The Increment (28 page)

“Maybe I can,” said Harry. “Or maybe I can put wings on someone.”

They talked into the
evening. The tea and biscuits were replaced with whiskey, and to Harry’s surprise, even Kamal Atwan had a drink.

And Harry told Atwan about Karim Molavi; he tried to say as little as possible about the boy’s background, but the Lebanese had a way of filling in the gaps. He seemed almost to know the story as Harry was telling it.

It would work, Atwan said. There was a special tool his people used, when they had proximity to a computer but couldn’t get inside. It used an electronic pulse to alter computer circuits. It needed a lot of power to do its work, but that could be arranged, too. Atwan hadn’t brought this gear with him, but he knew where it was in London. He sent an encrypted email message to his senior technical assistant back home. He told him to gather the necessary components and then fly that night to Ashgabat on another of Atwan’s ubiquitous GasPort Ltd. jets.

Harry asked if the sabotage could be done remotely, without Karim having to take the risk of inserting a flash drive or rewriting code.

“As you like,” said Atwan. “We need to have someone inside with our device. It is better than rewriting code. Your boy will not have to plug that device into anything. But he must plug himself back into Iran. Do you think he will do that?”

Harry’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like to think about this part.

“He’ll do it if I ask him. That’s my problem. He will do whatever I say.”

Once the London technical
team was on the way, they could all relax a little. Harry had a plan—a complicated and risky one, but not an impossibility. He nursed his Scotch; he still had a lot of work to do, and not many hours left. He had already begun thinking through the details in his mind, and he’d had one side talk with Adrian, when Atwan was sending his emails to London and ordering up his private air force. But it was still very much a work in progress, and Atwan knew it.

“You will need help getting the Iranian boy back in,” said the Lebanese.

“Adrian has his team. They are multitalented.”

Harry shot the British officer a look, and he could see that Adrian winced. Harry felt sorry for him, suddenly. He was an addict; he wasn’t in control of himself.

“They’re very good on the ground,” Harry continued. “Much better than anything anyone else has. And the kid trusts them. They got him across the border once, so they can do it again.”

“Adrian’s team will need local help from the Turkmen, I should think,” said Atwan. “Mashad is in their neighborhood. I would be very pleased to assist.”

“With your own people, or with the
baschi
? I don’t want to widen this circle any more than we have to.”

“My dear, in these matters, they are
all
my people. National boundaries are impermanent. Personal loyalties are not.”

“What could you do?”

“To get to Mashad, you would be wise to cross the border from Saraghs, in the eastern portion of this mercifully unpopulated nation. I have friends who can make arrangements for transport.”

“And crossing the frontier?”

“Well, guards are guards, aren’t they? A border is not an impermeable wall, but a collection of very permeable individuals. That is my specialty, I think.”

“I need all the help I can get, Mr. Atwan. I threw the sextant overboard a while ago. When we do the operational scrub tomorrow morning, you sit in with me and Adrian. We’ll make the pieces fit.”

Atwan sat back in his chair, but not magisterially. He looked uncomfortable for a moment, and Harry wasn’t certain why. This was a man who seemed supremely at ease in just about any situation. But there was something that was nagging at his conscience, if that was the right word. Eventually he took a long pull on his whiskey and spoke up.

“Your Iranian friend, the young scientist, do you plan on getting him out again?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “Absolutely. That’s a requirement.”

Atwan measured Harry, at the same time weighing a question of his own.

“But that will be quite difficult, won’t it? It will be hard enough to get him back into Iran, but it can be done. It will be hard to get him access to Mashad, but it can be done. Yet surely, my friend, at some point the alarm bells will go off. A nuclear scientist goes missing. Foreign spies running about the country on secret missions. I am sorry, but at some point the music stops.”

“They don’t know Dr. Molavi is missing yet. They think he went home sick, and it’s still the weekend. By the time they’ve gone looking for him, it will be too late. He will have done his dirty work in Mashad, and he’ll be out.”

“But the Iranian investigators are already suspicious of him. Didn’t you tell me that? He has been called in for talks. People know about him.”

Harry looked at Atwan curiously. He was sure he hadn’t discussed anything Molavi had said about interrogation during the debriefing that morning. Atwan could see the suspicion in his eyes, and he eased back in his tone.

“Never mind. But my point is, wouldn’t it be more prudent to plan on the likelihood that this young man will be caught. That way, if it happens, you won’t bring the whole operation crashing down on you if he falls.”

“No,”
said Harry. There was a surprising passion in his voice. “I hate sending this boy in. We will do everything to get him out alive. He is not expendable. He has put his life in our hands—in my hands—and I am not going to let him down. I feel about him as if…as if it were a personal commitment. I will not compromise on that.”

“I see,” said Atwan. Nobody spoke for a while. It was late, and they needed to begin briefing Jackie and Jeremy and the team on what would begin to unfold the next day.

As Harry stood to leave, Atwan took his hand and pulled him toward him in something like a hug. It wasn’t easy, for Harry was such a big man, and Atwan was small and refined. But he took Harry in his arms, and held him for a long while before he let him go.

“It is a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Pappas,” said the Lebanese, using Harry’s real name for the first time. “And I am very sorry about the loss of your son in Iraq.”

When Harry returned to
the safe house late that night, he asked Jeremy, the SIS duty officer, to call Jackie’s room. He wanted to talk with her, but he didn’t want to knock on her door and risk finding Adrian there, humping his warrior goddess on the antique Turkmen carpet. Jeremy reported that she was still awake, and alone.

Harry rapped on Jackie’s door. He was worried about her. She was the team leader. The lives of three other people were about to be entrusted to her. Everything depended on her judgment and reliability. Could she stand up under pressure? Harry didn’t know. But what he had seen of her sporting with Adrian made him nervous. He didn’t understand her. He knocked a second time.

Jackie opened the door meekly, her head bowed and a black scarf covering not simply her hair but most of her face. She looked away modestly.

“Ha!” she said, suddenly pulling the scarf away and letting it drop to the floor. “Fooled you, didn’t I?”

“Not even for a second,” said Harry. “Can I come in? I want to talk.”

“Sure. I wasn’t asleep.” She opened the door. “Be my guest.”

With the scarf gone, she was dressed in a tight black turtleneck and jeans that hugged her bottom. On her feet were fluffy pink slippers.

“Nervous about tomorrow?” asked Harry.

“Naw. I take a pill for that. I was going over the ops plan.” She nodded toward a heap of papers spread on her bed, under a reading light.

She stood motionless, as if unsure where they should sit, or what it was that Harry had really come for. She was trying to read him, just as he was trying to read her. Was he another lonely, hungry man, looking for a place to rest his head and stick his cock?

She tilted her head, appraising him. Her cheeks were aglow, even in the low light. She began walking toward the bed, as if that were the right place to talk. In the same moment, Harry moved toward the couch deep in shadow at the far end of the room. He took a seat there; she followed.

All the ambiguity of the woman, hard and soft, was captured in her room. An automatic rifle was leaning against the bedpost. She had disassembled and cleaned it earlier that evening, and the oil still glowed where she had rubbed it against the barrel and the stock. Her workout clothes were in a heap at the far side of room, where she had left them after a round of weight lifting with the boys in the gym earlier in the evening. Her Muslim pilgrim dress was laid out for tomorrow. Open on the bedside table was the book she was evidently reading.
White Teeth,
by Zadie Smith.

Harry wasn’t sure how to start the conversation, but she made it easy for him.

“You’re worrying about me and Adrian, aren’t you? I can see that look in your eye. It’s not come hither, but go thither.”

“Yup,” said Harry. “You got it.”

“You’re worried that it will compromise the mission, the boss shagging the team leader.”

“I wouldn’t have put it so crudely, but yeah, that’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

“Well, don’t. I have it under control. I’m not a lovesick damsel. I’m not a dick wipe. This is what women do now. They have sex and don’t worry about it.”

Harry looked at her. She was leaning forward on her haunches, her bottom barely touching the couch. The passion was impressive, but not entirely reassuring. Harry shook his head. He was puzzled.

“I don’t get you,” he said. “I know why Adrian wants to sleep with you, but I don’t see it from your end.”

“Sex is power, Mr. Fellows. I like to be powerful.”

“Call me Harry.”

“Okay, Harry. I’ll tell you a secret. Just you and me. How’s that?” She winked.

“What’s the secret?” Harry knew he was being pulled into her vortex, but he couldn’t resist.

“I get off having power over men. Men like to be in control. And you know what, Harry? So do women.”

“But life isn’t a bedroom, Jackie. You’ll have other people’s lives in your hands tomorrow. I need to know that I can trust you.”

Jackie paused. She licked her lips like a cat, reflexively, till they were glistening. She wasn’t trying to be sexy, but she couldn’t help it.

“Have you ever had an affair, Harry?” she asked.

“None of your business.”

“Sure it is. You’re asking about my sex life. Why can’t I ask about yours?”

She had a point.

“Yes,” said Harry. “I’ve had an affair. Several, as a matter of fact. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a fact.”

“And what did you like about it? Having an affair, I mean.”

“The sex.”

“Precisely. And did it make you a worse intelligence officer? Did it harm your performance?”

“No. I never let that happen. I always ended it before it got sticky.”

“Precisely, again. Okay, Harry. One more question. Do you think I’m stupider than you? I mean, do you think that I would get so involved in shagging a middle-aged man, a man who pops a pill to get a hard-on, that I would let it get in the way of my mission? Do you think I would let it affect my ability to protect my brothers Hakim and Marwan? Or my determination to bring that Iranian boy back safe?”

Harry was silent.

“Do you? Because if you do, you should fire my pretty pink ass right now. Otherwise, let me do my job.”

Harry studied her. She was a predator, crouching across from him, ready to spring, her cheeks red with the blood of indignation and force of will, her every muscle taut and ready. In truth, he could not imagine a person more prepared to go into a danger zone and come out alive.

He rose from the couch. He wanted to give her a hug but resisted the temptation and instead shook her hand.

“I trust you,” he said. “Do your job. Bring them home. Get it done.”

The sun came up
bright over the Kopet Mountains the next morning, its rays glinting off every trace of water on the barren range. Adrian Winkler rose before dawn to coordinate the operational planning. He was sitting at the computer in his villa studying maps and overnight cables. He seemed to have recovered from his fall into paganism and was once again doing the job of an intelligence officer.

After an hour of discussion with Harry and Atwan, the insertion team agreed on the basics of a plan. They would travel east by helicopter to a point near the border post at Saraghs. Atwan’s men had already been dispatched there to make the necessary contacts and payments. A gentleman from the Turkmen Ministry of Interior who had long been on Atwan’s payroll was installed in the villa, working with a technician to forge Iranian visas and the permission card from the International Visitors Office. Molavi wouldn’t need a passport. He would be hidden in the vehicle carrying the others.

It was Adrian who proposed the travel legend. Mashad was a holy city, and so the team would enter the city as pilgrims. Marwan and Hakim were both Muslims who spoke Arabic and a bit of Farsi. They would be believable flotsam in the stream that flowed into the sacred city. Jackie would have to go as one of their wives, wrapped in chador and veil and as silent and untouchable as a good Muslim would wish his wife to be. Jackie dyed her hair and eyebrows jet black. When she returned in costume, a black form shapeless and invisible, Adrian appraised her.

“Damned effective cover,” he said with a trace of a smile.

They hadn’t known where in Mashad to find the Ardebil Research Establishment. But information came in overnight from Vauxhall Cross that identified the location. It had been hiding in plain sight all these years. The facility was a few kilometers north of the city, on the road to a little town called Tus. Soon there was a small avalanche of digital information. Satellite photographs, maps of the adjoining area, GPS coordinates for finding the place, even a list of nearby hotels.

Now they needed an appropriate vehicle. Atwan’s headman in Saraghs found an old Mitsubishi minivan that plied the border regularly, taking in pilgrims and bringing out smuggled carpets and precious metals. The driver had a secret compartment under the rear seat of the van, well used for smuggling people and contraband in previous trips. Karim Molavi would go in the secret compartment.

Atwan’s man emailed a photograph of the van—dirty, dusty, its dashboard filled with Islamic bric-a-brac and its hood and hubcaps decorated with spangly gold ornaments that made it look like a one-vehicle circus parade. The driver, a reliably corrupt man who had done business with Atwan’s local operatives for years, would take the three “pilgrims” and the stowaway across the border into Iran and along the main road for the short three-hour journey to Mashad. He would wait there, and then, when the work was done, bring them out again. Getting in was the easy part. They all understood that. The heart of the operation would be Karim Molavi’s contact with his friend Reza.

The young Iranian scientist
rose after the others; his eyes were bright and his face had lost the stress lines of the day before. It was the sweet, soft color of honey in a glass jar. He asked for a breakfast of meats and cheese and rye bread, like he used to eat in Heidelberg. The German food was a special taste of freedom.

Harry walked in as the breakfast dishes were being cleared. He needed to have his talk with Karim. It was on their fragile bond that the mission rested.

“I need your help,” Harry began.

“Of course, sir. I promised you yesterday that I would help you.”

“Yes, I know, but now it’s the next day and it’s more complicated. I have a plan. It’s a very important one, not just for you and me, but I think maybe for the whole world. If you say no, I will understand.”

“Whatever it is, I am ready,” said Molavi.

Harry loved his unblinking bravery, but the Iranian didn’t know what the stakes were yet. Harry didn’t have time to sugarcoat the pill.

“It’s dangerous. You would have to go back to Iran.”

Karim looked away. That was the one thing he didn’t want to do. He turned his gaze back toward Harry.

“If I go back they will kill me. I am—what do you say?—an ‘enemy of the state’ now. I was very happy to get out. It is a great deal that you ask.”

“I know. I would not ask you unless it was important. The most important thing.”

“It is about Mashad, isn’t it?”

“You are too clever for my secrets. You’re right. It is about Mashad. It’s about sabotaging the backup equipment there, so there is nothing else left.”

Karim continued to look at Harry. He was still a young man, so innocent of the world.

“What do you think I should do? I am uncertain. What is right?”

Harry averted his gaze. That was the worst question the Iranian could ask. The hardest. But he knew the answer. A lifetime of training told him there was one button to push with this young man. His stomach hurt when he thought about what he was going to do. His head hurt. It was never enough, just to do your job. You had to pull others along with you. You had to make them do things you knew in your head and your gut they shouldn’t do. The words formed on his lips. It made it worse that he knew so intuitively how to manipulate this boy.

“What would your father tell you to do?” said Harry softly. “That is the way you should decide.”

Karim started at the words. He put his hands to his face and bowed his head. When he looked at Harry again, there was a gleam of moisture in his eyes, which he wiped away.

“My father would tell me to go back. He would say I should do my duty. He was a brave man. Always.”

Harry bit his lip. He was going to do it. He was going to make the boy walk the plank.

“Your father would be proud of you,” said Harry. His voice trembled. “He would know that you are his son.”

Harry excused himself.
He said he had to go to the bathroom. He closed the door and sat down on the toilet seat and stayed there until his hands stopped shaking. He had done it again. The worst thing in the world, the thing for which there was no forgiveness, and he had done it again. They say the biggest mistakes we make in life are the ones we make with our eyes wide open—the ones where we know what we are doing, and decide to do it anyway. But if it was a mistake, he had no choice but to make it.

“How will we do
it?” asked Karim. There was a sharpness in his eyes, but it was hard to say whether it was from fear or excitement.

“We can get you back in. That’s the easy part. We have made the plans. But you have to do the hard work. If we get you to Mashad, do you think you could visit your friend Reza and get inside the laboratory where you used to work?”

Karim pondered a moment. He didn’t want to answer too quickly and boldly, and then not be able to deliver.

“I think so,” he said. “I have all my passes, even the one I used before in Mashad. I brought them out. And the guards will remember me. And my friend Reza can meet me.”

“Reza won’t think that it’s strange that you’re coming to Mashad, and that you want to visit the laboratory?”

Karim shrugged. “Iranians think that everything is strange and nothing is strange. It would surprise him if I was in Mashad and didn’t come to see him. And what will I do when I am there?”

“Nothing,” said Harry. “You just carry this in your pocket.” He handed him a device that looked like something between a small brick and a fat cell phone.

“What is it?” asked the Iranian.

Harry knew it would be easier for Karim if he didn’t know what he was carrying. But he had told enough lies.

“It can change the way a computer operates,” said Harry. “It has a powerful pulse that burns some of the chips and connections inside. It’s like a ‘taser,’ if you know what that is. It has been calibrated very precisely to do its work. You need to be with your friend Reza when he logs in. You need to lay the jacket down so that the device is resting on the computer processor. That’s the hard part. Then you need to stay there with him for an hour while this does its work. We’ll have a power source outside to feed it. Do you think you can do that?”

“Probably. Reza is proud. He will want to show me what he has been doing. If I tease him a bit and tell him that we are doing all the hard work at Tohid, he will have to show me. That is the weakness for every scientist, sir. We must show our colleagues how smart we are.”

Karim had Reza’s phone
number in his Palm Pilot, and they debated whether to call him in advance. Harry thought that would be too risky, but Jeremy from the Ashgabat station said the SIS knew how to use a GSM relay inside Iran to make it appear that a call was coming from there. So they decided to phone Reza. No sense in risking their lives for a clandestine rendezvous in Mashad with a person who was away from the city.

Karim sat with Harry and Adrian in the makeshift operations room at the villa. Atwan was out of sight; Harry had insisted on that; he thought it would spook the young Iranian to see the rococo Arab financier, in addition to compromising his security. But the technicians had done their work. Karim dialed the number on his Iranian cell phone. They waited while the phone rang, once, twice, ten times. A recorded voice in Farsi and English asked the caller to leave a message.

Harry shook his head: No message.

“Wait five minutes and try again. Maybe he was away from his phone.”

Karim tried a second time, and again there was no answer. The air went out of the room.

“Wait thirty minutes,” said Harry. They tried to busy themselves, looking at maps of Mashad and pondering where they would stay the night if they had to. Karim had the phone cradled in his hand. Eventually Harry looked at his watch and nodded. Last try.

Reza answered on the third ring. He had recognized Karim’s number. He was delighted to hear from his old friend. You could hear the noisy enthusiasm through the little earpiece of Karim’s phone. Karim said that he was coming to visit his relatives in Mashad, the cousin whose family he had lived with back when he worked at Ardebil Research Establishment. He would be in Mashad the next day. Could he come see Reza at the laboratory?

“Rast migi?”
answered Reza. Are you serious?

Yes, Karim said. He was already en route. He would arrive the next day in the early afternoon. He proposed that they meet at Ardebil at two.

“Man hastam!”
said Reza. I’m there! It was too boring in Mashad. All the old friends had gone. Just bring your pass, he advised Karim. He would tell the guards.

Adrian talked with his
team that night. They would be leaving at first light the next day. It was agreed that Hakim would go to the site with the power source that would drive the chip-burning taser. He had to be within five hundred yards, but judging from the overhead reconnaissance, that shouldn’t be hard. The outer perimeter was only three hundred yards from the compound. They talked about how to handle young Dr. Karim. And they talked a good while about his Iranian friend Reza, a conversation that was difficult for every member of the team, but necessary.

Harry joined them as
the planning meeting was ending. He had been having one last run-through with Karim. Now he wanted to see each face in Adrian’s team, each piece of the Increment. Adrian asked Harry if he had anything he wanted to say.

“Don’t get caught,” said Harry. “This is one operation where we cannot afford a flap. The things you would say if you are captured and interrogated, and the use the Iranians would make of them in a show trial, honestly, it’s the kind of thing that starts wars. So don’t get caught.”

“Meaning what?” asked Adrian. He had willed himself not to think about this part and Harry had just burst the balloon of denial.

“I mean that if people try to stop you, serious people with guns, then shoot it out. Don’t leave anyone behind. You either get out safely, or you don’t get out. Nobody gets captured, no matter what. Understood?”

There was silence in the room. Adrian was looking away. Hakim and Marwan didn’t move a muscle, either of them. There was a keen look in their eyes, like hawks that had sighted their prey and could not see anything else.

It fell to Jackie to respond. Harry had been right, in the end. She was the strong one. With her darkened hair and complexion, she seemed almost to have changed form. Adrian was still looking away.

“I don’t think there will be a problem, sir,” said Jackie. “We know how to do this. We’ll get back. This is what we do.”