Harry’s senior staff gathered in his spartan office for the morning meeting. They were kids, most of them. The agency was becoming like a university, with a few old professors and the rest young people who were called “officers” and perhaps had even had a tour or two overseas but were more like students. There was no middle; only a top and bottom. That was the good part for Harry, the fact that most of his young colleagues hadn’t learned to game the system yet. Harry took his seat at the head of the conference table, his body too big for the chair.
“Sobh bekheir az laneh jasoosi,” said Harry. It was the same Farsi phrase he used each morning. Good morning from the nest of spies.
“What do we have overnight?”
“Mostly we have a lot of nothing,” rasped back Marcia Hill. She had a thin smile on her face, although Harry couldn’t understand why.
Marcia Hill was Harry’s deputy, a woman in her late fifties with a weathered face and a voice pleasantly ruined by whiskey and cigarettes; she had the tawdry appeal of a been-around movie actress. Marcia was Persia House’s institutional memory—the last survivor from the Iran desk of 1979 when the embassy in Tehran had been seized and U.S.-Iranian relations had ground to a thirty-year halt. She had been a reports officer, in one of the shit jobs they gave women back then. But she had taught herself Farsi and made herself useful to the burnouts from NE Division who handled the “Iran target.”
During the wasteland years, she became the repository of information about Iranian operations. She remembered names and family connections and botched leads—she was the only person, really, who knew just how badly the agency had done in its efforts to recruit spies in Iran. For her trouble, she was exiled to Support—where Harry found her, already halfway out the door to retirement. She felt sorry for Harry; that was the only reason she said yes.
Marcia ran through the string of operational messages they had received overnight from their listening posts in Dubai, Istanbul, Baku, and Baghdad, and from the several dozen other platforms that were woven together into the Persia House net. Her tally was a series of foul balls and strikeouts. A case officer in Istanbul had cold-pitched an Iranian on holiday in Turkey who was believed to be a member of the Revolutionary Guard. He had fled. A case officer under commercial cover in Dubai had met with an Iranian banker on the pretext of discussing an investment in Pakistan. The Iranian had said he would think about it, which meant that he wouldn’t. A case officer in Germany had shadowed an Iranian scientist attending a conference. He had two minders from the Ministry of Intelligence with him whenever he left his room; the case officer couldn’t get close. As Marcia said, it was a lot of nothing.
“What about the pitch list?” asked Harry. “Any new names?”
Persia House had a list of Iranian scientists it monitored and updated. They had been compiling it for years, adding every graduate student who passed through Europe, every Iranian who had his name on a scientific paper published in an academic journal, every traveler who came out with a purchasing team to buy laboratory gear or computer hardware. Anyone on this list who passed across an international frontier was a blinking light—a potential recruit. But the prize targets rarely traveled anymore, at least not alone. The Iranians weren’t stupid. They knew what we wanted. When they let someone go overseas unescorted, it was usually a dangle.
Tony Reddo spoke up. He was a young officer on loan from WinPac, the unit that monitored nuclear weapons technology for the agency. He was so young Harry wondered if he had started shaving yet. He had gotten his doctorate in nuclear physics when he was twenty-four, and now he was all of twenty-six. The other kids in the office teased him because he was so smart.
“We’re tracking three new papers,” said Reddo. “On neutronics, hydrophonics, and wave dynamics. We’re running traces on the names. No new delegations to report. No travelers.”
“Anything new to work with from overseas? Anywhere?”
“Not yet,” said Reddo. He glanced over to Marcia Hill, who gave him a wink, out of Harry’s sight.
“Christ!” said Harry. He sighed and turned to Marcia. “Tomorrow is another day. Right, Scarlett?”
“Give me a break, Harry.” She still had a trace of a smile on her face, despite all the bad news. She was holding something back.
Harry wanted to sound cheery for his kids, but it was a struggle. There was always tomorrow, until they ran out of time and there wasn’t. That was how the business really worked: people making lists and waiting for the moment, which usually didn’t come. It was like the old days in Moscow: you didn’t make things happen; they happened to you. You waited for some crazy fucker to throw something over the wall, and then you tried to figure out how to keep him alive.
“Anything else?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, one thing,” said Marcia with a sly nod. “You probably missed this. It came in yesterday from the website. They think it’s a VW. I showed it to Tony. We think it’s interesting. You ought to look at it.”
“Can it wait?” said Harry. He wanted to focus on real cases, not chaff from the website.
“Sure, anything can wait. But I think you’re going to want to see this. Tony can explain.”
Reddo was brandishing some pieces of paper he had printed out. He was such a kid. He laid the papers down on the conference table like a puppy who has found a bone.
“What is this shit?” asked Harry, motioning to the papers.
“Assays,” said Reddo.
“Come again?”
“Nuclear assays. Believe it or not, I think they are measurements of uranium enrichment.”
“From Iran? Are you shitting me?”
“No, sir. There are notations about the composition of the sample, here, see? I don’t really follow that. But look at the rows. I think they show the enrichment level after each pass through the cascade. They’re just like IAEA documents. That was what got me thinking. I’ve seen stuff like this before, same patterns and categories. Now look at the columns. I think they are measuring what emerges—the enriched product and the depleted tails. See how the one goes up, with each pass, and the other goes down? And see numbers here at the bottom? There’s one batch that’s marked thirty-five percent, and another that’s marked seven percent. And next to the second one there’s a little note that says D2O, with a question mark. See that?”
“Yeah, I see it. What does it mean?”
“Let me think.” Reddo scratched his head. It was hard to explain complicated things simply.
“So it means the Iranians are enriching uranium, just like they always say. But the strange part is the two batches. One says seven percent. That’s what you use to fuel a nuclear reactor. Okay. That’s interesting. The other batch is thirty-five percent. Uh-oh. That’s more than they need for a reactor. So you have to assume that’s for a weapons program. They’ll keep enriching more and more, until they hit weapons grade, which is above ninety percent. That’s bad news, but it’s not really a surprise. We figured they were going in that direction. So they’re halfway there. What’s super weird is the ‘D2O question mark’ notation.”
Harry rolled his eyes. He had gotten a C in high school chemistry and he had never taken a physics course.
“Explain it for the dumb guy. What’s D2O?”
“It’s the symbol scientists use for heavy water. Regular water—‘light’ water—is H2O, two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen. Heavy water has two deuterium atoms for each oxygen. And heavy water is what you use in the kind of reactor that can make plutonium. That’s the creepy part. Maybe this notation means they’re thinking of diverting the seven percent batch to a heavy-water reactor for a plutonium bomb program. In which case they wouldn’t need to enrich it at all.”
“The Iranians have plans for a heavy-water reactor at Arak, right?” said Harry. “But it isn’t operational. Unless we’ve missed something.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Reddo. “That’s the point, I guess.”
“Shit.” Harry shook his head. “And you think it’s real? T
he document.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Probably.”
“Which means it came from someone inside the program?”
“Gotta be. Or someone with access.”
“Well, fuck me,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Where the hell did this come from?”
Reddo pointed to an email address at the bottom of the message. It said [email protected].
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Um, I think that’s the return address. That’s how we contact the guy who sent this.”
Harry closed his eyes. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “We’re inside.”
Harry asked Marcia Hill to stay behind when the meeting ended. He wanted to think out loud a moment before the Iranian message took on a life of its own. Marcia had a card-room smile. She lived for moments like this. She had put up with the shit for so long, she wanted to enjoy the rare good parts. But Harry needed to worry it, poke some holes in it before he let it out.
“This has to be bullshit,” said Harry.
“No it doesn’t. Sometimes good things happen. Even to us.”
“Why would someone do it? Explain that. He’s giving up big secrets. Why would someone send a message like this, on an open Internet line, out of the blue?”
“It’s a calling card,” said Hill. “He wants to talk. Or she.”
“Is it a setup? Is it a dangle, to see how we react?”
“Maybe. But that’s CI’s problem, not yours.”
“Is he crazy?”
“Possibly. But so what? If the information is for real, who cares?”
“Will he get caught? I mean, what’s the chance of sending a message like this, and nobody seeing it? They have a good service. You know that better than anyone. You had to pick up the pieces after the postal fiasco.”
“Hard to say. But you have to assume he knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have sent it if he didn’t think he could do it without leaving fingerprints. Kids know how to do this stuff, Harry. Iran is full of hackers and computer nerds.”
Harry was still shaking his head. He wanted to see in his mind the person who had sent the message.
“Help me out, Marcia. You understand Iranians. What kind of person would do this? Assuming that it isn’t a setup, and that he isn’t crazy.”
Marcia pondered a moment. Why did anyone do anything? But Harry wanted an answer, so she thought back over the dozens of Iranian cases she had reviewed over too many years.
“He’s smart,” she began. “He’s proud. He’s unhappy. He’s young. He has a need, for some reason, to share what he knows. He’s not asking us for anything, he’s telling us. But this message is a tease. An opening bid. Iranians never give you the whole slice. It’s taarof.”
“Remind me. What’s taarof?”
“It’s their way of doing business. The dignity thing. They don’t want to name a price. That would be undignified. So they make a gift, and wait for you to respond. It’s unmanly to ask. Unwomanly, too.”
“He’s trusting the agency, in other words,” said Harry. “Not to fuck it up, I mean.”
“What an idiot,” muttered Marcia. “Doesn’t he read the newspapers?”
It all moved slowly at first, before it hit the tripwires.
It was Pappas’s case, since, as the director liked to remind him, he owned every speck of dust blowing out of Iran. He filed the initial message under the designator BQDETERMINE, which was the agency’s cryptonym for all Iranian collection operations, and gave “Dr. Ali” a provisional crypt of BQTANK.
But Harry knew he would have to share, right away, so he called Arthur Fox, the head of the Counter-Proliferation Division. He didn’t like Fox, who was always trying to show everyone what a hard-ass he was, but he had no choice. He proposed a meeting that afternoon and asked Fox to bring one of his nuclear specialists.
“So what do you think, Arthur?” asked Pappas when they had gathered a few hours later in a secure conference room. “Is this for real?” His big body was hunched over the conference table, his shoulders stooped as if burdened by the new weight they were carrying.
“Looks real,” said Fox. He held a copy of the Dr. Ali message up to his nose. “Smells real. So a logical inference would be that it is real.” Fox was a fastidious man; when he sniffed his nose, you understood that he was accustomed to fine wines and gourmet sauces. There was money in his background somewhere. That was a funny thing about the new tough guys. They came from the better side of town. They talked hard, but they had soft hands.
Harry needed Fox’s help, and he didn’t mind acting dumb. He had done it to good effect his whole career.
“What does it tell you, Arthur, assuming it’s real? Did we already know this?”
“It’s showtime, that’s what it tells me. We knew the Iranians were getting higher enrichment levels at Natanz, but we had not confirmed they were above seven percent. Suspected it, maybe; feared it, certainly. But the fact they’re at thirty-five percent—assuming it’s a fact—is news. Pretty serious news. Some people could argue—some people—that we should bomb the whole damn complex tomorrow, before it goes any further. Been saying that for years, in fact, but nobody has been listening.”
“Hold the speech a minute. I thought they needed ninety percent before they had the goods. Maybe this message is telling us they’re stuck. What about that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry. You want to wait for them to explode a bomb before you decide they’re serious? Bad idea.”
Harry nodded. Fox was right, even if he was a jerk.
“What about the seven percent batch? My guy Reddo thinks that may be a big deal. He thinks the ‘D2O?’ notation may mean they’re thinking about sending enriched uranium to a heavy-water reactor, and then reprocessing it later to make plutonium. Does that make sense?”
“Any allegation about Iran makes sense, Harry. These people are dangerous. We didn’t know about a plutonium program. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have one. If I had to bet, I would bet worst case.”
“Why am I not surprised? Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let’s bomb Iran.”
“That’s unworthy of you, Harry.”
“Just joking, Arthur.” Harry looked back at the text of the message from the mysterious Iranian correspondent.
“What about the other notations and formulas? Reddo wasn’t sure what they meant. What do they tell you?”
Fox’s nuclear expert spoke up. He was a young man named Adam Schwartz. He had graduated from MIT a few years ago. Pappas wasn’t sure why such a talented young man had joined a screwed-up government agency rather than making megabucks like the other smart kids.
“So I can’t say whether our mystery informant is part of the Iranian nuclear program, but he certainly has access to what’s going on,” said Schwartz. He looked down at the paper in front of him, as if to double-check. “His hexafluoride formula has several unusual signatures that match some anomalies in the samples we have from the Iranian program. He must know that. I think that’s why he sent the message. This is his statement of bona fides. So if I had to guess, I would say that, yes, he is a part of the program.”
Schwartz looked at his boss, who was frowning. “But I don’t know,” the analyst added.
“Dr. Ali,” said Harry quietly, half to himself.
“Say what?” queried Fox.
“Dr. Ali, you piss me off.” Harry spoke the name louder, as if the Iranian himself were sitting with them in the secure conference room. “I mean, give me a break. We’ve been killing ourselves trying to recruit someone like you, and now you walk in the door. Except you don’t even do that. You send a message to our website, like you’re signing up for summer camp. Are you fucking with me, Dr. Ali?”
“Maybe he’s real,” said Fox. “Maybe not. But how would you know, eh? This is pretty technical stuff, Harry. Easy to get suckered.” Fox was playing Pappas. His manner said that he wanted control of the case.
“Tell you what, Arthur. I know one problem with this case already, wh
ich is that too many people have copies of this message. A distribution list this wide and we’ll be reading about it in the New York Times. And then we can kiss Dr. Ali goodbye, whoever he is. This is an RH case, starting now.” RH was the agency’s term for “restricted handling.”
“Then close it down,” said Fox brusquely.
Pappas just nodded. He had already done that, before the meeting even started. He had created a special-access program, an “SAP,” many of whose members were sitting in the room.
“We need to create a legend for this guy,” Pappas said.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that we’ve got to kill Dr. Ali off in cable traffic so nobody asks, ‘Hey, whatever happened to that Iranian VW who sent the nuclear stuff?’ We lay a trail that leads everyone off in the wrong direction, and then we handle the case in the SAP. Is everyone cool with that?”
“Who runs it?” asked Fox. The natural set of his eyes was a squint.
“We both do. IOD and Counter-Proliferation. It will be a joint case. We’ll bring in the Info Ops Center for computer support, plus the director and the head of the clandestine service. That’s it.”
“Who briefs the NSC?” pressed Fox. Meaning, Who gets face time with the president?
Fox was still bargaining. He lived for turf battles like this. Pappas decided to give ground. He didn’t like going to the White House. They got all wound up in the Situation Room, and then they did the wrong thing. The people who paid the price for their mistakes were kids like his son. Let Fox spin them if he wanted.
THE INCREMENT Page 3
