The Disciple

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew the magnitude of the risks he was taking. He intended to wipe Israel and the largest American bases in the Middle East off the globe, send everyone in them to Paradise or hell, as Allah chose. And he was willing to obliterate Tehran, kill or maim the twenty million people in it, and blame the atrocity on the Americans. When the dust settled, he, the new Mahdi, would lead the Muslims of the earth in a holy war against the infidels. This would be the final war, the war between good and evil that would decide the fate of the human species and the planet.

“But we will have no more nuclear weapons,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “What if the Americans massively retaliate, destroy all our cities and holy places? What if Iran ceases to exist, becomes only a memory?”

“All the believers will be in Paradise.”

“They are all going there anyway, without a nuclear war,” the ayatollah pointed out with impeccable logic. “What if there is no Iran to lead the believers of the earth in this holy war?”

“I believe Allah wishes for us to struggle until the end. The words he spoke to Muhammad that he wrote into the holy Koran leave no other interpretation.”

Khamenei didn’t want to debate theology. In truth, he and his fellow mullahs lived a comfortable life in Iran, paid for with petrodollars, and he doubted that his friends wanted to trade their comfort for the glories of martyrdom. To be sure, Ahmadinejad wouldn’t say it quite that way, but he was steering the ship of state in that direction, and want it or not, martyrdom was visible just ahead.

Not that Khamenei had any intention of sitting in his office in the capitol waiting for a nuclear warhead to explode over his head. He and his key religious and political allies would all be in the executive bunker with Ahmadinejad and the senior officers of the armed forces.

As he thought about it, he opened a drawer in his desk, took out the list of people who would be in the bunker and scrutinized it. Almost four hundred names were on it; most, admittedly, were the wives and children of the religious, military and political elite.

His eye stopped at the name of General Habib Sultani, minister of defense. The general had suffered a nervous breakdown and was in a private sanitarium. It would be impossible to put him in the bunker, a man already unhinged. No, the merciful thing was to let the gods of war end Sultani’s life quickly, and Allah would usher him into Paradise.

Khamenei’s eyes continued down the list, considering each name, weighing what they could bring to the monumental task before them.

The fate of Habib Sultani’s family didn’t get an iota of thought from the great man. He didn’t waste an erg on the twenty millions of people who were to be sacrificed in Tehran; he gave not a thought to the people in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria who would die if the missiles aimed at Israel missed a little bit, nor did he spend a second or two contemplating the fate of the people in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar who would be cremated alive by missiles aimed at the military bases there. Like tyrants throughout history, Ali Khamenei rarely, if ever, thought about anyone but himself.

Khamenei put the list back in the drawer and closed it. Ahmadinejad was on the other side of the desk, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

The ayatollah had approved the tens of billions of dollars that had been spent on the nuclear program, not because he contemplated using nuclear weapons on anyone but because possession of such weapons would cause Iran’s prestige to soar, raising the nation from the status of a rich third-world oil producer to first rank among the world’s nations. Today he reminded himself of the sniveling, cowardly responses of the major powers to Iran’s nuclear program. Once Iran had nuclear warheads on its missiles, it would be the major Islamic nuclear power-and the undisputed leader of the Islamic world.

Unfortunately, Khamenei thought, Ahmadinejad wants to trade diplomatic and moral leadership for a military quest, which might or might not turn out as he hoped. He glanced at Ahmadinejad now, and saw a dangerous fanatic.

Khamenei realized that he had five days until Jihad Day, and of course he could postpone the launches at any time, or stop them altogether, right up until the rocket motors ignited. If the armed forces would obey him. If they refused, Ahmadinejad would have won, would have reduced him to a figurehead without power, like the Japanese emperor or the queen of England.

Of course, if Ahmadinejad was dead, the armed forces would have no choice. They would have to obey him. And he could lead the Islamic world into a new, brighter future.

In the silence of Khamenei’s office, Ahmadinejad was also doing some serious thinking. His strong right arm, Hazra al-Rashid, was dead, and the American spy, Carmellini, and the traitor, Larijani, were at large somewhere in the city. They had undoubtedly learned the truth about Jihad Day, and one had to assume they had communicated it to Israel and America.

Still, what could the Zionists and the Great Satan do at this stage of the game? If they could even find the backbone or political will to resist the inevitable.

No, those agents of the devil were not his most virulent threat. The most dangerous threat he faced was the ayatollah, sitting there like one of Muhammad’s sons, certain that his was the proper vision for Iran’s future. Khamenei knew the words of the Prophet, certainly, and yet he still hesitated to take up the bloody flag of martyrdom and go forth as a soldier of Allah.

However, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thought, not for the first time, what if the Zionists were to strike the Supreme Leader down before Jihad Day? The act would infuriate Muslims worldwide, would prepare them for the great holy war to come.

Suddenly certain, Ahmadinejad knew that was the way the future should be written. He had had dedicated holy warriors willing to do the job ready for months. All he needed to do was issue the order. The time, he decided, had come.

When I called Jake Grafton that evening, he asked me to get Davar and call him back. As usual, I was in the attic of the hotel. I closed up the phone, repacked it and took it with me, just in case. The hotel was empty of guests, and the staff had been given several days off with pay, so the hallways were empty. In the basement I moved the stuff that hid the hole, wriggled through, then pulled the stuff back into place and descended the ladder to the tunnel.

Davar was awake and alert. She was sitting up on her cot. Her swollen face showed every color of the rainbow. Still, she tried to smile when she saw me. Then she arranged a scarf over her face so that only her eyes were visible.

I reached with both hands and gently removed the scarf. “I know you look a mess,” I said, “but I want to see your face, just the same. The time for hiding behind scarves is almost over.”

“Oh, Tommy,” she murmured.

We chatted for a bit about this and that, carefully avoiding mentioning our recent adventure, or Ghasem.

Finally I said, “My boss wants to talk to you on the satellite phone. Now, if possible. We’ll have to climb clear up to the attic of the hotel that sits above this tunnel. Are you up for that?”

“Do you mean, can I do it?”

“Yes.”

She used both hands to lever herself erect. I could tell she was one sore female. Still, she didn’t complain. I stood beside her and kissed her as gently as I could. She wrapped her arms around me and stood like that for a long moment.

Then she said, “Let’s go.” She reached behind her for the scarf, and this time I helped arrange it. If she ran into any IRGC guys, we didn’t want them to see her face.

I got Joe Mottaki to run interference. Twenty minutes later Davar and I were back in the attic, and Joe was on the floor below, ensuring we were not interrupted. Davar sat on the only chair and caught her breath as I set up the satellite phone, checked the encryption device and made the call.

I could only hear her side of the conversation, which consisted mostly of yeses and noes. After a while, she handed me the phone. Grafton’s voice sounded in my ear, distorted as usual by the encryption gear.

“I want you and G. W. to do a scouting expedition, then lay low until Jihad Day.”

“Yes, sir.”

He briefed me on what he wanted me to do. I merely sat and listened. When Jake Grafton is giving you a mission, he covers everything you need to know and most of the foreseeable contingencies. I had no questions. My face must have turned pale, however, because I felt Davar take my hand and give it a gentle squeeze. I looked down at her. Through the gap in the scarf, I saw tears leaking from her eyes.

After I severed the connection and was packing up the phone, I asked her, “Do you know any of those folks who will be in the executive bunker?”

She nodded yes. “Girls I went to school with,” she whispered. “Some of them are friends.”

I took a deep breath. “If the Iranian missile forces manage to launch that missile aimed at Tehran, everyone in this city not in that bunker will be dead, cremated alive or killed by heat or radiation or fire, or crushed under the rubble. Including you and me. All twenty million of us. Once that thing is in the air, we are all dead.”

“Yes,” she whispered, so softly I almost missed it, and lowered her head. She looked so forlorn. She wasn’t telling me all of it-I could see that. “Who else will be in that bunker?” I demanded.

“My father and brother.”

I stared.

She raised her head. “My brother, Khurram, is a follower, one of the herd who follows the fundamentalists because they prey on the weak. They make him feel big.” She shook her head, then continued. “My father believes in money. He built that bunker-that obscenity-because they paid him. I asked him once what they were going to use it for, and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind. ‘In the event of an attack,’ he said, ‘the leaders must be saved.’ ‘And who else?’ I asked. ‘If Iran is attacked, who else will be saved?’

“He merely looked at me and said, ‘Don’t worry. We will be in the bunker.’

“That was his answer. We would be in the bunker.”

I went to the window and stood looking out. The part of the city I could see looked surreal, a mixture of old and new, atrocious architecture and stunning old buildings. I could hear the traffic, a living presence, and feel the people. The day was hot, and the heat made everything shimmer. The horrible pollution, which limited visibility to about three miles, smelled familiar, comfortable.

In a week I would probably be dead. Jake Grafton hadn’t minced words or tried to dress it up. As he spoke I remembered how that Hind helo had looked that afternoon, choppering off for Iraq. I wished to Christ Davar and I had been on it.

Staring at the doomed city, I realized that the best I could hope for was getting vaporized in the initial fireball.

Would I go to heaven? After all I had done? Or would I get to shake hands with the devil in hell?

Is there a heaven, or only blackness?

I turned and glanced at Davar, who was still sitting with her head lowered, lost in her own thoughts.

Maybe there was something I should say to her, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything.

When the Israeli ambassador called on the president, Sal Molina came to the conference room across the hall from the Oval Office and motioned to Jake Grafton, who was staring at a wall-sized chart that had been made from the photos Tommy Carmellini sent from Tehran with the burst transmitter. Other charts lay upon the table, along with sheets of paper setting forth the orders of battle.

The ambassador was speaking when Jake and Sal lowered themselves onto a couch at the side of the room.

“My government has decided on a first strike. Two missiles with nuclear warheads, each with two hundred kilotons of explosive power, are to be fired at Israel. If even one of them explodes over Israel, the population will be murdered where they stand. Israel will cease to exist. Quite simply, the risk is too great. We must act before the Iranians can fire those missiles.”

The president was standing in front of his desk, facing the ambassador, with his feet spread slightly and his hands in his pockets. His head was down, as if a great weight were pressing on him. “No,” he said.

“No?” The ambassador’s voice rose. “No? You stand here in Washington, half the world away from those madmen, and you tell us no?”

The president’s head came up. “Israel’s survival depends on more than surviving a nuclear blast. If you make a first strike on Iran with your limited assets, you will use nuclear weapons.”

The ambassador stiffened. “The military has not-”

“I know, I know,” the president interrupted. “Your government hasn’t shared a strike plan with you. But I am telling you, without transports and commandos on the ground and enough planes, the only possible way Israel can neutralize those missiles before they are pulled into the open for launch is to use nukes on the tunnel entrances.”

The ambassador took the blow in silence. The president continued relentlessly, “If you do that, the Islamic world will never forgive you; Europe will never forgive you; and, truthfully, most Americans will never forgive you. Israel will have ignited World War III-which is precisely what Ahmadinejad hopes to accomplish-and no power on earth could save it from the holocaust that will follow.”

The ambassador looked around for a chair. He sank into the nearest one.

After a moment the ambassador said slowly, “I merely deliver the message from my government. I do not make the decisions.”

“I understand.”

“The weight of responsibility is not on my head.”

The president waited until the ambassador was looking up at his face. “I am responsible,” he said. “The weight of responsibility is upon me.”

The president turned back to his desk, his hands still in his pockets. Finally he parked a cheek on the polished mahogany. “When I ran for president, I never thought I would have to make decisions like this.” He rubbed his chin with his right hand, then wiped his forehead with it and dried it on his trousers.

“Be that as it may,” the president added, “I know I am right. You know it, too.”

The ambassador nodded.

“An airburst over Tel Aviv or Iran will doom Israel,” the president continued remorselessly. “That choice is simply between a quick death or a slow one.”

“Show us an alternative.”

The president glanced at Jake Grafton. “Let’s go to the conference room. You can brief us.”

Jake Grafton rose from the couch and led the way.

An hour later, after the ambassador had left, the president stood looking at the charts. “I pray to God, and Allah, that your plan will work,” he said to Grafton, who merely nodded.

“Come on, Sal,” the president said, looking at Molina. “Let’s go next door and call the Israeli prime minister. Now I have to sell him.” He and his aide walked out of the room, leaving Jake Grafton alone with the charts and maps.

After a while, the admiral packed up all the charts and maps, locked them in his briefcase, chained the briefcase to his wrist and went home.

Grafton was home alone that evening-his wife was at a faculty function at the university-sitting in his den sipping whiskey, when the telephone rang. He picked it up.

“Grafton.”

“Jake, this is Sal. The Israelis agreed to hold off.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They said that if one nuke goes off over Israel, they’ll massively retaliate. There won’t be two bricks left stuck together anywhere in Iran.”

Grafton shot back, “Of course the president told them that we would have airplanes over the country and boots on the ground.”

“He did,” Molina replied.

“Yeah,” said Jake Grafton, then slowly lowered the telephone onto its cradle.

That night G. W. Hosein and Joe Mottaki stole some army vehicles. They didn’t tell me where they got them or who they had to kill, and I didn’t ask.

The following morning Davar, G. W. and I set forth in an SUV painted army colors. We wore uniforms, even Davar, who had a heavy beard glued to her swollen face. At least the swelling was going down. Still, she looked as if she had been in a car wreck and smashed her face on the dashboard.

Joe Mottaki followed us in an army truck. His men, Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar, rode in the back with AK-47s in their arms. They had a machine gun on the floor of the bed, near their feet, that they had liberated somewhere.

After a half hour of inching through traffic and avoiding roadblocks, we found ourselves in an area of finger ridges that came down from the mountains to the north. The Parliament building and other large government buildings were about half a mile to the south.

“The executive bunker is under that ridge,” Davar said, pointing.

“The main entrance,” she continued, “is under that prayer ground there.” She pointed again. “The Mosalla Prayer Grounds. It’s like a park, except one goes there to pray. The entrance to the bunker is in the basement of that small mosque. There is a tunnel that the people walk through to get to an elevator shaft. The head of the shaft is under twenty-five feet of reinforced concrete. Then they covered the concrete with ten feet of dirt.”

I looked at the buildings, trying to visualize the underground complex. “The main tunnel-it slopes down to the elevator room?”

“Yes,” Davar said. “It is precisely seventy-two meters long and ends at the top of the shaft. There are two elevators to take people up and down. Winding around the shaft is a staircase, in case the elevators cannot be used. The elevators take the people down seventy meters, then there is another room. Bombproof doors divide the room in two. Once through the doors, one finds another elevator shaft, and stairs, descending to the ground floor of the bunker. The floor of the bunker is a hundred and forty meters below the top of the elevator shaft.” She pointed. “Most of it lies there, under that ridge to our left. Between the top of the bunker and the surface is over three hundred meters of solid rock.”

“Okay,” I said.

“There are three air shafts, which will be sealed off when the bunker is occupied. The air in the bunker is recycled through scrubbers, and oxygen is added as necessary. It is submarine equipment we purchased from the Russians.”

“How long can four hundred people live down there?” G. W. asked.

“There is food, water and air for six months. A shaft drilled down from the floor of the bunker holds human waste and garbage. It is three hundred meters deep.”

“How big is this bunker?” G. W. wanted to know. “How much floor space?”

“Almost two acres. It is cut up into living units, which are separated by fireproof doors. Each living unit has its own fire detection and suppression system. My father was worried that a fire in the bunker might kill everyone, so he designed the units and fire suppression systems. Each is self-contained.”

“Electrical power?”

“It is provided by diesel generators, which suck air down four shafts that are not sealed. The air is sucked down and passed through a complex filtration system to scrub out the dust and dirt, then sent to the generators and finally exhausted back to the surface. Even if the intake air is contaminated with radiation, the diesels should still run as long as they have fuel available. A tank in the bunker area contains enough for six months’ judicious use.”

“Communications?”

“Wires in a pipe laid in a buried trench. Of course, the trench is only ten feet deep, and it only runs to the nearest boulevard. Then the wires are on poles and go to the local telephone exchange.”

“Doesn’t sound as if they thought that out very carefully,” G. W. said.

Davar shrugged. “The blueprints called for a pipe buried fifty feet underground, running to a military switchboard in a bunker under the Alborz Mountains, but that installation was never funded or built. Consequently an airburst over Tehran would wipe out the radio stations and landlines, and the bunker would be isolated anyway.”

“Have the bunker’s self-contained survival systems been tested?” I asked.

“My father has spent the last six months supervising the tests and repairing discrepancies,” Davar said. “He was satisfied.”

“Is there only one way in or out?”

“There is another way,” she said, “on the other side of the ridge. The heavy equipment and material needed to excavate the cavern for the bunker came in from a ramp dug on the other side, and the dirt had been removed that way. At the same time, the river below the ramp was straightened and widened, a construction job that provided cover for the bunker construction. When the bunker was complete, the ramp to the bunker was filled with reinforced concrete. A walkway, or ramp, runs through the concrete from the bunker to the riverbank. It is sealed with three bombproof doors, one just inside the entrance, one midway along it and one just outside the bunker. The walkway is almost a kilometer long.”

“Is your family going into the bunker?” G. W. asked.

“Yes,” she said simply, without inflection.

G. W. lit a cigarette with shaking hands. He sucked on it, then flipped ash out the open window, as Davar continued to describe her father’s creation. The ceiling of the bunker had been reinforced with lag bolts and massive steel beams.

“The elevator shaft lies fifty-two meters directly northwest of the center of that wall of the mosque,” she continued and pointed again. “It’s right under that parking lot.”

G. W. flipped his cigarette out the window and glanced at me. After our eyes met, he grabbed the steering wheel and put the truck in motion.

“I want to see the secondary entrance,” I said.

We had to drive a couple of miles through streets that led across the main ridge on top of the bunker, then cross a bridge over the river to get to the best vantage point.

With the truck stopped, I looked the entrance over with a set of binoculars. It was recessed under a rock shelf, set in the middle of what looked like a large highway tunnel filled with concrete. In fact, that was precisely what it was. I could see the roadway along the river where the big trucks had come and gone. The road had been bulldozed and the ground contoured, yet I could see where it had been.

“How long is the secondary tunnel?” I asked Davar.

“Over a kilometer. There are cutouts and bombproof doors at three places in the tunnel to ensure that a blast at the door doesn’t reach the bunker.”

I raised the binoculars and studied the ground above the entrance, which sloped away toward the crest of the ridge at perhaps a twenty-degree angle. The only place I could see that would allow a person to see both entrances was directly atop the brush-covered ridge, right over the center of the bunker. I wondered if that spot was too close to ground zero.

Well, sure as hell, I would soon find out.

As I was looking through the binoculars, G. W. asked Davar, “Who designed this bunker complex?”

“My father.” I sat frozen, staring through the binoculars, trying to control my face.

When I lowered the binoculars G. W. was looking at me with a bemused expression on his face. Apparently the irony of old man Ghobadi designing and building his own tomb had gotten to him, too.

As head of state, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not involved with the day-to-day political affairs of the legislature. His public appearances were mostly ceremonial and, since he was also guardian of the state religion, often religious. His visits to mosques were shown on television. However, he was the leader of the Party of God, the ruling political party; the IRGC and its intelligence arms answered directly to him; he was the commander-in-chief of the military; he controlled billions of petrodollars off budget; and Ahmadinejad’s government ruled at his pleasure. In short, he and Ahmadinejad were the two most important men in Iran and, some said, the entire Islamic world.

Today, outside the mosque, a television crew waited to film Khamenei as he exited the building. The cameraman began recording when a member of Khamenei’s security team gave him a Hi sign from the doorway, indicating the Supreme Leader had finished his prayers and was making his way toward the door.

He got Khamenei centered in the viewfinder, with people right and left, as the Supreme Leader walked slowly toward the camera, looking right and left, nodding to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd. There were always cheers. This was, perhaps, because Khamenei’s crowds usually consisted of handpicked members of the nonuniformed paramilitary force, the Basij, busloads of whom were ferried around to appear on camera at the proper moment.

The cameraman was taking it all in as the camera automatically focused on the central figure. So he saw the hand and pistol come out of the crowd, and he saw Khamenei recoil from the punch of the first bullet.

He heard muffled shots and saw that there were at least three men shooting into Khamenei, who went down under the fusillade. Still, the guns continued to fire at the figure sprawled on the steps.

Then the shooting stopped. The cameraman could see the crowd milling-he actually lost sight of Khamenei lying on the pavement-and hear the animal sounds from hundreds of human throats.

Then, almost as if by a miracle, a lane cleared and he glimpsed a dozen men stabbing one to death. He tried to keep the scene centered, but the jostling was too much. In seconds the crowd knocked him down.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in conference with his generals, trying to decide upon the hour of the launch. He thought perhaps a night launch would be best, but his generals were trying to talk him out of it.

“Americans fight best at night,” one said. “Every soldier wears night vision goggles, the pilots of their airplanes and helicopters wear them, they have infrared sights… If they should for any reason come over Iran to oppose us, we will give a better account of ourselves during the day.”

“The night doesn’t hide us from them,” the general in charge of antiaircraft defense said. “It merely hides them from us.”

Ahmadinejad frowned. He had bet everything that he could pull off a massive first strike on Iran’s enemies without the Americans getting wind of it. Literally, everything! Yet his generals assumed that such a deception was unlikely. Worse, they assumed that even though Iran knew how the Americans’ latest ECM magic worked and were prepared to defeat it should the Americans attack, they needed even more of an edge. The moral ascendancy of the infidels over his generals infuriated him. He opened his mouth to blast them, then thought better of it.

“There is a storm moving into the deserts of central Iran,” one general said. “Winds will exceed fifty miles per hour in places, gusts much higher, with a lot of dirt in the air. We hope it will dissipate by midnight Sunday, but it might not.”

Iran was full of foreign spies, and Hazra al-Rashid was dead, Ahmadinejad mused. Only Allah knew what the Americans believed now. Or if they would find the courage to fight Allah’s warriors. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to give his generals the advantage they sought.

“We will launch on Monday, two hours before dawn,” Ahmadinejad said. “If the enemy chooses to counterattack, they must do so during the day.”

The generals nodded their heads. This compromise seemed wise. A chart was consulted to determine the moment of sunrise. Dawn, they decided, could be defined as thirty minutes prior to sunrise. The first wave of missiles would lift off two and a half hours prior to official sunrise.

“Perhaps there will still be enough dirt in the air to hide the launches from the American satellites,” one general said.

Ahmadinejad looked Hosseini-Tash squarely in the eyes. “The missiles will be ready? The nuclear warheads installed?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“I want you to personally inspect each nuclear warhead after it is installed.”

Hosseini-Tash swallowed hard and nodded.

Only Hosseini-Tash knew the targets of the missiles, Ahmadinejad believed. His skin was pasty, yet covered with a thin layer of perspiration. Ahmadinejad could smell him. None of the others seemed overly concerned.

As the meeting was breaking up, Ahmadinejad asked for Hosseini-Tash to wait a moment. When the others were out of earshot he looked the general in the eyes and said, “I want you and your family in the bunker. Promise me. We will need you for the war to follow.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. I promise.”

“Very good.”

Hosseini-Tash was walking out when a breathless aide came running in. “Your Excellency, Mr. President. Zionists have murdered the Supreme Leader. Three of them shot him down as he was coming out of a mosque an hour ago. The crowd killed the assassins on the spot.”

Ahmadinejad feigned surprise. “May peace be with him,” he muttered.

“A television camera was there and filmed most of it. With your permission, we wish to air the scene.”

“How do we know the assassins were Zionists?”

“Witnesses have come forward and swore they were Israeli agents.”

Ahmadinejad paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts, then said, “Of course, air the footage. Tell the world what the Zionists have done, and pledge revenge.”

“Yes, Excellency,” the aide said and hurried away.

When he was alone, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiled. Of course he had betrayed the killers, who had been told they would be allowed to escape, but they were worth infinitely more as dead Zionist assassins than as live, loyal MOIS thugs.

They were just three more unwilling martyrs for the glorious cause.

On the other side of the world, Jake Grafton heard about Khamenei’s assassination before he arrived for work in the morning. The director, William Wilkins, called him with the news.

“Well, that move was on the board,” Grafton said. “We wondered if and when Ahmadinejad would make it.”

“He’s doing a rant on CNN right now,” Wilkins said. “Ira ni an television was kind enough to provide them with a high-quality digital feed. The Irani ans also passed along footage of Khamenei being murdered.”

“A story is a story, I suppose,” Grafton said. “But cooperation like that-isn’t that nice?”

“I thought so, too,” Wilkins said and hung up his phone.

Jake Grafton went back to perusing the weather forecasts for the Middle East.