The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,5
make breakfast for her daughter and send her off to high school in Fairfax. She was just a GS-9 and had traveled overseas just once, before the divorce, but she had that instinct, too. She knew that occasionally the strange people who sent anonymous messages to the CIA were for real. They knew secrets; they were angry at their government, or the security service, or maybe just at their boss down the hall. And they were Internet geeks who knew how to make contact from overseas without getting caught. Jana’s shop had tracked several dozen of these electronic contacts from China since she joined the unit, and a half dozen from Russia, but never an Iranian. So she stayed.
The message didn’t make much sense. It was just a list of dates and numbers. Maybe it was a technical document, maybe it was gibberish. Jana wasn’t sure, but she knew it was coming from a place that mattered.
“Iranian VW?” That was the subject line of Jana’s message forwarding the email. VW was the CIA’s shorthand name for these virtual walk-ins. She sent the message to the Information Operations Center, which managed computer tactics for the clandestine service. For good measure she copied the Near East Division, the Iran “issues manager” at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Iran Operations Division. That was too many addresses, it turned out, but how could she have known?
One of the cables went to Harry Pappas, the new chief of the Iran Operations Division. He didn’t pay any attention to it the first day. He was so busy he couldn’t see the water, let alone the ripples.
Harry was a big man in what had become a little institution. He had a face that was lived-in: a large, soft mouth, cheeks that were creased by sun and late nights, curly hair that had turned the dull gray of burnt charcoal. The most forbidding thing about him was his eyes, which conveyed a ferocity and also a weariness that all his strength could not dispel. He had come into the agency as a paramilitary officer during the 1980s after a stint in the army, and had gotten his start training the contras in Nicaragua. He spoke Spanish badly back then, with a Worcester, Massachusetts, accent, and he had since added bad Russian and now bad Farsi. Yet people always seemed to understand Harry Pappas, no matter what language he spoke.
“If people don’t get what Harry is saying, he just talks louder.” That was what his best friend Adrian Winkler liked to say about him. Adrian was British, and as with most SIS officers, he was a proficient linguist who did his business in lower decibels. But like Harry, he was a prankster. No matter how bleak things looked, Harry couldn’t resist a wisecrack or an irreverent curse. That had helped him survive a career in the neverland of the clandestine service.
But Harry Pappas was wounded, and everyone knew it. He had lost his only son several years before, in Iraq. The mess over there was a stomachache for everyone at the agency, but for Harry it was something much worse. That was the reason he had taken the job running Persia House—to try to get through the pain.
Today it wasn’t working. His desk was full of paper he didn’t want to read. He had a request to brief the senior staff members of the Senate intelligence committee, whom he regarded as twerps and second-guessers. He had a summons, from the director no less, to brief a meeting of the NSC deputies committee. He wanted to say no to both but knew he couldn’t.
They all wanted the same thing. The CIA director, the director of National Intelligence, the White House, the congressional intelligence committees—they were all howling for more production from Tehran. If there wasn’t an item in the PDB each morning, the president would ask, “What about Iran?” The director had suggested that Harry to go to the White House once a week with the PDB briefer, to show the flag and make excuses, but Harry begged off. He didn’t trust himself in their company.
What Harry really wanted to tell the president was, “Get your finger out of my eye.” Go away, be patient, shut up. But that was the one thing he wasn’t allowed to say, to anyone, especially when the comptrollers of the secret budget were throwing money at him. They wanted more of everything—more case officers, more platforms, more recruitments. They