The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,122

from the Americans and Israelis for so long—and even from Kamal Atwan. So often it is the special signatures of secrecy that give the game away. The best disguise sometimes is no disguise at all.

Reza was waiting at the gate. He kissed his friend, and then embraced him, and then kissed him again. Reza’s beard was fuller and his stomach bigger than the last time Karim had seen him, but otherwise he appeared the same. He had the same mischievous look of intelligence, especially. He was a chess player, a puzzle solver, a compulsive player of electronic games. No wonder they kept him on ice out here. He was the reserve player—the sixth man on the team, held in waiting on this faraway bench for when one of the starters fouled out.

They were in the guardhouse now. Reza asked Karim for his special-access pass. Karim handed it up to the guard, who typed the number into the system.

“The pass has expired,” said the guard.

“It’s old,” said Karim, trying to laugh. “Of course it has. Here’s the one I use in Tehran.”

The guard studied Karim. The young man pulled his black jacket tighter. He might as well have been standing naked. The guard stepped closer and peered at him. Then he smiled, the skeptical eastern smile of a Mashadi.

“Didn’t you used to work here?”

Karim nodded. “Yes, but that was before. Now I work in Tehran, at Tohid. I’m here visiting my cousin. I thought I would come see my old friend Reza.”

“You remember the old friends in Mashad? Usually you fancy Tehranis forget we even exist.” The guard had a chip on his shoulder, but now he was smiling at this departed scientist who hadn’t put on airs, and wanted to see the old lab.

“Salam, salam. Rooz bekheyr. Khosh amadi.” Hello, hello. Good afternoon to you. You are most welcome.

The guard was opening the electronic door, and then he stopped and turned back to Karim.

“I am sorry, Brother Doctor. Do you have a camera or anything that can make a recording?”

Karim paused. What was the right answer?

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure, sir?” The guard was friendly but vigilant.

Karim felt the device heavy in his pocket. He centered himself on the one requirement, to avoid detection of the secret tool.

“I have a cell phone, with a camera. Do you need that?”

“Yes, please.”

Karim handed him a phone. It was the Nokia he had bought in Tehran, with a new 3-mega-pixel camera.

“Thank you, sir,” said the guard, handing Karim a ticket for his phone.

“Come on,” said Reza. “I have to show you the new wing of the lab.”

Marwan approached from the north. The taxi dropped him at a kebabi a half mile from the ring road. He bought a sandwich and a bottle of lemon soda and walked to the park that was near the Azad Engineering University campus. They had studied the park on a satellite map back in Ashgabat and, measuring the distance, had decided that it was just inside the transmission perimeter. Marwan found a tree in the park and sat down beneath it. He reached in his dirty canvas bag for the black box that would drive the device in Karim’s coat pocket. The Americans could have done it overhead, with a focused energy beam from a satellite. But this wasn’t an American operation. Marwan switched on the equipment and aimed it in the optimal direction. Then he took the sandwich in his hands and began to eat.

The Crazy One ate his lunch alone at a small restaurant near Ghaem Square. He had told Mehdi to wait for him at the Iran Hotel in the center of town. He would call when it was time.

The restaurant was Lebanese, or so the menu claimed. He ordered a tabbouleh salad with no onions, hoping that it would be easy on his stomach. But it was too spicy when it came, and he pushed it away and ate bread only, with a glass of peach nectar. He tried reading The World Is Flat again, but he put it away when a man at a nearby table saw it open and wanted to talk about it. He was a professor at Azad Engineering University nearby. He taught computer science. He thought Thomas Friedman was the best writer in the world.

Al-Majnoun didn’t answer the man. The computer scientist looked once into the Lebanese man’s face and then looked away, frightened, and returned to his seat a few tables away. Al-Majnoun did not like talking to