The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  As they tried to build a bomb, the Iranians needed engineering help, lots of it. Even for a sovereign country with a multibillion-dollar budget, building a nuclear weapon was harder than it looked.

  Nuclear weapons are both complicated and very simple. Conventional explosives get energy from breaking chemical bonds between atoms. Nuclear bombs release the energy bound up inside individual atoms, a far bigger source of power. The difference in power is staggering. Fat Man, the bomb that the United States dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, used fourteen pounds of plutonium to produce a blast with the energy produced by 42 million pounds of conventional explosive. The bomb killed 70,000 people immediately and tens of thousands more over the next generation. Yet by modern standards, the Fat Man bomb is puny.

  Fortunately for humanity’s survival, most types of atoms can’t be used in nuclear weapons. The exceptions are plutonium and a certain kind of uranium, called U-235, so-called fissile materials. The United States and other major nuclear powers prefer plutonium for their bombs, because plutonium is even more potent than uranium. But plutonium is also harder to handle, and it doesn’t exist naturally. Making it requires nuclear reactors, big buildings that are prime targets for guided missiles or bombs. So uranium is the nuclear material of choice for countries like Iran, which need to make bombs in secret.

  Still, uranium can’t simply be pulled out of the ground and plugged into a nuclear weapon. In its natural state, uranium ore consists of two different isotopes, U-235 and U-238. They look the same, a heavy silver-gray metal. But they have different atomic structures. U-235 can be used to make a bomb. U-238 can’t.

  In its natural state, uranium is made up of 99.3 percent U-238, the useless kind, with just 0.7 percent U-235 mixed in. To separate the valuable U-235 from U-238, weapons builders used centrifuges, enclosed chambers that spin very fast, enabling them to pull the lighter U-235 out of the U-238.

  In theory, the centrifuge procedure is relatively straightforward. But as the Iranians had found out, bridging the gap between theory and reality could be difficult. Even under the best of circumstances, it required a small army of well-trained engineers and physicists. The Iranians had an added challenge. Because of the threat of the Israeli air force, they were working in labs buried seventy feet underground.

  UNTIL THIS MEETING, Ahmadinejad hadn’t told Li exactly what problems the Iranians were having. In part, his reticence was a matter of national pride. The Iranians hated to admit that they had failed where North Korea had succeeded. At the same time, Tehran worried that Beijing might be cozying up to them just to betray them to the United States.

  To overcome that suspicion, Li had gone to great lengths. Not even the other members of the Politburo Standing Committee knew the steps he had taken. Now, finally, his efforts were paying off. This time around, Ahmadinejad and his scientific advisers had made very specific requests, asking if China could lend Iran electrical engineers, metallurgists, and physicists—a hiveful of highly trained worker bees to build a very large stinger. In return, Ahmadinejad offered to name China as Iran’s preferred partner for oil and natural gas development, and to give China first call on Iranian crude in case of a worldwide shortage.

  Li hadn’t tried to hide his excitement at the offer. An alliance between China and Iran would be a giant shift in world politics. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, major nations would align in open defiance of America.

  Naturally, Li agreed. The approval of the Standing Committee would be a formality, he said. And why would the Iranians doubt him? He’d given them reason to believe that China hated the United States as much as they did.

  Li knew this alliance was risky. He didn’t fully trust the Iranians. But he needed their help, needed it now. He was setting China on a collision course with the United States. Without Iran’s support, his plan couldn’t succeed. And despite what he’d told the Iranians, the plan was his, his alone. The other eight members on the Politburo Committee didn’t know what he was doing. They would never have supported him.

  Li believed he had sound reasons for taking this path. The others on the committee were cowards and thieves. He needed to act, and quickly. One day, the full truth would come out, and the world would judge his actions. By then he’d be dead, though not forgotten. Never forgotten. In the meantime, though, he needed to keep his scheme secret. For if the Standing Committee learned exactly what he’d done, his future would be short and bleak.

  LI TURNED HIS CHAIR to face Cao Se. Technically, Cao was only the seventh-ranking officer in the PLA, but in reality he was closer to Li than anyone else. Li and Cao had served together in China’s three-week war in Vietnam in 1979. Li had come out unscathed, but not Cao. A mine had taken off his left leg below the knee. Sometimes Li wondered whether Cao was marked to take the misfortune for both of them. Perhaps in a previous life he had served Cao. Now the roles were reversed. Where Li was tall and handsome, Cao was small, his face pockmarked. His wife had died in childbirth in 1986 at a Shanghai hospital, and he had never remarried.

  A few years before, Li had caught Cao staring at him. The look wasn’t sexual, more like the devotion that a child lavished on a distant father. Sometimes Li wondered if a more independent adviser would have served him better. Yet loyalty like Cao’s was rare, and Li needed at least one man he could trust completely.

  Cao knew more about Li’s plan than anyone else. Even so, Li hadn’t told Cao exactly what he was doing. As much as he trusted Cao, he couldn’t take that chance. Not yet.

  “General.” Cao was drawing intently in a spiral notebook, his lips pursed tight, his face rapt. At the sound of Li’s voice, Cao snapped the notebook shut.

  “Keeping secrets, Cao?”

  “You know I have no secrets.”

  “Let’s see.” Li reached out for the notebook.

  “It’s nothing to do with anything, General.” Nonetheless, Cao handed it over.

  The book’s pages were filled with sketches of buildings in thick black ink, skyscrapers and highways and apartment complexes. Long flowing strokes that caught the motion and vitality of city life. Li recognized the giant Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, the Empire State Building. Other buildings seemed to be of Cao’s own creation, narrow towers that stretched to the sky, stadiums with cantilevered roofs.

  “Cao. These are excellent.”

  “A way to pass the time.”

  “No. Truly. You could have been an architect. You have a talent.” At this, Cao smiled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be interested, General.”

  Li handed back the book. And wondered, What other secrets have you been keeping from me all these years, little Cao?

  “So what did you think of Ahmadinejad today?” This conversation would necessarily be limited. Li and Cao knew that the A340 had a dozen bugs scattered through its cabin. As defense minister, Li controlled most of them. But not all.

  “These Iranians are strange people,” Cao said. “In a way, they’re like the Red Guards”—the young revolutionaries who had tormented China in the late 1960s. “They don’t mind tearing everything down. They take a certain pleasure in it. If they got the special weapon, they might actually use it.”

  “They think the world could end tomorrow. It gives them freedom.”

  “At first I didn’t think we could trust them. But now . . . Our interests are aligned. We help them, they help us. We’re in different beds but we have the same dream.”

  Li smiled. Cao had reversed the Chinese proverb of “different dreams in the same bed.” The implication of the saying was that no two people could fully trust each other. Even a husband and wife who’d slept beside each other for fifty years had different dreams.

  In this case, though, Li and Ahmadinejad knew that they were in a marriage of convenience. Their opposition to the United States had brought them together. They didn’t need to trust each other, as long as their interests were aligned.

  “Different beds, same dream,” Li said
. “It’s enough for a partnership.”

  “For now.”

  “It won’t have to be forever, Cao.”

  8

  ANNANDALE, VIRGINIA

  THE GOLDEN RETRIEVER LUNGED after a fat gray squirrel, dragging the man in the green windbreaker forward. He fell on the muddy ground, banging his knee against a bulbous stone, his curses echoing through the empty woods. The dog ran off, chasing the squirrel until it darted up a birch tree and disappeared.

  “Lenny! You moron! Come here.”

  The dog stared stupidly at him, then trotted back, his leash trailing on the muddy ground. The man could only shake his head. For months Janice had told him to get that dog-training video with the Mexican guy. He would have bought it already if she hadn’t nagged him so much. Even when she was right, she was wrong.

  “Lenny. You dope.”

  He patted the dog’s flank. Lenny licked his hand by way of apology before flopping onto the ground. Rain had fallen all night, leaving the earth soaked. The dog rolled from side to side on his back, ecstatic at the chance to cover himself in dirt.

  No wonder this stupid animal was his favorite creature in the world, the man thought. This simple sense of joy that he had lost long ago. If he’d ever had it. Certainly he preferred Lenny to his wife. If their house were burning and he could save only one, he’d probably grab the dog.

  “Enough. You’re making a mess.”

  He took Lenny’s leash and stood, trying not to lean too hard on his knee. The rain had let up before dawn, but a drizzle continued, spotting his forehead. He breathed in deeply, hoping the cool damp air would soothe his lungs.

  The man looked around the leafy woods to be sure he was alone. Wakefield Park lay in suburban Virginia, just west of the Beltway. But it seemed to belong somewhere more rural. Sparrows darted through beech trees, and foxes regularly made their way to the creek in the center of the park. In the early mornings, the place was deserted aside from a few mountain bikers—and the man in the green windbreaker.

  It was the perfect spot for dead drops.

  The man checked the gold Rolex he wore only outside the office: 6:07. Time to move, before the bikers showed up. He tugged on Lenny’s leash and off they went, Lenny’s head twisting from side to side as the idiot dog looked for more squirrels to chase.

  TEN MINUTES LATER THE MAN stopped near a granite outcropping beside a burned-out tree stump. He was alone, though he could hear the morning’s first biker yodeling gleefully over a rise to the east.

  From his jeans the man pulled a little black plastic case that looked like the control for a car alarm. The case had two buttons, one black, one red. He pushed the black button.

  To the west, up a slight hill, he heard two chirps. Maybe 150 feet away. He walked up the hill and pushed the black button again. This time the beeps were closer, thirty feet. He paced closer, one careful step at a time. He looked around, making sure he was still alone. He was. Once more he pushed the button. The beeps came again—

  There. It lay by a tree, a broken oak branch like any other. Only it wasn’t. It was the dead drop to end all dead drops. The branch was genuine, and originally from this park. But at a lab outside Beijing it had been hollowed out, its center replaced with a waterproof plastic compartment big enough to hold two thin sheets of paper—or a flash memory drive. Big enough to betray the CIA’s most important secrets.

  The Chinese had installed a receiver in the branch that responded to a signal in the plastic case the man held. The technology was simple, basically a car alarm with better encryption, but foolproof. He and his handlers could make drops just about anywhere. For the last three years, they had used Wakefield, a perfect spot, a fifteen-minute walk from his house.

  He reached down for the branch—

  And a squirrel ran by and Lenny tugged on his leash. Stupid dog.

  “Go. You deserve each other.” He dropped the leash. The retriever took off.

  “Alone at last,” the man said. He picked up the branch, rubbing his fingers over its bark, feeling for the hidden pressure points at each end. If they were pressed simultaneously—and only if they were pressed simultaneously—they would release an electromagnetic lock and pop open the center compartment.

  There. He found the first pressure point. Now where was the other? He probed the bark. There. No, there—

  “Hey! Buddy!”

  Dammit. He turned to see a mountain biker ped aling toward him. The guy was wearing the ridiculous gear they loved, a neon-yellow reflective jacket and tight Lycra shorts.

  “This your dog?” Lenny trailed after the bike.

  The man in the green windbreaker felt his heart thump crazily. “Yeah. His name’s Lenny. He thinks one day he’s gonna catch himself a squirrel. Thanks for bringing him back—” Stop talking, he thought. You’re just a guy out walking your dog.

  He snapped his mouth closed. He dropped the branch and reached for Lenny. “You dummy,” he said to the retriever. “You’re gonna get lost.”

  “Ought to keep an eye on him. I almost hit him.”

  “You’re right. My mistake.”

  The biker rolled closer. The man felt oddly light-headed. He knows. I’m not sure how, but he knows. Why had he left his Smith & Wesson in his basement?

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Shouldn’t you put him back on the leash?”

  “Sure. Of course.” He reattached the leash. “Thanks for bringing him back.”

  “No prob, man.” The biker nodded victoriously and turned down the hill. The man in the windbreaker sat down and waited for his pulse to return to normal. After all his years of tradecraft, he couldn’t believe that a jackass on a souped-up twelve-speed had almost busted him.

  “Lenny. You almost caused me big trouble.”

  Instead of answering, the dog squatted to relieve himself. Or maybe that was his answer, the man in the green windbreaker thought. He let Lenny take his time, waiting until he could no longer see the biker, until he could no longer feel his heart thumping sideways in his chest. When he was sure he was alone, he turned back to retrieve the branch—and the instructions inside.

  9

  WELLS WALKED DOWN A WHITE SAND BEACH, dipping his feet into the waves lapping along the shore. The water was the clearest blue imaginable, so bright it almost seemed neon. Exley lay on the beach under an umbrella, wearing a modest bikini that changed color as he looked at it, now red, now yellow, now green with camouflage stripes. That’s wrong, he told her. War isn’t sex. But she didn’t hear.

  He turned back to the ocean. Instead of sand, the water covered a bank of fluorescent lights. Off, he said to Exley. Turn them off. She ignored him, and when he looked for her, she was gone. He tried to run for her, but the waves ripped him away from the beach, away from her—

  “Mr. Brown.”

  Wells woke, muzzy-headed, to a hand shaking his shoulder. Instead of a beach, he was on a C-17. The cabin stank of sweat and stale unwashed bodies. They’d been airborne for twenty hours.

  “You okay, sir? Look a little green.”

  “Fine, Lieutenant.” Wells rolled his head, futilely trying to unlock the scar tissue in his back. Instead of standard seats, the military plane had plastic benches screwed to its walls. They seemed designed to torture the spine.

  “Lieutenant, how long was I out for?”

  “Five hours, give or take,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll be down in forty-five. Pilot just turned on the lights.”

  The lights. That accounted for his dream, Wells thought. All around him, men in fatigues were slapping themselves awake, swigging mouthwash, stretching, anything to shake off the boredom of an 11,000-mile journey. Wells had hitched a ride to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, which was being sent overseas for the third time in five years. Macho chatter filled the cabin, soldiers psyching themselves up for the grueling days to come:

  “Ready to land?”

  “Heck
no, Sergeant. Let’s spend another day in this tin can.”

  “Ramirez, is that my toothbrush?”

  “Nuh-uh, moron. Check your ass—it’s probably stuck there.”

  “Think this is what it’s like to be an astronaut? When I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut.”

  “You can’t even find Uranus, Roberts—get it? Uranus. Like—”

  “I get it.”

  “All right, who farted?”

  “Who didn’t?”

  Then, from the back of the cabin, the all-purpose Army cheer: “Hoo-ah!”

  “Hoo-ah!”

  “Those Talibs ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em! They going down like Chinatown!”

  “Hoo-ah!”

  “Like your sister on prom night!”

  “Hoo-ah!”

  “We’re sending Osama straight to hell!”

  “Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!” At first out of sync, but then melding into one giant “HOO-AH!” so loud the cabin rattled.

  Hoo-ah:short for “Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.” “I get it,” “yes sir,” and “rock on,” all in one. Not just following an order but being proud to follow it. Nothing like hoo-ah, the word or the spirit, existed in civilian life. Wells couldn’t help but smile. He felt privileged to be with these guys. After all these years of war in the desert and the mountains, the United States Army was still the world’s finest fighting force. Though the Marines might disagree.

  Now, the men in charge, they were another story. They—their kids, at least—ought to do some time over here, and not on the guided two-day tours the Army gave them so they could tell the talk shows how they’d been to the front lines. Let them spend months dodging mortars and roadside bombs, feel for themselves how a base could turn into a prison after a while.