The Colonel's Mistake (22 page)

Depleted uranium was used in armor-piercing bullets and armor plating because it was dense, cheap, and only mildly radioactive, but Mark hadn’t heard of a use for it in planes. “Was this
depleted
uranium kept in a lead case or anything?” He still wondered whether it was actually the highly enriched uranium.

“No, it was just wrapped in a towel.”

“And the unit leader handled it himself?”

“He did.”

“And you did what he asked you to? You made the replicas?”

“Yes, out of lead, as I was ordered to do. And since the block of depleted uranium was plated with cadmium, I plated the lead replicas with cadmium too.” He pointed to the electroplating bath and added, “We used to use cadmium to refinish old weapons that take rust. And molds for lead, they are easy to make.” Almost as an afterthought he said, “The only difference between the original block of depleted uranium and the lead replicas I made was that the replicas were hollow, with a cover that was easy to screw on and off.”

“Can you draw us a sketch of what this block of depleted uranium and your replicas looked like? To scale?”

“Yes, of course.”

The camp commander’s office was a drab room, located in a desultory concrete monolith called the castle, near the center of Camp Ashraf. The carpets were worn and the poorly constructed Chippendale furniture looked ready for the dump. A dim incandescent bulb glowed overhead.

In the corner sat an old Compaq computer, which Daria used to Google “depleted uranium cadmium aircraft.”

The computer was connected to the Internet through a phone line and it took several minutes to spit out the information. But when it finally did, thousands of search results came up. The first was a US Federal Aviation Administration memo.

Mark pulled a chair up next to Daria’s. The memo explained how some planes still used depleted uranium as ballast, either in the tail or the wings, because depleted uranium was remarkably heavy relative to its size. When it was used, it was always plated with cadmium to prevent rust.

“That’s it,” said Mark. He turned to Daria. “You get it?”

“That means the uranium could be anywhere in the world by now,” she said.

“Get what?” said the camp commander.

Mark stared at the screen for a moment longer. “This is what happened. Your missing unit leader did bring the stolen uranium
from Iran back to this camp. The problem then was how to deliver the uranium to its final destination.” Mark tapped on the computer screen. “And this tells us how it was smuggled out of Ashraf and probably out of Iraq—depleted uranium ballast from a Lockheed airplane was replaced with enriched uranium ballast that was encased in lead. Now, even encased in lead the enriched uranium might still have thrown off some radiation. Enough maybe to set off airport sensors if the plane was ever checked. But if the sensors went off, no one would think anything of it, because the original ballast was made of depleted uranium, which also would have thrown off a little radiation. That plane probably could have gone anywhere in the world and no one would have known what it was really carrying.”

Daria did a series of new searches and discovered that, while most new planes used tungsten as ballast, thousands of Lockheed C-130 military planes still used depleted uranium. Even a few of Lockheed’s civilian planes—older DC-10s and Jetstar business jets—still used it.

Mark tapped his knee with his hand as he thought. “Do a search of airports in Iraq.”

At that point, the commander said, “Sister Daria. I tried contacting Paris again while you were retrieving Mr. Sava. There was still no answer.”

“I have tried many times as well,” said Daria.

“Something terrible has happened.”

Daria turned from the computer to face the camp commander. “I fear it.”

“It was brought on by the mullahs who are looking for this uranium we stole.”

“I fear that too.”

“Do you also fear that the wishes of our leaders were not honored? That this uranium was taken somewhere it should not have been?”

“I do.”

The commander seemed torn, but only for a moment. “Then I must tell you that while you were retrieving Mr. Sava I spoke with a sister who claims she helped smuggle our missing unit leader out of the camp on the day he disappeared. She believes she was the last person in the camp to see him.”

For a moment the room was silent.

“She told me he was traveling with two extremely heavy trunks, and that it took all her strength to help him lift just one. She brought him to Jalaula—it’s a town north of here, not far away.”

“And from there,” said Mark. “Do you know where he went?”

“In Jalaula there is a road that branches off and leads to Kirkuk. He was dropped off after this intersection and the sister saw him get in a car with two other men and drive north. If you are right and he was headed for an airport, then they must have gone to Sulaimaniyah. It is the only airport in that direction.”

Sulaimaniyah was north of their current position, Mark knew. In the Kurdish region of the country.

“The airport there is new,” said the camp commander. “It was built after the invasion.”

“What kind of planes can it handle?”

“Any of the planes you’re looking for.”

If there was one thing Mark had learned in his twenty years of working for the CIA, it was that most people would believe almost any lie you told them provided that you followed two rules.

The first was that the lie had to be within the realm of plausibility. The second was that the lie had to be framed in such a way that it didn’t appear to be in the self-interest of the person who was telling it.

With those rules in mind, Mark handed the deputy director of security at Sulaimaniyah Airport a business card. It had his real name on it, along with a phony title—executive director of security, US Embassy, Baghdad, and a version of the Great Seal of the United States that he’d downloaded from the Internet.

“Your purpose?”

Mark pulled out his black diplomatic passport.

“A joint investigation is being conducted by the US embassy and the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement.” He gestured to Daria. “This is my assistant.”

He explained that he needed records of all arrivals and departures from May and June of this year. “For both commercial and charter flights.”

Mark wore a charcoal-gray pinstripe suit. A cell phone hung on his belt.

The security official, a middle-aged man with a Saddam Hussein mustache, frowned. He said he thought it could be arranged—eventually—if the request were made through the proper channels.

“They’re not classified documents and Border Enforcement and the US Embassy want them now.”

“For what purpose?”

Mark glanced around the terminal—it was empty except for himself and Daria, a handful of airport workers, and one family sitting in a waiting area off to the right next to a pile of luggage that consisted of cellophane-bound cardboard boxes. He wrote down a telephone number on the back of one of his business cards. “This is the direct line to the ambassador’s office. His people can answer your questions.”

The number was actually for a telephone at Camp Ashraf that would be answered by a twenty-two-year-old MEK soldier who’d once studied at the University of Illinois.

The security official stared uneasily at the number for a moment before saying reluctantly that he would consult with his director of security, who was in Mosul for the week.

“I can see you are uncomfortable giving Border Enforcement access to your records,” said Mark.

“It is simply a matter of—”

“I’m willing to come to an accommodation.”

“Sir?”

“Five hours, five hundred dollars.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’ll leave and come back in five hours. I’ll tell the embassy I got lost. That should give you the time you need to fix the records.”

The deputy director of security stared first at Mark, then at Daria. “And why, sir, would I want to do that?”

“Listen, I don’t give a shit what happens to Kirkuk or the cash that’s been smuggled through this airport. It’s an Iraqi problem as far as I’m concerned. But you want five hours, it’ll cost you five hundred dollars. If you try to stall without paying me, I’ll call the embassy myself and they’ll have a peshmerga general in the airport within the hour. Those are your options.”

The deputy director of security stuck out his jaw defiantly. “You have misjudged the situation here, sir. You have greatly misjudged both me and the situation, I can assure you.”

Ten minutes later Mark and Daria were led to a back room. The deputy director of security unceremoniously dumped a huge stack of flight records on a metal fold-up table.

“The records you requested,” he said. Then, with some indignation, he made a point of saying that the airport security force had nothing whatsoever to hide and would assist the Department of Border Enforcement however they could, as quickly as they could.

The flight records were in Kurdish. Daria was able to translate the headings of the different columns, explaining how one was for the date and time of each flight, one for the destination and point of origination, and another for the registration numbers of the individual planes.

It was a low-traffic airport, with usually no more than ten arrivals and departures per day. Knowing the size of the runway—it was nearly two miles long—and seeing how little use it actually got, made Mark think that the Kurds must be an awfully optimistic group of people.

Many of the registration codes popped up again and again, the same commercial planes making their biweekly runs to Dubai or Amman or Istanbul or Damascus. All Mark really cared about was a few days in July.

He soon came upon a charter plane that had departed on the morning of July 16, at 7:05 a.m., headed for Dubai. Its registration code—M-GBHN—corresponded to a Lockheed Jetstar.

It didn’t take long for them to check the rest of the flights. The Jetstar was the only Lockheed plane on the list.

Daria, who was watching over his shoulder, said, “I don’t have any contacts in Dubai.”

“I do,” said Mark.

New York City

Colonel Henry Amato was being driven down Forty-Second Street in a black Cadillac limousine, en route to the United Nations headquarters, when the call from Iraq came in. Lieutenant General David Obeir, a former protégé of Amato’s who’d stayed in Army Intelligence and had risen quickly through the ranks, was on the line.

National Security Advisor James Ellis was also in the limo, reading a dossier on the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations—with whom he and Amato were about to meet. The meeting would be secret and pointless, Amato knew. The Iranian ambassador would pretend to be shocked at the US accusation that Iran was in the midst of a major military mobilization, and Ellis would pretend to be shocked at the Iranians’ denial.

Speaking into his BlackBerry Amato said, “David, how are you?”

Amato had felt uncomfortable asking Obeir for such a big favor—they’d never been personally close and hadn’t spoken in years—but Obeir had been decent about it.

“NSA got a hit on the names you gave me.”

Amato tightened his grip on his BlackBerry.