The Twelfth Imam by Joel C.Rosenberg

Author:Joel C.Rosenberg [C.Rosenberg, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense & Thrillers
ISBN: 9781414345758
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2010-10-18T22:00:00+00:00

Tehran, Iran

Waiting for word from Esfahani, David had been going to prayer five times a day, often at the Imam Khomeini Mosque, though not always. He still wasn’t sure what he believed, but he wanted to believe in a God who would hear his prayers. So he prayed for his parents. He prayed for his brothers. He prayed for his country and Zalinsky and the president. He prayed most of all for Marseille. He asked Allah to bless her, to take care of her, to heal her heart and ease her pain. Yet he doubted any of it was getting through. Sometimes there were “coincidences” that seemed like answers to his prayers. But most of the time he still felt he was talking to the ceiling.

When he wasn’t at the mosque maintaining his cover, he went for long walks. He got to know the city. He visited shops that sold mobile phones, asked lots of questions, and then asked some more. Back in the hotel, he tracked business headlines on his laptop. He sent e-mails to colleagues at MDS. Mostly, he reviewed his cover story, again and again, meditating on every tiny fact until it had truly become a part of him.

But he was dying. For too much of the day, he was sitting in a hotel room in the capital of a country feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons. It was his mission to find a way to stop it, and he was stuck. Alone and out of ideas, he could only wait. He couldn’t talk to Zalinsky. He couldn’t talk to Eva.

The worst part, however, was not the isolation. Or the boredom. Or the feeling of helplessness and frustration at not being able to do more—do anything—to advance his mission, protect his country, and care for his family and friends. The worst part was trying to pretend he was a good Muslim. Deep in his heart, David Shirazi—aka Reza Tabrizi—knew he was not. He believed in God, or at least in some form of divine being in the universe known as “God,” or at least “a god.” He believed this God was a creator, that He had created the heavens and the earth and mankind and him personally. Beyond that, however, he wasn’t sure what he believed.

A shudder ran down his spine. To let such thoughts cross his mind—even if they remained unspoken—was tantamount to apostasy for a Muslim. They were an eternal death sentence, a fast pass to eternal damnation.

Yet how could Islam be true? The purest practitioners of the religion, he reasoned, be they Shia or Sunni, were the ayatollahs and the mullahs. His experiences in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere had taught him that these “holy men” were the most unholy men on the planet. Their minds were filled with thoughts of violence and corruption. The leaders of Iran were the worst of all. They actively denied the Holocaust while planning another. They were trying to obtain weapons capable of incinerating millions upon millions of people in the blink of an eye, and to do so in the name of their god.

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