8:55 P.M.
LOTOS CLUB
5 EAST 66TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY
Taimur sat in the driver’s seat of his Cadillac Escalade. The SUV was black on the outside, with a black leather interior, spotlessly clean. The engine was idling. Taimur had just dropped off a couple who’d flown into JFK.
He prided himself on the fact that he was an Uber Black driver and could afford the expensive Cadillac. He cleaned the vehicle constantly.
He’d saved more than $50,000 in the past two years from driving for Uber. Yet now, he knew, his plans to bring his sister and mother to the United States were irrelevant. All that mattered now was his part of an epic struggle against the Great Satan. He would spend the night in his car, waiting all night for the signal.
“Finally,” he whispered to himself, as a young man approached and knocked on his window, though Taimur waved him off. He watched as the bald man in a tuxedo flipped him off.
He looked to his right, on the seat, where a pair of Uzis lay, thinking about how satisfying it would be to shoot the fat, entitled asshole, but he did nothing.
Taimur used his fingerprint to enter his Chase banking account. In minutes, he arranged to wire everything to his sister in Parand, a section of Tehran south of the center of the Iranian capital.
He’d been waiting for this moment and now it was here. He couldn’t believe it. Finally, he would be put to use.
Taimur reread the text:
When the ground itself shakes it is time
The time was now here, the one he’d been waiting for. All of them had been waiting. The attack was here. He felt elation and disbelief, even though he would likely die in a matter of hours. He would be a part of a revolution against a country he’d lived in for ten years now, a country he loved on one level—but Iran was his blood. Taimur turned on music, Farhad Mehrad, whose songs he knew by heart. He reclined the seat and listened as he placed his right hand on one of the Uzis, softly rubbing the magazine as he sought a few hours of sleep before it all began.