Winkler didn’t have a son of his own, so he sort of adopted Alex. When it was finally time to leave Moscow, Alex was referring to the British man as “Uncle Adrian.” Winkler sent him gifts every year at Christmas. They were always books—adventure stories like Captains Courageous and Horatio Hornblower at first, and then later, real war stories about real wars. That was all that ever interested Alex, other than sports.
When Alex died, Pappas and Winkler were both in Iraq, as chiefs of their respective stations. They had that in common, too; they had watched a catastrophic mistake unfolding, tried fitfully to stop it, and failed. But on the day Alex died, it stopped being a policy problem. When Pappas heard the news, he went to Winkler’s liaison office in a half-destroyed building near the palace that served as the CIA station, closed the door, and started to cry. He couldn’t stop. He kept saying, “It’s my fault.” Winkler sat with him. This was a house of grief he couldn’t enter. Eventually he drove Pappas to BIAP and put him on a plane back home to Andrea. A sadder man he had never seen. Winkler flew to Washington several days later, to be with his friend when the body arrived at Dover, and to help put Alex in the ground. Nothing was the same after that, for either of them.
Pappas met Winkler at the antiseptic SIS headquarters known as “Vauxhall Cross,” on the Albert Embankment along the south side of the Thames. Winkler was a certified big shot now. He was chief of staff, which was perhaps a stepping-stone to becoming head of the service. Pappas took the elevator up to the top floor where Winkler had his office, just down the hall from Sir David Plumb, the knight of the realm who was the current custodian of the famous initial “C.” In the corridor were sharp-eyed young men in gaudily striped shirts who noted the presence of the visiting American.
Winkler beckoned Pappas into his office and closed the door. The room was decorated with African masks and spears, which seemed odd if you didn’t know that Winkler had grown up in Uganda. He’d lived on a farm in the bush, until his father was killed. Relatives had arranged for him to go to school at Rugby, and then he had won a scholarship to Corpus Christi. What brought him to the attention of the dons, who in those days still acted as spotters for SIS, was that Winkler spoke the Niger-Congo dialects of Uganda with uncommon fluency. In addition to the facility with languages, they noted that he was a young man who needed a father. He might as well have had SIS stamped on his forehead.
Winkler’s office had a view across the Thames toward Victoria Station and Pimlico and in the distance downstream, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. He motioned for Pappas to sit down on the couch and pulled up a chair for himself. The bulky gray corridor of Whitehall, the SIS version of “downtown,” was concealed behind the riverfront buildings a mile away.
“You look like you got hit by a truck,” said Winkler. It was true. Pappas had deep ruts under his eyes and an unhealthy pallor to his skin.
“Up all night on the plane,” said Pappas. “I thought I could drink myself to sleep, but it didn’t work.”
Pappas was too tired for small talk. And he didn’t want to leave an empty space in the conversation, into which memories of Alex might fall.
“I need a favor, Adrian. I figured you’d take me more seriously if I came in person.”
“I always take you seriously, Harry. It’s one of my life rules. What’s it about?”
“Iran.”
“Very nice. Flavor of the week. Iran and what, perchance?”
Harry cocked his head, as if appraising his old friend one more time, and then gave him a wink.
“This is for you only. You and Plumb, I mean. Nobody else gets briefed, unless we give the okay. Is that acceptable?”
“No. But I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Nope. And if this gets out, I personally will make sure that you never get another secret from Uncle Sugar until the day you die.”
“Gosh! Very intimidating. So Iran, then. How can we be helpful?”
“How many people do you have in your embassy in Tehran?”
“One.”
“I thought it was two.”
“We just had to pull one back. His wife had an ectopic pregnancy. I think that’s what it was. She almost died. He got soggy, asked to come home. Not long for the service, I’m afraid. Pity. Very good at languages.”
“Any NOCs?”
“A few travelers in and out, same as you, but not many.”
“Can your man in Tehran operate? The one who’s still there.”
“Well now, that depends on what he’s asked to do.” Winkler looked at his friend slyly. “You’ve got someone on the hook, haven’t you? Someone good. You lucky bugger. And you need our help servicing him. Is that it?”
“Something like that. More complicated, really.” He paused again.
“God, Harry! Really! You’re less communicative than my daughters.”
“Okay. It’s what I told you in the cable a few weeks ago. We have an Iranian walk-in. Except he didn’t exactly walk, he telecommunicated, through our website. We still don’t know who he is. But he has access to some very good material. Or should I say, ‘seems to have access.’ We call him Dr. Ali, but we have no idea what his real name is.”
“Where does he work?”
“We’re not sure, but we know the general area, from what he has sent us. You can guess what that is, given that I flew over here on twenty-four hours’ notice.”
“The weapons side of the nuclear program. They’ve started up again.”
“Roger that.”
“Those little bastards. Well, we knew they would, didn’t we? Knew they’d never actually stopped. You lads were the gullible ones, frankly.”
Winkler sat back slowly in his chair, as if taking it in. There was an even brighter twinkle in his eyes than usual.
“And now you’ve got a Joe. Well done! And he’s legitimate?”
“I think so. At least his material is. Or so Arthur Fox keeps telling me.”
Winkler made a face as if he had just eaten a bad oyster. “I don’t like that man, Harry. He’s a show horse.”
“Tell me about it. But he has the president’s ear, literally. He’s the one briefing the White House on our new guy. He’s got people so cranked up some of them are ready to drop a bomb on Natanz tomorrow morning.”
“Are they that crazy?”
“Not yet. That’s why I’m here. The director wants me to run our guy like a real agent and extract what he knows. But first I have to find him. We don’t have the assets on the ground. That’s why I’m here. As I said when we started this conversation, I need help. From you.”
“How endearing,” said Winkler. “We always like you Americans when you are needy and vulnerable. It brings out your feminine side.”
“Fuck you, Adrian. But I will assume that means yes.”
They got a map of Tehran and spread it out on Winkler’s desk. Neither of them had ever served there before, but they had both looked at so much overhead imagery of the city that they felt as if they knew it. Winkler put his finger on a spot in the middle of the map, just below a big intersection marked Ferdowsi Square.
“Here’s our embassy, on Jomhuri-ye Islami Avenue. From here, we can get a fix on radio propagation. Does your guy have any commo gear?”
“No. I told you, we’ve never laid eyes on him. He’s just an email address. But from the messages, I have the feeling that he’s in one of the nuclear labs. Maybe the big one in North Tehran, maybe one of the satellite shops under commercial cover.”
Winkler moved his finger up to the top of the map, to a small spot on the edge of the Alborz Mountains, near an old tuberculosis sanatorium that was now one of the city’s main treatment centers for AIDS patients.
“Right here,” said Winkler. “Ground zero for Fox and friends. If they had their way, they would just bomb this place—and take your lad with them.”
“Have you got anyone inside?”
“No. We tell you that every time you ask.”
“I know, but n
ow I’m asking you again. And this time I really need to know. Have you got anyone?”
Winkler smiled, and gave his friend a little wink. You had to trust someone.
“One person,” he said. “A scientist, who goes in and out. He’s sort of a consultant, in physics. He doesn’t have badge access, so he has to be cleared each time. But he can carry radiation monitors and some other gear.”
“Has he ever left anything behind? Any close-in?”
“You mean like needle mikes in the sofa? No. He’s too scared. We’re trying to bring him along slowly.”
“How did you recruit him?”
“We pitched him five years ago, when he was finishing his doctorate at Utrecht University. He was game in Holland, all right, but they gave him such a grilling when he got home, he broke off contact. They do that to all the students coming back. We warned him about it, but he got spooked anyway. The way it worked out was probably good for us, actually. What’s more secure than having no communications, eh? We kept an eye on him through some Iranians who know his family, and when we heard he was doing hush-hush work nobody would talk about, we thought, Bingo! We pitched him again on the street, in the middle of fucking Tehran—and now we had a handle on him, and he knew it.”
“Good case. No wonder you didn’t tell us.”
“He was studying physics, X-ray transport in plasmas, which interested us. Because that’s the key to making a hydrogen bomb work.”
“Oh shit. Are they working on that, too?”
“We don’t know. They’re sniffing around it, if our lad is reliable. He’s not Rev Guards so they don’t really trust him. But this is a long game, isn’t it? We’re working him slowly, so we don’t freak him out or blow his cover. We tried to get him to Dubai six months ago to pick up a new communications device and get some training, but he said no-go. His next out is skedded for Qatar, but he’s worried they’ll put him on the restricted travel list, which maybe is a good sign.”
“What’s his name?” asked Pappas.
“Fuck off! I love you, Harry, but not that much.”
“We need a marked card,” proposed Adrian. “Something you give to your Ali, which our Ali can see. You follow me?”
They had been talking for more than an hour, trying to cobble together the pieces of an operational plan. Harry had gone back over the material he had shared with Adrian when the VW first surfaced, and filled him in on what had happened since. Winkler had been listening, but not all that closely, and there was a restless look in his eye, as if he wanted to get on to the action part. That was when he mentioned the marked card.
“What kind of marked card?” asked Harry.
“Something that requires your guy to leave tracks, which my guy can follow. Let’s say you task him to look for something that my guy knows about, in the area where he’s doing his consulting.”
“Which would be physics, you said. X-ray transport.”
“Just so. And then my guy will hear about it. We’ll tell him to report any particular queries in his area, so he’ll find out who was asking the question. That sound right?”
“Will your Ali suspect anything? I mean, let’s be honest. Your guy could be bent already. I don’t want to risk blowing my guy out of the water.”
“He’s not bent. He’s straight as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Straighter! He’s just a scared kid. But I promise we’ll be careful. We’ll put in a couple of other special requests, so he won’t think this isn’t cricket. Don’t worry, Harry.”
“I like to worry. It’s recreational.”
Harry stared out the window again. The London Eye was turning almost imperceptibly several miles downstream. Harry wished the world would move that slowly.
“How quickly can you get to your guy?” asked Harry.
“In person?”
“Yeah. I don’t think this is something you would want to drop into his in-box.”
“A month or two to arrange a meet outside Iran, if we’re lucky. He can still travel, maybe, but he has to be careful not to dirty his knickers.”
“That’s too long. We need to move now.”
“We could do a crash meet in Tehran, I guess. We’ve got safe houses the station thinks are clean. But I hate to do that. If we expose our guy, then we’ve got nothing at all.”
“Do it, brother. If this works, we’re inside the tent.”
“Does it have to be face-to-face?”
Harry nodded. “The only lie detector that really works is looking someone in the eye. We need it. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
“I’ll need to ask the chief,” Adrian said solemnly.
“He’ll do whatever you tell him.”
“Get your hand off my pud, Harry. I don’t need any extra strokes.”
“Does that mean yes?”
Adrian nodded. “It’s a long shot, but I reckon it’s the best you’ve got. If you don’t find out who your Ali is, he’s useless. And if the Iranians are really building the Big One, you need to know who he is now—yesterday, actually. So what do we task my man to find out—that your man will hear about?”
“I’ll have to ask Fox. Let me work out the details with him.”
“I told you, I don’t like Arthur Fox.”
“Get over it, Adrian.”
“I’ll try. I’m going to have to tell the chief, you know.”
“Of course. I already told you that was okay.”
“And I will have to tell our one-man station in Tehran, so he can tell our Joe what to look out for. Good lad. A kid, but smart.”
“Understood. So long as you don’t tell him why you’re asking the question.”
“And then what do we do, when your lad surfaces? Do we meet him? Do we get him out of the country?”
“I don’t know yet. But I note that you are using the word ‘we’ in reference to this operation.”
“Fucking hell! Of course I am. In for a riyal, in for a toman, old boy. Joined at the hip, you and me. Am I right?”
The door to Winkler’s office opened without a knock just before noon, and in strode Sir David Plumb, Winkler’s boss and the head of the service. He was a sturdy-looking man in his early sixties, with thinning gray hair and traces of red on his nose and cheeks that testified to a career of late-night meetings poached in claret, port, and anything else that was handy. He might have been a senior civil servant in any of the Whitehall ministries, except for the playful look in his eyes. Plumb observed the map of Tehran on the desk and nodded approvingly.
“I heard you were coming, Harry,” said Plumb. “I thought I might join you two for lunch. Talk things over. Where do you like?”
“Anywhere but the Travelers Club,” said Harry. The club was notable for its high quotient of SIS members and its poor food.
“I’ve sworn off the Travelers. Everyone there seems to be working for the Daily Telegraph these days. Even the porter. Tell you what. Let’s go to the Ritz.”
Harry smiled. The Ritz was known to be Sir David Plumb’s favorite spot for lunch. It was fabulously expensive, with prices that would make even a Saudi prince check his wallet.
Sir David went back to his office to collect his umbrella and summon his driver. Harry had something more he needed to say to Winkler, in these last few moments they were alone.
“This may sound strange,” said Harry, “but I have a funny feeling about this case. I don’t like where it’s going.”
Winkler’s brow tightened. “What do you mean? Seems to me like a jolly good case. Don’t you trust us?”
“No, no. It isn’t that. Of course I trust you.” Harry lowered his voice. “The stakes are too high. We are tasking an agent to find out the details of Iranian plans to build a bomb. Suppose they provide the details. What do we do then? The linkages are too tight. How are we going to stop that without going to war?”
Winkler ventured a cocky smile. It was a look Harry remembered from Moscow, back when his friend was the golden boy, the rising star of the service.
“There ar
e ways and ways and ways, Harry. Don’t let them rush you. One thing at a time. And don’t let the worriers push you to make bad decisions. That has become the American disease. Don’t succumb, old boy. You’re the last sane American I know.”
They walked together toward the elevator. Plumb was coming out of his office, fifteen yards away.
“There’s one more thing, Harry, before we go,” whispered Winkler.
“Tell me.”
“Mahmoud Azadi.”
“Who’s that?”
“That’s the name of our agent in Tehran.”
10
LONDON
The maître d’hôtel at the Ritz had prepared Sir David’s favorite table, in a far corner of the dining room by the windows overlooking Green Park. It was hardly a secure spot for a confidential discussion, but that didn’t seem to bother Plumb. He operated as if he were in his own security bubble, trusting those he deemed suitable and ignoring everyone else. The SIS in that respect hadn’t changed much from the old days, when the fact that you had known someone at school, or had dated his sister at Oxford, was deemed sufficient proof of your reliability.
Even in late summer, the trees and lawns of Green Park had a rich, languid color worthy of the name. The foliage blocked a view of Buckingham Palace a half mile away, but the vista remained much as it had been in Victorian times. The British Empire had come and gone—and then come back once again in an unexpected way, as the “little people” of bygone days, Indians, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Chinese, had returned to Britain to spend their newfound wealth with abandon. The gray, gritty days were past. London was as flush and verdant that season as its parks. The Brits were better at post-imperial life than the Americans, but then, they were better at most things.
The luncheon party was merry, good food and wine and especially delicious gossip about their respective services, but it was obvious that Plumb had a more serious reason for asking a visiting American to join him for lunch.
THE INCREMENT Page 9