Operation Desolation (7 page)

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT GENEVA (UNOG)
OFFICE FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS
PALAIS DES NATIONS
5:47 P.M. CET

Franz Herlicher looked at his paper again with amazement.

He had of late noticed a creeping tendency to type the wrong word rather than to simply misspell the one he'd intended. He blamed the word processor's spellchecker for it. If he misspelled, it caught the error at once. Over the years it had served to improve his spelling dramatically.

But he'd noticed that now he often simply typed a similar, but incorrect word, with nearly the same frequency with which he'd once misspelled words. He wondered if a certain proportion of errors were programmed into the human condition and no matter how hard you worked to eliminate error, error always returned, one way or another.

But that wasn't the problem here. He'd not typed the wrong
word
. This wasn't a matter of inadvertently substituting “tenant” for “tenor” as he'd done earlier that day. No, in the paper he'd distributed he'd managed to mistype throughout it, altering the paper in subtle yet significant ways, finally changing the entire last
paragraph,
nearly every word of it. The reality was that his paper was no longer the one he'd written.

And Herlicher had absolutely no idea how that could be.

The problem had been pointed out to him by his colleague, Lloyd Walthrop, with the UK Foreign Office in London. His e-mail to that effect had been scathing and Herlicher was still blushing from the memory of it. Theirs had been a valued professional relationship and he wanted nothing to tarnish it. After all, Herlicher didn't intend to remain in dreary Geneva among the Swiss forever.

Educated at the Bavarian law facilities in Munich, Franz Herlicher had begun his career with a brief stint in Brussels, working for an odious Prussian he'd despised. When this chance to move to the United Nations came along he'd jumped at it. He'd been promoted to senior analyst within the Office for Disarmament Affairs and was assigned to draft the final committee report on the Iran nuclear weapons program. His first version had been well received with only a few minor suggestions for changes.

This was a break-out opportunity for him, he was certain. The report's conclusions would likely shape world events and it was not unlikely that the entire report, with his name on it, would find its way into the public domain. The best part was that even if the Western powers refused to act, he would still have garnered exposure that made the kind of career he'd always envisioned.

Herlicher had frankly been surprised when the committee had voted to take such a firm stand against Iran. He'd not encountered such assertion in the organization previously. He'd determined early on that the true purpose of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs was not to prevent nuclear disarmament or to even accurately report nuclear developments within nations, but rather to evade commitment and responsibility. It was, he understood, the way of the world.

Don't stick your neck out or it will get chopped off,
his father had taught him. Let the world take care of itself. If anyone was truly interested in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons they'd do something about it, not ask for more reports.

But something had clearly happened to change all that, at least for now. It might have been a sudden realization that a nuclear Iran was a threat the civilized world could not ignore, but Herlicher thought that unlikely. The world tolerated a nuclear North Korea after all. Or it might have been outside pressure, say from the United States, Britain, or even France, even all three behind the scenes, but again he doubted that was the case. The UN was largely impervious to such pressure. Since its inception it had become monolithic, driven by its own internal and self-serving dynamics.

The answer he'd been given over lunch when he'd discreetly posed the question of “Why now?” when the evidence had been there for years had caught him by surprise. It seemed so improbable that he doubted it could possibly be true.

“A source,” the chairman had told him. “A source has come forward with irrefutable evidence.”

“You mean someone came to us instead of the United States?” Herlicher had asked, unable to mask his shock. After all who could trust them? UNOG, for one, leaked like a sieve. Why come to them with such intelligence? Why not sell it to the Americans? That's what they were good at, buying up people and resources.

And why assume that ODA, as his office was known, would act? Its history suggested quite the contrary. Herlicher had been mystified by the explanation.

“Yes. He's an idealist apparently and very well sourced. We now know Iran is about to detonate an atomic device. We know where, we know the scheduled date. The evidence is beyond dispute. It has been decided that we will issue a timely and decisive report.”

“Why?”

The chairman leaned forward. “Because if we don't, the source says he will go to the Americans and it will come out we had the information first. So it's going to come out one way or the other. Better us since it's inevitable.”

Now that, Herlicher decided, made sense. ODA had in recent years been largely discredited. This would change that.

In his office, Herlicher leaned back in his chair, then glanced at the wall where the window should have been, if only he were ranked more highly on the organizational chart. The old League of Nations had constructed the Palais des Nations in the 1930s. The imposing structure had been assumed by the United Nations after the Second World War and was now the Europe an center for that international body. Some 1,600 employees filed into the enormous edifice each day. The building itself was situated in lovely Ariana Park and overlooked Lake Geneva with a magnificent view of the French Alps, neither of which Herlicher could see from his small office.

Should this report not live up to his admittedly high expectations, his plan was to return to the EU, hopefully in a slot above the evil woman he'd left behind. One of the men to help him with that transition was Walthrop, which was why the e-mail had been so difficult. Never before had words on a computer screen seared him with such force.

Herlicher finished his after-lunch coffee and reread the report once again. It summarized the facts leading to the conclusion. He'd asked Walthrop, confidentially, to run through it and let him know if he'd overlooked any aspect his final report ought to address. He'd been intending to curry favor with the man by giving him an advance peek but his effort had the opposite effect.

His first reaction to the e-mail had been to ask himself how the man could have misread his report so badly? Still, cautious as ever, Herlicher had gone to his “Sent” folder and clicked on the attachment to confirm what he'd sent. Perhaps he'd linked to some early draft or even a different report altogether. Something.

And then he'd seen it. In utter and total disbelief he'd stared at the report he'd sent. In shock, he'd printed the thing out and was now holding it in his hand. It wasn't the report he'd written. It wasn't the report he'd attached and sent!

A wave of paranoia swept over him. His immediate thought wasn't “How could this happen,” but rather “Who was doing this to me?” And why? What possible purpose could this serve?

He'd immediately sent Walthrop an explanation but realized how futile it sounded. Someone had entered his computer, bypassing all security, and cleverly altered his words so that the report said the exact opposite of what he'd written. It was incredible. Herlicher struggled to gather his wits as he reconsidered the situation. Who would believe such a story? It was his report, sent from his office, from his computer. How could anyone tamper with it? And if it had been altered, why had he sent it in the first place? That would be the question.

Still, what else could he say? It was the truth. Someone had found a way to change his report. He didn't know how, or when, but
someone
had done it. He followed up by calling Walthrop repeatedly, but either the man was not in his office or he was refusing to pick up his telephone.

Herlicher sat in despair. He wondered if in a moment of insanity he'd really written it that way and now had no memory of the act. Perhaps in some kind of psychotic, self-destructive trance he'd made the changes. He struggled with the thought, earnestly trying to conjure a memory, anything that would suggest such an explanation. There was none.

Iran was poised to detonate a nuclear bomb in less than three weeks. That was the point of the report. That was what he'd written. There'd been no reason, no possible motivation, for him to have written anything else. He had no opinion on the subject, no reason at all for the report to say one thing rather than another. But the report now said there was no evidence to suggest Iran was about to do any such thing.

Herlicher went carefully through the printed report, making a point to highlight every change. When he finished he was surprised there were so few, no more than a dozen words spread throughout, two short sentences rewritten, then the new concluding paragraph. How long would something like that take? Given their totality it didn't seem possible anyone could have done it quickly.

He rose, instinctively straightening his tie as he did, and paced as he thought this through. Could he be actually suffering some kind of breakdown and not realize it? He'd read once that the deeply mentally ill had no idea they were deranged.

Was
he crazy?
Ausgeflippt.
That was the German word for it. His mother had once mentioned one of her uncles in that way but he'd been under the impression the man's aberrations were a consequence of the war and his years in a Russian POW camp. Now Herlicher considered that perhaps that was what she'd wanted him to think. He could recall no other instance of mental illness in his family. Of course, his mother could have been lying.

Herlicher glanced at his door quickly. No one was there. Maybe someone had come into his office and made the change. He locked the door at night as instructed but he wasn't the only one with a key, and to be frank, sometimes he forgot.

Still…someone wanted him to look bad. That was the most likely answer.
Who could that be?
Though he'd been very careful during his time in Geneva there were always enemies, those who disliked him personally, those who sabotaged a colleague for fun, those with an agenda. And there was always the latent hostility toward all Germans you saw throughout Europe. No, any list would be very long and he was sure to omit someone.

Three others had keys officially but how could he know for certain where it ended? He was not the only one ever assigned to this office. They might have kept the key. That's what he would have done. Then there was the cleaning staff. Not all of them were Swiss. Some were Italians.

Then he recalled that he was supposed to lock his computer screen whenever he left his desk, but he rarely did so and it locked automatically after being idle for fifteen minutes anyway. The only way someone could have altered his report was to slip into his office while he was away and
before
the computer went into default mode and required the password.

Herlicher strained to recall the events leading up to the e-mail. What had he done? Had he left the office long enough for someone to make changes? He wiped his brow with his pristine handkerchief.

Now he had it. He'd left his office to use the restroom. He'd finished the final draft and decided to take a break before composing the e-mail to Walthrop. He left the office and passed…Carlos Estancia, his supervisor. Why didn't he think of that immediately? It was so obvious. The man didn't like him. How many times and in how many ways had he shown that? But had Estancia popped into his office during the time Herlicher had been gone and quickly altered the report?

How long
had
he been gone? Herlicher considered it and was crestfallen at his conclusion. Five minutes. No more. That was simply not enough time for anyone to make the subtle changes in the report. And on reflection, the extent and quality of the alterations were certainly beyond Estancia's ability. The man was a moron.

Suddenly Herlicher collapsed in his chair. Now he remembered. He'd performed a final copy edit, then had sent at once. There had been no delay.

There'd been no time for anyone to sabotage his report. None.
Maybe, maybe, I really am losing my mind.

LONDON, UK
WHITEHALL
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
RESEARCH GROUP FOR FAR EAST AFFAIRS
5:33 P.M. GMT

Lloyd Walthrop was still angry with Herlicher. The man had called and left a voice mail and now had sent by e-mail an explanation Walthrop refused to read. The German was a cretin. Walthrop had always taken him to be a weasel but until now he'd assumed the man would deal with him honestly, at least until it was in his interest not to.

He'd first met Herlicher the previous year at a Madrid conference on the state of the Iranian economy. It was an area of official mutual concern. At the time he'd seemed a mild-mannered, if a bit paranoid, German bureaucrat. The only thing notable about him was that he worked for UNOG in Geneva. Even that wasn't especially significant until he'd let drop that his primary duties were with the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs and that he served on the committee tasked with producing any United Nations' status reports and recommendation on Iran's nuclear program. That had caught Walthrop's attention, as he assumed it was meant to.

Walthrop had been pleased at the contact. Since then, they'd exchanged e-mails and reports but in recent weeks he'd impatiently waited for a new nuclear report. Herlicher had been assigned its actual writing and that struck Walthrop as a coup for himself.

Though officially assigned to the Foreign Office, the key aspect of Walthrop's job was to gather intelligence from the various branches of the UK government and to funnel it to those who needed to know. Occasionally he acquired an interesting tidbit from an EU source and when he did, that was so much frosting on the cake. Unofficially, he'd been asked to pay special attention to the imminent UN report on Iran.

According to his sources, the situation there was coming to a head. More than one national intelligence agency was reporting that detonation of an atomic device in the Iranian desert was forthcoming. There was serious talk of meaningful international action. Iran had flaunted the UN inspectors and sidestepped sanctions for too long. His reading of the current state of the world was much as it had been just prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Desert Storm before it: Something was going to happen.

Some of what Walthrop did was presented officially, though confidentially, but the greater part found its way to the necessary hands through informal back channels. From time to time he was called on to brief leaders in Parliament and the office of the prime minister. It had long been this way in British intelligence. He'd attended the right schools, knew the right sorts, and over the decades had demonstrated his loyalty and judgment. Outside certain circles he was unknown, and he very much preferred it that way.

He'd wondered at first if Herlicher had known his true position in the UK government but over the following months realized he did not. He'd targeted Walthrop for no other reason than he worked in the Foreign Office. But once Walthrop had indicated an interest in the German's work, the two had formed the sort of bond that existed between colleagues possessed with mutual needs. The Brit wanted to know what UNOG was going to report before it became common knowledge while the German was looking for a leg up in Brussels. One hand washed the other.

Walthrop turned back to the foolscap on his desk and reworked his report with a pencil. He knew it was all quaint, very archaic; his assistant chided him about it from time to time, but he simply couldn't think straight on one of those computers. He detested the things—and he didn't trust them. After all, the things were now connected, like so many tunnels from house to house, and the so-called firewalls and other security measures built in or installed failed to work with depressing regularity.

Not that Walthrop wasn't a man of the twenty-first century. He preferred travel by jet to the alternative and in the last year had developed an appreciation for video conferencing. He couldn't help wondering about the security of it all but was assured there was no issue and he was careful with what he said.

Still, all those bits and pieces of electronic data out there somewhere was troubling. Better if important information was set down to paper and locked away with a trusty guard outside. Walthrop didn't think of this as old-fashioned, rather as just so much common sense, though he had to admit there seemed a dearth of that in recent years.

One evening he'd expressed, once again, his dislike of computers. His wife had pointed out that his voice was carried by telephone with electronic pulses, that a telly was nothing more than a computer screen—to which he allowed that explained a great deal to his way of thinking. Why his war with the PC? she asked.

He'd explained it to her again. He knew his protestations sounded silly when uttered but there it was.

And, of course, there was another issue. What he wouldn't acknowledge to her was that he didn't type all that well. He'd only learned at university and had never been very good at it. The computer only made things worse by pointing out an endless stream of mistyped words and questionable use of grammar. He preferred to write his letters and reports out in longhand then transfer them by typing into his computer. It wasn't perfect, it was very slow, but his wasn't a fast occupation.

Whatever his reasons he was never entirely comfortable with computers. More than once when he'd opened an interesting attachment he'd inadvertently downloaded a virus. It had happened often enough for his lack of computer prowess to become a subject in the greater office. In fact, he'd had a bit of trouble with Herlicher's attachment as he recalled.

Earlier that day when it arrived he'd glanced at the subject line and felt a wave of satisfaction. At last! He clicked on the attachment, but instead of opening the file he saw the following:

 

OfficeWorks has stopped working.

A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.

Windows will close the program and notify

You if a solution is available.

 

Below the message was a button that read, “Close program.”

Now what was this?
he'd thought. Why would he want to close the program? And just how did Windows expect to get back to him? This was one of those questions he never got an answer to. And if Windows, whatever that was, could get back to him about this problem that meant Windows, or whoever controlled it, knew what was taking place in his computer. That was exactly what he was talking about.

OfficeWorks sounded familiar. He considered that a moment then, slightly embarrassed, realized it was the name of the office word processing program his division used. The bright kids from IT had assured him that almost everyone in the world used it. It was the best there was.

If it was so good,
Walthrop thought,
why did it stop working?

He closed his e-mail program. He'd learned that starting it up again usually fixed any problem he ran into. Then he'd gone to Herlicher's e-mail and double-clicked on the report. This time it opened without a problem. That was more like it.

He now realized that his response to Herlicher the moment he'd finished reading the report had been an indulgence. He'd been needlessly harsh and berated himself for it. The man might be a suspicious fool but he had his uses and now he'd cut him off as a source.

Of course, he'd misled Walthrop badly, and the Brit had made the mistake of confiding his expectations about the results of the pending report to the foreign secretary. Now his professional reputation, or at least his judgment, was at risk. Just the day before Walthrop had received a note reminding him to make available the advance copy of the UNOG report.

He should never have confided his expectations and with that realization he understood the true object of his anger: himself. He shook his head in wonder. Here he was at fifty-two years of age, and still relearning the lessons he'd thought he'd absorbed decades earlier.

It was, Walthrop decided, the excitement that had been the cause. He'd been eager from the moment when he realized he was being provided with an advance look at the imminent ODA Iran report. This was one of those tidbits for which he was famous within his circles. He'd let pride govern his actions.

Not that the UK government ministries gave the United Nations much credence. It had done nothing to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and technology and wasn't likely to in the future. But when the UN, of all organizations, condemned Iran by stating categorically that it was about to detonate a nuclear bomb he believed that would finally compel military action. At long last, the United States, Britain, and France were prepared to initiate a military strike to prevent a nuclear test and to cripple the Iranian nuclear program.

As Walthrop understood it, Iran had scheduled detonation of its first atomic bomb for April 26. The essential fuel to make the bomb possible would be processed and ready about ten days earlier. The UNOG report, Herlicher had told him, was due to be released on April 13. That would give the world powers just three days before the enriched uranium was ready, or thirteen days to disrupt the testing site if that was the plan. These were very short timeframes but for such a vital issue they were entirely feasible. Now what had looked like a near certainty was all at risk because the ODA had buckled at the knees. That was the only explanation he could see.

The thought of Iran with a nuclear bomb scared the daylights out of Walthrop. Ever since the Shah was replaced by fanatical clerics, Iran had been the primary source of financial support to Muslim terrorists the world over. The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East were primarily caused by Iran, which supported both Hamas and Hezbollah. Certainly, Israel did little to help herself but it was Iran constantly tossing petrol on the fire.

Supporting such terrorist organizations with state income was Iranian policy. As long as the mullahs held control of that vast nation with its enormous oil wealth, worldwide jihad would continue. And there were times when Walthrop was persuaded that he was one of the few in the Foreign Office who truly appreciated the inevitable consequences.

Once Iranians had the Bomb, Walthrop had no doubt they'd place it in the hands of nut jobs willing to use it. And if his colleagues in the government took any comfort at all from the thought that Iran would stop with bombing Tel Aviv and that the destruction of Israel would bring an end to this madness they were very much mistaken in his view.

Because Walthrop had not the slightest doubt that the second major city on that list was London itself.

He just couldn't believe that the UN was once again going to back away from the self-evident. Last week when he'd encountered Herlicher in the lobby of the UN building in New York, the German had confided that UNOG had received material from a highly placed source in Iran and that the report he was authoring would give a detonation date and recommend immediate action. Then he'd sent this monstrosity to him instead. More of the same endless dribble. What use was the man? What use, for that matter, was the United Nations?

Walthrop glanced at his e-mail and briefly considered opening Herlicher's new message. His telephone had rung three times since he'd replied to the report and he'd not picked up, letting it roll over to voice mail. The German had nothing to say he wanted to hear.

Walthrop sighed. It wasn't the end of the world—at least, not yet.