The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,27
a neutron generator perform at the level needed to produce fission in the core of a nuclear bomb. But it malfunctioned.”
“Malfunctioned?”
“Yes. It didn’t work. This neutron generator is sort of like a fancy spark plug. They used to call its predecessor a ‘zipper,’ back in the Manhattan Project. Don’t ask me why. It’s sort of complicated: It starts with explosives, which create energy that heats up a wafer of deuterium. Ionizes it, to be precise. The explosion accelerates this ionized deuterium so it bombards a target of tritium, and it produces a whole lot of neutrons. And the neutrons create a runaway chain reaction in the plutonium core of the bomb. And then, boom! If you follow me.”
“I don’t have any fucking idea what you’re talking about, but so what? I take it this thing—whatever it is—would produce a nuclear explosion. If it worked.”
“Correct,” said Reddo. “This is one of the technical puzzles in building an actual nuclear weapon. In the test this message described, the neutron pulse fizzled. It would not have been able to start a proper chain reaction. But that isn’t the point: this document says the Iranians are building a triggering device. An initial test failed, but presumably more are planned.”
“Are they close?”
“I don’t know. From this document, there’s no way to know how serious the technical problems are, so we can’t really evaluate the message that’s being sent. If they keep trying it this way, they’ll keep failing. But they won’t, presumably.”
“It’s pretty fucking scary, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” Reddo and Schwartz spoke the words in unison.
Pappas closed his eyes and tried to take in what he had just heard. This was the red flag—no, more than that, it was the wailing siren. If the message was true, the Iranians had restarted their covert weapons program. They had done some basic work on these problems through 2003, but then stopped. Or at least, that was what the agency had believed until about thirty seconds ago. Dr. Ali’s message described a failure. But if they solved the trigger problem and assembled enough fissionable material, they could test a nuclear weapon. And if they did that, then the whole world would be turned upside down.
Pappas summoned the members of his special-access program. He gathered them with a sense of foreboding. It wasn’t that he wanted to keep the intelligence to himself. He just knew that this was a piece of information that would carve its own course, like a flash flood, once it was let loose.
The Dr. Ali SAP group met the next day. Fox had returned the previous night from his vacation house on Nantucket. He was tanned and relaxed. His face didn’t have Harry’s perpetual look of sleeplessness; he was innocent, in that way. He didn’t know the worst that life could do to someone. That was what made him talk like a tough guy; he had never really had to be very strong himself.
“We should go to the White House.” Those were Fox’s first words when they were seated in the conference room.
“For sure,” said Harry. “But not yet. We just got the damned message.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Fox. “This is an Iranian declaration of war.”
“No it’s not. It’s a document we have barely had time to analyze. To the extent we understand the message, it’s telling us that they fucked something up. The White House doesn’t even know about Dr. Ali. Let’s not pull people’s chains downtown until we’re sure what we have here.”
“You don’t seem to understand, Harry. This is the breakout. They are back in the weaponization business. They’re working on the trigger for a bomb. They’re almost ready to test. That’s the message. Nothing else matters. We need to take this to the White House, today. If you won’t, I will. And the director will back me up. He wants it briefed to the national security adviser this afternoon.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I already asked him. Not to go behind your back. But I thought the admiral should be informed.” The director was a navy four-star, still serving in uniform. He liked to do things by the book, but in his job at the CIA, he wasn’t sure what the book was.
“You’re right,” said Harry. As much as he disliked Fox, he knew that he was correct. This wasn’t something to sit on. But he was worried just the same. Once something went downtown, you couldn’t control it anymore. It took on a life of its own.