The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,39

in Pomerol, and they’re practically worthless. But press them and ferment the juice and put it in bottles and lay them down for a few years…by God, now you have an investment. See what I mean? Capital is time.”

Harry was wondering whether the SIS chief had perhaps had a bit too much to drink when Plumb wheeled on him suddenly and clasped his hand.

“Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is a short clock, Harry. You are not running out of time. The Iranians are not about to detonate a bomb. They have not built a heavy-water reactor. They do not have plutonium. They don’t have a working trigger. Oh yes, I know all about the new panic, but it is misplaced, my boy. We have more time than your skittish friends in the White House seem to think. Perhaps even more than you think. The essence of wisdom here is to avoid acting rashly, in the belief that you are running out of time. You are not. I assure you.”

Harry was taken aback by the intensity of what Plumb had said, and the oddity of it.

“You’re telling this to the wrong person, Sir David. I am a career intelligence officer who is running a CIA division. I don’t make policy. I don’t have much influence with the people who do make policy. If you want to influence whether America goes to war against Iran, you’re talking to the wrong guy.”

Plumb took his napkin from his lap, folded it carefully, and placed it atop the table. He pulled his chair back from the table, preparing to leave. Adrian Winkler did the same.

“I’m not at all sure of that, Harry,” said Plumb. “Actually, I rather think you are the ‘right’ guy. You just don’t know it yet.”

DAMASCUS/TEHRAN

The Crazy One traveled to Damascus for the weekend. Nobody dared to ask him why, and he wouldn’t have given an answer, even if they had. But the truth was that he was bored. He had requested a private jet from the president’s office, and flown alone from Mehrabad to Al-Mazzah military airport outside Damascus. He arrived as a shadow person, without a passport or any other trail.

A black sedan brought him to the new Four Seasons Hotel, where a suite had been booked for a Mr. Nawaz. The hotel was told that he was a Pakistani businessman working in Iran on sensitive business. The security man who had accompanied him spoke a few hushed words to the desk clerk, and a suite on the top floor, the presidential floor, had been cleared for him, and the usual check-in arrangements were waived.

And now Al-Majnoun was sitting on his balcony, smoking a hubbly-bubbly pipe laced with opium. He looked toward the old tombs across the way; they were being restored as part of the manic refurbishment of Damascus, cranes over the centuries-old stone crypts and passages, scaffolding surrounding the sacred burial ground. He puffed hard on the pipe and looked again, and he could see the jinns hovering anxiously over the tombs, their rest disturbed. They were alight, ghosts in the air, jittering to and fro. Could he hear them crying? No, he was not that stoned, but he would put another gummy wad of opium in the pipe until he could hear them talk.

It was a pleasure to be in this Arab city. That was all the Crazy One really knew. He was not a Persian. His adopted country’s nuances and rituals were not his own. Even its religion embarrassed him. Iranian Shiism was so noisy and overdramatic—pilgrims weeping sentimentally at the mere mention of Hussein, and clanging their chains so histrionically on Ashura day. This was more like the professional wrestling matches he watched on satellite television than real religion. Where was the austerity, the purity of the desert? These Persians were city people with gloves on their hands. How could they touch God? Their culture was so ingrown, it was as if everyone had grown up listening to the same bedtime stories and could finish them all by memory. Whereas for Al-Majnoun, the Crazy One, everything was invented and everything was new.

“Mr. Nawaz” had meetings in Damascus. Important people came to see him, and brought him letters from other important people. He sent emissaries and sometimes, under armed guard in cars with blackened windows that didn’t open even to the Syrian moukhabarat, he went to visit others. He had to be very careful where he went. The Israelis would want to