The Increment (30 page)

The Ardebil Research Establishment
was hidden away in an empty industrial park near the Azad Engineering University, just above the northern ring road. It had a wall and a security gate, but there was little else to suggest that it was special. Perhaps that was why it had escaped detection from the Americans and Israelis for so long—and even from Kamal Atwan. So often it is the special signatures of secrecy that give the game away. The best disguise sometimes is no disguise at all.

Reza was waiting at the gate. He kissed his friend, and then embraced him, and then kissed him again. Reza’s beard was fuller and his stomach bigger than the last time Karim had seen him, but otherwise he appeared the same. He had the same mischievous look of intelligence, especially. He was a chess player, a puzzle solver, a compulsive player of electronic games. No wonder they kept him on ice out here. He was the reserve player—the sixth man on the team, held in waiting on this faraway bench for when one of the starters fouled out.

They were in the guardhouse now. Reza asked Karim for his special-access pass. Karim handed it up to the guard, who typed the number into the system.

“The pass has expired,” said the guard.

“It’s old,” said Karim, trying to laugh. “Of course it has. Here’s the one I use in Tehran.”

The guard studied Karim. The young man pulled his black jacket tighter. He might as well have been standing naked. The guard stepped closer and peered at him. Then he smiled, the skeptical eastern smile of a Mashadi.

“Didn’t you used to work here?”

Karim nodded. “Yes, but that was before. Now I work in Tehran, at Tohid. I’m here visiting my cousin. I thought I would come see my old friend Reza.”

“You remember the old friends in Mashad? Usually you fancy Tehranis forget we even exist.” The guard had a chip on his shoulder, but now he was smiling at this departed scientist who hadn’t put on airs, and wanted to see the old lab.

“Salam, salam. Rooz bekheyr. Khosh amadi.”
Hello, hello. Good afternoon to you. You are most welcome.

The guard was opening the electronic door, and then he stopped and turned back to Karim.

“I am sorry, Brother Doctor. Do you have a camera or anything that can make a recording?”

Karim paused. What was the right answer?

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure, sir?” The guard was friendly but vigilant.

Karim felt the device heavy in his pocket. He centered himself on the one requirement, to avoid detection of the secret tool.

“I have a cell phone, with a camera. Do you need that?”

“Yes, please.”

Karim handed him a phone. It was the Nokia he had bought in Tehran, with a new 3-mega-pixel camera.

“Thank you, sir,” said the guard, handing Karim a ticket for his phone.

“Come on,” said Reza. “I have to show you the new wing of the lab.”

Marwan approached from the
north. The taxi dropped him at a
kebabi
a half mile from the ring road. He bought a sandwich and a bottle of lemon soda and walked to the park that was near the Azad Engineering University campus. They had studied the park on a satellite map back in Ashgabat and, measuring the distance, had decided that it was just inside the transmission perimeter. Marwan found a tree in the park and sat down beneath it. He reached in his dirty canvas bag for the black box that would drive the device in Karim’s coat pocket. The Americans could have done it overhead, with a focused energy beam from a satellite. But this wasn’t an American operation. Marwan switched on the equipment and aimed it in the optimal direction. Then he took the sandwich in his hands and began to eat.

The Crazy One ate
his lunch alone at a small restaurant near Ghaem Square. He had told Mehdi to wait for him at the Iran Hotel in the center of town. He would call when it was time.

The restaurant was Lebanese, or so the menu claimed. He ordered a tabbouleh salad with no onions, hoping that it would be easy on his stomach. But it was too spicy when it came, and he pushed it away and ate bread only, with a glass of peach nectar. He tried reading
The World Is Flat
again, but he put it away when a man at a nearby table saw it open and wanted to talk about it. He was a professor at Azad Engineering University nearby. He taught computer science. He thought Thomas Friedman was the best writer in the world.

Al-Majnoun didn’t answer the man. The computer scientist looked once into the Lebanese man’s face and then looked away, frightened, and returned to his seat a few tables away. Al-Majnoun did not like talking to strangers, ever, but especially not today. He was waiting for the time when he could finish his work and be done.

The Ardebil laboratory was
quiet in midafternoon. Some of the researchers had left for lunch. Others were at their desks playing computer games. As in government labs around the world, people were passing the time waiting to go home. Reza escorted Karim down the corridor to the neutron research area where they had once worked together. The door was locked electronically, and marked with signs in Farsi warning against entry by unauthorized visitors. A security officer sat at a metal desk just outside. He was reading the football scores in the local newspaper, but when he saw Reza and Karim he snapped to attention.

The guard was glowering. His mustache was twitching from side to side. Didn’t Reza know that no visitors to this part of the lab were allowed? Karim studied his face. He thought he recognized him from the old days.

“Ali?” he asked. “Is that you? Don’t you remember me? The boy from Tehran who kept blowing the fuses?”

The guard stopped twitching and stroked his beard. “Dr. Karim?” he ventured. “You have come back?”

“Just for a day. I’m here to see Reza and my family, and then I go home.”

The guard ventured a smile.
“Haale shoma chetoreh?”
And how are you?

“Khubam—shoma chetori?”
Karim returned the greeting, and they wished each other good health.

“Can he come in?” asked Reza.

“Of course. We know him. He has to sign the book.” He pushed a book toward Karim, who signed his name and his pass number.

They walked into the forbidden space, past the little office Karim had once used. The exterior wall had once been just past his cubicle, but now it had been extended. There was a door, but it wasn’t locked or guarded. This was the new wing Reza had been talking about.

“Come on, Karim.” His friend tugged at his arm. “You’ve got to see this.”

Inside the new wing, on a table in the center of the room, was the precious neutron generator. The metal was still shiny, and it looked as if it had just recently been uncrated. It was a small cylindrical object, no longer than a foot. At one end was a thick metal casing, with a hole where the explosive trigger was inserted. In the middle was the electromagnetic generator that turned the energy of the explosive into an electronic charge that could ionize the deuterium packed inside and accelerate it toward the tritium target. For all the complicated machinery, it was a simple physical process: the deuterium-tritium reaction produced a surge of neutrons—which could then bombard the plutonium core of the bomb and initiate the fission reaction. The result was a fearsome weapon, with the energy of the sun condensed into a few hundred kilograms.

“Not bad!” allowed Karim. “It’s like the one we have in Tehran. Only it looks newer.”

“And better, my brother. Soon we will be doing the work. You will see. You big boys in Tehran get the glory, but your work never turns out right. So now it is time for the Mashad team to teach you a little physics.”

“Where did you get it? I thought we had the only one at Tohid.”

“Shhh!” Reza put his finger to his lips. “We assembled it inside. That’s the thing. We bought the pieces abroad and put them together. Nobody had done that before, my brother. And I helped. Your friend Reza, who wasn’t smart enough to get a fellowship to Germany. What do you think now?”

This was the Reza that Karim remembered. Cocky and competitive. The young man who had to show you that no matter what you had done with your computer, he could do it better on his. The two of them had wasted many evenings writing graphics programs on the big simulators to pass the time—daring each other to import pornographic images from the Internet and send them anonymously to the bearded ones who rode herd on the scientists.

“You are dreaming, Reza. There’s no way it works better than our machine in Tehran. We may have a few bugs in the engine, but you haven’t even turned on the motor.”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong. You are becoming Plan B, my brother. We are the new Plan A. Wait and see. You will be lucky if you can get your old job in Mashad back, when they close everything down in Tehran.”

Karim scoffed. “How? With computers that don’t work? With software you don’t understand? I remember you, Reza. You are the king of the error message. I’ll bet you don’t even know how to run the simulation for the neutron generator. This is all for show.”

“You are a dog,” said Reza. He walked to the console where the main operator sat. The chair had barely been used. The leather in the seat was still shiny; the computer console was bright and unmarked. The neutron generator looked as if it had just been unwrapped. They were keeping it dry and ready, in reserve for when it was needed. The real work was done on the big computer that simulated the interaction of the neutron trigger with the fissile material in the core. The ability to run these simulations was the long pole in the tent.

Reza took his seat and turned on the big processor, which hummed to life. The screen went from black to white and an interface gradually appeared.

“I’m hot,” said Karim. “Mind if I take off my coat?”

Reza didn’t even hear him. He was absorbed in the hum of his new super-toy. Karim laid the black jacket down on the case of the processor. A log-in display had appeared on the screen.

“Don’t look while I type,” said Reza, with a wink.

Karim turned his back while his friend typed in his username and password. The jacket and its silent electronic device were only a few feet away from his nimble hands. The screen dissolved again, and they were in the most secret electronic space in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“Watch me now,” said Reza. “We did some simulations of the generator last week. We’re working to get higher yield. Goodbye, Tel Aviv! Watch this, Karim. We are going to make you fancy boys in Tehran look very stupid when we get the tests right and you can’t.”

Karim smiled appreciatively as Reza went through the simulation.

“Better than I expected. But it’s obvious you don’t have the real stuff. You’re still subcritical. This will fizzle, brother, I promise you. You don’t have the full package.”

“You are so arrogant, Karim. The blood of the Imam Hussein would not make you shed a tear. So I will show you what the real men of science can do.”

He punched some more keys, and the system hummed away as it moved through a new and more complex simulation. For every trick Reza knew, Karim asked about another one that he didn’t. Eventually Reza even gave way at the terminal so Karim could show him some features of the equipment Reza hadn’t understood. Karim looked at his watch. More than fifty minutes had passed since they began working the machines and bantering. The few other workers in the lab had drifted away, happy enough to let the whiz kids play their games.

Karim proposed one more test, to see if Reza really had the right stuff. It was a protocol for “boosting” the deuterium-tritium mixture to get more neutrons and a vastly larger explosion. In truth, it was one of the things that had failed repeatedly in Tehran. Reza attempted the maneuver, but now he really was out of his league, and Karim couldn’t get the machine to perform the requested sequence either.

“It’s the machine’s fault. Just like in Tehran. Something doesn’t work.”

“No, Karim. The machine is never wrong, at least the homegrown Mashad machine of Brother Reza, the genius of the world. I know it’s your fault. You know it’s your fault. Why don’t you admit it?”

Karim took a last glance at his watch and reached for his jacket.

“I love you, brother,” he said. “And someday you will come help us with the real machines, the big machines, up in Jamaran. But right now, I am tired. I have all the miles between Mashad and Tehran in my bones. What do you say we go out and get a meal?”

Reza lowered his voice. “And later maybe some home brew. I have a new source. This stuff tastes like Russian vodka. I am not kidding you, Karim. The best. I live up in the hills, all alone. Nobody around. No one will see us. The
basij
wouldn’t dare come looking even if we were holding an orgy.”

“Quiet,” said Karim. His friend’s boasting made him nervous.

They traversed the long gallery of the new wing and then passed back through the locked door. Karim signed out on the guard’s pad. Old Ali gave him a grateful kiss goodbye on both cheeks for just remembering his name. At the main gate, Karim picked up his Nokia. He shook that guard’s hand, too, to thank him. He said he would be back soon.

The sun was low in the sky now. Reza asked Karim where he wanted to eat. There was a new restaurant on Khayyam Boulevard called the Silk Road. It was very tasty, and not just the food. Pretty girls from the Engineering University liked to hang out in the coffee bar. Reza beckoned for his friend. These Tehranis were too arrogant; they breathed all that smog every day and it made them dizzy. They thought they knew all the answers.

The two Iranian scientists
walked together out of the Ardebil compound. A soft late-afternoon breeze was blowing in from the farmlands, bearing the fragrance of saffron and the other exotic spices for which the region was known. Students were leaving the university campus across the way; cascades of them, the boys and girls walking in separate clusters. The women were so slim and fine; you could see their shapes as the breeze blew their cloaks tight against their hips and bust. “Mashad girls rock,” said Reza in English.

Karim looked up and down the street until he saw a dirty Mitsubishi bearing the glittery trappings of a shared taxi. It was moving slowly toward them and then stopped, about fifty yards away. He tried not to stare at the van; he was so close to being done, he needed only to keep moving. He put his arm around Reza’s shoulder, not so much from affection as to bind himself to the other man a little while longer until his job was finished.

Reza’s car was in the parking lot next to the Ardebil compound. It was a new Peugeot—not one of the Iranian knockoffs, but a real French Peugeot. That must be a token of official affection. They had tried giving Karim cars over the years, and vacation apartments on the Caspian, and special coupons to import consumer electronics products, but he had always refused. That had been part of why they trusted him at Tohid, because he appeared to be a scientist only, a man who had joined the program not for the perquisites, but for the intellectual challenge of the work.

Reza drove south toward the Silk Road restaurant where he had booked a table. It was in the Homa Hotel near the center of town. The late-afternoon traffic was heavy, but it was going the other way, toward the suburbs. Karim didn’t speak much. Reza popped a cassette into the music system. The percussive sound of R. Kelly filled the car; Reza turned up the bass and began nodding his head, in the way he thought a rapper would. Every time the singer said the word “motherfucker,” Reza would repeat it loudly, because it sounded cool.

The little Mitsubishi van from Saraghs carrying its three pilgrims followed behind, the car stopping and starting in the traffic and the driver cursing in Turkmen at the Persian assassins at the wheels of the other vehicles. They were heading to the city center too, it seemed, doubtless to the pilgrim shrines of the
haram-e-motahhar.

A third vehicle had
been waiting as well outside the Ardebil Research Establishment. It was a black Paykan, hired for the day from the Iran Hotel. The driver of the car would have been recognizable to passengers who had traveled on the overnight Green Express from Tehran. He had kept watch through the night outside one of the first-class cabins, never moving once.

In the back of the Paykan sat Al-Majnoun and Mehdi Esfahani. Both men were carrying weapons. Mehdi, a man who was uncomfortable with silence, would occasionally start up a conversation, but the other man would leave it hanging in the air. His face was dead still, scanning the guardhouse of the Ardebil Research Establishment in the middle distance.

When he saw the two Iranian scientists emerge from the gatehouse, Al-Majnoun told the driver to start the car and follow at a safe distance. Mehdi peered toward the window and then pulled back.

“The Molavi boy!” proclaimed Esfahani in the stern voice of a prosecutor. “I was certain of it, always. The traitor. The dog.
Coon-deh!
” The last word, spoken with special scorn, was a slang term for homosexual. “Who is the other one with him?”

Al-Majnoun did not answer. He removed one of the two automatic pistols from his black Tumi briefcase and attached a silencer to the barrel. He tucked the gun inside the belt of his trousers and then folded himself into the recess of the backseat while the driver followed his prey toward Khayyam Street and the Homa Hotel.

Karim and Reza ate
a light dinner at the Silk Road. Reza wanted to pile on course after course, to show off, but his friend said he wasn’t very hungry. Reza winked and whispered that what Karim needed was some of the home brew, the very best, like they used to have when they were young and crazy. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Karim realized that he wouldn’t mind something to dull the ache in his legs before the long ride back across the border, so he said yes, just one drink at Reza’s villa in the hills, and then he would go. He had the telephone number of a taxi that would pick him up from Reza’s place afterward, he said, so his friend could drink all he liked.

As they were leaving the restaurant, a dark form darted from the alley nearby. He was a compact, muscular man, dressed like one of the laborers who came across the Pakistan border like so many stray goats. As he neared Reza, he lurched toward him with his arm outstretched and bumped him on the upper arm. Reza cried out in pain. He reached for his wallet to make sure that he hadn’t been robbed and then cursed the man, who had disappeared around the corner.

“
Akh!
That hurt. It stings, too, like he stuck me with something. The bastard. This country won’t be safe for decent Persian people anymore. What did he do?” He was rubbing his shoulder where he had been bumped.

Karim was frozen in place. He had seen the man’s face, just after he pushed into Reza, and he had recognized it. It was the face of the Pakistani operative Hakim, who had helped bring him out of Iran.

“Should I call the police?” asked Reza, still rubbing the bruise on his arm. “What do you think?”

Karim hadn’t moved. He sensed what was happening, but he would not allow the true picture of it to take shape in his mind.

“No police,” said Karim. “Let’s go to your place. You’ll be okay.”

“I need a drink, bro, and maybe a ho,” babbled Reza in English, trying to sound like a rapper again. But already his voice was weaker.

Reza drove his Peugeot
north again, toward the suburbs above the university. His driving was erratic. He would speed up and slow down at the wrong times, like an old lady, and other cars were honking at him. After twenty minutes, Reza apologized that he was feeling a little faint, and Karim drove the rest of the way to Reza’s home. It was a villa in the hills above the city, with a bit of land around it; a reward to Reza for his service to the program. Reza directed Karim into a darkened driveway. He leaned against his friend’s shoulder as they walked up the path and toward the house. The lights of the old city were twinkling in the distance, the green dome of the mosque appeared as a distant emerald.

“You need to lie down,” said Karim. He could feel his friend’s body going limp as the paralysis set in. There were tears in Karim’s eyes as he laid Reza down on the couch. He brushed them away. His friend’s breathing was becoming shallower and he was beginning to whimper like a dog that wants attention. How could this be happening?

Karim knew he should call a doctor. There was still time, perhaps. Reza groaned. Spittle was coming out of his mouth. Karim touched his hand. It had gone cold.

“There, there,” said Karim. “You’ll be all right.”

Tears were pouring from his eyes now. What had he done? How had he set this in motion? Karim thought of the American, Mr. Harry. Who was this man who had acted like his friend? He leaned over Reza, covering him like a blanket with his body. He felt his breathing, each rise and fall slower, and the sound more raspy. And then the breathing stopped. Still Karim lay there atop him, trying to prevent the life spirit from slipping away from his friend into the Mashad night.

There was a sharp
rap at the door. When Karim didn’t answer, the door blew open with sudden force and two dark forms surged into the apartment. Karim clutched the body of his friend tighter.

“Get up, Karim, please,” said Jackie. She was trying to soften her voice, but there was an edge of tension. “We’ve got to go. Now.”

Marwan stood by the door, holding his automatic rifle tightly at his side.

“You killed him!” wailed Karim. “I trusted you. He was my friend. What did he do?”

“I will explain it later. We have to go now. The car is downstairs. Come on.” She pulled at him, but Karim was a large man. She called for Marwan to come help.

“Stop! Do not force me. Let me sit here a moment.” Karim’s head was cradled in his hands. Jackie stroked his back. Marwan pointed to his watch, but Jackie shook her head. They had to let the young Iranian find a center, or they would lose him.

Another car had pulled
into the driveway, lights out and coasting the last fifty yards. Hakim, keeping watch by the Mitsubishi van, saw it coming but he was too late. Through an open window of the black Paykan, a man in a black cloth cap fired once, hitting Hakim in the shoulder. Hakim spun, but before he could get off a shot of his own, a second shot hit him full in the head, producing a pulpy sound like a pumpkin splitting. The other man in the car, the Iranian intelligence officer with the carefully groomed goatee, let out a gasp. Despite his line of work, he had never seen one man kill another.

Al-Majnoun walked toward the vehicle. Two more shots and the rear tires of the Mitsubishi were gone. The Turkmen driver was cowering on the front floor under the steering wheel. Al-Majnoun put his gun to the driver’s head and pulled the trigger, and then returned to the Paykan. Mehdi Esfahani was in the backseat, holding his gun in his hand but having no idea what to do with it.

“Get out,” rasped Al-Majnoun. “Follow me.” He took a second pistol from his black briefcase and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

The two men scuttled up the walkway toward Reza’s house. Al-Majnoun’s body was pitched forward as he searched for the rear entrance. He moved with the certainty of someone who knew the layout of the apartment. He found the rear door and gently forced it open. He put a mask over his face, pulling it down over the striated flesh. He was not a man, but another life-form.

Al-Majnoun dove into the house, rolling a gas grenade toward the living room where Karim was still recovering, head in hands. The room exploded with automatic fire, but Jackie and Marwan were shooting randomly; they couldn’t see their target. As skilled as they were, they had been taken by surprise. They were already choking from the gas, and in another moment they could no longer fire their weapons accurately, or even focus their eyes.

Al-Majnoun waited until they were incapacitated and then crept toward the living room. Jackie’s body was flaccid. She tried to move her gun, but couldn’t. Marwan also appeared to be motionless, but when Al-Majnoun moved toward him, he summoned a spasm of muscle memory and let off a spray of fire. One of the bullets caught Al-Majnoun in the leg. It drew a clean shot from Al-Majnoun’s automatic pistol, like the sound of a piece of plastic being ripped. The bullet hit Marwan in the chest; a second followed to the head. Al-Majnoun moved toward Karim Molavi’s inert body; he tugged at the clothing of the lifeless figure and listened for his heartbeat, to make sure he was still alive.

Mehdi had lurked outside, but now Al-Majnoun called for him to enter the house. The interrogator tried to look composed, brandishing his pistol before him as if he knew how to use it. The gas from the grenade had dispersed now. Al-Majnoun pulled the gun away from Jackie’s hand and slapped her across the face.

“Wake up, British lady,” he said in English. He slapped her again.

Karim’s world had gone all foggy. He tried feebly to rouse himself, to aid the woman he still regarded as his protector. Al-Majnoun pushed him back on the bed.

“Stay there,” said the Lebanese. “You are my prisoner.” He called Mehdi into the room. The Iranian approached slowly, looking at the carnage in the little room, two people dead, two helpless captives.

Al-Majnoun had taken his second pistol from his pocket. The Lebanese killer’s face was throbbing and twitching, as if all the scars had come alive like so many worms. The look in his eye testified that he really was the Crazy One, that he needed one more act of mayhem before his play was done. Mehdi could see that the man was not in his right mind; not in any mind.

“Don’t kill the boy,” he said. “We need his evidence. We need to interrogate him.”

Al-Majnoun turned toward Mehdi. The smile on his face was that of a jack-o’-lantern, illuminated from inside by a flickering candle. He raised his pistol toward Mehdi Esfahani. There was a look of absolute terror in the eye of the Iranian intelligence officer, and perhaps a glimmer of realization now, too late, that the game had been something entirely different from what he had believed.

“Al-Majnoun, what are you doing?” he screamed. “Al-Majnoun, please!”

Before Esfahani could speak another word, the assassin squeezed the trigger.

“You misunderstood,” said the Crazy One, pronouncing the postmortem on his victim. The body had crumpled to the floor in one motion, like a suit that has fallen off its hanger.

Al-Majnoun wiped clean his
first pistol, the one he had used to kill Hakim and the Turkmen driver outside, and Marwan here on the floor of the apartment. He put that gun into Mehdi’s soft hand, and wrapped the finger around the trigger. The second pistol, which he had used to kill Mehdi himself, he put into the hand of Marwan. He picked up the gas canister and put it in his pocket. He surveyed the room to make sure the tableau would read to the Iranian investigators the way he intended.

Jackie squirmed on the floor, looking for a sharp object she could use to cut her wrist or impale her heart. That was the only thought she had left. She could not be taken prisoner. She had received that order of silence, and she was determined to obey it as a last command. But Al-Majnoun saw her, and slapped her again. In a sudden motion, he jerked her hands behind her and fastened them with a wire clasp. Then he continued with his inventory of the room. Karim sat on the couch, still staring at the body of his friend Reza.