THE INCREMENT

by David Ignatius

She reached out her arms. She never asked where he was going. Neither did Andrea. That was part of the family bargain.

  Harry kissed her cheek and held her, longer than he had intended. Her head felt small in his arms, the way it had when she was a baby.

  “You seem sad, Daddy,” she said.

  Harry pulled back. He hadn’t meant to seem like anything.

  “I guess I am.” He paused. “I miss my family when I go away.” Something made him want to keep talking. “Sometimes I miss my family when I’m home, too. There’s never enough time. It’s hard to say the words.”

  “We know how hard you work, Daddy. We know it’s important.”

  “It’s not more important than you, Louise.”

  She smiled up at him. It was almost a look of compassion, like what he used to see in Andrea’s face back when she didn’t turn away when their eyes met.

  “Don’t be sad, Daddy,” said Lulu. “We love you.”

  Harry got into London very early on the United flight, and he had some time to kill before his meeting with Adrian. He took a taxi into the city, and walked along the Thames for an hour. London was just coming awake. The delivery trucks were out, but otherwise the streets were empty. He strolled down Victoria Embankment, just below Whitehall, and then crossed the Waterloo Bridge toward the railway station and Royal Festival Hall. Britain had still been in a post-imperial daze when these graceless concrete buildings were constructed. Maggie Thatcher was just getting started with her wrecking ball.

  Harry walked along the south bank until he came to Century House, the old headquarters of SIS before it moved upstream to Vauxhall Cross. How many times had he visited this building over the years? Dozens, maybe scores. The British were junior partners in the firm, but courtesy calls were part of doing business. Harry always came away from these meetings with a sense that his British colleagues were better suited for the game than Americans were. They weren’t any better at keeping secrets, but they were better at telling lies.

  Winkler was waiting for him when he arrived at Vauxhall Cross. He had set up a secure video conference link with the embassy in Tehran so that Harry could talk directly with the station commander there. The SIS officer’s face was on the screen, staring into the video camera, his blond hair neatly combed and his tie knotted up to the top of the collar. He looked very young, but that was the way the British did it, in and out early. Winkler said his real name was Robin Austen-Smith, but not to use that during the conversation.

  “Hello, Tehran,” said Adrian.

  “Hello, London. Sorry I can’t see you on this hookup, but I hear you fine.”

  “We won’t keep you long. Tell our American friend a bit about what we’ve learned on the Bullfinch matter,” said Adrian. Apparently that was the code they were using for the operation they had mounted over the past month.

  “We believe the target works at an establishment called Tohid Electrical Company. It’s part of the Iranian nuclear establishment. We think it took over some of the functions of the Shahid Electric Company, when the Iranians closed down its covert activities in 2003. Tohid is probably owned by the Revolutionary Guard, and we think the personnel there are on a restricted, no-travel basis. But we don’t know that. We’ve never gotten inside.”

  Harry was taking notes. In a whisper, he asked Adrian whether he could ask questions. His host nodded yes.

  “We know a little about Tohid,” said Harry. “Your description fits what we have. Why do you think the target works there?”

  “Because someone working there contacted our source, Ajax 1, with the programmed query. Probably better to leave the details offline. Mr. Winkler can explain them to you. We have a name for the target, too. We’ve done some checking on our end, based on some collateral we gathered, and we think it’s real. Mr. Winkler can give you that as well. But we haven’t taken any further action, pending word from London.”

  “Good job,” said Harry. He turned toward Adrian and tipped an imaginary cap.

  “Yes, well done, Tehran. An extra watercress sandwich for you at teatime.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Winkler flipped a switch and the video screen went fuzzy, and then dark.

  “Fuck me,” said Harry. “You did it.”

  “Not quite, old boy. But we started it. The question is, what do you want to do next?”

  “I don’t know yet. Let’s start with the basics. What’s the name you’ve got?”

  “Dr. Karim Siamak Molavi. He’s a scientist, attached to a covert department of Revolutionary Guards intelligence. His father was a dissident intellectual, anti-shah. The son studied in Germany, at the University of Heidelberg. His name surfaced on some scientific papers in the late 1990s, then disappeared.”

  “Why’s he contacting us?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe it’s a provocation. But probably he’s pissed off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his cousin Hossein Shamshiri got cashiered six months ago from a senior position in the Rev Guard. He was a colonel. We picked up word of that after it happened. We did traces and found the family link to Shamshiri. That’s what Austen-Smith meant about ‘collateral.’”

  “What did cousin Hossein do to get himself canned?”

  “He picked a fight with the wrong guy. A Pasdaran general who was taking more than the normal cut from an enterprise Shamshiri was supervising. He complained to higher-ups about this un-Islamic behavior, but the general had friends. Someone at the top decided that cousin Hossein was a troublemaker and forced him out.”

  “So Molavi has a motive?”

  “Precisely. That’s what makes us think he’s legitimate.”

  “Shit. You know a lot. You’ve been holding out on me, Adrian.”

  “Not at all, mate. And don’t overstate the importance of a few stray facts we may happen to know. We remain a very poor relation, with our noses pressed up against the windows of our betters. Still, we do have a few crumbs of intelligence that we can bring to the high table.”

  “Give it a rest. I can take everything but the false modesty. So what are we going to do, now that we have a name and a motive?”

  “Ring his bell, don’t you suppose?”

  “But how? Your man Austen-Boston, or whatever his ridiculous name is, he obviously can’t do it. They’ll make him in a minute if he gets near a guy with this kind of security clearance. And you don’t have another officer in the station. What about your access agent Mahmoun?”

  “Mahmoud Azadi is the name of that worthy gentleman. But he isn’t answering the phone at present, I’m afraid. I suspect he got a bit spooked after the last mission that brought us to Mr. Molavi.”

  “Shiiiit.” Harry drew the word out, so it was multisyllabic. “So what’s left? Do you have any other assets in country to handle this? Because we don’t.”

  “Not yet,” said Adrian. He seemed to be debating something in his mind, and then resolved it in the affirmative. “Not yet, but we might be able to get something in place.”

  “And what’s that, if I might ask.”

  “We have a certain operational capability we don’t like to talk about. Even with each other.”

  “But you’re going to tell me.”

  Adrian nodded. But still he didn’t say anything.

  “Come on, boy. Cat got your tongue? What is it?”

  “We call it ‘the Increment.’ It doesn’t exist, legally. But there you are. The Increment.”

  Harry cocked his head. He had heard the term once, a few years before, from another British officer. But when he had pressed, the man hadn’t responded.

  “What the hell is the Increment? Some kind of secret unit?”

  “It’s looser than that. More ad hoc. We use soldiers from the Special Air Services, mostly. Black ops people, highly trained. Many of them are from the—forgive the term—former colonies. Indians, Paks, West Indians, Arabs. They all speak the languages fluently, like natives. They can operate anywhere, and more or less invisibly. Or so we li
ke to think. They are seconded to SIS for certain missions where we have to get into a denied area, do something unpleasant, and get out. They have the mythical 007 ‘license to kill,’ as a matter of fact. I like to think of them as James Bond Meets My Beautiful Launderette. They give us certain capabilities that we would not have, even under our own rather expansive rules. You don’t know about the Increment because, strictly speaking, there is no such organization.”

  “And you would be willing to lend these versatile individuals to the United States government?”

  “No. But we might be willing to lend them to you, Harry.”

  15

  LONDON

  Adrian proposed that Harry stay over and have dinner. He wanted to talk some more, you could see that in his eyes. Harry suggested that Susan join them for a festive meal at a Russian restaurant, where they could drink shots of vodka and remember the old days in Moscow. But Adrian said no, they should go out just the two of them, and he proposed that they dine at Mirabelle’s, the grand dame of French restaurants in the West End. He sounded wary at the mention of Susan, and Harry wondered why.

  They drank a lot of whiskey before the meal, and Adrian eventually blurted it out.

  “Susan and I have separated,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Harry. He didn’t know if that was the right thing to say, but it was what he felt.

  “Don’t be. It was going to happen eventually. Would have happened earlier, if Susan hadn’t thought she could make it all work. But I finally busted the connection.”

  “How? I mean, Susan always knew that you had other women. She talked to Andrea about it. I always suspected she had a lover or two of her own along the way. That’s why you two were such a fun couple.”

  “She told the truth about her affairs. I lied. That’s the difference. The lies got bigger. I have another child, by another woman. Bet you didn’t know that. Susan didn’t either. And that’s not even the woman I’m with now. Life is complicated, Harry.”

  “Does the service know?”

  “Of course. You think I’m daft? They know everything. That’s the problem, isn’t it, Harry? Other than inside the firm, it’s all a big fucking lie. And finally that’s all that’s left, is the lie.”

  “You’re drunk,” said Harry.

  “Maybe so, maybe so. But I’m right, too. The problem with our business is that we’re supposed to lie. We’re required to, for fuck’s sake. When someone asks what we do, we tell a lie. Every time we get on a plane, we have a different passport. We stay at one hotel under one identity and another when we’re using a different identity, and we just hope the desk clerk doesn’t remember a face. We get people to do bad things, the very worst things, and we say to ourselves, ‘higher calling,’ or ‘can’t be helped.’ That’s if we still have a tinge of guilt left. But pretty soon that goes away. I wouldn’t know how to talk to a woman if I was using my true name, Harry. I couldn’t get a hard-on.”

  “Go back to Susan. She knows who you are.”

  But Adrian wasn’t listening. He was going to explain to Harry, his one and only friend, what he wouldn’t say to anyone else, even in the House of Lies that was his service. He took another deep drink of his whiskey and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “It’s not that simple. I’m corrupt, old boy. I needed money to support my ‘lifestyle,’ if you will. So I took money. First time was in the Middle East, as a matter of fact, after we left Moscow. I went to meet a Syrian agent in Cyprus, to give him his cash. It was two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. He was a greedy fucker, too, we paid him a lot, and I had always wondered why.

  “So, so, so…” He took another gulp of whiskey. “The case had just been handed off to me, and I didn’t know much about him, you see. When I got to the safe house, he motioned for me to turn off the sound system, with little hand signals, pantomime, you know? He knew the drill. So when the sound was off, I opened up the briefcase to show him the cash, and he said, ‘Take your cut.’ Just like that. His previous case officer had been skimming, and he just assumed I would too. So I asked what the deal was with my predecessor, and he said twenty percent. And I thought, Blimey! That’s fifty thousand quid. That could put a down payment on a nice flat in London back then. So I took it.”

  “Everybody does little shit,” said Harry. “It’s a cost of doing business.”

  “This wasn’t little shit, Harry. Over the years, it’s a lot of money. It paid for women, and apartments, and abortions, and school fees for my girls, and a boob job for Susan when she still thought she could pull me back.”

  “And nobody in the service knows?”

  “Of course they know. Not the details. But we’re all in this together. We hand off the agents, officer to officer. We know we’re all skimming at the casino, but it’s SIS omertà. That’s why we’re a band of brothers, dear boy. Because each of us has the next guy by the balls, and it’s in no one’s interest to do anything except to keep the skim going. I’ll be next chief of the service, after Sir David. That’s the corridor talk. And you know why?”

  “Because you’re a good intelligence officer.”

  “Bullshit, Harry. It’s because I’m one of them. I won’t upset the applecart, because I’ve got a big fucking handful of apples myself. They’ll like me even better when I’m divorced, because they won’t have to worry that Susan will straighten me out. I’m bent, Harry. You’re just too straight to see it. That’s why I love you and nobody else does. How can anyone trust an honest man?”

  Adrian called Harry the next morning at his hotel as he was getting ready to leave for the airport. He voice was businesslike, as if he were trying to make up for the indiscretions of the night before. He must have a killer hangover, but it didn’t show. That was another British skill, the ability to drink like a fish and come up all dry and fluffy the next morning.

  “How about you stay in London another day, old boy?” said Adrian. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. One of our chaps, though he would never describe himself that way.”

  “I really don’t have time for socializing, Adrian. I’m already a day late. People back home are ready to pop.”

  “I know, I know. But this isn’t socializing. Trust me. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think this was worth the time. For you, I mean. The gentleman in question is a Lebanese businessman. Rich as god, he is. Worked for the Libyans in the 1970s, marketing consignments of oil and anything else he could get his hands on. Now he’s businessman. So to speak. Very discreet, very quiet. Flies so far below the radar he’s almost touching the ground, but he never gets dirty, never a stitch out of place. Useful chap to know.”

  “Sounds like a heck of a guy, Adrian, but I should get back.”

  Harry paused. “Unless this involves the matter that we were discussing yesterday. What’s his business, if I might ask?”

  “Ah yes. Well, that’s just the point, isn’t it? He’s in the business of selling certain very-hard-to-obtain items of scientific equipment. Things that would be quite difficult to acquire from any other source, if you follow me.”

  “Yes,” said Harry, smiling to himself. “I think I follow you. Where do we meet the gentleman in question?”

  “We’re having lunch with him, actually. I took the liberty. At his place in Mayfair. He doesn’t like to go out. And we rather encourage that sense of…entertaining at home. I told him we would be there at half one. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Does he have a name, your friend?”

  “Kamal Atwan.”

  Harry pulled the phone away from his lips for a moment. He knew many prominent Arab businessmen in London, but this name was unfamiliar to him. Evidently he really did fly below the radar.

  “Pick me up at the hotel. And when we’re done, have a car take me to the airport so I can catch the late flight. I still have to get back tonight.”

  “Of course. The workaholic thing. Protestant ethic. We understand. But there’s one more thing about this little luncheon party, if you don’t
mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, he’s our asset, you see. Mine, to be precise. Very close hold, too. The kind we don’t share even with our American cousins. So when we meet him, you’ll have to go as one of us. That’s what we’re telling him. That you’re on our team. We own the information. It stays in our circle. Doesn’t enter yours. Otherwise he would never agree to see you.”

  “That’s an odd arrangement, even for you, Adrian. What’s his problem with Americans?”

  “I know this will come as a shock, Harry, but he doesn’t trust you. He thinks the CIA is incompetent. He thinks America doesn’t protect its friends. I can’t imagine where he got such an idea, but there you are. So let’s just make you an honorary British agent for the day, shall we? No harm in that.”

  “I guess not,” said Harry. He didn’t even think about it, really.

  16

  LONDON

  Kamal Atwan lived in a Regency townhouse on Mount Street, just behind Berkeley Square. To another wealthy Arab, it would have been a convenient spot to bring guests after a night carousing at Annabelle’s, around the corner. But Atwan was an altogether more serious man. A burly servant opened the door—by the looks of him, he was more bodyguard than butler. He nodded to Adrian, whom he seemed to know, and invited the two into an elegant parlor. The first thing that caught Harry’s eye was the dazzling color of the painting hanging on the far wall. It appeared to be one of the Water Lilies series by Monet, but that couldn’t be right.

  “Is that what I think it is?” whispered Harry, nodding toward the painting.

  “Uh-huh,” answered Adrian. He pointed across the room to a bright canvas of a dewy-lipped young woman. “And yes, that’s a Renoir.”

  Atwan was waiting for them upstairs in his library. It was lined with bookshelves on three sides, with a ladder to reach the upper shelves. The books appeared to be organized and catalogued, much like a small college library. The fourth wall of the room was glass, looking out on an indoor pool.