The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,69
is hard to read, like the other one. It’s scary stuff when you first look at it, but it’s describing something that hasn’t worked. Maybe that’s the real message our Iranian friend is sending us. Maybe he’s saying, ‘Watch out! We’re trying to build a bomb.’ Or maybe he’s saying, ‘Relax. We’re trying to build a bomb but it isn’t working.’”
“That’s why you need to talk to him.”
Harry nodded.
“Do you know who he is? This Iranian scientist?”
“It took a while, but we finally got a real name and workplace. With help from SIS. The director authorized it, sort of. The White House doesn’t know they’re helping. I think they would shit if they did.”
“Good for the admiral,” said Hoffman. “I wasn’t sure he had the stones. So what are you and your British friends planning to do? Can you run him in place?”
“Well, that’s the question. There’s one more data point. We just got a new message. He says he’s scared. Not in so many words, but it’s obvious that he thinks they’re on to him, and he wants to get out.”
Harry thought of the picture of the Iranian actress, and the brief plaintive message.
“But the White House says no?”
“Correct,” said Harry. “Arthur Fox is telling them this is it. They already have the smoking gun. They don’t need any more intelligence.”
“I hate Fox. I should have fired the prick when I had the chance. So what about your agent? The guy who wants out.”
“They want to leave him in place, but use his information in a public dossier about the Iranian nuclear program.”
“That will get him killed.”
“Yes, sir. But that’s not the real problem.” Harry moved awkwardly in his little chair. He wanted to make sure Hoffman understood him. He wasn’t sentimental about losing an Iranian he’d never met. That wasn’t the point.
“I’m ready to sacrifice an agent if we have to. But in this case, we don’t even understand what he’s trying to tell us. Maybe he’s telling us that the equipment is malfunctioning, but that nobody realizes it. Maybe he’s saying that a sabotage program is working.”
Hoffman looked uncomfortable. He put his cigar down on the table and backed his chair away from Harry.
“What would you know about a sabotage program, Harry?”
“Nothing.” Harry thought of his meeting in London with Kamal Atwan, and his promise to Adrian Winkler that whatever he learned there would belong not to him, but to the British.
Harry noticed the discomfort of his former boss. Hoffman was rarely ill at ease about anything, so he was curious.
“So you don’t know about a sabotage program, Mr. Hoffman?”
Hoffman looked around. The coffee shop was nearly empty. Even so, he lowered his voice.
“I didn’t say that,” he answered quietly. “I said that you don’t know anything about such a program. You’re not cleared for it.”
Hoffman had drawn a red line, but Harry decided to step over it.
“Help me out. What would I understand, if I had been cleared?”
Hoffman shook his head. “This subject is out of bounds, my friend. On beyond zebra. I’m deaf and dumb.”
“Don’t play games with me, Mr. Hoffman. My ass is on the line here. These people in the White House want to take the country to war again, and I need to know what the hell is going on. I need a friend right now.”
“Hum, hum, hum.” Hoffman balanced his coffee spoon on his finger, playing for time while he tried to decide what to say. He leaned toward Harry and began to speak again, barely above a whisper.
“We did have a program of the sort you describe. We were running it through Dubai. The folks at Los Alamos put together all kinds of fancy shit. Computers that dropped a stitch. Centrifuge parts that worked for a year but then began to malfunction.”
“What happened?”
“They rumbled us, that’s what happened. They realized that the trader who was supplying all this tainted shit was bad. They tortured him. Very bad scene. He gave up the whole goddamn network.”
“How come I don’t know about this? It’s not in the files.”
“Our biggest successes rarely are, Harry boy. Neither are our biggest fuckups. This one was a combination of both. End of story, unfortunately.”
Harry knew that this was not, in fact, the end of the sabotage story. But he didn’t say that to Jack Hoffman. That information existed in a different space, under a different flag. In his silence, he crossed another line.
The waiter came back with the check, obviously hoping that this set of customers