The Increment (13 page)

“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 like 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.”

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.

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.

Atwan rose to greet them. He was a tidy man, slim and carefully dressed. His hair was a burnished silver-gray, the color of pewter. He was wearing velvet slippers monogrammed with his initials, and a cashmere sweater under a tweed jacket. On the table next to his chair he had placed the book he had been reading when he was interrupted. It was a collection of essays by Isaiah Berlin. Harry noted the book. In his experience Arabs didn’t read much—certainly not books by Jewish philosophers. Beside the Berlin book was a well-thumbed copy of the latest survey published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Adrian Winker approached the host and kissed him on the cheeks, three times, Lebanese-style. He introduced Harry, not by his real name, but as “William Fellows.” He hadn’t told Harry he was going to give him a work name.

Harry extended his hand to Atwan, who shook it limply.

“Mr. Fellows is American, but you can trust him,” said Adrian. “He’s one of us. Reliable.”

“I am certain of it, my dear,” said Atwan, smiling up at Harry. He took notice of the American’s size and demeanor. “You might almost be Lebanese, if you were not so big.”

“I’m Greek,” said Harry.

“Fellows is not a Greek name, I think.”

“The name was changed. At Ellis Island.”

Atwan motioned them to sit in a sumptuous leather couch and chairs by the far wall. A bottle of white wine was sitting in a silver cooler. A servant arrived to open it and pour them each a glass. It was a 1996 Bâtard-Montrachet; next to it was an open bottle of 1990 La Tâche, breathing a bit before the main course. The two bottles of Burgundy would have cost Harry a month’s salary.

“Perhaps Mr. Winkler has told you about my business?” said Atwan.

“Not at all,” said Harry. “I know only what I can see with my own eyes. Which is that business seems to be pretty good, whatever it is.”

“Good boy, Adrian,” said the Lebanese, patting Winkler on the hand. It was a gesture of such familiarity, almost as if Adrian were a member of the family. Harry pondered the nature of the relationship between Adrian and Atwan, and then put the thought out of his mind.

Atwan tasted the white wine and pronounced it adequate, and glasses were poured for the two guests. The host, it turned out, didn’t drink himself—except to make sure that what he was serving was of the required quality. A servant brought him a Diet Coke. Adrian took a sip of his wine, wet his whistle, so to speak.

“I thought perhaps you might tell my friend Mr. Fellows about some of your recent dealings with Iran,” said Adrian. “He is working with us, as I mentioned to you, and I think it’s important that he learn a bit about some of the transactions that are under way.”

Atwan arched his eyebrows. “How much detail would you like me to share with Mr. Fellows?”

“Some. Not all. Enough.”

“I see.” Atwan smiled. “I should take Mr. Fellows into the library. But not into the bedroom.”

“You might say that. Into the bedroom, even, but not under the covers.”

“Well then, how to begin? I suppose you could say that I am in the import-export business. I obtain products that are scarce in world markets. And then I sell them to people who want to buy them. Not under my own name, of course. I have many companies. They operate so effectively that I can, as you might say, hide in plain sight. What could be simpler? Except that it is not so simple.”

“Why not?” asked Harry. He wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, or why Winkler had brought him here.

“Because I deal in products that are somewhat unusual, my dear. They are not the sort of things you find at Marks and Spencer.”

“Such as?”

Atwan looked to Adrian for guidance. The British spy nodded.

“Go ahead, Kamal. I told you: he’s one of us.”

“Very well. The sorts of products I might be looking to buy and resell at present would include, let me think…fast rise-time oscillographs, to measure very short electrical pulses. That would be one item. And something known as a flash X-ray, which can take a picture of an imploding core. That’s a useful device. And, let me think…hydrodynamic measurement tools that chart the movement of shock waves through materials. And very fast computers that can take data from these measurement instruments and use them to simulate a complex process. I’m quite interested in those, with the proper software tools.”

“Do you perhaps see a pattern here, Mr. Fellows?” asked Adrian with a wink. “Care to hazard a guess as to how one might use this equipment?”

“They’re tools for developing a nuclear weapon,” said Harry.

“You cheated,” said Adrian. He looked over at Atwan, who was sipping his Diet Coke.

“Since we’re playing twenty questions, let me ask the next one,” said Harry. “What about heavy-water reactors? The kind whose spent fuel can be reprocessed into plutonium. Any orders to get one of those up and running?”

Atwan laughed. There was a lightness about him, a Fred Astaire quality, despite the deadly seriousness of his business.

“You have a feel for the market, my dear. I can see that. We have no orders yet to complete that reactor. But I tell you frankly, I would not be surprised to get such a request soon. It is in the pipeline, shall we say.”

“And who are your customers? If I may ask.”

“I am afraid I never discuss that. Except with Adrian. A matter of business confidentiality, sir. Not something to talk about.”

“Go ahead,” said Winkler. “Tell him who you’ve been dealing with recently, Kamal. It’s all in the family.”

Atwan cocked his head suspiciously, but Winkler nodded for him to go ahead.

“Well then, my dear Mr. Fellows. My most recent customer for this scientific equipment has been an Iranian company. It operates through intermediaries, of course. Several layers. But the end purchaser is a company called Tohid Electrical Company. Not very well known to the world. But known to my friend Mr. Winkler.”

Harry didn’t move a muscle. Of course he knew the name. Tohid Electrical Company was the business address of an Iranian gentleman named Karim Molavi. Also known as “Dr. Ali.”

“Sorry,” said Harry. “Never heard of it.” He looked over to Winkler and saw him nod his chin ever so slightly, in homage to Harry’s discretion.

They ate a splendid
lunch. A waiter brought stuffed grape leaves and kibbeh and a dozen other Lebanese appetizers, then a fish course of fresh lobster tails, and then rare lamp chops adorned with paper bibs so they looked like little choir boys dressed for chapel; and then a groaning board of cheese with a dozen different varieties. Atwan barely ate himself, just nibbling at the food, but Winkler went at it like a trencherman.

Harry matched him until the waiter brought out a dessert of hot fudge sundaes, which he waved off, but Adrian kept on eating—enjoying every mouthful. It seemed clear that he had sampled Atwan’s cuisine on other occasions and was eating as if he were the man’s own son—or perhaps business partner.

Atwan talked about his library. That seemed to be his dearest possession, more even than the Impressionist paintings that decorated the walls downstairs. He had first editions of all the great English novelists, he explained. Austen, Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope. The British Library wanted to buy his collection but he had refused. The books were his most intimate friends, Atwan said. He had given up on people, but his library never disappointed him. He revisited the books, year to year, always finding in them things he had missed the last time around. He was presently rereading Trollope’s
The Way We Live Now
, he explained, which was written in the 1870s as new wealth was flooding into London, creating the hedge funds and private-equity billionaires of their day.

“Haram,”
he said, using the Arabic word that connotes wrongdoing. “This new money. I do not trust it. It gives people too much freedom. These businessmen think they are gods, come down from heaven. They forget their obligations. That is something I never do. I am loyal to my friends.”

He took the British man’s hand in his, in that same intimate way as when they had first arrived, and held it for a long while.

“And so is Adrian. Loyal to his friends. And so, I trust, are you, Mr. Fellows.”

“How did you like
Kamal Atwan?” said Adrian as they exited the townhouse. “I told you that he would be ‘worth a detour,’ as they say in the Michelin Guide.”

“Quite a man. Never met an Arab quite like him. You two seemed mighty friendly. Do I sense that you have, perhaps, a business relationship? Outside the intelligence business, I mean.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, old boy. Especially not now.”

“I practically fell over when he mentioned Tohid. We need to talk about that.”

“Quite right.” Winkler looked around. A car was waiting, but he didn’t trust it. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Where nobody can listen, eh?”

Adrian marched off on long strides, with Harry keeping pace. They walked along Mount Street and ducked into the narrow lane of Hay’s Mews. Adrian didn’t speak until they were invisible from the larger streets.

“You get the trick, don’t you?” he asked Harry. “I mean, you see what this is about?”

“Your man is selling stuff to the Iranians. So you know what they’re buying for their nuclear program.”

“Well of course, old boy. I mean, fuck yes, we’re monitoring the shipments. But it’s the value-added that matters. That’s what this game is about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well now, Harry, all that technical gear that Kamal was mentioning. Oscilloscopes and flash X-rays and computer simulations. All very precise and calibrated, wouldn’t you think? I mean, these are the tools that you’re using to measure how your nuclear material moves toward the core, for the big bang, right? You follow me?”

“Beginning to.” A smile was forming on Harry’s face. “Tell me more.”

“So think about it, Harry. Since we know who’s buying it, we can go into the warehouse where this cargo is sitting, in Dubai or Islamabad, and make a few, shall we say, adjustments. Nothing that would make a difference at first—or even for a year. Just a little tiny wobble. But over time, that wobble would continue, you see? And those very precise measurements would be just slightly off. And then, relying on them, you would be off a little bit more. It’s like a compass that doesn’t point true north, but you can’t tell that. So you start off thinking you’re going to Birmingham. But blimey, you end up in Penzance. You with me, Harry?”

The London air was moist. A shower cloud was forming to the west. Harry put his hands in his pockets, looked at the ground, and then turned his head up toward Winkler. He was smiling.

“You’re damn right a picture is forming.”

“And what might that picture be, old chum?”

“Our mystery correspondent at Tohid Electrical Company is giving us a readout on the errors. The point isn’t that these tests are working, but that they’re not working. That’s the game.”

“Precisely right, old boy. He is telling us that the sabotage and deception are succeeding. He probably doesn’t realize it, but that’s the gist of his message.”

“Which is the opposite of what Washington thinks.”

“’Fraid so.”

“What the hell am I going to do?”

“Tell you what you’re not going to do, mate. You’re not going to breathe one bloody word of what you’ve heard here today. Remember, you have joined our family. We own this information. We gave it to Harry Pappas, but not to another soul.”

“You’re muscling me, Adrian. I don’t like that.”

“No, we are doing the opposite. We are trying to help stop your government from doing something quite catastrophic. We are helping the ‘special relationship’ stay special. And the only way to do that is by bringing you offside, and whispering in your ear. You have to figure out what to do next. We’re not smart enough for that. Not even your old pal Adrian. This is your show now, Harry. But if you tell a soul what you learned today, I promise that you will bring the house down. On yourself and everyone else. Promise, old chum. Bank on it.”

They walked back to Mount Street, where the car was still waiting. Harry was late arriving at Heathrow, but such was the power of Adrian and his colleagues that the plane had mysteriously been delayed an hour because of a security review by the British Airports Authority. Harry tried to sleep on the long flight home, but he couldn’t.