The Increment (25 page)

The Iranian gentleman continued east in the Mercedes. His two passengers made their way on foot through the low brush along the seaside. In twenty minutes, they had reached the empty beach house where Molavi and his guide had taken refuge.

The woman in the chador made a sound that was like a warbling birdcall. She waited ten seconds, then made the same sound again, louder. From inside the house came back a similar warble, quickly, three times, answered by a long, low whistle from the woman. The door of the house opened, and Jackie and Hakim swept inside. He laid down his heavy bag and unzipped it. Inside were three automatic weapons.

Molavi watched this pantomime wide-eyed. When the woman entered the room, she removed her chador and approached him in her tight black suit.

“Dr. Ali, I presume,” she said. “You don’t mind shaking hands with a woman, I hope.”

“Not at all,” said Molavi. His face was alight. “I could give you a kiss, madam.”

Jackie smiled. “Not yet, I think. Let’s get you out of here first.”

Molavi looked at the others, waiting for someone to say something, but nobody did, so he spoke up himself.

“And where are we going, please?”

“My dear Doctor, we are going to take a little boat ride. A fishing boat, I should think. The kind that does its fishing after dark. So for now, I suggest that we all get some rest and a little food, if our hosts have been able to arrange that.”

She walked to the kitchen and found cans of tuna fish, a jar of mayonnaise, some crackers packed tightly in cellophane. On the floor was a case of mineral water. In a cabinet was an unopened jar of Nescafé. It was impossible to know whether these supplies had been left thirty years ago, or within the past week. But that was the magic.

October is the month
when Washington tricks itself into thinking that summer’s promise isn’t quite spent. The trees are shedding their leaves in the biological certainty that winter is coming. But humans are not so sure, on a bright day when the sky turns royal blue and the air blows in from another season. This Indian summer is a time to embrace Washington, but for Harry Pappas, it was urgently the moment to leave. He had been getting updates from London, and now the news was coming in a rush as the members of the Increment team deployed in Iran. Adrian had promised to tell Harry when it was time to go, and now the summons had come, not in an encrypted back-channel message, but in a call on Harry’s office phone.

“It’s time, old boy,” said the SIS chief of staff. And that was it. He rung off.

Harry Pappas went looking for his deputy, Marcia Hill. He walked through the Persia House reception area, past the garish poster of the martyred Imam, to Marcia’s cubicle. She was buffing her nails with an emery board, the thin nicotine-stained fingers incongruously capped with perfect lacquered tips. Another woman would have stopped when the boss arrived, but she continued.

“I’m off for a few days,” Harry said. “Maybe a week. Hard to be sure. Don’t fuck everything up while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” She looked at her nails and blew away the dust. “And where are you going? If I may ask.”

“London, first, but after that, I’m not sure.”

“And what am I supposed to tell your…how should I put this…your ‘colleagues’?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Tell them I’m on an operational assignment. Tell them I’m meeting an agent who will only talk to me. Tell them whatever will work.”

“Should I say it’s Dr. Ali?”

“No. If they think they know, fine, who cares. But I don’t want any chatter in the system, anywhere. This could get complicated.”

“How?”

“Just take my word, Marcia. This one has more creases and folds in it than a paper airplane.”

Marcia touched his arm with one of her brown, buffed fingers. It was something she almost never did.

“Are you sure this is the right time to be leaving town, Harry? I mean, there are some people across the river who are ready to start a war with Iran in a week. You’re supposed to stop that kind of nonsense. You are the head of the Iran Operations Division, or at least you were, last time I checked. So we, sort of, need you.”

Harry took her hand.

“Don’t go soft on me, woman. The admiral knows I’m not abandoning ship. So do you. The fact that these crazy bastards are beating the war drums is why I have to go. I can’t explain it to you, but I probably don’t have to.”

“No.” Marcia shook her head. She knew what he was doing, and she knew why he couldn’t talk about it. She loved Harry, and she worried about him. He was carrying too much baggage. At some point, he was going to stumble and hurt himself.

“Call for help if you need it,” she said. “Promise me that, Harry. Don’t let yourself get turned upside down. You’re good, but you’re not Superman.”

On his way out
of the building, Harry went up to the seventh floor to say goodbye to the director. He wanted to keep faith with his boss, without making him complicit in what he was doing. The admiral was in his office, reading cables from a red-striped binder. He was wearing the dress blues today, rather than the summer whites of a few months ago. These admirals sure liked their uniforms. In another life, Harry would get a job running a dry cleaning shop near a naval base.

“I’m off again for a few days,” said Harry, sticking his head in the door. “Marcia will run the division while I’m gone.”

“Is this it?” asked the director, looking up from his cables. “Have you found your man?”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

“Can I tell the White House?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. It’s off the books. It could blow up. I don’t want anyone to get caught in the fallout, including you.”

The admiral extended his hand. He wasn’t an emotional man, but he felt something in this encounter that wasn’t official, but personal.

“Bless you, Harry. Travel safe. Good luck.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry gave a little salute. He saw that the director’s eyes were moist. Even in this building, where the bureaucrats always seemed to be gaining the upper hand, you couldn’t entirely suppress the reality that this business was about life and death.

Adrian Winkler met Harry
at Heathrow the next morning. He looked even more than usual like a rascal—a man who has his hand in the cookie jar and is so sure of himself that he doesn’t care if you catch him at it. He was wearing a fine cashmere blazer, double-breasted with brass buttons bearing the crest of his London club, and gray flannel slacks that fell over his shoes, just so. Harry, tired from a mostly sleepless night on the plane, could only smile at his friend’s dandy appearance.

“Hello, old son,” said Adrian. “How are they hanging?”

“Stop sounding so cheerful. It hurts my head.” Harry took another look at his sleek British friend. “You look like you won the lottery.”

“We
both
won the lottery, Harry. My team is on the way out of Iran. Our team, I should say. And they have our boy.”

“Thanks be to Allah. Where are we going to meet them?”

“Well, well, well. That’s the question, isn’t it? And I have an answer, most certainly do. But first we have a little bit of business to do, on our way into Vauxhall Cross.”

“I’m kind of tired, Adrian. Can I get some sleep?”

“’Fraid not, old boy. This is an appointment we don’t want to miss. Not really a choice, actually. We all have to pay the piper, you see.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Adrian? I don’t have any piper, and I hope you don’t.”

But the SIS chief of staff wouldn’t answer. He patted Harry on the back and escorted him to his Rover sedan, parked in the garage alongside Terminal 3.

Harry fell asleep in
the car, so he didn’t know the destination until they had arrived at the townhouse on Mount Street. It was only then that he understood that the particular piper they were coming to pay was the Lebanese businessman Kamal Atwan.

A servant opened the door and led them upstairs, past the Renoir and the Monet and into the businessman’s magnificent library. Atwan was sitting in a chair looking at a Bloomberg terminal and occasionally punching numbers on his keyboard. He looked up when he saw his two visitors, and then back at the screen.

“A moment, please,” said the Lebanese. “This is an opportunity I really should not miss.” He picked up the phone to call a trading floor somewhere, to confirm that his buy order had been executed. When the business was done, he rose to greet them.

“It’s easy to be smart when other people insist on being stupid,” said Atwan. “If people persist in mispricing assets, well then, you take advantage of that, don’t you?”

“Most definitely,” said Adrian Winkler. “I hope you saved a little piece of the deal for me and Harry.”

The British intelligence officer laughed, and so did Atwan. Harry wanted to believe that Adrian had been joking.

Atwan ushered them to the couches at the far end of the library and rang for a servant to bring coffee. The Lebanese was wearing his black velvet slippers, monogrammed with his initials, a velvet smoking jacket, and an ascot. Harry had never seen anyone dressed in an outfit like that, except in old movies.

“Mr. Fellows and I are about to go on a trip,” said Adrian. “We thought we should stop by and see you first.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you, my dear. I must say. And where are you going?”

“Somewhere on the Caspian coast,” said Adrian. “I was thinking of Turkmenistan. They say it’s quite nice this time of year.”

Harry shot his British partner a dirty look. What was he doing telling this Lebanese businessman their operational plan? And why was he telling Atwan before he had even briefed Harry? Adrian didn’t even glance at him.

“Ashgabat is especially nice,” said Atwan. “And quiet. One can work there without fear of being disturbed. If one knows the local customs. And the headman, of course. I was rather good to the old
baschi,
and the new one realizes he is in my debt.”

“So you’ll tell him we’re coming?”

“Of course. I’ll have someone call with the tail number of your plane. As we say in the East, you are most welcome.”

“Thank you, Kamal Bey. I am most particularly grateful. And so is Mr. Fellows, though he is only now learning of our destination.”

“Don’t mind me, boys,” said Harry. “I’m just here to clean up the mess.”

Atwan laughed. “Oh, very good, yes. Clean up the mess. But Mr. Winkler assured me there won’t be a mess, will there? No! Of course not.”

The coffee arrived, along
with some pain au chocolate and muffins and jam. Harry hadn’t eaten much on the plane, and he devoured what was before him. The coffee roused him, so that he began to focus more clearly. He had the odd sense, sitting in Atwan’s library, that he and Adrian were subcontractors, and that the real chief of this mission was the Arab gentleman seated across from them and dressed in the manner of Fred Astaire.

“Well now,” said Adrian, “we do have a bit more business before we go.”

“Ah yes. There is always more business in your business. And what are we talking about in particular?”

“We will be meeting in Turkmenistan with a young Iranian scientist. This individual is a nuclear physicist who works for Tohid Electric—”

Harry broke in before Adrian could finish his sentence.

“Whoa!” Harry put up his hand. “Hold on a minute. Can I talk to you for a moment, Adrian. Privately.”

Adrian looked at Atwan and shrugged. “We have no secrets here. We’re among friends.”

“Maybe you don’t have any secrets, chum, but I do. So humor me. Let’s find a private place to talk. Now.”

Harry rose and walked across the floor of the library, carpeted with an immense Persian rug from Ardebil. He waited for Adrian, who eventually followed after a hushed apology to Atwan.

“What the fuck are you doing?” said Harry when they were together in an anteroom outside the library. “This is my guy. This is my operation. I don’t have a clue who your Arab friend is, other than the fact that you seem to have your hand in his pocket. And I damn sure hadn’t planned on sharing the details of our operation to exfiltrate my guy.”

“But you already have, dear boy.”

“Fuck you, Adrian. And stop the ‘dear boy’ crap. Level with me or I’m walking out of here right now and never coming back.”

“Calm down. Take a deep breath, and listen to me. Kamal is working with us on some things that are more sensitive than you understand. He is not some Arab lightweight. He is the key to something very much larger than you realize. And he is utterly trustworthy. I assure you. He has far greater reason to stop the Iranians from making a nuclear weapon than does your government or mine. Or even the Israelis, for that matter. So please, relax and come back into the library with me. It will all become clear.”

Harry moved to leave, but Adrian stopped him.

“And please don’t make any more silly threats. This is not
your
operation; I thought we were clear about that. Your ‘guy’ is in the hands of my ‘guys’ at this very moment. There’s nothing you can do about that now. You made your decision some time ago. It’s really quite out of your control now, I’m afraid.”

Harry returned to the
library knowing that he was caught in a box that was largely of his own design. He had set this process in motion, and he couldn’t really complain now that it was continuing along its course, at its own pace and carving its own direction. He had given up control to another service and its network of people and priorities, because he had believed that was the only way to accomplish his larger aim. Now he had to see that decision through to its end.

When they regained their seats on the couches, Harry was the first to speak.

“Sorry, Mr. Atwan. It’s been a long night, and I haven’t had much sleep. I just needed to get some things clear with my partner Adrian. I was the one who originally made contact with the Iranian who works for Tohid, so this is personal for me. I don’t like anyone shopping my kids without my permission. But Adrian tells me that you are one hundred percent reliable, and I trust Adrian. So I trust you. And there we are.”

Harry reached out his hand to Kamal Atwan. They had greeted each other earlier, when Harry first arrived. But this time the Lebanese held the American’s palm in his own for a good twenty seconds. Atwan’s fingers were finely drawn but powerful, like those of a pianist.

“Trust does not speak in words, Mr. Fellows,” said Atwan, finally letting the American’s hand go.

“So let us think
this through, eh, gents?” said Adrian, starting up again. “As I said before, our Iranian friend works for Tohid Electrical. And that, in turn, is a company to which Mr. Atwan has been supplying equipment for some years. Which provides certain opportunities, and also certain difficulties.”

Harry nodded, but he needed to understand this better before he made any more mistakes. He turned to Atwan.

“What kind of equipment have you been selling Tohid?” he asked.

“Very high-end. A half dozen different items, I should think. Adrian has the list. We’ve sold them flash X-ray systems. I’m quite sure of that. We’ve sold them many different kinds of measuring equipment. Hydrodynamics is the name of that area of research, I think. Shock waves and all that. Very expensive.”

“I’m sure,” said Harry with a wave of his hand. He didn’t understand money or care much about it.

“My dear, really, you have no idea. Hundreds of millions of dollars change hands in these deals. In the case of one item the Iranians particularly wanted, the price tag was half a billion dollars. How do you put a price on such an item? It is a matter of life and death, sir. So I—we—charge them what this most unusual market will bear. And we are generous with our friends and business partners. Always.”