The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,135

its liaison partners knew more: if there was commotion within the security establishment of any foreign nation, it usually left some electronic or physical markings that could be captured and analyzed.

The agency’s own reporting was thin. How could it be otherwise? They had one good source in the Iranian nuclear program, and now he was dead. Harry found one report that had come in two days ago from the station in Dubai. They were running an agent who was a member of the Ministry of Intelligence; he picked up talk from people who had access to real secrets.

The header on the cable was SHAKE-UP COMING IN TEHRAN? It reported Iranian corridor gossip that heads would be rolling soon in the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence because of a big screwup there. The station chief, wanting to show how smart he was, had played down the rumor as sibling rivalry, noting that MOI officers were always forecasting doom for the Rev Guard. But Harry had reason to take the report more seriously. He messaged Dubai to call a crash meeting with its source, to see if they could pull more.

Next Harry checked the foreign liaison file, which had gotten a little fatter in the past few minutes since Marcia sent out her whip. Multiple sources were reporting that there had been some unusual gatherings in Tehran the past few days. The Turks had a source who claimed that the head of the Ministry of Intelligence had been summoned to the Supreme Leader’s compound by the national security adviser. A Mossad agent within the Syrian moukhabarat, who happened to be on a trip to Iran, reported that there was a panic within Rev Guard intelligence over the disappearance of one of their senior officers involved in security of the nuclear program. The Iranians feared that the officer had defected to Israel. No such luck, said the Mossad representative in Washington.

The most intriguing report had come in that day from a Russian intelligence officer planted in an IAEA inspection team that was visiting Iran for yet another discussion of inspection procedures. The Russian reported that over the past twenty-four hours, access to all Iranian nuclear facilities—declared and undeclared—had been shut down. Even Iranians with normal security clearances couldn’t get into their usual workplaces, as of this morning. The IAEA team had made an urgent query to their contact on the Iranian president’s staff. And that office was in a panic, too.

Harry felt a little of his gloom dissipate. Something bad had happened inside the Iranian nuclear program. They were trying to figure out how bad. Senior people were being summoned. Scientists’ access was blocked. Even the Iranian president was nervous. A shit storm was rising in Tehran. That was promising.

Okay, so what did he know? What had to be true, no matter what had happened on the way to that deadly fireball across the riverbed at Kalat? He knew that even if the operation in Mashad had been a total washout, the Iranians would be scrambling. A scientist in their nuclear program was dead. By now, they would have identified Karim Molavi’s body in that burnt-out car. Probably they wouldn’t be able to identify Jackie from what was left of her body, and the identities of the other two members of the Increment team were probably covered, too, unless the Brits had been sloppy. So the Iranians wouldn’t have proof, but they were paranoid enough to guess at the truth. Their scientist had died trying to escape Iran with foreign intelligence agents. He had been recruited as a foreign spy. Everything he had touched was contaminated, and they couldn’t be sure how far the stain spread. They had to suspect that the worst had happened: their nuclear program had been penetrated.

The Iranians would have to take action quickly. Harry knew he wouldn’t see it outright, lit up in bold. They were too careful for that. But he would see shadows, as people moved to protect other parts of the nuclear program that had suddenly come under suspicion. He would hear echoes of voices, summoning people for interrogation, calling them back from posts overseas where they were vulnerable. That was what he would look for—the aftershocks.

Harry dug into the NSA file. The messages were queued in a way that made them hard to search, so he called in Tony Reddo, one of his smart kids, and asked him to set a filter that captured anything that involved a sudden recall of personnel or change in status