On the day Alex was killed, the Marine commander tried to keep the news from getting to Harry. He wanted to chopper into the Green Zone and deliver it himself, in person. But Harry was too sharp-eyed. He read the dispatch as it moved over the secure communications net. Corporal Alexander Pappas had been killed by an IED while conducting a raid near Ramadi. He read it once, twice, and then he let out a cry of anguish that could be heard across the cavernous building that housed the CIA station. He fell to the floor and put his head in his hands. People tried to comfort him, but he needed to be alone with a friend he trusted, who was outside this American circle of deceit and death.
Harry went to the office of Adrian Winkler, the British SIS station commander, and when he arrived, he closed the door and began to sob. What he kept saying, over and over, was: “This was my fault.”
Harry dozed off for a few minutes, just before dawn. He was awakened by Andrea, who was calling his name. She had gone looking for him in the bathroom, and in the kitchen downstairs, and even in the recreation room in the basement, never thinking that he had gone into Alex’s room. He opened the door, rubbing his eyes.
“What are you doing in there?” she asked.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Everything,” he answered, shaking his head. “They’re doing it again.”
“Who’s doing what again?”
He looked away. His voice trailed off. “I can’t talk about it.”
She took his hand for a moment, and then let it go. She spoke to him now with a wife’s deep emotion.
“You have to do something, Harry. This is eating you up, whatever it is. You have to do something.”
“I know,” he said. “I will.”
Harry needed to talk to someone he trusted. He went through a mental list. His closest friend from the old days was the former NE Division chief—a little firecracker of a man, rough and profane, who had mentored him when he first joined the agency. He hated people like Arthur Fox even more than Harry did, and he had advised Harry to quit the agency after he came back from Iraq. But he lived in Williamsburg now, and when he came to Washington he liked to have breakfast at his club and gossip about the new crowd and how they were screwing everything up. Harry liked him, but he wasn’t sure he would keep his mouth shut.
A better bet was Harry’s ex-boss, Jack Hoffman, the former deputy director for operations. He was an agency lifer, from a family that had sent a string of brothers, cousins, and uncles to the CIA. Jack had survived them all, but nobody lasts forever at the Fudge Factory. He eventually had been thrown overboard by the White House as one of the designated fall guys for Iraq, and by and large he had kept his mouth shut. He had protected Harry during all the months the White House was bad-mouthing him, and he had tried to give Harry a medal after Baghdad, when he was getting ready to retire himself. But Harry had refused to take it. The idea that he would be honored for Iraq only deepened his sense of shame about Alex.
Harry always called him “Mr. Hoffman.” Never by his first name. He had the manner of a retired Mafia don. He was tough, and talked even tougher, but he kept the secrets. If they told him to go down with the ship, down he went. That was the deal. Harry called him that morning at his home in McLean. He was gardening, he said. Sure, he would be happy to see Harry. He suggested that they meet at a coffeehouse in Tyson’s Corner, near a string of fancy women’s clothing stores. They could talk there with reasonable confidence that nobody would be listening.
Jack Hoffman was waiting for Harry. He had come early to size up the place. Good tradecraft, as ever. He was seated in a corner, with a view of the door and the Louis Vuitton salon next door. He had an unlit cigar in his hand. Harry took a seat next to his former boss. The chairs were small, designed for ladies who shop, and Harry’s large body spilled over the frame.
Hoffman motioned to the waiter and ordered two coffees and a donut. The waiter said they didn’t carry donuts, but that they did have viennoiseries. Hoffman said he’d take one of those.
“And there’s no smoking,” said the waiter, pointing to the cigar.
“I’m not smoking. I’m remembering. Now, go away.” He made a little shooing motion with his hand, as if he were flicking away a bug.
The waiter was going to protest, but something in Hoffman’s manner deterred him. Two ladies who were seated several tables away were looking at the cigar. They whispered to each other and moved to another table across the café. Hoffman turned to Harry.
“What’s up, Harry? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m worried about Iran.”
“You got me out of my garden to tell me that?”
Harry started to apologize, but Hoffman punched him gently on the shoulder.
“Just joking with you, Harry boy. Lighten up. Tell me what’s bothering you. You look like shit.”
“I’m getting squeezed. The White House wants to hit Tehran. They don’t know how yet, but they’re looking at options. They think the Iranians are about to break out. They’re preparing a dossier, just like Iraq. But the intel doesn’t show that. It’s crap. They think we’ve got hard facts, but we don’t. The truth is, I’m not sure what we have. I’m trying to find out, but it takes time, and this crowd is impatient.”
“You think?” said Hoffman sardonically. He had his own scars to show on that account. He put the cigar in his mouth and bit down on it.
“So I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to unravel this ball of string, you know. I’m talking to the Brits, who have a station there. But it makes me nervous. I worry that I’m going to do something wrong. You understand? I worry that I am being disloyal to the White House if I don’t do what they want. But I’m being disloyal to myself if I do. See what I mean?”
“Honestly, Harry, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. You better start at the beginning.”
“Okay, okay.” The waiter brought the coffees and a sad-looking little bun with a crown of spun sugar.
Harry took a breath. Normally he wasn’t nervous, but he found Hoffman intimidating. He started again, lowering his voice.
“Here’s what it’s about, Mr. Hoffman. We have an agent inside the nuclear program. He came in as a VW, and we haven’t met him face-to-face yet. But he has sent us a couple of documents, and they look totally legit to me. The question is figuring out what they mean. The first was a readout on their enrichment program; it says they’re at thirty-five percent, which is close to a bomb, but not there yet. We don’t know how long it will take to get the rest of the way.”
“You need to debrief the agent.”
“Exactly. But that will take some time, and some help from London. And the White House says we don’t have time.”
“Well, tell them to piss off.” Hoffman winked. He knew as well as Harry that defiance was not an option. If you couldn’t do what they told you to do, you were supposed to quit.
“It gets more complicated,” continued Harry. “The Iranian sent us another document. This one was about a triggering mechanism for an actual bomb.”
“No shit! The Holy Grail.”
“Looks like it. The weapons program is back on, for sure. But this second document is hard to read, like the other one. It’s scary stuff when you first look at it, but it’s describing something that hasn’t worked. Maybe that’s the real message our Iranian friend is sending us. Maybe he’s saying, ‘Watch out! We’re trying to build a bomb.’ Or maybe he’s saying, ‘Relax. We’re trying to build a bomb but it isn’t working.’”
“That’s why you need to talk to him.”
Harry nodded.
“Do you know who he is? This Iranian scientist?”
“It took a while, but we finally got a real name and workplace. With help from SIS. The director authorized it, sort of. The White House doesn’t know they’re helping. I think they would shit if they did.”
“Good for the admiral,” said Hoffman. �
��I wasn’t sure he had the stones. So what are you and your British friends planning to do? Can you run him in place?”
“Well, that’s the question. There’s one more data point. We just got a new message. He says he’s scared. Not in so many words, but it’s obvious that he thinks they’re on to him, and he wants to get out.”
Harry thought of the picture of the Iranian actress, and the brief plaintive message.
“But the White House says no?”
“Correct,” said Harry. “Arthur Fox is telling them this is it. They already have the smoking gun. They don’t need any more intelligence.”
“I hate Fox. I should have fired the prick when I had the chance. So what about your agent? The guy who wants out.”
“They want to leave him in place, but use his information in a public dossier about the Iranian nuclear program.”
“That will get him killed.”
“Yes, sir. But that’s not the real problem.” Harry moved awkwardly in his little chair. He wanted to make sure Hoffman understood him. He wasn’t sentimental about losing an Iranian he’d never met. That wasn’t the point.
“I’m ready to sacrifice an agent if we have to. But in this case, we don’t even understand what he’s trying to tell us. Maybe he’s telling us that the equipment is malfunctioning, but that nobody realizes it. Maybe he’s saying that a sabotage program is working.”
Hoffman looked uncomfortable. He put his cigar down on the table and backed his chair away from Harry.
“What would you know about a sabotage program, Harry?”
“Nothing.” Harry thought of his meeting in London with Kamal Atwan, and his promise to Adrian Winkler that whatever he learned there would belong not to him, but to the British.
Harry noticed the discomfort of his former boss. Hoffman was rarely ill at ease about anything, so he was curious.
“So you don’t know about a sabotage program, Mr. Hoffman?”
Hoffman looked around. The coffee shop was nearly empty. Even so, he lowered his voice.
“I didn’t say that,” he answered quietly. “I said that you don’t know anything about such a program. You’re not cleared for it.”
Hoffman had drawn a red line, but Harry decided to step over it.
“Help me out. What would I understand, if I had been cleared?”
Hoffman shook his head. “This subject is out of bounds, my friend. On beyond zebra. I’m deaf and dumb.”
“Don’t play games with me, Mr. Hoffman. My ass is on the line here. These people in the White House want to take the country to war again, and I need to know what the hell is going on. I need a friend right now.”
“Hum, hum, hum.” Hoffman balanced his coffee spoon on his finger, playing for time while he tried to decide what to say. He leaned toward Harry and began to speak again, barely above a whisper.
“We did have a program of the sort you describe. We were running it through Dubai. The folks at Los Alamos put together all kinds of fancy shit. Computers that dropped a stitch. Centrifuge parts that worked for a year but then began to malfunction.”
“What happened?”
“They rumbled us, that’s what happened. They realized that the trader who was supplying all this tainted shit was bad. They tortured him. Very bad scene. He gave up the whole goddamn network.”
“How come I don’t know about this? It’s not in the files.”
“Our biggest successes rarely are, Harry boy. Neither are our biggest fuckups. This one was a combination of both. End of story, unfortunately.”
Harry knew that this was not, in fact, the end of the sabotage story. But he didn’t say that to Jack Hoffman. That information existed in a different space, under a different flag. In his silence, he crossed another line.
The waiter came back with the check, obviously hoping that this set of customers was leaving. Hoffman ordered more coffee and, once again, a donut. He hadn’t touched the bun in front of him. The waiter shuddered. Hoffman put his cigar back in his mouth and the waiter retreated.
“What should I do?” asked Harry. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. The White House is trying to roll us. I don’t trust anyone at the agency enough to tell them what I just told you. But I am stumped. I don’t know what’s right.”
Hoffman looked out the window to the parking lot. BMWs, Mercedes, Lexuses. Maseratis. There wasn’t an American car in the lot.
“Don’t let them do it,” he said. “Don’t let them take the country to war again without real evidence.”
“But I can’t disobey orders. Can I?”
“No. I suppose not. Not technically. But drag your feet. Work with your British friends. Find some way to debrief this Iranian. Make sure you understand what the intelligence means before you let them make it public.”
“Should I tell the director?”
“Would he make you stop?”
“Probably, if I was honest with him.”
“Then don’t tell him. Just do it.”
Harry nodded. He knew that there were situations that didn’t fit the usual categories, but he was uncomfortable with what his former boss was telling him. It amounted to insubordination. Something worse than that, perhaps.
“Do what’s right, my friend,” said Hoffman. “You’re the one who has to decide what that is.” He opened his wallet and dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and then, in what he seemed to regard as a gesture of contempt for the waiter, another ten. He turned back toward Harry.
“This conversation never happened. If anyone ever asks me about it, I’ll tell them I don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.”
“That means I’m on my own,” said Harry.
“Yeah. Pretty much. But that was true anyway.” Hoffman put his cigar in his mouth, walked out the door, and when he reached the open air, lit it and took a deep breath of the pleasing, noxious smoke.
20
WASHINGTON
Harry asked his wife Andrea to have dinner with him Friday night at the Inn at Little Washington, a fancy restaurant about an hour south of their home in Reston. She thought something must be wrong. They used to come there on anniversaries and other special occasions, before Alex died and their easy pleasures ended. She suggested someplace cheaper and nearer to home but he said no, he really needed to talk, and he wanted to be somewhere private and far away. That made her more nervous. What was it that had kept him up all night, that had taken him out of their big old bed?
Andrea went to the beauty parlor and had her hair done, and then went to the little Vietnamese place on Route 7 and had a pedicure. She wanted to look good for him, whatever was coming.
Andrea had been Harry’s dream girl, a lightning bolt, as the French say, from the moment they met in the 1970s. She was tough and smart, but she was also feminine in a way that most women had given up trying to be back then. At teachers college in Waltham, she was pursued by law students and medical students, and even the interns at Mass General. They were all multimillionaires now, those boys who had looked longingly at her short skirts and tight blouses, and it wasn’t that she had disliked the idea of being a lawyer’s or doctor’s wife. But then she met Harry.
Their parents knew each other; that was how they were introduced. Harry was already in the army, graduated from Ranger school and about to make captain. He had been off on missions overseas that he couldn’t talk about, so there was a mystery about him. And he was intelligent—not book-smart like the medical students, but smarter. He knew what ordinary people knew, and he didn’t seem to realize that he was quite extraordinary himself. That lack of pretense was part of what attracted Andrea. He was big and reassuring; when she was in Harry’s arms at the end of their second date, she didn’t want to be anywhere else. And he was a funny man, ready with a wisecrack that punctured the self-importance of the Massachusetts people with whom they had both grown up. He made her laugh, back in those days when things still seemed funny, and they didn’t know what loss was.
Harry ordered cockta
ils, and then a bottle of wine. He was so deliberate about it, knocking back big sips of his whiskey and staring at the empty glass until they poured the wine. He acted as if he wanted to get drunk. But he was tongue-tied, for some reason. What was going on? Andrea wondered. She was frightened.
And then her face fell, because it was obvious: he was going to ask her for a divorce. He had been so far away from her the past few months, taking trips he didn’t even bother to explain, why hadn’t she seen it coming? He didn’t know how to be unfaithful, he was so bad at it. But she had let him slip away to wherever he was now, pounding down the drinks in this too-expensive restaurant until he could find the right words. Andrea wondered what she would say, whether she would cry, what she would do if he left her. Men still flirted with her; she could find another husband if it came to that. She didn’t want to stay married to this man if he didn’t love her anymore. She was as proud as he was.
Harry sat across from her, staring at his glass. He was fumbling for words, trying to frame the question he wanted to resolve. He took her hand in his, but she pulled it back.
“I don’t know how to say this, Andrea. It will probably sound crazy. But I’m trying to understand what loyalty means. I need to talk to you about it.”
“So talk, Harry,” she answered. “But don’t play games. Loyalty is simple. It’s about being true to the people you care about.”
THE INCREMENT Page 17