The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,38

war with Iran, Harry, and it will take us all thirty years to dig out from the rubble. Number 10 is nervous. Terrified, actually. You’re not going to start a war with Iran, are you?”

Harry wasn’t sure how to answer the question. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I hope not. But I don’t know. This White House, as you say, is wobbly. You can’t be sure which way it’s going to spin.”

The cheese trolley arrived. Sir David asked for four different kinds, arrayed on his plate in ascending order of sharpness of flavor. A ripe Camembert, then a chèvre dusted with pepper, then a sharp Irish cheddar, finally a fat wedge of Stilton. A look of contentment momentarily softened his face as he contemplated his cheese, but then the frown returned.

“You see, Harry, we really can’t afford another American mistake. It’s too damned costly for us. We travel along in your wake like the faithful little brother, helping you pick up the debris after your misadventures. But I’m not sure how much longer we would be prepared to do that. The ‘special relationship’ is not good for our health, you see.”

Plumb paused and sampled the Camembert, which was oozing onto the plate. He went on to the chèvre, and then the cheddar, while Harry pondered what to say.

“They’re building a bomb,” Harry said eventually. “We have it out of Iran. They’re working on a trigger. That’s what Adrian and I were discussing. That’s why I’m here.”

“Yes, yes,” said Sir David. “I’ve heard about that. The director phoned me last night. But even if it’s true, let me pose the impolite question: So what? Everyone wants a bomb these days, but we haven’t gone to war to stop them. Chinese, Indians, Pakis, North Koreans, for goodness’ sake. They all have their bombs, and mirabile dictu, none of them seems at all inclined to use them. But in this case, people in the White House seem to think that military action may be necessary. Or so we have been led to believe by our, forgive the term, ‘spies.’ But you’re a man whose judgment I trust. Seasoned, tempered by life. So I put it to you: Is America going to war again? It’s rather important to us.”

Harry shook his head. He felt mildly disloyal, even having this conversation. The Brits did their best to make you forget that they were a foreign nation, feeding you lamb chops and fine wines and a little pudding, and would you mind please telling your innermost secrets to your dear, innocent cousins.

“I can’t answer,” said Harry, “because I don’t know. There’s a group around the president that wants a confrontation with Iran. There’s another group that doesn’t. There’s the Congress, which is sick of war but listens to the Israelis. And the Israelis keep saying we have to strike Iran before it’s too late. And there’s the president, who is so battered you wonder how he can stand up straight. You tell me how all those pieces fit together, and I’ll tell you whether we’re going to war with Iran.”

Sir David had finished his cheese by now, and was polishing off the last of the Gevrey-Chambertin he had ordered for Harry and Adrian to go with their lamb chops. The dining room was beginning to empty out. He wasn’t in a rush. He looked out to the green of the park and then back toward Harry, his eyes twinkling with that mischievous look that had marked him as an operator from the days he was a schoolboy. He was getting to the point, in his own eccentric way.

“Time,” he said. “That’s really the issue, isn’t it?”

“I don’t follow you,” said Harry.

“I had an economics professor at Cambridge. He was an Italian. Piero something. Ancient man, when I encountered him. He had devoted his life—wasted it, most people thought—to proving that Ricardo’s Labor Theory of Value was correct. What a folly! An economist who has been dead for nearly two hundred years, whose theories are held in disrepute by all right-thinking people, but never mind. That was this fellow Piero’s life’s work, which he distilled in a little monograph called The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Fancy that. What he did was to build a model in which ‘capital’ was actually labor—‘dated labor,’ he called it. And that was his point. It was time that added value to the products of human labor. Pick a bunch of grapes off a vine, even