The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,145

were almost feminine, pumped with fat and gel so that they appeared as little pontoons. The face seemed almost to be in motion, the different pieces going in different directions. Scars were visible along the edges, and there was a bit of puffiness, as if the man had just had another operation to recombine and rearrange.

Atwan walked over to this most peculiar gentleman. He was smiling now, as if he were a farmer exhibiting his prize pig. He patted Al-Majnoun gently on the back, and then steered him toward Harry.

“My dear Harry, let me introduce Kamal Hussein Sadr. Al-Majnoun. The Crazy One. You know the name of course, but perhaps not the face.” He laughed to himself, as if this were a private joke.

Harry took Al-Majnoun’s hand in his. The tips of the fingers were like an emery board, from so many efforts over the years to remove identifiable traces of what had once been the man’s fingerprints. When they had shaken hands, Atwan nodded for Al-Majnoun to take a seat in a corner of the room.

“So you’re not fucked,” Harry said.

“Quite so.”

“And my warning wasn’t necessary. The man is already out of Iran, obviously.”

“Oh yes. In the flesh. All the many layers of it. You did not think I would be so stupid as to let the Iranians have my man. After nearly thirty years? That would have been quite unwise. No, he was on his way out of the country as soon as he had done his work.”

“His work.” Harry let that phrase fill the room, and repeated it. “His work. Which included killing three British intelligence officers, I think. Not to mention a brave Iranian agent.”

“Two, my dear. Only two, unless you count that silly Turkmen driver. The others were not my fault. I made a promise to you that I would try to get your Iranian boy out of the country, and I endeavored to keep my word, truly. And I knew that our friend Adrian was bewitched with the girl, so I tried to save her, too. But not everything is possible, my dear, even when we do our best. You should know that, better than anyone. You have suffered a great loss, but it is wrong that you should blame yourself.”

Harry winced at the reference to his son. And he resented that Kamal Atwan presumed to give him personal advice in the presence of a hired killer. But he stayed silent. That was Harry’s weapon, that he could keep the pieces together inside, even when they hurt so much that he wanted to kill with his naked hands the man standing across from him.

“It’s over,” said Harry.

“And why should that be, my dear? In our sort of world, it’s never over. How can it be? The world is too ambiguous a place for endings.”

“The Iranians think it’s over.”

“No they don’t. My dear Harry, I don’t think you’ve grasped the essence of the matter. The Iranians have no idea what is going on. Listen to your famous NSA chatter, and you’ll see. This man, the scar-faced man in black, was said to be an intimate friend of the Leader. Do you think the mullahs can allow themselves to imagine that he was working all the while—all the while!—for a foreign conspiracy? Of course not. It would bring the whole tower down. The Leader himself would be suspect. Who could accept such a thought, or even tolerate it? It would destroy the regime, my dear, root and branch.”

“Not a bad idea,” said Harry.

“Oh come now, don’t be a romantic. You sound like those neoconservatives. Poof! Let us transform the evildoers, at a stroke. That is not the way the world works. It progresses from one shade of gray to another.”

“Bullshit,” said Harry.

“You want to provoke me, my dear, but you will not succeed. The truth is that we have drawn the Iranians, who so much want to see only black and white, into my gray world where nothing is quite the way they want it to be. And in the gray, it is very hard to find your way.”

“They’ll know someone has been diddling their nuclear program. That’s for sure.”

“Well, yes. The prime minister has highlighted the role of that poor young man, Dr. Molavi. But they won’t know how far his deception went. Some will say all the problems at Tohid were his fault, and they will overlook the bias in the equipment we have been selling them. Others will suspect the equipment, too, but