The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,19

“Dr. Ali” to resume communication should be reported to Pappas personally. That was it. The Iranian VW was dead and gone, as far as the agency’s official traces would show.

Harry brought one other intelligence service into the loop, but only at the highest level. By secure encrypted cable, he informed his friend Adrian Winkler, the chief of staff of the British Secret Intelligence Service, that the agency had a new lead that had come in via the website. The new source appeared to have access to the Iranian nuclear program, but the agency was still struggling to confirm his information and discover, if it could, his identity. Harry gave the few other details they had, and asked if they rang any bells in London.

He sent the cable for two reasons: he wanted to make sure that the British were not running the same agent; and he had a glimmer in the far horizon of his mind that he might need their help at some point in the future.

Harry took his wife Andrea to the movies that Friday night. It was a “summer blockbuster,” one of those movies that had gotten its start with a character from a comic book, and then had been stretched through so many remakes there wasn’t much left. They sat through the first half, but when yet another tedious special-effects sequence was cranking up, Andrea nudged her husband.

“I hate this movie,” she said.

“So do I,” whispered Harry.

“Then let’s go.”

They walked out, pissing off all the people who had to miss a second or two of computer-generated nonsense as they stepped past knees and ankles along the row of seats.

They had dinner at Legal Sea Foods in Tysons Corner. It was the first place Harry thought of, because his agency friends often came there for lunch. Andrea ordered a piña colada, which she usually did only on vacation. Harry had a whiskey, and then another. The two were getting pleasantly plastered. It felt like the first time they had relaxed together in several years.

Andrea asked Harry a question she wondered about sometimes, especially during the hard times, but would only have asked him when she was a little tipsy. Remind her why had he joined the CIA in the first place? He had seemed happy as an army officer when she first met him in Worcester. Why had he traded that for such a complicated life?

“My father wanted me to do it,” said Harry, looking at his glass and taking another gulp. “He loved the CIA.”

“Why?” she pressed. “What had it ever done for him?”

“Matter of honor,” said Harry. “He thought we owed them. He was a Greek, to a fault. So if he made a friend, that was it, friend for life. Before I was born, when he was still living in Greece, he got involved in the fighting. They had a civil war in the late 1940s. People forget that. My dad was on the side fighting the communists. The Americans helped him. It wasn’t the CIA back then. They called it something else. But they were American spies, basically. They gave him weapons and money, and when he got wounded they helped him come to America. They saved his life. That was what he always told me.”

“So he wanted you to join up?”

“The army, yes. And then when I got pitched by the agency, I asked him what he thought. I wasn’t supposed to, but I couldn’t help it. We were Greeks. We didn’t have secrets from each other. I had never seen him so happy. He kissed me. Tears were streaming down his face.”

“So it’s a chain,” said Andrea. “Father to son, father to son.”

She didn’t say it bitterly or angrily. It was just the truth.

TEHRAN

The young Iranian was in his office in Jamaran, reading back articles from the American Journal of Physics, when they came for him. He didn’t hear the knock because he was listening to his iPod while he read, so they had to push the door open. The young man rose with a start, pulling the buds from his ears. Two burly men entered the room. They wore dark green suits the color of a fir tree. Behind them stood Dr. Bazargan, the laboratory director. He was trying to maintain his dignity, but without much success.

“Sobh bekheyr, Doktor,” said one of the men in plain clothes, bidding the scientist good morning. He took out an official card and proffered it toward the young man. It identified him as an