The Increment (26 page)

This line of discussion was grotesque to Harry. It is inevitable in a business that involves the systematic bribery of others that there will be a residue of corruption that sticks. But Kamal Atwan’s operation seemed to have taken this to an entirely new level. Harry wondered not whether his friend Adrian Winkler was part of the business plan—that was already obvious—but whether the chain of partners in the firm extended upward, to Sir David Plumb, and perhaps others, higher still. He honestly did not want to know the big picture, so he focused on the details.

“How do you ship the equipment? Not from Britain, I assume.”

“Of course not, my dear. It comes from a hundred different places. It is smuggled and sold and resold. We have witting cutouts, unwitting cutouts. We use every bit of artifice you can imagine, and then we add another layer or two. Our advantage is that we know what the Iranians want, and we know how to insert ourselves into the supply chain in a way that will, eventually, intersect their purchasing network. It’s not for everyone, this sort of business, oh no. We know the sort of people whom the Iranians are likely to trust. We know who to pay, and how much. So the business gets done, you see.”

“And the equipment you sell, how well does it work?”

At this, a smile came over Atwan’s face, and then he began to chuckle aloud, and soon Adrian was laughing, too.

“How well does it work? That is very good, Mr. Fellows. It works, at first, exactly as it should. As the purchaser expects. But then, a month or a year later, it begins ever so slightly to deviate from the proper performance. But how can the purchaser tell? If a watch tells you it is eleven-fifteen, how are you to know that it is really eleven-sixteen, if you don’t have a second watch? And then it’s eleven-seventeen, and eleven-thirty, and so on. A year into a project, our miscalibrated equipment will have deflected you a bit from where you should be. And five years on, it will have deflected you a good long way. In ten years, you would be totally lost, I should think.”

“So you’ve been sending this defective equipment to Tohid. And to other Iranian companies, I assume.”

“Oh yes, we have quite a number of buyers. But you are quite wrong to describe the equipment as defective, Mr. Fellows. It operates precisely as designed. It’s just that the design was a bit mischievous.”

“Okay, let me add this up,” said Harry. “An Iranian scientist sends us information saying that his lab has tested a neutron generator of the kind that could be used to trigger a nuclear weapon.”

“Yes, very good. Very useful for you. A bit problematic for me. Potentially bad for business, but never mind that.”

“Bad for business? How?”

“Never mind, my dear. Just a joke. Really.”

Atwan laughed; Adrian laughed. Harry continued with his questions, not understanding Atwan’s comment, but not paying very much attention to it, either.

“Okay. So according to my Iranian scientist at Tohid, the neutron trigger didn’t work the way it was supposed to. The test failed. But if his lab was using some of your, let’s say ‘reconfigured’ equipment, then it’s possible the test never will work out right. Because all the measurements are screwed up.”

“Not ‘possible,’ my dear, but ‘likely,’ I should say.”

“So instead of setting off alarm bells, the report from this Iranian agent should actually be reassuring. Is that right?”

“Oh yes,” said Atwan. “Very reassuring. Unless the Iranians for some reason came to doubt the accuracy of their measuring equipment, they would stumble on inconclusively for years and years, trying and failing and never understanding why. And buying more equipment, of course, to hedge their bets.”

Atwan smiled with the air of a businessman contemplating a cash flow that would continue for decades.

“Feel better now, Mr. Fellows?” said Adrian. “A little less hot under the collar? Perhaps even happy that the firm of Atwan and Winkler has been managing your interests?”

Harry contemplated the complexity
of the operation Atwan had described. The CIA had begun a gambit like this, according to Jack Hoffman, but had given it up a few years later when its supplier network was blown. He was happy to know that someone else had taken up the skein of deception—and that this someone had been the British Secret Intelligence Service and its business partner. But some questions were nagging in Harry’s mind, and he struggled to put them in words for his colleagues.

“What if there’s a second watch?” Harry asked eventually.

“Sorry, I don’t follow that at all,” said Adrian.

“What if the Iranians have a second watch that tells them the first watch is wrong. That it isn’t eleven-fifteen, as the first watch said, but some other time.”

“Ah! Clever man,” said Atwan.

The Lebanese financier was quicker than Adrian, who expressed puzzlement again. “Sorry, still not getting your drift here, Harry.”

“What if the Iranians have a second set of instruments that they acquired somewhere else? A second way of measuring how fast neutrons move in a bomb casing, say, or how quickly explosives push the fissionable material into the core. If they have a second way of monitoring things, then they’ll know that one of the measurements is off.”

“Why would they have two sets of instruments?” asked Adrian. “That wouldn’t make sense.”

“Because maybe they have two separate tracks, or four. Who knows? But they’d do it for redundancy. For insurance. For self-protection against devious bastards like us who they must know are trying to play games with them.”

“But my dear Mr. Fellows,” broke in Atwan, “what if
both
watches are wrong? Or all four, if that is the case. The watches may be telling different times, but all those times may be inaccurate.”

“Is that possible? I mean, have you shipped so much spooky gear into Iran that you could be supplying multiple programs?”

“I would not like to brag,” said Atwan modestly, adjusting the fluff of his ascot.

“I think that means yes,” said Adrian Winkler.

Atwan called for lunch
to be brought into the library. The chef had managed to poach an entire salmon, and graced it with new potatoes, fresh parsley, and fat, sweet English peas. A butler opened a bottle of 1978 Corton, sold at auction for the Hospices de Beaune with the unlikely name “Docteur Peste.” It set off the salmon so well that the two tastes might have been married in the kitchen. Harry barely touched the wine. He was still trying to think his way through the transactions in Iran—and how they would run Dr. Karim Molavi when they finally had a chance to debrief him, face-to-face. Harry had begun to trust Atwan’s judgment over the course of the morning, or at least respect the depth of his deviousness. And he wanted his opinion. So he asked.

“What should Adrian and I do with our Iranian scientist when we finally meet him?”

“You flatter me, my dear, to pose such a question.”

“I don’t flatter you. I need you. What do you think?”

“Well, sir, let me think.” He paused, and then began again. “I would have three questions for him, I think. The first, about his home base; the second, about his neighborhood; and the third, shall we say, cosmic.”

Atwan took a drink of the Corton, the tiniest sip. He didn’t touch alcohol, normally, but with this very old and good wine he was making an exception. Harry and Adrian waited for him to clear his palate and his mind. Harry had taken a small pad from his pocket so that he could make notes.

“So I will begin at home, yes?” said Atwan. “My first question for this fellow would be about his own laboratory at Tohid. Do his colleagues suspect that anything is wrong with their instruments and readings? Have any of them said anything—anything whatsoever—to suggest that they see a reason for their lack of success? A reason other than the normal scientific process of trial and error, that is. If so, you must know that. If they have discovered this ruse, then you and Mr. Winkler must quickly plan another. Or reinforce it. Do you follow me, my dear Mr. Fellows?”

“I think so,” said Harry. “We need to find out if Tohid knows we are playing games with them. And then plan accordingly. What’s the second question—the neighborhood one?”

“Yes, my dear. The second question is whether your young gentleman knows about any other programs that are similar to his own research at Tohid. You surmise that such additional programs might exist in principle, but you must know that they exist in fact. Cities, addresses, people. Otherwise you cannot target this deception accurately, I am afraid. And then you will be lost.”

“Okay,” said Harry. “We need him to identify other weaponization programs. Redundant ones, which the Iranians created so that if the Tohid track fails, other tracks would be ready. Is that it?”

“Yes, yes.”

“So what’s the cosmic question?” asked Harry.

“The cosmic question, sir, is whether your Iranian man is smart enough and brave enough to go back in and steer this process in the direction that you want, once you have interviewed him. And whether you, Mr. Fellows, are smart enough and brave enough to understand what he is telling you. Otherwise, it would be better really to let it all run, just as we have set it up, and not let this Iranian chap get in the way and make mistakes. It’s awkward.”

“For whom?”

“For business, my dear.”

Harry Pappas and
Adrian Winkler took off that afternoon from Mildenhall air base in Cambridgeshire, in a small business jet bound for Turkmenistan. The jet was registered to GasPort Ltd., a nominee company whose owner was a shell company in the Netherlands Antilles. The plane was unmarked, other than the tail number that had been furnished that day to the ruler of the country, in a private and personal call from a Lebanese businessman in London who had done him many favors, and would do him many more.

The fishing trawler reached
the Caspian coast just before midnight. Jackie and her team were waiting on a sandbar that jutted out from the shore, east of Gohar Baran. The moon was a quarter full, casting a pale light on the murky saline waters of the Caspian. Karim Molavi was nervous: he studied every distant light across the water; he started at every automobile that passed on the coastal road. He fiddled in his pockets and removed his Iranian cell phone, and his “special” phone, and his Palm Pilot electronic address book. He asked if he should leave them behind, and Jackie answered, “God, no.”

“I have no passport,” whispered Karim. He was embarrassed. He had not wanted to mention it, for fear that it would create a last-minute problem.

Jackie laughed. She thought he was making a joke. “You won’t need one on this trip,” she said.

The members of the team were all dressed in black camouflage against the night, shadow figures along the shore. Jackie had a black wet suit for her Iranian passenger. Molavi tugged it on awkwardly, then donned the black balaclava handed to him by Marwan, whom he still knew as “Mr. Saleh.” Marwan and Hakim had automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Jackie had put down her gun and was squatting on the sand, positioning a small radio beacon.

The fishing boat had extinguished its running lights. They heard the slow chug of the old boat’s motor before they saw the craft. The captain was a Turkman, wrapped in a heavy cape. He had been plying these waters for thirty years, ferrying cargoes to and from Iran since the days of the old Soviet republic. He had paid off the authorities on both sides of the border for so long that he was almost legitimate; all they asked was that he stay in the shadows and not get caught. With the Turkman was a British intelligence officer from Ashgabat station, dressed in a navy peacoat and shivering in the night air.

The four waded toward the trawler, Jackie leading the way, her gun hoisted high over her head. Molavi followed, and then Hakim and Marwan, facing to shore with their guns on automatic fire.

Jackie called out the name “Jeremy.” The British man in the pea jacket answered back with her name, “Jackie.” That wasn’t much of a recognition code, but it sufficed. He lowered a ladder, and the four clambered up, Molavi first. The
putt-putt
of the engine grew louder and soon they were away. When they cleared Iranian coastal waters, Jackie told Molavi he was safe. He shook his head, as if he still did not believe his deliverance was real.

The Iranian looked at the British woman, snug in her wet suit, the rubber fabric clinging to her breasts and hips.

“Is it always this easy?” Molavi asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “if you do it right.”

An Iranian patrol boat
bobbed at anchor to the east, guarding the border point below the Turkmen coastal town of Hasan Kuli. The Turkman smuggler gave the Iranian vessel a wide birth.

Molavi was exhausted, and he lay down under a heavy blanket. The others talked in low voices, drinking coffee from a thermos that Jeremy, the British intelligence officer, had brought along. Occasionally one of them would make a joke and the others, in the decompression after the mission, would join in the laughter.

As dawn broke, the boat made for a fishing village about ten kilometers north of Hasan Kuli. It was a barren spot, the town bleached as white as the Caspian sand. A jeep was waiting for them; it drove them several miles inland, where a helicopter was cranking its rotor. The markings on the side identified it as belonging to GasPort Ltd. A crewman from the helicopter handed dry clothes to Molavi and led him to a shed near the landing site, where he could change and use the toilet. The rest of the team changed clothes in the open air. The black wet suits were stowed in a carry-all, and replaced with street clothes that might have been worn by a group of adventure tourists on a Central Asian holiday.

When they boarded the helicopter, Molavi had trouble attaching the four-way straps of his safety harness, so Marwan and Hakim on either side clicked the buckles. Jackie handed him earplugs to dull the roar of the helicopter engine. When they were all buckled and plugged, the helicopter levitated from the ground in an easy upward float that felt like the suspension of gravity. When the chopper was several hundred feet up, it lowered its nose and banked east toward Ashgabat.

The helicopter flew over
the desert plains of southwest Turkmenistan, passing near trading towns with unpronounceable names—Kizyl Atrek, Gumdag, Gyzylarbat. To the south were the Kopet Mountains, a sharp ridge of peaks that guarded the frontier between Turkmenistan and Iran. Through the helicopter window you could make out the dry riverbeds and goat trails of this rugged, empty land. Molavi tried to stay awake and see the sights, but he couldn’t manage it. Escape was a kind of narcoleptic drug. He enjoyed the sleep of a condemned prisoner, released.

Harry Pappas and
Adrian Winkler landed at the Ashgabat airport, the plane coming to rest in a distant corner away from the commercial terminal. A powder blue Mercedes was parked on the jetway, a local security man in plain clothes standing beside it. When the two men descended the gangway, the Turkman greeted them stiffly and led them to the car. He rode in front with the driver, the two Westerners in back. The car peeled off the tarmac, avoiding customs, passport control, and the Ashgabat VIP lounge.

It was early morning, and the city was just waking up. It was a capital that appeared to have been built overnight. The new section of town was all white marble palaces, ceremonial state buildings, and grand apartment blocks. It was like a toy city. The buildings were stately and well built—designed in a sort of Turkic neoclassical style that was all noble pillars and gold domes. It conveyed the sort of permanence that a nomadic people would want in their capital, when they realized that they were sitting on the world’s fifth-largest gas reserves and could afford to build whatever they wanted.

The nation’s previous leader, who had modestly called himself
Turkmenbaschi,
or “leader of the Turkmen,” had named nearly every one of these grand edifices after himself. He had even crafted a golden statue of himself atop a massive pillar at the center of town. It was motorized so that at every daylight hour the
baschi
’s body was facing the sun.

“Is this place for real?” asked Harry. “It looks like a Turkish Disney World.”

“Beats me, old boy. Never been here. Not likely to come back, either.”

“It’s beautiful, in an ugly sort of way.”

“Shhh,” said Adrian, nodding toward the security man in front. “Remember, we are guests in the house of the
baschi
.”

The powder blue Mercedes drove them south through the capital. They passed eccentric buildings designed to please the former leader’s iron whim: the state publishing company, whose façade was built to look like the open pages of a book; the Ministry of Health, a skyscraper formed to resemble the caduceus—the rod entwined by two snakes that is the symbol of the medical profession. Ahead of them a dozen miles distant stood the Kopet range, rising sharply out of the high plain. The buildings here offered an unobstructed view of the mountains. They passed the President Hotel, open only to guests of the
baschi,
and then the presidential palace itself. Another mile and they came to a gated villa. The guard spoke to the security man in the front seat and then raised the barrier. As they rolled toward the white marble villa, the front door opened. Every aspect of this trip seemed to have been ordered by an unseen hand.

“This is a safe house?” asked Harry, looking at the splendid villa. “You might as well put out a neon sign.”

“It’s a police state, Harry. Everything is safe. The GDP is a state secret, for God’s sake. If they tell us it’s secure, it’s secure.”

“Have you set up the audio?”

“My people have. We’ll be running a tape the whole time you’re in with him. It will upload to London via satellite, so we don’t have to worry about keeping a record here.”

“Did you rig any countersurveillance?”

“Sort of. No bubble, but some white noise. We’ll be all right. These people aren’t going to shop us to Tehran. They have too much at stake.”

Harry shook his head doubtfully, but it was too late to question these details. He had the feeling, not for the first time, that Adrian was taking risks that would not make sense unless he knew something that Harry didn’t.

Karim Molavi was waiting
in a pleasant sitting room when Harry and Adrian arrived. He was drinking a cup of tea and reading a copy of the latest issue of
Scientific American,
which had been left on a coffee table with other scientific periodicals. He was alone in the room. Jackie and her crew had gone somewhere else in the villa, to sleep or eat or practice their marksmanship.

Adrian peered through a keyhole into the room where Molavi was sitting and opined that the Iranian appeared to be content. They had agreed that Harry would do the initial debriefing alone. Behind Molavi, through a large plate-glass window, were the mountain peaks that buffered him from his homeland.

Harry Pappas entered the room. He took his first look at the man who until this moment had only been an email address. Molavi was bigger and younger than he had expected. He had a dark, handsome face, with a dominant nose and thick black hair. He had the bearing of an intellectual; confident, reserved, composed. The mystery was why he had risked everything to reach out.

“My name is Harry,”
he began. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I received the messages that you sent to us. I’m responsible for your case, in our government. It is an honor for me to meet you at last in person.”

He extended his hand to Molavi, who shook it softly, almost like a caress.

“Thank you, sir,” said Molavi. He spoke English in a soft and measured voice.

“Are you happy? Do you have everything you need?”

“Oh yes, sir. The people who came to rescue me were like a dream. I thought that only happened in movies. They were English, I think.”

“Yes. The British are working with us. We moved heaven and earth to find you and get you out, once you contacted us.”

“I do not know what to say, sir. You came to me from so far away, and picked me up as if you were a great bird and I was your chick.”

“Well, you’re here now, son. And we need to talk.”

Harry hadn’t planned to call him “son,” but it slipped out, and it seemed right.

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

“Are you ready? Would you like to eat something first?”

“Oh no, sir. They gave me breakfast. It was very good.”

“Don’t call me sir,” said Harry, smiling. “I am here as your friend and adviser, not your boss. You can walk away anytime you are uncomfortable.”

“I am quite comfortable, sir. And where would I go? Please, I am not stupid. I am ready for your questions.”

Harry began with the
basics, as intelligence officers always do. Full name, parents’ names, addresses, close relations, workplaces and addresses, foreign travels. He ran it like a doctor’s checkup; taking the inventory of a life, item by item. He wanted to assemble the collateral that could be checked against available records and databases—not simply to establish Molavi’s bona fides, but to provide a context for understanding him and what he wanted.

Harry was of the old school, in that respect. He believed that the essence of handling an agent was understanding what he wanted out of the transaction, and then attempting to give it to him, or at least the appearance of it. Something in the way Molavi spoke about his family history caught Harry’s attention, and it was here that he made his first foray.

“Tell me about your father,” said Harry.

“What is there to tell? He was a great man who never achieved what he deserved. He despised the shah. He believed in the revolution. But when he saw what it became, he despised the revolution, too. Iran is full of people like my father, who were unlucky.”

Harry studied the young man. “He was never honored for his service, I take it.”

“No. They gave him a pension, and free medical care because he had been tortured by Savak. But he was a professor of literature. He believed in the imagination. What use did they have for him?”

“You honor him,” said Harry softly.

“What? I’m sorry.”

“You honor him, Karim. By who you are and what you do. Especially by having the courage to be here today.”

The Iranian lowered his head. Harry could not tell whether there were tears in his eyes, but he suspected that it was so. Harry took one more step. In the manuals of tradecraft, what he was doing was known as establishing “rapport,” but that instrumental term did not begin to encompass the art of establishing a clandestine relationship.

“I had a son who would be almost your age now,” said Harry. His voice was now so soft that it could barely be heard. Molavi had to lean toward the older man.

“What happened to him?”

“He died. In Iraq. He was a good boy. I grieve for him every day.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

“I mention my son for a reason. If he were alive today, I would want him to be as brave as you are. I would want him to have the same conviction as you, that there are larger interests than what your government tells you to do. I wish that I had taught my son better that his country’s leaders do not define what is true and right. If I had done that, he might be alive today. That is why I know that your father would be proud of you. I can see it with a father’s eyes.”

“Thank you,” said Molavi. He had listened very carefully, and he knew that the American spy was speaking to him from a deep chamber of the heart, which had many echoes.