The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,10
say. But you have to assume he knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have sent it if he didn’t think he could do it without leaving fingerprints. Kids know how to do this stuff, Harry. Iran is full of hackers and computer nerds.”
Harry was still shaking his head. He wanted to see in his mind the person who had sent the message.
“Help me out, Marcia. You understand Iranians. What kind of person would do this? Assuming that it isn’t a setup, and that he isn’t crazy.”
Marcia pondered a moment. Why did anyone do anything? But Harry wanted an answer, so she thought back over the dozens of Iranian cases she had reviewed over too many years.
“He’s smart,” she began. “He’s proud. He’s unhappy. He’s young. He has a need, for some reason, to share what he knows. He’s not asking us for anything, he’s telling us. But this message is a tease. An opening bid. Iranians never give you the whole slice. It’s taarof.”
“Remind me. What’s taarof?”
“It’s their way of doing business. The dignity thing. They don’t want to name a price. That would be undignified. So they make a gift, and wait for you to respond. It’s unmanly to ask. Unwomanly, too.”
“He’s trusting the agency, in other words,” said Harry. “Not to fuck it up, I mean.”
“What an idiot,” muttered Marcia. “Doesn’t he read the newspapers?”
It all moved slowly at first, before it hit the tripwires.
It was Pappas’s case, since, as the director liked to remind him, he owned every speck of dust blowing out of Iran. He filed the initial message under the designator BQDETERMINE, which was the agency’s cryptonym for all Iranian collection operations, and gave “Dr. Ali” a provisional crypt of BQTANK.
But Harry knew he would have to share, right away, so he called Arthur Fox, the head of the Counter-Proliferation Division. He didn’t like Fox, who was always trying to show everyone what a hard-ass he was, but he had no choice. He proposed a meeting that afternoon and asked Fox to bring one of his nuclear specialists.
“So what do you think, Arthur?” asked Pappas when they had gathered a few hours later in a secure conference room. “Is this for real?” His big body was hunched over the conference table, his shoulders stooped as if burdened by the new weight they were carrying.
“Looks real,” said Fox. He held a copy of the Dr. Ali message up to his nose. “Smells real. So a logical inference would be that it is real.” Fox was a fastidious man; when he sniffed his nose, you understood that he was accustomed to fine wines and gourmet sauces. There was money in his background somewhere. That was a funny thing about the new tough guys. They came from the better side of town. They talked hard, but they had soft hands.
Harry needed Fox’s help, and he didn’t mind acting dumb. He had done it to good effect his whole career.
“What does it tell you, Arthur, assuming it’s real? Did we already know this?”
“It’s showtime, that’s what it tells me. We knew the Iranians were getting higher enrichment levels at Natanz, but we had not confirmed they were above seven percent. Suspected it, maybe; feared it, certainly. But the fact they’re at thirty-five percent—assuming it’s a fact—is news. Pretty serious news. Some people could argue—some people—that we should bomb the whole damn complex tomorrow, before it goes any further. Been saying that for years, in fact, but nobody has been listening.”
“Hold the speech a minute. I thought they needed ninety percent before they had the goods. Maybe this message is telling us they’re stuck. What about that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry. You want to wait for them to explode a bomb before you decide they’re serious? Bad idea.”
Harry nodded. Fox was right, even if he was a jerk.
“What about the seven percent batch? My guy Reddo thinks that may be a big deal. He thinks the ‘D2O?’ notation may mean they’re thinking about sending enriched uranium to a heavy-water reactor, and then reprocessing it later to make plutonium. Does that make sense?”
“Any allegation about Iran makes sense, Harry. These people are dangerous. We didn’t know about a plutonium program. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have one. If I had to bet, I would bet worst case.”
“Why am I not surprised? Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let’s bomb Iran.”
“That’s unworthy of you, Harry.”
“Just joking, Arthur.” Harry looked back at the text of the message from the mysterious Iranian correspondent.