Atwan rose to greet them. He was a tidy man, slim and carefully dressed. His hair was a burnished silver-gray, the color of pewter. He was wearing velvet slippers monogrammed with his initials, and a cashmere sweater under a tweed jacket. On the table next to his chair he had placed the book he had been reading when he was interrupted. It was a collection of essays by Isaiah Berlin. Harry noted the book. In his experience Arabs didn’t read much—certainly not books by Jewish philosophers. Beside the Berlin book was a well-thumbed copy of the latest survey published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
Adrian Winker approached the host and kissed him on the cheeks, three times, Lebanese-style. He introduced Harry, not by his real name, but as “William Fellows.” He hadn’t told Harry he was going to give him a work name.
Harry extended his hand to Atwan, who shook it limply.
“Mr. Fellows is American, but you can trust him,” said Adrian. “He’s one of us. Reliable.”
“I am certain of it, my dear,” said Atwan, smiling up at Harry. He took notice of the American’s size and demeanor. “You might almost be Lebanese, if you were not so big.”
“I’m Greek,” said Harry.
“Fellows is not a Greek name, I think.”
“The name was changed. At Ellis Island.”
Atwan motioned them to sit in a sumptuous leather couch and chairs by the far wall. A bottle of white wine was sitting in a silver cooler. A servant arrived to open it and pour them each a glass. It was a 1996 Bâtard-Montrachet; next to it was an open bottle of 1990 La Tâche, breathing a bit before the main course. The two bottles of Burgundy would have cost Harry a month’s salary.
“Perhaps Mr. Winkler has told you about my business?” said Atwan.
“Not at all,” said Harry. “I know only what I can see with my own eyes. Which is that business seems to be pretty good, whatever it is.”
“Good boy, Adrian,” said the Lebanese, patting Winkler on the hand. It was a gesture of such familiarity, almost as if Adrian were a member of the family. Harry pondered the nature of the relationship between Adrian and Atwan, and then put the thought out of his mind.
Atwan tasted the white wine and pronounced it adequate, and glasses were poured for the two guests. The host, it turned out, didn’t drink himself—except to make sure that what he was serving was of the required quality. A servant brought him a Diet Coke. Adrian took a sip of his wine, wet his whistle, so to speak.
“I thought perhaps you might tell my friend Mr. Fellows about some of your recent dealings with Iran,” said Adrian. “He is working with us, as I mentioned to you, and I think it’s important that he learn a bit about some of the transactions that are under way.”
Atwan arched his eyebrows. “How much detail would you like me to share with Mr. Fellows?”
“Some. Not all. Enough.”
“I see.” Atwan smiled. “I should take Mr. Fellows into the library. But not into the bedroom.”
“You might say that. Into the bedroom, even, but not under the covers.”
“Well then, how to begin? I suppose you could say that I am in the import-export business. I obtain products that are scarce in world markets. And then I sell them to people who want to buy them. Not under my own name, of course. I have many companies. They operate so effectively that I can, as you might say, hide in plain sight. What could be simpler? Except that it is not so simple.”
“Why not?” asked Harry. He wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, or why Winkler had brought him here.
“Because I deal in products that are somewhat unusual, my dear. They are not the sort of things you find at Marks and Spencer.”
“Such as?”
Atwan looked to Adrian for guidance. The British spy nodded.
“Go ahead, Kamal. I told you: he’s one of us.”
“Very well. The sorts of products I might be looking to buy and resell at present would include, let me think…fast rise-time oscillographs, to measure very short electrical pulses. That would be one item. And something known as a flash X-ray, which can take a picture of an imploding core. That’s a useful device. And, let me think…hydrodynamic measurement tools that chart the movement of shock waves through materials. And very fast computers that can take data from these measurement instruments and use them to simulate a complex process. I’m quite interested in those, with the proper software tools.”
“Do you perhaps see a pattern here, Mr. Fellows?” asked Adrian with a wink. “Care to hazard a guess as to how one might use this equipment?”
“They’re tools for developing a nuclear weapon,” said Harry.
“You cheated,” said Adrian. He looked over at Atwan, who was sipping his Diet Coke.
“Since we’re playing twenty questions, let me ask the next one,” said Harry. “What about heavy-water reactors? The kind whose spent fuel can be reprocessed into plutonium. Any orders to get one of those up and running?”
Atwan laughed. There was a lightness about him, a Fred Astaire quality, despite the deadly seriousness of his business.
“You have a feel for the market, my dear. I can see that. We have no orders yet to complete that reactor. But I tell you frankly, I would not be surprised to get such a request soon. It is in the pipeline, shall we say.”
“And who are your customers? If I may ask.”
“I am afraid I never discuss that. Except with Adrian. A matter of business confidentiality, sir. Not something to talk about.”
“Go ahead,” said Winkler. “Tell him who you’ve been dealing with recently, Kamal. It’s all in the family.”
Atwan cocked his head suspiciously, but Winkler nodded for him to go ahead.
“Well then, my dear Mr. Fellows. My most recent customer for this scientific equipment has been an Iranian company. It operates through intermediaries, of course. Several layers. But the end purchaser is a company called Tohid Electrical Company. Not very well known to the world. But known to my friend Mr. Winkler.”
Harry didn’t move a muscle. Of course he knew the name. Tohid Electrical Company was the business address of an Iranian gentleman named Karim Molavi. Also known as “Dr. Ali.”
“Sorry,” said Harry. “Never heard of it.” He looked over to Winkler and saw him nod his chin ever so slightly, in homage to Harry’s discretion.
They ate a splendid lunch. A waiter brought stuffed grape leaves and kibbeh and a dozen other Lebanese appetizers, then a fish course of fresh lobster tails, and then rare lamp chops adorned with paper bibs so they looked like little choir boys dressed for chapel; and then a groaning board of cheese with a dozen different varieties. Atwan barely ate himself, just nibbling at the food, but Winkler went at it like a trencherman.
Harry matched him until the waiter brought out a dessert of hot fudge sundaes, which he waved off, but Adrian kept on eating—enjoying every mouthful. It seemed clear that he had sampled Atwan’s cuisine on other occasions and was eating as if he were the man’s own son—or perhaps business partner.
Atwan talked about his library. That seemed to be his dearest possession, more even than the Impressionist paintings that decorated the walls downstairs. He had first editions of all the great English novelists, he explained. Austen, Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope. The British Library wanted to buy his collection but he had refused. The books were his most intimate friends, Atwan said. He had given up on people, but his library never disappointed him. He revisited the books, year to year, always finding in them things he had missed the last time around. He was presently rereading Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, he explained, which was written in the 1870s as new wealth was flooding into London, creating the hedge funds and private-equity billionaires of their day.
“Haram,” he said, using the Arabic word that connotes wrongdoing. “This new money. I do not trust it. It gives people too much freedom. These businessmen think they are gods, come down from heaven. They forget their obligations. That is something I never do. I am loyal to my friends.”
He took the British man’s hand in his, in that same intimate way as when they had first arrived, and held it for a long while.
“And so is Adrian. Loyal to his friends. And so, I trust, are you, Mr. Fellows.”
“How did you like Kamal Atwan?” said Adrian as they exited the townhouse. “I told you that he would be ‘worth a detour,’ as they say in the Michelin Guide.”
“Quite a man. Never met an Arab quite like him. You two seemed mighty friendly. Do I sense that you have, perhaps, a business relationship? Outside the intelligence business, I mean.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell, old boy. Especially not now.”
“I practically fell over when he mentioned Tohid. We need to talk about that.”
“Quite right.” Winkler looked around. A car was waiting, but he didn’t trust it. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Where nobody can listen, eh?”
Adrian marched off on long strides, with Harry keeping pace. They walked along Mount Street and ducked into the narrow lane of Hay’s Mews. Adrian didn’t speak until they were invisible from the larger streets.
“You get the trick, don’t you?” he asked Harry. “I mean, you see what this is about?”
“Your man is selling stuff to the Iranians. So you know what they’re buying for their nuclear program.”
“Well of course, old boy. I mean, fuck yes, we’re monitoring the shipments. But it’s the value-added that matters. That’s what this game is about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well now, Harry, all that technical gear that Kamal was mentioning. Oscilloscopes and flash X-rays and computer simulations. All very precise and calibrated, wouldn’t you think? I mean, these are the tools that you’re using to measure how your nuclear material moves toward the core, for the big bang, right? You follow me?”
“Beginning to.” A smile was forming on Harry’s face. “Tell me more.”
“So think about it, Harry. Since we know who’s buying it, we can go into the warehouse where this cargo is sitting, in Dubai or Islamabad, and make a few, shall we say, adjustments. Nothing that would make a difference at first—or even for a year. Just a little tiny wobble. But over time, that wobble would continue, you see? And those very precise measurements would be just slightly off. And then, relying on them, you would be off a little bit more. It’s like a compass that doesn’t point true north, but you can’t tell that. So you start off thinking you’re going to Birmingham. But blimey, you end up in Penzance. You with me, Harry?”
The London air was moist. A shower cloud was forming to the west. Harry put his hands in his pockets, looked at the ground, and then turned his head up toward Winkler. He was smiling.
“You’re damn right a picture is forming.”
“And what might that picture be, old chum?”
“Our mystery correspondent at Tohid Electrical Company is giving us a readout on the errors. The point isn’t that these tests are working, but that they’re not working. That’s the game.”
“Precisely right, old boy. He is telling us that the sabotage and deception are succeeding. He probably doesn’t realize it, but that’s the gist of his message.”
“Which is the opposite of what Washington thinks.”
“’Fraid so.”
“What the hell am I going to do?”
“Tell you what you’re not going to do, mate. You’re not going to breathe one bloody word of what you’ve heard here today. Remember, you have joined our family. We own this information. We gave it to Harry Pappas, but not to another soul.”
“You’re muscling me, Adrian. I don’t like that.”
“No, we are doing the opposite. We are trying to help stop your government from doing something quite catastrophic. We are helping the ‘special relationship’ stay special. And the only way to do that is by bringing you offside, and whispering in your ear. You have to figure out what to do next. We’re not smart enough for that. Not even your old pal Adrian. This is your show now, Harry. But if you tell a soul what you learned today, I promise that you will bring the house down. On yourself and everyone else. Promise, old chum. Bank on it.”
They walked back to Mount Street, where the car was still waiting. Harry was late arriving at Heathrow, but such was the power of Adrian and his colleagues that the plane had mysteriously been delayed an hour because of a security review by the British Airports Authority. Harry tried to sleep on the long flight home, but he couldn’t.
17
TEHRAN
Karim Molavi’s door was open just a crack inside the white building that housed Tohid Electrical Company. Dr. Molavi had left it that way on purpose—neither open nor closed. He worked on secrets, but he was not secretive. That was the message his door told. They had given him less work the past few weeks, and that made him wonder: Did they trust him less? Had they put his name on a watch list? But those were questions you couldn’t think about for very long. They made you weak.
The young scientist repeated to himself the passage from the Koran that the regime took to be its guiding precept. Amr be marouf, va nahi az monker. Promote virtue and contain vice. That was what he did every day. He had just turned the idea inside out, supplanting the liars’ definitions with his own. He had to be smarter than they were, every day and every minute. That had always been his protection, that he could see things before the others and process them more quickly in his mind.
Molavi was dressed in his usual white collarless shirt, but without his father’s gold cuff links. He had put them in a box and hidden them in his apartment a few weeks earlier. He wasn’t sure why. The jacket of his black suit was neatly placed on a wooden hanger on the back of the door. He had cut his hair so it wasn’t as thick and lustrous; he had looked too elegant before, he feared. People would notice. And he had let his beard grow. Good grooming for men had become dangerous in recent months. The police were visiting the barber’s shops now, warning not to trim men’s eyebrows or the hairs in their nose. It was against God’s will. When Molavi thought of that, it made the idea of betrayal seem easier. Who could not betray such lunacy—the idea that God commands us to have bushy eyebrows?
On his desk were several articles he had printed out from journals in the West. He was underlining them; yellow ink for information that would be useful for the university institute where he lectured once a week as part of his cover; red ink for information that would be useful for his secret work at Tohid. He walked to the window and pulled back the dark curtain. It was so bright outside; it was another world. The push of the traffic, the babies in prams, taken by their grandmas and nannies for a morning walk. The rich men who lived in Jamaran and the poor men who served them—whose biggest secret, nearly all of them, was the dream of what lay between a woman’s legs.
“Karim?” There was a rap at the half-open door and then a push, and his boss, Dr. Bazargan, entered the room. Dr. Bazargan wore a white coat, as if he were a medical doctor or a laboratory technician. He was stupider than the people who worked under him. That was why they had given him the job.
“May God grant you good health, Director,” said Molavi.
“And to you. Thanks God.” Bazargan hovered awkwardly, unsure whether to stand or sit.
Molavi rose and offered him a chair, but the visitor declined. It wasn’t that sort of courtesy call, evidently.
“People have been asking more questions about you, Karim. I thought I should tell you.”
The young scientist blinked, his eyelashes falling like a curtain.
“What are they asking?” said Karim as confidently as he could manage. “Do they wonder how I do my work? Do they read my papers and wish to discuss them?”
“No, Karim. It is not that. I do not think these people are scientists.”
Molavi remained standing. There was a roar in his ears.
“Who are they, then?”
“They are with the Etelaat, I think. Like the men who came before.”
Molavi understood. The Etelaat-e
Sepah. The intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guard.
“And they asked more questions?”
“Yes. They wanted to know things I could not answer. I did not know. I told them they would have to talk with you.”
“They are welcome. My only wish is to serve the revolution and be faithful to the teachings of the Imam. They are most welcome.”
“They will come soon to see you, I think.”
“How soon?”
“Well, Karim, they are here now, actually. They told me to come get you. I am sorry.”
How like Dr. Bazargan this charade was. He could not say the thing itself; he tiptoed up to it. He was almost trembling now. Indeed, he looked more frightened than Karim Molavi, as if something terrible was about to upset his world of privilege here in the Jamaran district. He was not a good liar. He had not embraced his fear and learned to hide in it.
“They are most welcome,” repeated Molavi. He took his coat from the hanger on the door, put it on carefully, and followed Dr. Bazargan out the door.
They put on the blindfold this time, more to scare Karim than to hide where he was going. When they took it off, he seemed to be in the same walled compound off the Resalat Highway. But this time they deposited him not in the modern wing that looked like an Ikea showroom, but in another building. It was older and darker. Even the light inside seemed to have been pressed and shuttered. The walls of the room were decorated with stern posters of the revolutionary martyrs, and with warnings against the treachery of the monafequin, the hypocrites.
Mehdi Esfahani was waiting for Molavi, tugging at his goatee. He shook Karim’s hand when he arrived, but there was a cold menace in his eyes.
“We meet again,” said the interrogator. “What a pity that is, for you. No jokes this time. No laughs at all. I am sorry, but you have disappointed me.”
THE INCREMENT Page 14