The Increment (9 page)

“Right here,” said Winkler. “Ground zero for Fox and friends. If they had their way, they would just bomb this place—and take your lad with them.”

“Have you got anyone inside?”

“No. We tell you that every time you ask.”

“I know, but now I’m asking you again. And this time I really need to know. Have you got anyone?”

Winkler smiled, and gave his friend a little wink. You had to trust someone.

“One person,” he said. “A scientist, who goes in and out. He’s sort of a consultant, in physics. He doesn’t have badge access, so he has to be cleared each time. But he can carry radiation monitors and some other gear.”

“Has he ever left anything behind? Any close-in?”

“You mean like needle mikes in the sofa? No. He’s too scared. We’re trying to bring him along slowly.”

“How did you recruit him?”

“We pitched him five years ago, when he was finishing his doctorate at Utrecht University. He was game in Holland, all right, but they gave him such a grilling when he got home, he broke off contact. They do that to all the students coming back. We warned him about it, but he got spooked anyway. The way it worked out was probably good for us, actually. What’s more secure than having no communications, eh? We kept an eye on him through some Iranians who know his family, and when we heard he was doing hush-hush work nobody would talk about, we thought, Bingo! We pitched him again on the street, in the middle of fucking Tehran—and now we had a handle on him, and he knew it.”

“Good case. No wonder you didn’t tell us.”

“He was studying physics, X-ray transport in plasmas, which interested us. Because that’s the key to making a hydrogen bomb work.”

“Oh shit. Are they working on that, too?”

“We don’t know. They’re sniffing around it, if our lad is reliable. He’s not Rev Guards so they don’t really trust him. But this is a long game, isn’t it? We’re working him slowly, so we don’t freak him out or blow his cover. We tried to get him to Dubai six months ago to pick up a new communications device and get some training, but he said no-go. His next out is skedded for Qatar, but he’s worried they’ll put him on the restricted travel list, which maybe is a good sign.”

“What’s his name?” asked Pappas.

“Fuck off! I love you, Harry, but not that much.”

“We need a marked
card,” proposed Adrian. “Something you give to your Ali, which our Ali can see. You follow me?”

They had been talking for more than an hour, trying to cobble together the pieces of an operational plan. Harry had gone back over the material he had shared with Adrian when the VW first surfaced, and filled him in on what had happened since. Winkler had been listening, but not all that closely, and there was a restless look in his eye, as if he wanted to get on to the action part. That was when he mentioned the marked card.

“What kind of marked card?” asked Harry.

“Something that requires your guy to leave tracks, which my guy can follow. Let’s say you task him to look for something that my guy knows about, in the area where he’s doing his consulting.”

“Which would be physics, you said. X-ray transport.”

“Just so. And then my guy will hear about it. We’ll tell him to report any particular queries in his area, so he’ll find out who was asking the question. That sound right?”

“Will your Ali suspect anything? I mean, let’s be honest. Your guy could be bent already. I don’t want to risk blowing my guy out of the water.”

“He’s not bent. He’s straight as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Straighter! He’s just a scared kid. But I promise we’ll be careful. We’ll put in a couple of other special requests, so he won’t think this isn’t cricket. Don’t worry, Harry.”

“I like to worry. It’s recreational.”

Harry stared out the window again. The London Eye was turning almost imperceptibly several miles downstream. Harry wished the world would move that slowly.

“How quickly can you get to your guy?” asked Harry.

“In person?”

“Yeah. I don’t think this is something you would want to drop into his in-box.”

“A month or two to arrange a meet outside Iran, if we’re lucky. He can still travel, maybe, but he has to be careful not to dirty his knickers.”

“That’s too long. We need to move now.”

“We could do a crash meet in Tehran, I guess. We’ve got safe houses the station thinks are clean. But I hate to do that. If we expose our guy, then we’ve got nothing at all.”

“Do it, brother. If this works, we’re inside the tent.”

“Does it have to be face-to-face?”

Harry nodded. “The only lie detector that really works is looking someone in the eye. We need it. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

“I’ll need to ask the chief,” Adrian said solemnly.

“He’ll do whatever you tell him.”

“Get your hand off my pud, Harry. I don’t need any extra strokes.”

“Does that mean yes?”

Adrian nodded. “It’s a long shot, but I reckon it’s the best you’ve got. If you don’t find out who your Ali is, he’s useless. And if the Iranians are really building the Big One, you need to know who he is
now
—yesterday, actually. So what do we task my man to find out—that your man will hear about?”

“I’ll have to ask Fox. Let me work out the details with him.”

“I told you, I don’t like Arthur Fox.”

“Get over it, Adrian.”

“I’ll try. I’m going to have to tell the chief, you know.”

“Of course. I already told you that was okay.”

“And I will have to tell our one-man station in Tehran, so he can tell our Joe what to look out for. Good lad. A kid, but smart.”

“Understood. So long as you don’t tell him why you’re asking the question.”

“And then what do we do, when your lad surfaces? Do we meet him? Do we get him out of the country?”

“I don’t know yet. But I note that you are using the word ‘we’ in reference to this operation.”

“Fucking hell! Of course I am. In for a riyal, in for a toman, old boy. Joined at the hip, you and me. Am I right?”

The door to Winkler’s
office opened without a knock just before noon, and in strode Sir David Plumb, Winkler’s boss and the head of the service. He was a sturdy-looking man in his early sixties, with thinning gray hair and traces of red on his nose and cheeks that testified to a career of late-night meetings poached in claret, port, and anything else that was handy. He might have been a senior civil servant in any of the Whitehall ministries, except for the playful look in his eyes. Plumb observed the map of Tehran on the desk and nodded approvingly.

“I heard you were coming, Harry,” said Plumb. “I thought I might join you two for lunch. Talk things over. Where do you like?”

“Anywhere but the Travelers Club,” said Harry. The club was notable for its high quotient of SIS members and its poor food.

“I’ve sworn off the Travelers. Everyone there seems to be working for the
Daily Telegraph
these days. Even the porter. Tell you what. Let’s go to the Ritz.”

Harry smiled. The Ritz was known to be Sir David Plumb’s favorite spot for lunch. It was fabulously expensive, with prices that would make even a Saudi prince check his wallet.

Sir David went back to his office to collect his umbrella and summon his driver. Harry had something more he needed to say to Winkler, in these last few moments they were alone.

“This may sound strange,” said Harry, “but I have a funny feeling about this case. I don’t like where it’s going.”

Winkler’s brow tightened. “What do you mean? Seems to me like a jolly good case. Don’t you trust us?”

“No, no. It isn’t that. Of course I trust you.” Harry lowered his voice. “The stakes are too high. We are tasking an agent to find out the details of Iranian plans to build a bomb. Suppose they provide the details. What do we do then? The linkages are too tight. How are we going to stop that without going to war?”

Winkler ventured a cocky smile. It was a look Harry remembered from Moscow, back when his friend was the golden boy, the rising star of the service.

“There are ways and ways and ways, Harry. Don’t let them rush you. One thing at a time. And don’t let the worriers push you to make bad decisions. That has become the American disease. Don’t succumb, old boy. You’re the last sane American I know.”

They walked together toward the elevator. Plumb was coming out of his office, fifteen yards away.

“There’s one more thing, Harry, before we go,” whispered Winkler.

“Tell me.”

“Mahmoud Azadi.”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s the name of our agent in Tehran.”

The maître d’hôtel at
the Ritz had prepared Sir David’s favorite table, in a far corner of the dining room by the windows overlooking Green Park. It was hardly a secure spot for a confidential discussion, but that didn’t seem to bother Plumb. He operated as if he were in his own security bubble, trusting those he deemed suitable and ignoring everyone else. The SIS in that respect hadn’t changed much from the old days, when the fact that you had known someone at school, or had dated his sister at Oxford, was deemed sufficient proof of your reliability.

Even in late summer, the trees and lawns of Green Park had a rich, languid color worthy of the name. The foliage blocked a view of Buckingham Palace a half mile away, but the vista remained much as it had been in Victorian times. The British Empire had come and gone—and then come back once again in an unexpected way, as the “little people” of bygone days, Indians, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Chinese, had returned to Britain to spend their newfound wealth with abandon. The gray, gritty days were past. London was as flush and verdant that season as its parks. The Brits were better at post-imperial life than the Americans, but then, they were better at most things.

The luncheon party was
merry, good food and wine and especially delicious gossip about their respective services, but it was obvious that Plumb had a more serious reason for asking a visiting American to join him for lunch.

“We are worried about you,” said Sir David. He had just finished his Dover sole and his second glass of Puligny-Montrachet, and was waiting for his cheese.

“Not about you personally, of course,” he continued, “and not even about the agency, although we do wonder sometimes whether perhaps you are losing a step. No, we are worried about the administration. They are becoming, shall we say, accident-prone. They remind me of a gyroscope that has been knocked off-balance and begins to wobble, more and more. September 11, well, bad luck. Pick yourself up, get on with it. Iraq, terrible mess. God-awful mess, actually. But such is the nature of life. Make mistakes. Try to fix them. Suck it up. Get on with it. But this natural process of regeneration does not seem to be happening in your fair land at present. Not only was the previous administration a disappointment, but the new one seems likely to be equally so, and perhaps the next after that. This worries us. It worries the prime minister. He isn’t sure what to do.”

Harry was silent, staring at the lamb chop bones on his plate.

Sir David looked over the top of his glasses, into Harry’s eyes. “Am I overdramatizing?”

“No,” said Harry. “Things are bad. I can’t really blame them on Iraq. We all made mistakes. We should have seen it coming. We shouldn’t have gone in…” His voice trailed off.

There was an awkward silence. Harry was looking away from the table, trying to keep his composure.

“Harry lost his son in Iraq,” said Winkler.

“Yes. I’d heard that. I am terribly sorry, Harry. For you this is not a discussion in the abstract. Forgive me. We’ll talk about something less unpleasant.”

Harry shook his head. “We are in a hell of a mess, David. It’s true. We do need to talk about it. I need to talk about it, more than most people. I just don’t know what the answers are.”

“You and Adrian were discussing Iran, I gather.”

“We have started a joint operation. Adrian can give you the details, perhaps in a place that is less…noisy.”

“Well, I’m jolly glad that we can be of help. That is our role in life. We are the pilot fish, who live to nibble the bacteria off the great shark. And perhaps to perform other services from time to time.”

“Give me a break, David. You have a station in Tehran and we don’t. And from what Adrian tells me, you’re actually using it.”

“Perhaps so. But you see, it’s Iran that worries me most of all, Harry. That’s a place where your mistakes might become truly consequential. Iraq’s a mess, true enough, but that’s their problem, isn’t it? Bloody difficult. But from our perspective, well, Saddam is gone and the Iraqi military is destroyed. So you might say, what’s all the fuss about, really? Not the ideal outcome, certainly. A bit untidy, to be sure. But we’ll all survive.”

Plumb paused, took a sip of his wine, and continued to speak in a lower voice.

“Whereas Iran, you see, is a different matter altogether. You start a war with Iran, Harry, and it will take us all thirty years to dig out from the rubble. Number 10 is nervous. Terrified, actually. You’re not going to start a war with Iran, are you?”

Harry wasn’t sure how to answer the question. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I hope not. But I don’t know. This White House, as you say, is wobbly. You can’t be sure which way it’s going to spin.”

The cheese trolley arrived. Sir David asked for four different kinds, arrayed on his plate in ascending order of sharpness of flavor. A ripe Camembert, then a chèvre dusted with pepper, then a sharp Irish cheddar, finally a fat wedge of Stilton. A look of contentment momentarily softened his face as he contemplated his cheese, but then the frown returned.

“You see, Harry, we really can’t afford another American mistake. It’s too damned costly for us. We travel along in your wake like the faithful little brother, helping you pick up the debris after your misadventures. But I’m not sure how much longer we would be prepared to do that. The ‘special relationship’ is not good for our health, you see.”

Plumb paused and sampled the Camembert, which was oozing onto the plate. He went on to the chèvre, and then the cheddar, while Harry pondered what to say.

“They’re building a bomb,” Harry said eventually. “We have it out of Iran. They’re working on a trigger. That’s what Adrian and I were discussing. That’s why I’m here.”

“Yes, yes,” said Sir David. “I’ve heard about that. The director phoned me last night. But even if it’s true, let me pose the impolite question: So what? Everyone wants a bomb these days, but we haven’t gone to war to stop them. Chinese, Indians, Pakis, North Koreans, for goodness’ sake. They all have their bombs, and
mirabile dictu
, none of them seems at all inclined to use them. But in this case, people in the White House seem to think that military action may be necessary. Or so we have been led to believe by our, forgive the term, ‘spies.’ But you’re a man whose judgment I trust. Seasoned, tempered by life. So I put it to you: Is America going to war again? It’s rather important to us.”

Harry shook his head. He felt mildly disloyal, even having this conversation. The Brits did their best to make you forget that they were a foreign nation, feeding you lamb chops and fine wines and a little pudding, and would you mind please telling your innermost secrets to your dear, innocent cousins.

“I can’t answer,” said Harry, “because I don’t know. There’s a group around the president that wants a confrontation with Iran. There’s another group that doesn’t. There’s the Congress, which is sick of war but listens to the Israelis. And the Israelis keep saying we have to strike Iran before it’s too late. And there’s the president, who is so battered you wonder how he can stand up straight. You tell me how all those pieces fit together, and I’ll tell you whether we’re going to war with Iran.”

Sir David had finished his cheese by now, and was polishing off the last of the Gevrey-Chambertin he had ordered for Harry and Adrian to go with their lamb chops. The dining room was beginning to empty out. He wasn’t in a rush. He looked out to the green of the park and then back toward Harry, his eyes twinkling with that mischievous look that had marked him as an operator from the days he was a schoolboy. He was getting to the point, in his own eccentric way.

“Time,” he said. “That’s really the issue, isn’t it?”

“I don’t follow you,” said Harry.

“I had an economics professor at Cambridge. He was an Italian. Piero something. Ancient man, when I encountered him. He had devoted his life—wasted it, most people thought—to proving that Ricardo’s Labor Theory of Value was correct. What a folly! An economist who has been dead for nearly two hundred years, whose theories are held in disrepute by all right-thinking people, but never mind. That was this fellow Piero’s life’s work, which he distilled in a little monograph called
The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities
. Fancy that. What he did was to build a model in which ‘capital’ was actually labor—‘dated labor,’ he called it. And that was his point. It was
time
that added value to the products of human labor. Pick a bunch of grapes off a vine, even in Pomerol, and they’re practically worthless. But press them and ferment the juice and put it in bottles and lay them down for a few years…by God, now you have an investment. See what I mean? Capital is time.”

Harry was wondering whether the SIS chief had perhaps had a bit too much to drink when Plumb wheeled on him suddenly and clasped his hand.

“Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is a short clock, Harry. You are not running out of time. The Iranians are not about to detonate a bomb. They have not built a heavy-water reactor. They do not have plutonium. They don’t have a working trigger. Oh yes, I know all about the new panic, but it is misplaced, my boy. We have more time than your skittish friends in the White House seem to think. Perhaps even more than you think. The essence of wisdom here is to avoid acting rashly, in the belief that you are running out of time. You are not. I assure you.”

Harry was taken aback by the intensity of what Plumb had said, and the oddity of it.

“You’re telling this to the wrong person, Sir David. I am a career intelligence officer who is running a CIA division. I don’t make policy. I don’t have much influence with the people who do make policy. If you want to influence whether America goes to war against Iran, you’re talking to the wrong guy.”

Plumb took his napkin from his lap, folded it carefully, and placed it atop the table. He pulled his chair back from the table, preparing to leave. Adrian Winkler did the same.

“I’m not at all sure of that, Harry,” said Plumb. “Actually, I rather think you are the ‘right’ guy. You just don’t know it yet.”