64

SHAHID MOTAHHARI MOSQUE, TEHRAN, IRAN

“Allahu akbar.”

The haunting call to prayer sounded from the minaret and wafted over the city of Tehran. The armored car carrying Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ansari pulled up under a portico and came to a complete stop. Flanked by bodyguards, Ansari slowly emerged from the backseat and quietly entered the mosque.

The facility had been cleared of everyone but his security detail, one of the many perks of being the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ansari padded over to the right side of the vestibule, where he found a row of basins and faucets. There he began his ritual cleansings, washing first his right hand and arm three times, then repeating the procedure for his left hand and arm. Then he washed his mouth three times, followed by his nose and the rest of his face, neck, and beard, three times each. When this was complete, he removed his turban and ran his dripping hands over what was left of his thin gray hair, turning then to wash behind and inside his ears. Finally he removed his sandals and washed his right foot three times, then the left, and then dried himself with a small cotton towel.

Putting his turban back on but leaving his sandals off, the aging cleric made his way into the domed sanctuary and knelt on the thick and ornate carpet. His body was racked with pain. This was plain to anyone who knew or saw him. What wasn’t known to anyone but his wife, his chief of staff, his personal physician, and the country’s chief oncologist was that Ansari had recently been diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer. The prognosis was not good. If he continued to refuse surgery and chemotherapy, which he had steadfastly done so far, he would be dead in as little as two months, and no longer than six.

He was ready to leave this earth. Ansari had little doubt paradise awaited him. No Muslim had lived a more exemplary life, he reassured himself. He just didn’t want to enter eternity alone. And thus, facedown on the carpet, his regular prayers completed, Ansari now beseeched his god with the deepest longing of his heart.

“In the name of Allah, the gracious, the merciful,” he whispered in Arabic, the holy language of the Prophet. “I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the accursed. O Lord, increase my knowledge. Glory to Allah. All praise belongs to Allah. Allah is the greatest. Glory to my Lord, the Most High. My spirit and heart are prostrate for you.”

A sharp pain shot through his abdomen. He winced and gritted his teeth, determined not to let his bodyguards hear him groan.

“O Lord, you have commanded me to fight those who do not believe in you or in the Last Day, those who do not consider unlawful what Allah and his messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture,” he continued. “You commanded me to fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and to be harsh toward them. You have declared in the Holy Qur’an that the only refuge of such infidels is the damnable fires of hell.”

This time burning pains gripped his lower back. Ansari pressed on.

“O Lord, you know the number of my days, so in your mercy grant me the strength —and the courage —to bring your enemies to justice,” the cleric pleaded. “Grant me the tools and the time to make your enemies burn in the atomic fires. My aides assure me that if I am prepared to spend the necessary resources, they can have these incoming Russian warheads mounted on vastly improved missiles —able to reach Tel Aviv, Washington, and New York —in just six to seven months. Five if you help us. They assure me neither the wicked Americans nor the filthy Zionists have the ability to shoot these missiles down, not if we launch them simultaneously with 200,000 Hezbollah missiles from southern Lebanon. O Allah, the great and awesome one, in your loving-kindness grant me this dying wish. And in so doing, I pray you will hasten the coming of the promised one, the until-now hidden one —His Excellency Imam al-Mahdi, peace be upon him —to reestablish the Caliphate and, at last, bring about the End of Days.”

Elena Marie Garcia.

When Marcus awoke in the middle of the night, she was all he could think about.

In his mind’s eye, he could go back in time and see her as a rising high school senior, standing on the top of Pikes Peak on a breezy day in early August. Wearing a gray zip-up sweatshirt over a light-blue T-shirt, tan khaki shorts, and well-worn Timberlands, she was holding his hand as she gazed out over the surrounding mountaintops. It was a breathtaking view, but it didn’t interest Marcus at all. Only she did. He couldn’t take his eyes off her mocha skin or warm brown eyes or her jet-black hair pulled back in a ponytail.

That had been a perfect day —the half-day hike, the picnic they’d packed themselves and enjoyed at the summit, the sunset they’d watched arm in arm, and the hike back down in the dark with headlamps strapped around their foreheads —but it had only been one of so, so many perfect days. Together they had hiked more fourteeners than he could remember. They’d gone skydiving and helicopter skiing together. They’d skied some of the steepest mountains and the biggest moguls. They’d gone white-water rafting through some of the most intense rapids in any river in any state within two hundred miles of their little hometown of Monument. They’d gotten their motorcycle licenses together. They’d even taken flying lessons together, with Marcus going so far as earning his pilot’s license for single-engine planes. And Elena had been with him every step of the way.

He loved her zest for life. He could still hear her screaming with delight when he had to practice stalls and restarts at ten thousand feet. He could still feel her arms squeezing him as she sat on the back of his father’s old Harley and they raced up and down the Front Range. He could still feel her lips on his the moment their pastor told him he could finally kiss his bride. He could see the tears of joy in her eyes when she’d given birth to Lars. And he could still feel the tears of shock and pain in his when he’d ducked under the crime scene tape and walked across the shattered glass into that 7-Eleven and seen the blood-soaked sheets draped over the bullet-ridden body of the only woman he had ever loved and the only child they’d ever had.

A wave of immense loneliness washed over Marcus. Behind the privacy of the thin curtain, he pulled the blanket over him and curled up in a fetal position. The sadness ran so deep it was physically painful. But Marcus refused to let the dam burst. He genuinely couldn’t be certain he could regain control if he let his emotions rise to the surface. Back in Washington, in the seclusion of his own town house, he’d let it happen a few times and been unable to go outside for days. He hadn’t told his mom or sisters. He hadn’t told his friends. He hadn’t even told his pastor. This was not a burden they could bear. It was one he had to bear alone.

And right now it was crushing him.