Four in the morning is a distinctive time of day. A singular time zone of tranquility, it circles the earth as continuous witness to the low point of human activity. Nightclubs are closed and parties have fizzled. The previous night’s contestants have largely found their ends, some snoring contentedly next to husbands or wives, others laying spent in hotel rooms, having finalized proceedings with mistresses or prostitutes. Friends can be found crashed on friend’s couches, and those without means simply sprawl in alleyways. Those unfortunate enough to work the night shift are at their circadian bottoms, bleary-eyed and searching the drawer under the coffee machine for one more creamer packet. Conversely, four in the morning is an hour to challenge even the most industrious early riser. Those already awake are still at home, busy breakfasting, dressing, and performing necessary tasks of personal hygiene.

For all these reasons, four in the morning holds one inescapable certainty. It is the hour in which a city’s streets will be at their most quiet. And for all these reasons, across the world, it is the hour when secret police units are at their energetic best.

Farzad Behrouz sat in a black car parked quietly along Palestine Street in south Tehran. The synagogue he was watching appeared quiet, but it was a markedly false impression—at the moment, his ten-man team was laying siege inside. The head of state security sat lamenting what is a little known paradox: Iran, the most virulently anti-Semitic country on earth, in fact hosts the largest Jewish population of any Muslim state. The Jews of Iran are granted solid constitutional protections, and are on paper equal to Muslims. Here, of course, Behrouz took his own interpretation—paper was of little use against steel and leather.

He looked at his watch and saw that the squad had been inside for twenty minutes. It was time to make an appearance. He got out and buttoned his overcoat, nothing to do with the cool desert night, and walked purposefully toward the entrance. He was met at the ornate portico by a man who was shorter than he was, albeit built like a cinder block.

“Well?” Behrouz asked.

“Two. We have them out back,” the man replied.

The stout sergeant led Behrouz through the central building, past the Torah ark and a tile mosaic depicting a menorah, and finally outside to a gated courtyard. Two Jews, one presumably a rabbi, and the other younger and wearing a yarmulke, were seated on the ground. If the men were wide-eyed to begin with, the arrival of the thick-coated head of state security did nothing to quell their anxiety. Behrouz hovered over the pair like a farmer with a shouldered ax.

“You know who I am?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said in near unison.

“Do you know why I am here?”