The Increment (27 page)

Harry grasped the young man’s shoulder and held it, the way he once had held Alex’s.

“Now, come sit here next to me,” said Harry, “and let’s talk about your work in the nuclear program.”

Adrian strolled down the
marble hall of the villa. He knew he should be listening to Harry’s debriefing, but Harry could do the work by himself. And he had another concern. He had seen Jackie turn into a room off the main corridor when he and Harry first arrived, and now he wanted to find her. His heart was racing. It was like the feeling he used to get when he wanted a cigarette and couldn’t find one, back when he smoked. To call it desire was being polite. It was an addiction.

He stuck his head in one door. It was an exercise room. Hakim was lifting weights; Marwan was doing crunches on a rubber mat. One of Hakim’s Bhangra CDs was playing, the percussive sound of the drum marking the beat against the high wail of the singer. They didn’t notice Adrian. They were in their zone; warriors at rest. Adrian went farther down the hall and opened the door on a vacant library lined with empty shelves.

The last door on the corridor was open a crack. He peered in and saw Jackie reclining languidly on a couch. She had showered and changed, and was dressed in sweatpants and a blue cashmere sweater. Her hair was not quite dry, and long blond ringlets were circling her neck. She was listening to music on her iPod, so she didn’t notice Adrian at first. As he tiptoed into the room she looked up at him and smiled.

“Lock the door,” she said.

Adrian secured the lock and walked back toward the couch. She had risen. The sweatpants were hanging low, below her navel, drooping almost to her crotch. As she took a step toward him, her breasts moved under the blue sweater like a swell upon the water. She shook her hair and the droplets of water came off her in a fine mist.

“God, woman, you are a sight,” he said.

“I was waiting for you, darling. I was afraid you would be too busy to see me.”

“I am too busy to see you,” he said, taking her in his arms and whispering in her ear. “But not too busy to fuck you.”

He pulled at the loose terry cloth fabric of the sweatpants, which fell to the floor. Her flanks were as taut as those of the fine horse she had ridden around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. He cracked her across the bottom with his open palm. She felt the sting, and smiled so that you could see her perfect white teeth.

“You want it like that?”

“Like what?” Adrian’s voice had a tremble of anticipation.

“Take off your trousers, my darling, and you’ll find out. Don’t disappoint Jackie, or she will be
very
angry.”

Harry worked patiently through
the morning with Molavi. He was building his dossier. He asked first for a list of the experiments and research tasks Molavi had conducted, and then a list of all other research projects he had heard about. As he logged each answer in a spiral notebook, Harry would ask whether that particular piece of research had been successful. Had the equipment worked properly? Was anyone suspicious? He recalled Kamal Atwan’s list of questions and tried to touch all those bases.

When this inventory was done, Harry asked for a list of locations where nuclear weapons work was done in Iran—all the places Molavi had ever visited, and the additional places he might have heard about. That was the most important information Molavi possessed, and Harry wanted to get it out in their first hours, in case they had to break off the meeting for some reason. Molavi mentioned only six locations. Harry knew about five of them. The sixth was new. It was in Mashad, near the eastern border with Turkmenistan.

“Why was it there?” asked Harry.

“I don’t know. Far from Israel, maybe?”

Harry said they would come back to Mashad later. He wanted to know when Karim had gone to work at Tohid, and what that laboratory had been doing in the years when the weaponization work had supposedly stopped in 2003.

“It never stopped, really. The program stopped, but the work continued. I did the same things after the official termination that I did before.”

“Why did you send us your first message?”

“To wake you up, sir. You had gone to sleep.”

“Sorry, that’s not a good enough explanation.”

“Because I was angry. The regime was destroying everyone I cared about. My father, my cousin, me. I had to do something. Otherwise, Mr. Harry, I would die.”

“Okay, but still not good enough. Revenge may have been a reason, but you’re not just about that. There was something else.”

Molavi searched his mind. He had never fully analyzed his motives until now. He had acted on instinct and compulsion, rather than a rational plan. But what was it that had made him take the risks, without asking for anything in return?

“I was ashamed,” answered the Iranian. “I could not live with myself if I didn’t do something. So I acted. That probably sounds crazy.”

“No,” said Harry. “It sounds like the truth.”

It was lunchtime. Harry’s
stomach was growling, and he knew that Molavi could use a break before they cycled back over the details. Harry stepped outside into the hall and looked for Adrian in the anteroom, next to the room they were using for the debriefing. Jeremy, the young British officer who had accompanied the boat out of Iran, was sitting at a computer, his earphones on to monitor the conversation in the other room.

“Where’s Adrian?” asked Harry.

“He stepped out. Busy with something else, I guess.”

Harry could guess what that was, but he didn’t intend to discuss it with the junior officer with the earphones dangling around his neck, and probably not with Adrian, either.

“We need some lunch,” said Harry. “Hot, and good.”

“It’s all ready,” said Jeremy.

“With some cold drinks. No booze, just Cokes. And some coffee. And some ice cream, if there is any.”

They ate a lunch
of steak and chips, with a dessert of Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip that the duty officer had somehow found in Ashgabat. Molavi relaxed as they ate. He talked about his school days in Germany. Harry asked if he wanted to take a walk before going back to work, but Molavi said no. He asked to use the toilet, and came out with his hair neatly combed. He was fastidious that way. Harry worried about only one thing. Molavi was decompressing so quickly that it would be difficult to get him to go back in, if they decided that was necessary.

Harry began again.
What scientific instruments did Tohid use? Where were they obtained? How were they serviced? Did people come from overseas to work on the equipment, or were they Iranians? Had Molavi ever seen any of the maintenance records, and could he get access to them? Did the Iranians question their suppliers? Were they suspicious? Did they compare one company with another?

The young Iranian apologized. He didn’t have many answers, and didn’t think he could get much more information now, at least at Tohid. He was under suspicion. They had already begun limiting the flow of information to him, or at least he thought they had.

“The test results you sent us from the neutron generator,” pressed Harry. “Where did you get those?”

“From the Central Laboratory. I go there to do some of my research. It is a closed site. We are accompanied in and out.”

“How did you take the material out?”

“I sent it to myself, in the computer system, from one secret account to another. It’s not so difficult if you know how. That is the advantage I had. None of the Pasdaran security people are clever enough to track the scientists. They have to trust us. They have no choice. Until they decide that they do not trust us.”

“The neutron trigger experiments that were described in those test results, were they considered successes or failures?”

“Failures,” answered the Iranian.

“And what was the response of your colleagues to those failures?”

“To try again. You know the expression, ‘If at first you don’t succeed…’”

“‘Try, try again,’” said Harry, completing the old saw. “But they kept failing, isn’t that right? The tests were failing before the lab report you sent, and they have continued to fail since then. Is that right?”

Molavi nodded. His erect posture had eased. He was slumping a little in the chair now.

“And were they suspicious, that the experiments kept failing?”

Molavi paused, as if he understood the importance of the ground they were touching now. “Yes. They began to worry.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that was one of the subjects they asked about when they interrogated me. The interrogator talked about trains going in the wrong direction, and equipment being unreliable. He wouldn’t say any more. They aren’t sure, you see. But I know that he was worried about it.”

Harry rose from his
chair and walked to the window. He needed to think a moment. There was a dusting of early snow at the very top of the mountain range that stood so starkly before them. The impression was of a fringe of white hair, atop a creased and pitted face. How far away was Iran? Twenty miles, fifty miles? Harry walked back to his chair. Molavi was sitting attentively, waiting to begin again. He was a good boy. It was not easy for Harry to think that he might have to send him back across those mountains again.

“So, Dr. Molavi, here
is my question,” said Harry, leaning in toward the young man. His bulk was a shield, and also a prod. “Suppose that someone decided that the work in your laboratory was unreliable. Would they have an option—to go to another facility, let’s say, to conduct similar experiments?”

“Oh yes. I think so. That was one of the principles of the program. ‘Robust and redundant.’ They said that in English, because there are not good words for those ideas in Farsi.”

“And where would they do this redundant research, if they decided that the first track at Tohid wasn’t working right? Do you know?”

“In my area of neutron research? At Mashad, I believe. That was the parallel site.”

“How do you know? Did you ever go there?”

“Oh yes, of course. I was sent there for two months, back before 2003, when the official program was still going. I had a second cousin there, from my mother’s family. I lived with them. But then they decided that the main research would be at Tohid, and Mashad would just be a backup. But that’s where they would go. They have equipment there. Everything. It’s called Ardebil Research Establishment.”

“And they have confidence in this facility in Mashad—that it has not been penetrated or manipulated by us?”

“Oh yes. Why not? It is very secret. There were only a few of us who went there. My best friend from high school is still there, I think.”

“Your best friend?” Harry was trying to contain his enthusiasm, but he was not entirely successful. “Your best friend from high school works at the neutron research facility in Mashad? A person who would do you a favor, if you asked. Is that right?”

“Yes, certainly. His name is Reza. He doesn’t like the big bosses very much, either. Nobody does.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Harry shook his head.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Nothing,” said Harry. “Let’s take a break. I need to think.”

He walked out of the room with a buzz he couldn’t have explained. It was like a logic cloud coming together, all the disparate shapes fitting together into something that didn’t have words yet, but felt like an idea; a plan, even. But to make it real, he would need help in a hurry from someone he did not fully trust.

Harry eventually found Adrian
Winkler. He was out walking with Jackie in the garden on the other side of the villa. He was whispering something in her ear, and she was giving him a little paddle on the fanny. Adrian had a flushed look on his face. Harry hoped it was from sex, rather than from drinking. Jackie pulled back from her boss as Harry approached. She was in control of him. Every gesture and movement said that.

“How’s it going, old boy? Is the young Iranian doctor all that we dreamed about? Worth the effort? Do tell.”

“Don’t give me the ‘old boy’ stuff, thank you very much,” Harry barked. “We need to talk, right now. So tell Miss Moneypenny to get lost for a while. Eh what?”

Adrian shrugged. He looked back at Jackie and gave her a wink, and walked inside with Harry. He really didn’t give a shit. That was the measure of his debauchery, that he didn’t care whether his friend Harry knew that he had been fucking his brains out with a woman who was nominally his subordinate.

“Don’t say anything, Harry, because it would be tedious. And it would be irrelevant. We all have our weaknesses. You just haven’t been creative enough to discover yours.”

“Shut up, Adrian. And get your nose out of that woman’s pussy for long enough to sober up. We have work to do. I think I just figured out what the game is here.”

“Oh, jolly good. So pleased. I would hate to think that this was just a dirty little weekend in Ashgabat.”

They walked into the villa and found the anteroom where Jeremy was sitting at his monitoring station. Molavi had gone back to his bedroom to take a nap, the young officer said. Harry asked Jeremy to leave the room, and then closed the door. He poured some coffee for Adrian and told him to drink it. The British officer took a few gulps, and then helped himself to a piece of a Toblerone candy bar that was sitting next to Jeremy’s computer.

“Are you back among the living?” asked Harry.

“Yes, more or less. And don’t pay too much attention to my extracurriculars, Harry. That’s always been part of my operational style.”

“No apology necessary,” said Harry.

“That’s lucky, because I’m not apologizing. What’s up? Did you break the bank with our Iranian friend? Hope so.”

“I got a lot of good stuff. So much, actually, that I have a question for you. Can you make a secure call to Kamal Atwan if we need to?”

“Sure. That shouldn’t be a problem. What do you need to know?”

“I want to know if he has shipped any equipment to Mashad, for starters. How would we make the call? Can you use the communications suite at the embassy? Because I want this done in a SCIF, or someplace just as tight. For real.”

“I’m sure Her Majesty’s Government would oblige. But there’s no need to use the embassy gear to contact Atwan.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s right here in Ashgabat. He wanted to come along in case we needed anything. Turkmenistan is one of his accounts, shall we say. He keeps a villa here. He has so many strings tied around the leadership, he might as well be Edgar Bergen. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Christ! You are out of control, do you know that?”

“Possibly, Harry. But it’s too late to do anything about that now. And besides, so far everything is working out dandy. So settle down, if you please. I will see if I can raise Brother Atwan. He’s probably sticking hundred-dollar bills in the
baschi
’s trouser pockets right now.”

Harry and Adrian traveled
to Atwan’s villa, a few doors down from the presidential palace. That seemed to Harry the most secure alternative, or to be more accurate, the least insecure. The house was furnished less elegantly than Atwan’s place in Mayfair, but only slightly so. There were fine carpets on the floors and paintings on the walls, including what looked to Harry like a Degas watercolor of racehorses at the track. And there was a British staff in place as well—a butler, maids, a cook. They seemed to live here permanently and maintain the place in perfect Atwanian order—all the foods and wines and sundries that the chief preferred, always ready for his arrival, no matter how infrequent or unlikely that might be. Harry wondered how many of these well-appointed bolt-holes Atwan had secreted around the world.

“My dear Mr. Fellows, always such a pleasure.” Atwan kissed Harry thrice on the cheek. “I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of joining you here. I do like some adventure, you know.”

“I’m actually glad to see you here, Kamal Bey. I prefer to travel a little more anonymously, normally. But under the circumstances it makes things easier. I need your help, in a hurry.”

“How nice. I cannot think of a greater pleasure than being useful to someone who really needs my help.”

“Can we go somewhere private? I’m sure you trust your people. But in a country like this, the walls have ears.”

“Quite so. I have a room that’s used for my private business. It’s swept every day when I am here. I brought one of my London technicians along for just that purpose. He made a check a few hours ago.”

Atwan led Harry past a library, which from the look of it had nearly as many volumes as the one in London. Down a hallway was a door that led into a windowless room equipped with several computers, a Bloomberg terminal, and a flat-screen television tuned to Fashion TV. The models, stunning young girls from Siberia and Belarus and God knows where, were prancing down the runway, planting their high heels in a way that made their tiny torsos pivot as if they were on cocktail skewers.

“My favorite program,” said Atwan, switching off the television. “When I see a woman I particularly like, I place an order. I have a friend at one of the modeling agencies, you see. And many of these dear girls are available, for a price. You wouldn’t think so, but there it is. They are exotic caged animals, and they know it. Peacocks on promenade. When I find the right girl, available, you know, I will send her as a special gift to a friend. Or send him, where that is appropriate. The boys are not so expensive. I will ship them abroad all tied up in ribbons and bows. It’s so much nicer than the usual sort of gift. The personal touch.”

“Not my problem,” said Harry, taking a seat in one of the black leather chairs in Atwan’s little hideaway. “It’s just business.”

“I am so glad to hear you say that, my dear. That’s a very enlightened attitude. Just business indeed, and how can we afford to make value judgments when it comes to business? Now, my dear, how can I help
you
do business? Please. I am at your service.”

Harry looked around the room. The door was closed tight. The only people inside were him, Adrian, and Atwan. He hated to share secrets with people he didn’t fully trust, but he had no choice.

“The Iranians have a secret weapons laboratory in Mashad. At least it was unknown to me until a few minutes ago. Its cover name is Ardebil Research Establishment. Have you ever heard of it?”

Atwan paused and thought a moment. “I don’t think so. We have shipped to Jamaran, and Esfahan, and Parchin, and Natanz, and Shiraz. But never to Mashad.”

“We know about those other places. But Mashad is new to you, too?”

“I can check, if you would like. I took the liberty of bringing my records with me. They are very portable.”

The Lebanese businessman reached into his pocket and removed a computer flash drive monogrammed with his initials. He turned to the bank of computers and plugged the little drive into the USB port of one of the processors. He clicked open the drive, and in a few moments the screen displayed a spread sheet of business records.

“You’re good,” said Harry. “The normal billionaire arms dealer would have someone else do that for him.”

“I couldn’t afford to hire such a person, my dear. The only assets I truly possess are the secrets I keep. I cannot entrust those to anyone.”

Atwan studied the screen, looking for Ardebil Research Establishment among dozens of Iranian company names to which his far-flung affiliates and hidden fronts had shipped equipment over the years. He found nothing in this first scan; then he went back and looked for any business concerns in Mashad that might have touched his net. Again he came up dry.

“What did you say they were doing at this facility in Mashad?”

“I didn’t,” said Harry. “But my guess is that it parallels the work at Tohid. So they would be doing the basics of weaponization. Work on a trigger, probably with a neutron emitter. Work on timing the firing. Work on miniaturization of the core. Materials science, maybe. The key thing is the neutron trigger.”

“Well, let’s look, shall we?” Atwan went to a different document on his flash drive, this one organized by products sold. He went to the subcategory for neutron generators and the related instruments for testing and simulation. Tohid had been a customer, all right. Many shipments through various cutouts, over many years. But there was nothing for a company called Ardebil or for any concern in Mashad.

“Dear me,” said Atwan, “they seem to have gotten past us. I wonder how anyone could have sold them this sort of equipment without it coming to my attention. That disturbs me, more than you might imagine.”

“Accidents do happen,” said Adrian. “Even to you.”

Atwan ignored his genial British friend, who was still a bit red-faced and giddy from his earlier activities. It was as if he could smell the sex on Adrian, and he didn’t like it. Atwan was peculiar in that respect; he used debauchery freely enough to get what he wanted, but he was not a debauched man himself. That was his power—to use others without being used.

“Perhaps you could get us something to drink, Adrian. Some tea, perhaps. A whiskey if you prefer. I’ll have a cup of tea. And a sweet biscuit, please. How about you, Mr. Fellows?”

Harry said that he would have tea and a biscuit, too. Adrian knew that he was being sent away, but he didn’t seem to mind. He had taken the master’s shilling, many millions of them. And he did as he was asked.

“This is just about
our worst nightmare, isn’t it?” said Harry, turning to Atwan once they were alone. “I mean, we’re spinning them for all it’s worth on one side of the house—so much so that they’re getting suspicious that we’re playing games. Meanwhile, there’s another side of the house we didn’t even know about. And over there, they’ve got a whole other program on ice. As soon as they get spooked about Track A, they’ll go to Track B. And then we’re fucked. Pardon my French.”

“That is the problem, my dear Mr. Fellows. Quite right. But it has an answer. We are not without resources. Certainly, I am not without resources. The question is how to use them.”

Harry rubbed his forehead, as if by that action he could bring forth a plan. What were the tools he had to use? How quickly did he have to play his next move? What could Atwan’s network do quickly that might make the pieces of this puzzle fit together the right way? In the space of a few minutes, he had gone from resenting Atwan’s presence to depending on him for advice and operational support.

“Let me ask you some questions, Kamal. Do you mind if I call you that? I promise that I won’t steal anything from your cookie jar or order one of your fashion models for Christmas.”

“Of course you can, my dear. And I am sorry that you will not accept a present or two, but I quite understand.”

“So, for starters, I’m wondering how quickly you could penetrate the supply chain for the Mashad facility. So that you could get your gizmos in, and make the equipment there as unreliable as the other tools the Iranians are playing with.”

“Months, I am afraid. If at all. The Iranians are not stupid. None of their suppliers are, either. They go to very great lengths to avoid precisely the tricks that we are using. They accompany all their shipments. They have twenty-four-hour guards at all their warehouses. They do not hire anyone in the chain whom they do not know, and even then they test them for loyalty. To build my network has taken the better part of thirty years. I am using now penetrations that I set down when I was starting out in the business. I can work through many governments, it is true. But I cannot conjure up companies and shipments out of thin air.”

Harry nodded. That was the answer he had expected. That was the reason the CIA had gotten out of the sabotage business. It was too damned difficult, it took too long, and it cost too much. And it was vulnerable to any asshole scientist who had been recruited for the mission but got pissed off and decided to tell someone about it. But intelligence work was the art of the possible; you used the tools you had in hand. And Harry’s hands were not empty. Sleeping in the nearby safe house was a human key that could unlock the door that Atwan thought was impassable.

“Kamal, I want you to do a little thought experiment with me, okay? I want you to imagine that you had access to the research lab at Mashad. Assume you could get in and out safely. Is there something you could put in play, into the neutron generator, or into the computers, that would achieve the desired result?”

“Meaning to poison the project?”

“To poison it, but without a trace. So that if the Iranians turned to that facility, assuming that it was clean, they would end up screwing themselves. But they wouldn’t know it for years. Do you think that would be possible?”

“Oh yes. I mean, my dear sir, that is what we do. We need only a few minutes’ access to the equipment to do our little business.”

“Would you sabotage the neutron generator?”

“Oh no. They would build another. Or buy one. The oil companies use them now, you know, for seismic work. No, the better way would be to manipulate the computer that does the simulation of the imploding core and the operation of the neutron generator. That’s how they test a bomb without actually testing it, you see?”

“How in the hell would you do that?”

“We have ways to delete bits of code, pieces of chip, slices of memory. We can do brain surgery without ever cutting open the skull. We just have to be nearby. But it is access that is the problem. So you are asking me, if I could fly, could I fly to Mashad? And I answer yes. But of course, I cannot fly.”