With a wave of his hand, Al-Majnoun sent the intelligence officer away.
As Mehdi Esfahani retreated from the mottled form in the corner, the Lebanese man seemed to disappear into the darkness itself, a cape of black. Even when Mehdi opened the door, letting in the light of the hallway, it was impossible to distinguish clearly the form of the man in the shadows.
12
WASHINGTON
Harry Pappas returned to Washington feeling that he was living in someone else’s body. No matter how he positioned himself in the airplane seat, he couldn’t get comfortable. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t read, either, so he just sat there hour after hour, fidgeting, until the plane touched down at Dulles. He would have liked to stay overnight in London and dine comfortably with Adrian Winkler, but he had promised his daughter Louise that he would attend a play at her summer camp. He was bone-tired, and the last thing he wanted to see was a bunch of fifteen-year-olds in Plaza Suite. But she had been complaining that he was never around, and although he told her that it wasn’t so—that love wasn’t measured in hours and days—he still felt guilty. So he returned.
The play was depressing. It told the stories of three dysfunctional couples; none of them were getting what they wanted out of life, and most didn’t even seem to know what it was they wanted. Lulu played a middle-aged suburban mom from New Jersey who is bored with her husband and wants to have an affair with her old boyfriend, but can’t quite summon the courage. Harry was surprised by how well she acted the part: she had great timing, and she hit all the laugh lines just right. How did she know so much about adult angst?
“How did you like it?” she asked when Harry met her backstage after the show. He had forgotten to buy her flowers, but Andrea had remembered.
“You were great,” said Harry, giving her a big hug.
“But how did you like the play?” She wanted a review.
“It was funny,” said Harry. “A lot of funny lines. But the people were so screwed up. Real people aren’t like that.”
“Yes they are. That’s the point, Daddy. Life is empty. That’s what the play is about.” He gave her a pat on the back but she turned away. She was peeved, wanting to pick a fight with her jet-lagged father.
Harry looked to Andrea. “Come on, sweetie. Mommy and I aren’t like that.” But that was the wrong thing to say.
“You don’t understand,” groaned Lulu. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She was slipping away from him. In another few years—hell, in another few minutes—she would be gone.
Harry drove her home. Andrea went separately in her own car, so they were alone. He tried to talk about London, her acting, and how it was almost September and time for the start of a new school year. She answered as little as she could. She leaned away from him, toward the passenger door, as if just being in the same car was painful.
“Why don’t you polish the door handle while you’re over there,” Harry said.
Lulu didn’t laugh. There was a little sound of air being exhaled, like a sigh but without even that energy.
“Why are you so angry with me?” Harry asked finally, as they were nearing the house in Reston.
“I’m not! I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Harry felt an empty chill, as if a cold wind were blowing through his body. This was what despair felt like. He was near tears, suddenly. He tried to fight it off.
“It’s not my fault, darling.”
“What are you talking about, Daddy?” She said it furiously, her voice brimming with hurt. She knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Alex.”
“No!” It came out as a wail, puncturing the membrane of her grief.
“It’s not my fault. I didn’t want him to go. If you knew…”
She was sobbing now. Not little sniffles, but convulsive sobs as if she had just discovered her brother’s body. When they reached the house, she ran to the door. Harry stayed in the car. He couldn’t move. After a few minutes, Andrea came out and brought him inside.
Harry saw his boss alone the next morning. The director was wearing his navy uniform again. It made him seem like a visitor, a liaison officer from another department. Harry told him about the meeting in London, most of it, at least. He explained that SIS had someone in Tehran, an Iranian agent in place, who might be able to flush out their mystery correspondent, Dr. Ali. The director listened to the operational plan, but he seemed distracted. What Harry was explaining wasn’t on point, it seemed. The train had moved on.
“The White House is all fired up,” the director explained when Harry had finished. “You need to understand that. They met yesterday. They don’t regard this as a fishing expedition. More like a turkey shoot.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve got to push your man. Get as much as you can, as fast as you can. They want to move. Rattle the cage. Your finesse play with SIS is nice, but it’s going to take too long.”
“Sorry, but the SIS contact is all I’ve got. Do you have a better idea?”
“No. But Arthur does.”
Harry shook his head. This was what happened when the merry-go-round started up. Things started to spin, and everyone got dizzy. He wanted to tell the director, “Get another guy. I quit,” but that would be unprofessional, and also stupid. So he just said, “I’ll talk to Arthur.”
Harry had a lunch meeting that day with the head of French intelligence, who was visiting Washington. He proposed a French restaurant, of course, a little place called Chez Girard near the White House. He was a neat, well-spoken man who had tried to rescue his service from some of the swashbucklers and fixers who had given it such a bad reputation. He was Cartesian; he talked about big strategic ideas in a way that Harry, the operator who had come up through the paramilitary branch, could only admire.
Harry had gotten to know him during his brief stint in Beirut, after the CIA station chief had been kidnapped and killed. The Frenchman had been chief of his service’s station, no easy task in a country where French and Lebanese dirty money were so thoroughly mixed. Harry liked him, and the two men had stayed friends in the years since. Harry visited him occasionally at his creamy white offices on the Boulevard Mortier, near the municipal swimming pool that gave the French service its nickname, “La Piscine,” and the Frenchman reciprocated when he was in town. He always addressed Harry by his full name, heavily accented, Har-ry Pap-pas.
It was a pleasant enough lunch; more gossip than real business. But toward the end of the meal, the Frenchman had said something that troubled Harry. We are worried about you, he had confided. We are concerned that the CIA is losing a step. We would like to help, but we don’t know how. Harry didn’t have a good answer for him.
Fox was sitting regally in his office when Harry paid a call that afternoon. He was wearing a bow tie, even on this hot day in late August, when most people had their ties at half-mast or had dispensed with them altogether.
“We missed you at the White House yesterday,” said Fox reproachfully. “There was a principals meeting.”
Fox didn’t seem to know that Harry had been in London. That was good. At least the director had kept his word about that.
“Sorry. I had promised to take my daughter on a trip. She’s been missing me. I couldn’t break the date.” A double lie.
“We have some ideas,” said Fox. “We talked them over in the Sit Room yesterday.” By “we,” he seemed to mean himself and the president.
“I’m all ears.”
“We need proof from this Dr. Ali of what was in his email, in a hurry. That’s the drill: We get him to confirm the neutron generator tests. We find out where the equipment is from. We ask what’s up with the plutonium program. If he can’t help give us answers, so be it. Dommage. Move on. And then, unless people lose their nerve, we bust their balls.”
Harry winced. Fox was especially unconvincing when he tried to talk like a street tough. “Meaning what?”
“The president likes the idea o
f a naval embargo in the Gulf, once we have the goods. Go to the UN with the evidence that they are building a weapon. Say it’s unacceptable, and that under the Non-Proliferation Treaty we will stop ships at sea to make sure they aren’t carrying material that could be used to make a bomb.”
“No disrespect to you and the president, Arthur, but that’s a mistake. If you go public, you’ll blow our source. Get him killed before we know what the Iranians are really doing. You might get your rocks off, but what next? They’ll keep going, and we won’t know shit.”
Fox had set his jaw, but there was a little smile, too, almost a smirk.
“They won’t keep going if we bomb their facilities.”
“Jesus, Arthur! We don’t know enough to be advising the president that he should go to war. We don’t know anything. Get real, man.”
“I’m not asking you, Harry. I’m telling you. This is what the president wants to do. Our job is not to make policy, but to carry it out.”
“Our job, Arthur, is to do our job. Which is to provide reliable intelligence. I thought people might have learned that, after the past few years.”
Harry surveyed Fox’s office. The pictures in the silver frames on his desk told the story. Fox sitting with the president at Camp David. Fox standing with Stewart Appleman on the deck of a boat somewhere, Nantucket probably. That was where his authority originated. It was dressed in Top-Siders and sipping a gin and tonic. There was absolutely no point in challenging Arthur Fox head-on, none at all. Harry took a deep breath.
“Let’s go back to basics. Leave the bombs for later. How’s that?”
“Fine, Harry.”
“The first thing we need to do is communicate with our agent—or the person we hope will become our agent. What is it that we are going to tell him? Have you and the president discussed that?”
“I made a list.” Fox took a sheet out paper out of a red-clad folder. “We ask him where and when the neutron emitter was tested. We ask him where the parts came from. We ask him what other components of the trigger have been tested, and where, and when. We ask him—”
“You can stop there,” cut in Harry. “By that point, he’s already dead.”
“Goddammit, Harry. You don’t seem to understand. The Iranians are building a nuclear weapon. We are running out of time to stop it. We don’t have the luxury of waiting to do all your nice tradecraft exercises. We need answers. To this list of questions. Now.”
Fox stopped. He realized that he had been shouting, which was unbecoming and unnecessary. He began again, more slowly.
“You realize that I speak for the director in this.”
“Afraid so. I saw him before I came down here.”
“Don’t be selfish, Harry. Be a team player, for once.”
Harry took a step back from Fox’s desk. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled like tiny electrified wires. Team player. What a prick. It was people like Arthur Fox who had gotten his son killed.
“Tell you what, Arthur. I’ll write up a message for the ‘iranmetalworks’ Gmail account he wants us to use, tasking him on the items you mention.”
“Unnecessary. Already done.”
“Have you put it in the ‘saved’ file?”
“Not yet. Waiting for you. Director’s orders. I would have done it yesterday. You were gone. But he said no.”
Harry went to Fox’s computer and read the message. It was a set of instructions, written like a message to a maid. Harry shook his head.
“May I?” he asked. “Just a little editing.”
“Sure, if it makes you feel better.”
Harry sat down at the computer and began massaging the text. He added a few phrases. Grace notes, personal admonitions, the kinds of things he would say to an agent if they were sitting together in a safe house. He took out some of the specifics, the words that could get Dr. Ali killed if the message was intercepted and filtered along the way. He did the things Fox would have done if he had ever actually handled an agent in his life. When he was done, he pulled his chair back so Fox could read.
Dear Friend:
We thank you for contacting us again. We are interested in a continuing business relationship. We have questions about the last message you sent. It described testing of a certain device. For business purposes, it would be helpful to know when and where these tests took place. We wish to know also where the pieces of this device were obtained. We also wonder if there is another technique to make the final product, using a different material. We cannot find a working site in any of our business directories. Can you advise? A final question: We would like to make an investment in X-ray transport technology that might be useful in new designs. Can you query any of your business associates on this topic?
Please know that your messages have been read by the chairman of our company. He is very grateful for your help, and wishes to show his gratitude. Would it be possible for one of his business associates to meet with you, at home or somewhere nearby? We can make arrangements better outside, if that is possible for you. Time is very urgent, as you know. You will make millions with your inventions, dear friend, if that is what you desire.
Harry added a last phrase, in Persian. “Yek donya mamnoon.” A world of thanks.
Fox studied the message carefully. “You can’t be more specific with him?”
“Not yet. If we can get him out to Dubai or Istanbul, we can do a lot more. I’m working on ways to contact him in Tehran, too.”
“We don’t have time for all this, Harry. Time is running out. And what’s this crap about X-ray transport technology? We don’t care about that.”
“I do. It’s a tell.”
“What kind of ‘tell’? We’re not playing poker.”
“If he asks the X-ray question, maybe someone’s going to hear about it. And maybe that someone is going to tell us. And then maybe we’ll know who we’re dealing with.”
“Oh,” said Fox. He pondered the situation for a moment and realized this was the best he was going to get.
“Save it,” he said.
Harry saved the message on the “iranmetalworks” account. And it was gone, though they couldn’t be sure where.
13
TEHRAN
Mahmoud Azadi squirmed nervously in the backseat of a Paykan taxi in Tehran, heading north in the afternoon traffic. The cars were moving along the Kordestan Expressway, big and breezy like Los Angeles, the city that Tehran secretly mimicked in its dreams. When the cab reached Vali Asr Avenue, the traffic slowed to a crawl. The driver asked his passenger what kind of music he wanted to hear, Persian or Turkish, but Azadi said he didn’t care. The taxi stopped for another passenger, a single woman. Azadi moved to the front seat, as the rules required, so that he wouldn’t have to sit next to her.
His mind was somewhere else. He hated meeting the British in Tehran. They weren’t supposed to do this. They were supposed to wait and talk in Qatar or Dubai. They were supposed to use the mysterious communications device they had left in the bushes in Lavizan Park many months ago. Something bad was happening, it could only be that. When Azadi received the message the day before summoning him to the apartment, he had been sick to his stomach. He had been afraid even of his own vomit, that it was a telltale sign of his secret work.
The September smog had settled over the city like a noxious cloud. Azadi couldn’t even see the Alborz ridge through the haze, and it was only a few miles away. He had grown up in this neighborhood, born in the last gaudy days of the shah. He was lucky that his father had been a religious man with the right friends in the bazaar. Otherwise the family would have been destroyed, and he might be driving a cab instead of riding in one.
The traffic edged up Vali Asr. At each corner, cars entering from the right pushed their way in, defying the oncoming traffic. People drove here by inches. They were ready to die for a car’s length of space. It hadn’t been that way in the Netherlands, when Azadi was a student at Utrecht. “Sun of justice, shine upon us.” That was the university mott
o. There were rules. People stood in lines. They stopped at traffic lights. A man’s dignity wasn’t at risk every time he entered an intersection.
Azadi got out on the corner of Vali Asr and Satari Boulevard. The driver said he didn’t want any money for such a short ride, but of course he didn’t mean it. Azadi gave him five tomans. Too much, but he was nervous. The apartment was two blocks north, on Foroozan Street. He walked slowly, looking in the store windows the way the Englishman had told him to do. There was someone behind him, a man in sunglasses, walking as slowly as Azadi. Why was that? He had that queasy feeling again, as last night, that he wanted to be sick. The man in the sunglasses continued past him, but then he stopped at the corner of Foroozan Street and began reading a newspaper. Nobody did that. Azadi was panicking now. He wanted to run, all the way back to Holland if he could. The foreigners were devils, and they had made him a devil, too.
He hailed an empty taxi coming up Vali Asr. From the driver’s open window came the buoyant sound of an American country singer. He recognized the voice: it was Sheryl Crow; Azadi had a bootleg copy of one of her CDs. The young taxi driver asked Azadi if he minded the music, and when he didn’t answer, he let it play. The driver was a brave man, or maybe just a careless one. Azadi was reassured, either way. Why should he be so afraid? Perhaps he had just imagined the surveillance.
He told the driver he wanted to go to the Nigerian embassy, on Naseri Street. They inched their way two blocks north, so close to the other cars that the metal skins seemed to be touching. They turned right off the main drag and moved slowly down the side street. Azadi looked up at the rooftops of the buildings. You could see satellite dishes on most of them, sucking down the sweet signals of pirate television from Los Angeles and Toronto and Dubai. They were illegal, officially, but that didn’t matter most of the time. When the authorities decided to crack down, there would be a little story in the paper, and people would move the dishes back from the edge of the roof so they couldn’t be seen from the street. A few dishes would be confiscated, and then sold on the black market by the police. And then after a few weeks everything would go back to normal. The authorities didn’t lose face; the people didn’t lose face; the rituals were preserved.
THE INCREMENT Page 11
