Esther's Sling (8 page)

Two hours later a chime sounded and the message light on Amit’s phone started blinking. Margolis retrieved the email and reversed the process to read the message from Israel.

Cannot accept request to access radar system. Working on alternative ideas. Standby.

Amit Margolis deleted that message and started typing. He had spent the prior two hours thinking about what alternatives were possible if he
received exactly this response.

We could offer access to real time data from UAV sale. All that is needed to provide are code keys. I believe this solution will be acceptable.

He texted this message, embedded in a photograph of the Bolshoi Theater, to “Mary.” It took only thirty-five minutes for a response. The prime minister liked his idea. He had approval.

Amit Margolis entered the lobby of the meeting hotel a few minutes after the noon hour. He had been dropped off by taxi a couple of blocks away and had walked in with his real suitcase in tow. He warmed up quickly, the glare of two FSB agents adding their own heat. Both men had been chewed out for losing track of Margolis the prior day. It was a mistake they wouldn’t make twice, so Margolis was heading home after this meeting. The Mossad agent headed up to his room on the second floor.

Exactly an hour later, Dmitri Arkanov knocked on Amit’s door. The Israeli turned off the TV and opened the door. “Welcome
,” he said. Both men sat in the same seats as the prior day. Amit wore the same gloves.

“It must be nice
to be back home,” said Arkanov.

“I am always happy to be in Moscow.”

“Did you visit relatives last night?”

“No. I spent the night right here. Slept well. I appreciate your concern.”

Arkanov did not like being ridiculed. But he had to admit that the man he knew only as Lev Cohen had won the prior day’s exercise in spy craft. He moved on. “Have you had the opportunity to discuss our request with the right authority?”

“Yes, I have. Unfortunately your request is not acceptable, but I do have a suggestion that I think you may find to have equal or greater value to your country.”

“I am listening.”

“We have supplied Georgia with unmanned aerial vehicles.”

“Yes. The Hermes UAV.” Arkanov was interested.

“We can supply you with the communications codes. You will be able to see what they see in real time.”

Arkanov had briefed the Russian President the prior evening and had a good idea as to what would please his boss. He knew his boss would be very pleased with this outcome. Whatever they got from this deal was pure gravy – they had already decided not to sell the S-300 to Iran as a result of intense pressure from the U.S. “I was fully prepared for a long afternoon. But I believe we have an agreement,” he said. He reached over to shake the Israeli’s hand.

“I believe we do.”

The agreement would not appear on any treaty or paperwork, the word of these two men being the only formal recognition. Russia knew that if it broke its word, cooperation on Chechen terrorists would end and the codes being used by Georgia would be suddenly changed. Israel believed that if it failed to deliver, then S-300 missile batteries would be shipped to Iran. Both sides had good and valuable consideration to maintain their obligations.

On Friday, January 8, 2010, Shlomo Fiegelbaum did something
rare; he left the offices of Mossad to travel to Ben Gurion International Airport to meet a returning Mossad agent. As Amit Margolis exited the customs doors in Terminal 3, Shlomo stepped forward. “How about a ride?” he said as he extended his hand. “Welcome home. I’m very proud of you.”

Only twenty feet away, two young Mossad agents with bulges in their jackets carefully watched over the aging deputy director.
The two guards followed their charges outside to a waiting black GMC Suburban for the ride to the Kirya Tower in Tel Aviv. The armored Suburban was quickly on Highway 1 headed into town. The dialogue between the two principal men in the car was not substantial, only the exchange of pleasantries.

A half hour later, Fiegelbaum led Amit Margolis towards a conference room on the 41
st
floor of the Kirya Tower adjacent to Camp Rabin, known within the IDF as HaKirya, or the Campus. He stopped for a second just after the pair passed through the lobby’s security doors. “The prime minister wants to meet you,” he said.

Margolis was surprised and not sure how to react. “Why?” It was the only response that came to him.

“You will soon learn. The director is in there as well.”

“I hope I’m not in trouble.”

“Don’t worry.”

Outside the conference room several of the prime minister’s security detail were seated in the hallway. Fiegelbaum entered the room with Margolis following. Eli Cohen stood up and walked over to the young Mossad katsa before the director of collections could say anything. “Pleased to meet you, Mister Margolis.” Cohen extended his hand.

“Mister Prime Minister.” The pair shook hands vigorously. Margolis was self conscious, feeling as if he was being treated like a war hero, which he was not.

“Please have a seat.”

Before he sat down, Margolis walked over to the far side of the table where Ami Levy sat. Margolis shook his hand. “Director,” he said.

Through the multiple layers of windows that were separated by vacuum, the view of Tel Aviv looking south towards
Herzliya reminded Margolis of the views from Dov Hirsch’s balcony and the beautiful woman he had not seen since Sunday afternoon. He had told her that he had a business trip to Canada and would be unable to communicate until he got back. He was eager to talk to her, but it had to wait for now.

“Welcome home, Amit. Have a seat.” Levy pulled on the back of the chair next to him. Margolis sat down where told while the prime minister sat down at the head of the table. F
iegelbaum sat across from Amit.

“I knew your father well,” Cohen
said. “You know he prevented world war three.”

Margolis first heard this tale from his mother. During his time at Mossad, his father was occasionally talked about, especially by the few old timers who were around. Amit never quite knew what to make of the stories. He heard different versions and they all seemed so improbable. He still remembered the visit to their home by Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the summer of 1983. What he didn’t learn about that visit until he joined Mossad was that Begin had posthumously and secretly awarded his father the Israeli Medal of Valor, the highest decoration in Israel. The medal was now in Amit’s possession, secured in a safe deposit box in Tel Aviv. But despite all of this, Amit had remained
unsure. “Perhaps, Mister Prime Minister, you can tell me about it someday.”

“When the day comes, Amit, it will be my honor.” Cohen opened a bottle of water that had been sitting on the table. “Water?”

“No, thank you sir.”

“Please tell us about your trip.”

Margolis spent only a few minutes reviewing his two meetings with Arkanov. The next twenty minutes were taken up by a discussion on what was required for Israel to honor its side of the deal and the ramifications of the deal itself. During this time, the dialogue was almost entirely between Cohen and Margolis, with the prime minister quizzing the Mossad agent on his opinions and analysis. When they were done, Cohen asked Margolis to leave the room for a minute.

Four minutes later, Shlomo Fiegelbaum opened the conference room door. “Amit,” he called out. Margolis stood and walked into the room. He returned to
the same seat.

“We have a new assignment for you Amit,” said the prime minister. “But unlike what you are used to, there will be no danger and not much travel. I want you to join a planning team that is based right here on the Campus. Before I tell you what it is for, is this something that would interest you?”

“Sir, I have taken an oath to serve Israel as my father did. That oath is in my heart and in my soul. I will serve in whatever capacity you ask of me.”

“I can feel the emotion you have. I must say you inspire me, Amit. Consider yourself part of Yahalom Group. You will spend the next six months planning the attack on Iran’s nuclear program.”

Amit Margolis was shocked. This was not at all what he expected or even suspected. This was a military operation and the only military experience he had was his mandatory three years in the IDF. “I am confused. Why would you want me to do this?”

“Yes, I assumed you would react this way.” Eli Cohen took a sip of water. “As you would assume, we have been planning for this on a contingency basis for some time. Last year our planning had to change a key assumption. We began planning for an operation alone without any active assistance from the United States.”

Amit was surprised, he had assumed that Israel had always been planning for an operation without direct American involvement, at least as a contingency. Prime Minister Cohen continued. “Our problem is that we are, quite frankly, stuck in a rut. The Yahalom Group, the team charged with coming up with the plan, has existed for almost a year. It consists of half a dozen senior staff officers. One is from the navy, two are ground force officers and the remaining three are air force officers. All of them are colonels or generals. All of them are career officers. And all of them think conventionally.”

This still did not answer Amit’s question and his face showed it. Director Ami Levy
jumped in. “You see, Amit, they keep going in circles and coming to the same conclusion. It is the conventional military conclusion …”

“And that is that this can’t be done without the Americans,”
Margolis interjected.

“Exactly,” replied Cohen. “These men are stuck in conventional dogma. We need someone to inject fresh thinking into this group.”

“But I am not a military man.”

“Again, exactly. Any military professional
who joins that group will come to the same conclusions. It is the nature of the profession. I … no, we … no, Israel needs someone just like you to shake up this team. You have imagination and a deeply analytical mind. You need to get these men thinking outside the box.”

“Easy. Use nuclear weapons.”

Eli Cohen started laughing. It was genuine. “Have you been listening in on our cabinet meetings? No, no Amit. That contingency plan is easy enough. The point of your involvement is to come up with a non-nuclear plan that works. The Yahalom Group has one mandate: deliver a plan that destroys the Iranian program without the use of nuclear weapons and that everyone will look at and say ‘yes, that will work.’ Can you do this?”

“Sir, I have already committed. I will join this planning group as you desire. I just want to be sure that this is the right decision for you and Israel. None of these men will even respect me.”

“Amit, that last comment is nonsense,” Cohen responded. “You are how old? Thirty-five?”

“I turn thirty-five this year.”

“Look around you. The prime minister and the two senior members of Mossad are sitting here begging you to undertake this assignment. Do you think this is from lack of respect? Quite the opposite. Look, let me tell you this story. I have known Ami and Shlomo for a very long time. These two men are the best judges of character I know. What it takes to gain their respect is really more than I can contemplate. I came to them two weeks ago to suggest a man for this assignment. Anyone from Mossad or Shabak or Aman or even the private sector. They came back with your name. The only thing I knew about you was your blood lines. But what they described was a man every bit the equal of his father. He would be very proud of you.

“As a last test, I wanted to see how you did in Russia handling the S-300 issue. Believe me, when you came back with the suggestion on the drones, I knew that Ami and Shlomo were absolutely right. You are the man for this. The man to bring a new perspective and shake these guys up. Time is running out, Amit. This is not a country club assignment. We need a working plan and we need it yesterday.”

The room was quiet. The power of any prime minister or president is massive by virtue of the position. But Eli Cohen had the charisma and passion to cause men – and an entire nation – to march to the gates of hell. Margolis had gone from skeptical to excited. “Okay. When do I start?”

“I know you are tired, but I want to introduce you to the group right now. They are across the street in the Matkal Tower.”

“I’m ready.”

Eli Cohen entered the conference room late. He had just finished an interview with CBS News that was intended to air on
60 Minutes
within the next month or two. He was in a good mood. Not because the questions were easy – they were, in fact, openly hostile to the prime minister’s belligerent attitude towards Iran – but because Eli Cohen felt he had proved his points with indisputable logic. Never mind if the
60 Minutes
correspondent believed otherwise, it was the way Eli Cohen always felt. The prime minister was in such a good mood that he already had a cigar fired up and underway as he walked in.

“Gentlemen, please be seated
,” he began. The date was Tuesday, March 9, 2010. “We have a focused agenda today.” The Kitchen Cabinet was formally in session in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Cohen sat in his chair at the head of the conference table. Ben Raibani stood up and walked to the wall to turn on the air filtration system – this role having been long established for him. “We are here to review the latest Esther planning,” Cohen continued. “Esther” was the working codename for the various plans being formulated by the Yahalom Group. “I regret to inform everyone that Mort is still in the United States and can’t join us today.” Cohen had asked Mort Yaguda and his wife to spend the month of March in Washington making the rounds among the politically powerful and influential. It was what Yaguda did best and Cohen needed his skills to be fully employed. Israel was pushing hard to counter what the prime minister saw as the dangerous policies of appeasement being followed by the President of the United States.

Cohen continued. “First I want to update everyone with a critical change since we last met on this topic in December. As everyone here no doubt recalls, that was a lengthy and frustrating meeting. It was, in fact, essentially a repeat of the meetings we had in May and August. Since we have been spinning our wheels, I made the decision to add a new member to Yahalom Group. In early January, we added a young Mossad officer to the group. He is not a military man, but he is a very strong analytical thinker who is very creative.” Cohen paused a moment to see if any questions were coming. Nothing. “The purpose of this meeting is to update everyone here on the state of Esther and to review any key issues affecting the Iranian situation. I believe that Yavi has some important updates, so I will turn it over to him.”

Yavi Aitan looked older than in the prior May, much older. He was on the frontlines of the covert struggle to slow the Iranian nuclear program. The stress of the role he played was showing, and the impact was very clear. His hair, which was jet black at the May meeting, was already showing a salt and pepper look on the sides of his head. His eyes were bloodshot and dark rings now formed a forbidding foundation under them. But his habits were the same. He pulled his seat up and leaned forward against the table. “Thank you, Prime Minister. We have a number of items to review. The first thing I would like to cover is the latest intel we have on Myrtus. As you know, we were successful in injecting the worm into the centrifuge control systems at Natanz. The software worked the way it was designed. The bad news is that the damage so far has been less than we expected. So we did not destroy all of the IR-1 centrifuges in place in Natanz. We did, however, destroy over two thousand centrifuges based on our current best estimate. We …”

“How accurate is that estimate?” asked Minister of Defense Zvi Avner.

“I have a high degree of confidence. The sources for this are multiple and include humint.” Human intelligence meant spies inside the Iranian nuclear program. Having responded, Aitan continued where he left off. “We have had Operation Lead Vault in action for almost a year now and we have committed a lot of resources to this in cooperation with allied intelligence agencies. Lead Vault is the ongoing program to deprive Iran of raw materials they need to build more centrifuges. We have particularly targeted their ability to make or import maraging steel, which is used for the bellows in both the IR-1 and their newer designs.”

Ben Raibani started to ask a question. Aitan raised his hand to acknowledge his thoughts before he spoke. His tone suddenly changed from authoritative to that of a professor in front of a class.
Aitan continued. “Rotor tubes inside a centrifuge are spinning at great speeds. The longer and wider the tubes, the more efficient is the centrifuge. But a long rotor tube is also subject to greater levels of vibration stress. So one way to reduce that stress load is to cut the tubes into shorter sections that are then connected together with joints that combine strength and resilience. These joints are known as bellows. The bellows in the IR-1 combine four aluminum tubes into a single rotor that is one point eight meters long.

“So bellows provide the critical internal structural support for the rotor tubes as they spin and incur vibrations. They allow for longer and larger rotor assemblies. Maraging steel is just a very strong alloy of steel that has a high degree of resistance to distortion. The Iranians use grade 300 maraging steel that has about eighteen percent nickel, nine percent cobalt and four and a half percent molybdenum.

“They have to import all of the maraging steel they use. This type of steel is controlled by the IAEA and is technically banned from Iran. But they use a number of front companies operating outside Iran that acquire controlled materials like maraging steel. They have purchased this steel from mills in Japan, China, Russia and North Korea. Fortunately, international pressure has gotten all but China and North Korea to stop selling. The large Chinese companies won’t sell to Iran but some small steel mills will still do business with a wink and a nod assuming they get a nice profit in the process. We are working hard to end these sources. North Korea continues to supply some but their mills have spotty quality and we are usually able to interdict their shipments. The North Koreans have become leery as a result of our interdiction success. The bad news is that the Iranians are planning on building an indigenous capability. We are watching those developments very closely and will take action as necessary.

“The same analysis applies for carbon fiber, which can be used for rotors and bellows. The fact is that the most advanced centrifuges in the world are now made of carbon fiber. But fewer than a dozen countries in the world can manufacture quality carbon fiber and none of them will knowingly sell to Iran. Just like the situation with maraging steel, we have heard chatter that they are planning on building an indigenous factory. This is very early, so we will have to wait and see what they do.”

Eli Cohen interrupted Aitan’s review. “How did Myrtus work?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I thought I reviewed that at the beginning.”

“No. I mean, how did the virus accomplish the destruction of two thousand centrifuges?”

“Oh. Well, the key, Mister Prime Minister, to understanding how Myrtus does what it does is to understand how a centrifuge works. It’s a precision machine. The internal rotor is spinning at very high speeds, over one hundred thousand RPM in top quality machines. The faster it’s traveling on the periphery, the more efficient the enrichment process will be. But to achieve higher rotational speeds means that the machine must be built to ever tighter tolerances. The slightest vibration at a speed of, say, sixty thousand RPMs, becomes a destructive vibration at seventy thousand RPMs. Plus, every rotor has certain frequencies at which there is a natural harmonic vibration, known as resonance. These types of vibrations place huge stress on the rotor and its components.

“The rotor assembly is the key and it has to be perfectly balanced and aligned. As a result, a great deal of effort is taken to balance the rotor for the design speed. The best analogy I can give you is when you have your car wheels aligned. They may be perfectly aligned at one hundred kilometers per hour but then you get a vibration at one hundred thirty or one forty. That vibration, if you continue to drive at that speed for too long, can damage the original alignment and create a vibration when you are back at one hundred.

“We created – I should be fair and say the Americans created – a program that changes the converter frequency, or the rotational speed, to induce a new vibration for a period of time. If you want the scientific detail, the Americans calculated the average flexural resonance frequencies of the rotor for the IR-1. Notice I used the plural. There are a number of harmonic resonance frequencies for the IR-1. The Iranians operate their centrifuges at a frequency that is just below the fourth resonance frequency. Myrtus increases the frequency to the point of the fourth harmonic. This induces what is called an s-form deformation in the rotor. This particular resonance puts significant stress on the rotor, the bellows, the bearings and even the motor.

“In non-scientific terms, any imperfection in the rotor assembly is magnified by the change in rotational speed. Myrtus does this briefly then returns the rotor to its design speed for four weeks. Then the program slows the rotor down to a very low speed. This does two things. First it induces more vibration imbalance by passing through the first three resonance frequencies, but second, it allows the uranium hexafluoride to condense inside the rotor. Hexafluoride gas is highly corrosive, so doing this can significantly accelerate the corrosive impact of the gas inside each affected centrifuge.

“But we have added a second piece of software to Myrtus. This we came up with ourselves. Not even the Americans are aware of it. The software very quietly adjusts control valves in the piping to allow for a small amount of oxygen to be introduced in each cascade.” Aitan looked at the blank stares and decided to provide more background. He thought for a moment how best to explain it. As he spoke, he was using his hands to illustrate. “Rotors are spinning at great speed. That speed generates tremendous friction with the air, producing drag, heat and stress just like the leading edge on the wing of a supersonic fighter. To eliminate this, the rotor is inside an airtight vacuum casing. Vacuum pumps in the piping and molecular pumps in each centrifuge run continuously to maintain the vacuum and remove any uranium gas that escapes from the rotor assembly into
the vacuum of the outer casing.

“What we have done is to take control of the inlet valves into the vacuum system, which is a centrally managed network of piping for each cascade. We are not eliminating the vacuum completely, we are just making it a partial vacuum. This introduces friction which increases the stress on the rotors and their motors by a meaningful amount. Myrtus also takes control of the vacuum pressure warning systems and makes sure they register that a proper vacuum is being maintained.

“Over time, we expect that this will cut the life expectancy of each centrifuge by at least fifty percent. We think that Iran will have a hard time finding this second method of attack, even after they uncover the core software worm. This method hides elsewhere in a very clever location and the injection is done via an encrypted code that we don’t think anyone is capable of breaking, maybe with the exception of the NSA – and I am sure they won’t be helping Iran on this. We have actually been able to refine this attack on infected machines by using information sent to us over the internet and then modifying the code.” Aitan looked around the room. He was very proud of what the team at Unit 8200 had accomplished, like a teacher whose student was accepted into a prestigious university. “Questions?”

“Yes,”
responded Ben Raibani. “Have the Iranians figured out what is happening with Myrtus yet?”

“Good question. We aren’t completely sure, but it appears that they do not yet recognize that a worm is behind recent centrifuge failures. What we do know is that the IAEA, in
its recent visits, has noted a large number of centrifuge failures at a rate much higher than at any time prior to the summer of 2009. Iran is trying to figure out why this is happening. They are methodically running through the most likely causes of the failures. Since the guys trying to figure this out are all engineers, they think like engineers. They are thinking in the physical realm and tackling the issue from that perspective. We can only hope they continue to think in a conventional manner.”

Aitan thought for a moment and added an afterthought. “By the way, when the Iranians uncover the Myrtus software, which they will inevitably do, there are cruder ways to achieve the same impact on the IR-1 centrifuge. For instance, if we simply disrupt the power source, the centrifuge stops spinning and in the process passes through all of the resonance frequencies as it slows. Likewise, when they are restarted, they pass through the resonance stress points on the way back to the design rotation speed. Myrtus just does this surreptitiously. But my point is that we have, uh, what I will call ‘conventional’ ways of damaging their centrifuges.”

“Even more conventional is to blow that damned site off the face of the earth,” responded Zvi Avner, much to the satisfaction of Raibani.

Aitan wanted to discuss the latest worm that Unit 8200 had come up with and that was now being unleashed in Iran, Syria and other enemy targets by Mossad agents. It was designed to eavesdrop by turning each computer it infected into a big listening device, sending files, logging keystrokes, listening through the microphone and even quietly turning on any built-in video camera. It was so sophisticated that it secretly reprogrammed the wireless card on the computer to interrogate any nearby Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones and to inject any phone it found with a sub-virus, turning the targeted phone into a powerful mobile eavesdropping device for Israel. All of the data
were being transmitted back to servers located around the world but controlled by Israel. It was proving so effective that the men and women working on the project had nicknamed it “Tunnel,” since it created a virtual tunnel into the work and personal environment of its victims. The amount of data being generated was so significant that a separate unit of Aman was being created just to collect and analyze everything coming in. The Tunnel software had been written without American involvement, and Aitan wanted to brag about that fact to the other men in the room. But he had agreed with the prime minister to keep this new cyber weapon secret for the time being.