and ran into the house. David looked to his father for help, but Dr. Shirazi simply shrugged off any knowledge of what his wife was up to. Two minutes passed. Then three. Then five. David checked his watch. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. He forced himself not to gun the engine or honk the horn, but inside he couldn’t take it anymore. Finally his mother came running back out to the car and breathlessly handed him a plastic Wegmans grocery bag.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just a little mail for you,” she said, giving him one last kiss through the open window as the snow began coming down even harder. “I keep forgetting to send it over to you.”
“Thanks, I guess,” he said, putting the Impala in reverse and easing out of the driveway. “Anything interesting?”
“Probably not,” she said. “Except maybe one.”
“Really? From who?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But the postmark said Portland.”
Hamadan, Iran
Najjar woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
He couldn’t breathe, haunted for yet another night by the face of the man he had seen beheaded as a Zionist spy. His dear wife, Sheyda, held him, startled awake, no doubt, by his repeated nightmares and constant thrashing and moaning.
“What is it, my love?” she whispered with a tenderness that typically calmed and comforted him.
Now neither her soothing voice nor the gentle touch of her arms around him sufficed. Najjar had no idea what to say. He couldn’t tell her that her father was a butcher. He couldn’t fully believe it himself. What’s more, he had to remain quiet. Everything that happened in that facility-everything-was highly classified. He was not authorized to say anything to anyone about anything that happened there. To be found breaching security, even to the daughter of the director of the facility, would land him, he feared, in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. And that, he knew, would be a merciful sentence. Two unauthorized phone calls had already cost one man his life.
But it wasn’t simply the gruesome image of the executioner’s blade slicing the man’s head off and the massive flow of blood that threatened to prevent Najjar from ever sleeping peacefully or innocently again. It was the fact that the man hadn’t been given a fair trial in a court. It was the fact that neither Najjar nor his colleagues had seen a single shred of proof against the man. It was the fact that this man was a fellow Muslim, yet he had been shown no mercy. Worse, it was the fact that Najjar now knew why the man had looked so familiar.
For in his most recent nightmare, Najjar suddenly came to the realization that this was the man he had seen kidnapped back in Baghdad years before, the man whose family he had seen slaughtered execution-style on Al Rasheed Street.
36
Syracuse, New York
David parked at Hancock Field and raced into the terminal.
He was intrigued by the letter from Portland and its bizarre timing, but that would have to wait. David was devastated by news of his mother’s cancer. He couldn’t imagine his mother not being there for him. Nor could he imagine his father living all alone. He rued all the years he had missed spending time with them both-summers, birthdays, holidays. They were all gone now, and he could never get them back.
First things first, he called a local florist and ordered two dozen yellow roses-his mother’s favorite-to be sent to the house with a note asking for her forgiveness for not being able to stay longer. Next, he dashed off an e-mail to Zalinsky’s administrative assistant, informing her that he was leaving the Agency’s car at the Syracuse airport. Then he checked his bags, got his boarding pass, and cleared security just in time to catch the flight to Atlanta.