With that, Hosseini rose, his hands dripping with warm blood, and turned to the chief of his security detail, who stood stone-faced and trembling in the hallway.
“I will come out soon,” Hosseini said calmly. “Make certain my way is not obstructed.”
With that, the Supreme Leader entered the bedroom alone. The security chief shut the door behind him. Hosseini then returned to his prayer rug, knelt again facing Mecca, and bowed down.
Without warning, a blazing light as if from the sun itself filled the room. Hosseini was stunned, wondering what this could be. Then a voice, emanating from the center of the light, began to speak.
“Very good, my child. I am pleased with your sacrifice.”
The room grew cold.
“The hour of my appearance is close at hand. With blood and fire I shall be revealed to the world. It is time to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the infidels-Jews and Christians, young and old, men, women, and children.”
This was the moment Hosseini had been waiting for, he knew, the moment for which he had prayed all of his life. But he had never imagined it like this. He was hearing the actual voice of Sahab az-Zaman, the Lord of the Age. The Twelfth Imam himself was speaking directly to him, and every fiber of Hosseini’s being trembled in excitement and in fear.
“Now, listen closely to what I am about to tell you. Get ready; be prepared. And do not hesitate for a single moment to carry out my commands.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Hosseini cried. “Thank you, my Master.”
“You shall complete the weapons and test them immediately. When I finish roaming the earth and all is set into place, we will proceed to annihilate the Little Satan first and all the Zionists with it. This is your good and acceptable act of worship to me. You must bring to me the blood of the Jews on the altar of Islam. You must wipe the ugly, cancerous stain of Israel from the map and from the heart of the Islamic caliphate. This is right and just, but it is only the first step. Do not be distracted or confused. This is not the ultimate objective. I have chosen you above all others not simply to destroy the Little Satan, for this is too small a thing. The main objective is to destroy the Great Satan-and I mean destroy entirely. Annihilate. Extinguish. Obliterate. Vaporize. In the blink of an eye. Before they know what has hit them. The Americans are a crumbling tower. A dying empire. A sinking ship. And their time has come.”
The Twelfth Imam then instructed Hosseini to meet with his security cabinet, consisting of President Ahmed Darazi, Defense Minister Faridzadeh, and General Mohsen Jazini, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, already gathered and waiting for him in the retreat’s main dining room.
“Each of you must carefully select four deputies, forming a group of twenty. These must be men of honor and courage, like yourselves. They must be men willing to die for my sake, for the sake of Allah. The twenty of you will form my inner circle and be my most-trusted advisors. You will meet weekly. You will establish secure communications. You will then recruit 293 additional disciples-some mullahs you trust, but mostly military commanders and leaders of business and industry. You must find servants extraordinarily gifted in organization, administration, and warfare. You will recruit this group with haste, but never let the Group of 313 meet all together in one place. It is too dangerous. There is too much risk of infiltration or leaks. Create a cell structure. Do not let one cell know about another. Only you four can know all the details. Is this clear?”
“Yes, Master. I will do all that you say.”
“Very good, Hamid. Get ready; be prepared. Let there be no mistake-I am coming back soon.”
40
Mount Tochal, Iran
Hosseini pressed his face to the floor.
The words of the Twelfth Imam rang in his ears. He wanted to ask questions, to plead for wisdom, to say something, anything, but no words would form; no sound would come.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone. Hosseini lay prostrate, unable to move. It seemed like only a few minutes, but later, as his breathing calmed and his heart slowed, he realized that nearly an hour had gone by. None of his aides dared check on him, of course. Nor would his guests.
Slowly Hosseini began to compose himself. He washed his hands and face, changed into fresh clothes, and stepped out of his room. He walked down the freshly mopped hallway, then turned right and went down another long hallway, past several bodyguards stationed at strategic points, and entered the main dining room. There he was greeted by his security cabinet, all of whom instantly rose to their feet.
“Please, gentlemen, be seated,” the Supreme Leader said, taking a seat at the head of the table.
“I have known the three of you for many years,” he began. “I have sought your counsel and relied on you many times. Now I need your best assessment. Ali, we will begin with you.”
Hosseini paused. He knew he needed to explain to his colleagues what had just happened. But first he needed to gather his thoughts and process it for himself.
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh began. “Last month you asked me to go back to my team and ask many questions, to press the scientists for more clarity. This I have done.”
“And what have you found?”
“We are ready, Your Excellency.”
“You are certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“The uranium is sufficiently enriched?”
“Most of the last batch was 97.4 percent,” Faridzadeh said. “Some came in at 95.9 percent. Both are sufficient, and we continue to make improvements.”
“How many warheads could you build with that?”
“We have already finished nine.”
Hosseini was taken aback by the defense minister’s impressive report. “They are already built?”
“Yes, Your Excellency-thanks be to Allah-nine of them are ready to be detonated. My men should have another six done by the end of the month.”
“This is welcome news, indeed,” the Supreme Leader said. “Which design did you use? The one from Pyongyang?”
“No, Your Excellency. In the end, we chose A. Q. Khan’s design.”
“Why?”
“The data from the North Korean tests were disappointing, Your Excellency,” Faridzadeh explained. “The warheads the North Koreans tested certainly detonated. But the yields were not that impressive.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Pyongyang’s bomb could annihilate several city blocks, but we don’t believe they could take out a city. And this was one of your stated objectives, the capacity to take out all or most of a city with a single weapon.”
“Yes, we must achieve this,” Hosseini pressed. “You’re certain the North Korean plans are not sufficient?”
“I am not a physicist, as you know, Your Excellency,” the defense minister replied. “But my top man has pored over the data from every angle, and he is simply not convinced the North Korean design has been perfected to the point that we’d want to risk the future of our own country on it.”
“But we paid so much for it,” Hosseini said.
“We did, Your Excellency. But what the North Koreans sold us was effectively worthless in comparison to what we bought from A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.”
“But we hardly paid Dr. Khan anything.”
“Nevertheless,” the minister said, “Islamabad has built 162 warheads to date based on Khan’s design. They’ve tested their warheads multiple times. The yields are absolutely enormous. So we know the design works. Now we simply need to test what we have built and make sure we have followed his impressive design to the letter.”