The Disciple

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Brigadier General Dr. Seyyed Hosseini-Tash was a nervous man, Ghasem thought. Today, at the long-awaited test of the neutron generator, he exuded everything but confidence. His uniform was rumpled, and, despite the pleasant temperature inside the tunnel in which they stood, the brigadier was visibly perspiring. Although he was a major general, Ghasem’s uncle Habib Sultani never wore a uniform, preferring civilian clothes instead. In contrast to Hosseini-Tash, who was in charge of the weapons of mass destruction program, which of course included the manufacturing of neutron generators, Sultani appeared collected and in control.

In addition to the brass, there were two men from the president’s office standing here in the tunnel, along with the MOIS enforcer, Major Larijani.

This was the official party, which stood off to one side, out of the way, while a dozen technicians in white coats, wearing radiation detectors on strings around their necks, worried and fretted over various instruments. The instruments were arranged on tables in the center of the tunnel, which ran forward about two hundred feet and ended in a rock wall. Actually the tunnel turned ninety degrees, but that opening was hidden from where the official party stood. Wires from the instruments ran along the ground to the rock face and around the corner.

Down the hidden gallery about three hundred feet was a wall. It had been hastily constructed of material that absorbed radiation. On the other side of the wall, on the tunnel floor, lay the neutron generator, surrounded by a layer of high-quality chemical explosives. The explosives were decorated with six detonators. This whole device weighed but ten pounds.

The instruments the technicians were fretting over were radiation detectors. Finally, after several hours of nail-biting tension while the technicians checked wires and voltages, the senior technician approached a still-perspiring Dr. Hosseini-Tash and told him all was ready.

“Very well,” the brigadier said, glancing at Sultani and the men from the president’s office. “Proceed with your test.”

So this was it, Ghasem knew. The neutron generator would either produce enough radiation to trigger a nuclear explosion, or it wouldn’t. The thing was made of beryllium and polonium-210. Refining the beryllium had required a huge industrial effort; yet even more money, billions, actually, had been spent enriching uranium sufficiently to get usable quantities of polonium and plutonium.

Ghasem took a deep breath and waited until his uncle glanced at him. His uncle raised one eyebrow, then looked away. So he was feeling the tension, too.

The whole thing was anticlimactic. One of the technicians flipped a switch, needles jumped on the dials in front of them, and other needles squiggled black ink lines on a continuous roll of paper. After a few minutes huddled with the technicians studying the lines on the paper, Hosseini-Tash turned to Sultani with a smile of relief on his face.

Ghasem thought he would hear a small pop when the conventional explosive went off, but he didn’t-the thing was too well isolated under and behind millions of tons of rock.

Watching the uniformed brigadier and his uncle, who also looked relieved and proud, confer in low tones, Ghasem was well aware that this test had taken Iran one step closer to the bomb, a weapon the mullahs apparently wanted but, as Ghasem was well aware, the average poor Iranian thought was a grotesque waste of money.

Regardless of the wishes of the man in the street, the bomb was coming: The mullahs were going to get precisely what they wanted. Ghasem thought about that. Well, at least Ahmadinejad was getting what he wanted.

“I got your message,” Sal Molina said to Jake Grafton, who was standing in the doorway to Molina’s cubbyhole White House office. “Come in and sit.”

Molina gestured to a chair, then realized both of his chairs were stacked with files. He grabbed a handful. Lacking anywhere else to place them, he stacked them in one corner of the room. Jake put the rest of them on top of the heap and sat.

“You’re leaving for the Middle East in a few hours, aren’t you?” Molina asked.

“Yes,” the admiral said. “Before I left, I wanted to bring you up to date. Apparently the Iranians tested their first neutron generator ten hours ago. It’ll be in tomorrow’s intel summary.”

“So they have enriched uranium, workable detonators and missiles to deliver warheads,” Molina summarized.

Grafton nodded. “The only thing remaining is to assemble weapons, test them and mount them on missiles.”

“How long?”

Grafton shrugged.

“How did you learn of this test?”

“Rostram’s cousin called our man on Rostram’s cell phone.”

“How did he learn about it?”

“He was there, he said.”

“Is Rostram going to send this news to Azari?”

“Probably.”

“So how do you and Azari stand?”

“He is working for me now, and he knew he was feeding us information supplied by the Ahmadinejad administration. Rostram and the code and all of that are there as window dressing for the NSA.”

“He confessed?”

Jake Grafton simply nodded.

“Is he going to write any more op-ed pieces for the newspapers?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Sal started to say something, then changed his mind. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “There will be no preemptive military strike on Iran.”

Jake Grafton smiled as if he were amused. “Did you give a copy of that memo to the Israelis?”

“They’re with us on this,” Molina said. “The latest adventures with Hamas in Gaza have convinced them that they will lose the war in the court of public opinion if they strike first at Iran. Israel cannot afford to be seen as the aggressor.”

Jake Grafton blinked. “Not even to save the lives of every man, woman and child in the country?” he asked.

“No preemptive strike,” Molina said. He unlaced his fingers and sat up in his chair.

“Was this our idea or Israel’s?”

“I don’t think a postmortem on how we got here will be productive.”

Grafton didn’t say anything.

“After the Iranians fire their missiles, however, we will need to take out their missile manufacturing and warhead production facilities, the reactors and all the rest of it. Today the Joint Chiefs will be tasked for coming up with a plan. They’re going to need all the information you can give them.”

“Sal, I can’t believe this. The president is actually going to let Iran fire missiles armed with nuclear warheads at Israel, or wherever in hell Ahmadinejad aims them, and only then are we going to kick Iran’s butt?”

“That’s about the size of it. Politically, that’s the only option, and the Israelis understand that. If we attack Iran first, we will have World War III on our hands. It will be the Western world versus the Muslim world in the kind of dogfight that breeds hatred and violence that may last for centuries. We simply must let Iran fire the first shot.”

“I think it was Khamenei who noted that only one missile has to get through,” Jake said, “to wipe Israel and the Zionist problem off the face of the earth.”

“The president promised Israel that none would get through.”

“Or what? He’ll publicly apologize?”

Sal Molina set his jaw.

Jake Grafton stood and nodded his head as he processed it. “You’d better tell the military to make it snappy,” he muttered. “I have this feeling that the curtain is going to rise sooner rather than later.”

Although he had felt calm and in complete control at the test of the neutron generator, Habib Sultani certainly didn’t feel that way as he prepared himself for his first appointment with the president after he returned from his Southeast Asian diplomatic mission. Sultani felt like the world was spinning faster and faster. The successful test of the neutron generator was only a small part. The arrest and subsequent death of his father-in-law meant that someone somewhere in power had serious doubts about the Sultani family religious orthodoxy, which went hand in hand with political orthodoxy. Political and religious correctness was the only way to survive in Islamic Iran, and Sultani well knew it.

Then there was the assassination attempt on the president’s life in Indonesia. According to the whispers, it had been a close call for Ahmadinejad. Assassins were waiting in the hotel lobby to murder him. A 100 mm tank cannon shell had missed him by inches. The Mossad, of course-and no one on the planet thought that the Israelis wouldn’t try again.

Sultani tried to push all that out of his mind. He saw himself as a servant of the nation, and he truly believed that a nuclear-armed Iran would be safe from its many enemies, including Israel, America, Russia and Iraq-and Iran was almost there.

He tried to calm himself. Made sure his clothes were presentable and went off to see the president.

Troops surrounded the palace, and four tanks. Sultani had to show his credentials four times to get into the president’s wing of the palace, where he was carefully searched for weapons. After that, he was escorted along a hallway to the foyer of the president’s office. Six armed mullahs were there, and they didn’t take their eyes off him. After an interminable wait, he was admitted to the president’s office. When the door closed behind him, they were alone in the room.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked stressed and tired.

“When?” Ahmadinejad demanded, skipping the social preliminaries.

Sultani knew precisely what the president was asking. “We will have a dozen missiles with nuclear warheads two weeks after you order them into production,” the defense minister said. “We have built one warhead. We can test it underground, then go into production, or we can go straight to production today.”

“How long will it take to test a warhead?”

“About three or four weeks. We must transport it to the desert test site, properly instrument it, then detonate it and check all the data.”

“And if it works as we believe it will, then it would take another two weeks to manufacture identical warheads and install them in the missiles?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ahmadinejad rubbed his hand through his hair, then used both hands to massage his face. He took a deep breath and looked at Sultani. “You know about the Israelis’ attempt to murder me in Jakarta?”

Sultani nodded.

“We are approaching a critical moment in the life of our nation. Our enemies do not want us to have these weapons to defend ourselves. The closer we come to that capability, the more dangerous the situation.”

“I understand,” Sultani muttered, because he thought he had to say something.

“If we test a warhead, underground or aboveground,” Ahmadinejad said, almost to himself, “our enemies will of course learn about it. A nuclear explosion is impossible to conceal. And within hours, I believe, they will launch their attack. I do not believe we can safely test a warhead until we have operational missiles to defend ourselves.”

“If we build a dozen warheads without testing the design,” Sultani explained, “we run the risk that the design will not work as we hoped. A nuclear warhead is an extremely complex, compact machine. If we use all our beryllium and weapons-grade U-235 on a dozen faulty warheads, we will be several more years away from having truly safe, operational weapons.”

Ahmadinejad wiped at his forehead and vigorously rubbed his face again. He leaned back in his chair and took his time answering.

Sultani thought at least a half minute had passed before Ahmadinejad said, “We cannot wait. The political situation does not give us that luxury. We must have warheads as soon as possible. Build them now. Once we have them, we will select one to test.”

“Which missiles do you plan to have the warheads installed upon?” Sultani asked. All the missile guidance systems were preprogrammed, of course, so once the fire order was given, military crews could simply roll the transporter/ launchers from the tunnels where they were housed and fire them. “Since time is a consideration, I suggest we merely select missiles aimed where you want the warheads to go, take out the conventional warheads and install nuclear ones.”

“I haven’t decided,” Ahmadinejad told him. “I’ll study the target list and let you know as soon as possible.”

Both men were well aware of the logistical problems of hauling warheads and technicians all over the country to the various missile sites. That task alone would take up most of the two weeks they believed necessary to do the job. They discussed that, and the possibility that the target list had been compromised, which meant stolen by the enemy.

“Even if the enemy has the entire list,” Sultani said, “we have nine hundred operational missiles. They won’t know which ones carry the nuclear warheads.”

“Even if they knew the precise missiles,” Ahmadinejad said aloud, “they won’t be able to tell one from the other, either on the ground or in the air. If we must fire our missiles, some of them will get through to their targets.”

“I am worried about the accuracy of the missiles,” Sultani confided. “Israel is a very small place, surrounded by Muslims, and the distance is very great.”

“Allah will help us,” Ahmadinejad said, in a tone that indicated he wanted no more discussion of that topic.

Ah yes, Habib Sultani thought. Once you have done all you can, trust in God. Unfortunately, God often seems to forget about the Muslims or is too busy to give much aid. He kept these thoughts to himself, of course.

Sultani rose to go, but Ahmadinejad motioned with his hand. “I heard the sad news about your father-in-law. Tragic. I have no doubt that he is in Paradise now.”

Sultani set his jaw. The injustice of it screamed to be voiced, and on an impulse, he said, “Someone whispered to the MOIS that an aged religious scholar had written something blasphemous, and for that reason alone, he was arrested and beaten until he died.”

“His heart stopped,” Ahmadinejad explained. “A tragedy, as I have said, but I offer no apologies. We must defend the Prophet against the voices of the unbelievers, who seek to create doubts in the simple-minded. The one true faith is under attack from all quarters. Only by defending the faith against all enemies with every means at our disposal, with every fiber of our being, with every ounce of strength our bodies possess, can we earn glory-and Paradise.”

Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Without Allah, and the glory we earn defending him, what reason is there to live? We would be like mice in the field, living meaningless lives. Through the Prophet, Allah promised Paradise. Our task is to earn it.”

He signaled that the interview was over.

Sultani walked out of the office.

The incident in the Alborz Mountains had me severely worried. I figured that the MOIS and Revolutionary Guard guys were going to get stirred up when they found that a helicopter trailing Davar and Ghasem had been shot down. And they would find out-bullet holes are easy for anyone to spot.

Ghasem’s invitation to a warhead factory had been the best offer I’d had since I got here, yet if the security types grabbed him and his cousin for interrogation, I could forget it.

The truth is I was just plain paranoid. Not knowing what the Iranian security forces were up to made it worse.

I expected to get arrested any minute. When that minute passed, there was another, and another.

My jitters amused me for about an hour; then I became disgusted with myself. Nerves aren’t becoming in a professional thief.

Get a grip, Tommy.

Nazra al-Rashid spent no more than ten minutes at the crash site in the mountains before she became convinced the helicopter had been shot down. It had burned, of course, and the Plexiglas had melted in the conflagration, which had pretty well consumed the bodies and all the plastic in the cockpit area.

What was left was scorched metal, which displayed bullet holes quite nicely.

She turned and looked southward toward the pass. Probably when the helo came through, she thought.

As she walked back to her waiting car and driver, one of the MOIS men brought her a handful of spent cartridges and pointed toward the east side of the pass. They were 7.62 × 39 mm. An AK-47, of course. There were millions of those weapons in the country and more millions in surrounding countries, so that knowledge meant little.

The helo had been keeping tabs on Davar and Ghasem. Since Professor Murad had been implicated in writing a blasphemous book, the security forces had been keeping tabs on them. Then someone shot back. Who?

“Who shot down the helicopter?” al-Rashid asked the general in charge of the Revolutionary Guard as she tossed the handful of spent cartridges on his desk.

“We are not sure,” he answered, paling slightly behind his frizzy beard. He had always had a problem discussing business with a woman, but Ahmadinejad had made it clear that he had no choice. Still, the whole situation rankled. Justifying himself to a woman!

“I saw a report that the Ghobadi girl was seen talking to the American spy, Tommy Carmellini. Where was he when the chopper was shot down?”

“I do not know,” the general said starchily. “We were not tailing Carmellini that evening.”

“Why not?” Hazra al-Rashid demanded. “Did you not see my written orders that Carmellini was to be followed around the clock?”

“Pfff,” said the general. “We have not the men for an operation of that size.”

Hazra had not sat down; she was still standing in front of the desk. Now she leaned forward, toward the general, putting her fists on the desk to support her weight. “You will obey my orders, General, or I’ll be looking at the color of your insides. And the president can name a new man to your post, since you’ll be in no condition to continue serving. Do you understand me? Around the clock.”

The general was no wallflower. He hadn’t gotten to the top of this gang of thugs and fanatics by taking crap from anyone. He stood now and, with his fists on the desk, leaned toward Hazra. “Don’t threaten me, whore. Remember your place.” His voice was rising. “This is an Islamic nation. I will not-”

Hazra had thrown open the office door by then, and four men came shooting through. She pointed at the general. “Take him to Evin Prison. Ward two-oh-nine. I’ll be there in an hour.”

The general was shouting and struggling with the four men when she walked out of the room.

Ahmad Fassihi was a secret Marxist. Also, although he was outwardly a Muslim, he believed in most of the tenets of Zoroastrianism and, through some mysterious mental process, had managed to mesh Marxism with this ancient religion. He liked Marxism because of its emphasis on providing the necessities of life for everyone; he knew little about the old German’s views on religion, the “opiate of the masses,” and cared less. The teachings of the prophet Zoroaster, however, spoke directly to his soul. Zoroaster spoke of the one universal and transcendental God, preached that life is a temporary state in which mortals must actively participate in the battle between truth and falsehood and taught that good thoughts, good words and good deeds are necessary to ensure happiness. Had he but known it, he was close to the beliefs of the late Israr Murad, but unlike the philosopher, he had never really devoted much thought to politics or religion.

Like people everywhere, Ahmad Fassihi ignored political and religious tenets about which he knew little, or with which he disagreed. Ahmad Fassihi was, in his heart of hearts, a practical man.

Since he had been wise enough to avoid the MEK, his natural political home, Ahmad Fassihi was still alive in postrevolutionary Iran. Yet, believing as he did, he was a Russian spy, and had been one for twenty years. He received no money for his efforts, nor had he ever asked for any. Passing Irani an military secrets to the Communists was a good deed, a stand that a moral man must make in the battle against evil. After the collapse of Communism, screwing the Islamic fundamentalists became his goal, and his activities continued as before. However, as promotions and increasing responsibilities came his way due to his engineering talents and hard work, the value of the intelligence he passed increased.

This morning Hazra al-Rashid appeared in his office with a secret envelope, one that was numbered and that he had to sign for as she stood watching across the desk. Fassihi waited until the black cloud that was al-Rashid had departed and the door to his office was firmly closed before he opened the envelope and stared at the single sheet of paper that it contained. At the top of the page in Arabic script were the words targets for the jihad missiles. Under the heading appeared twelve positions defined by latitude and longitude. He had no idea what places the numbers represented, nor was he curious enough to consult an atlas and find out.

His job, as head of the Iranian missile program, was to get the guidance systems of the twelve Jihad missiles previously designated by the president reprogrammed to these targets.

This target list, Ahmad Fassihi thought, was a document the Russians would like to have. He was far too careful to copy it on the old Xerox machine down the hallway-the MOIS routinely checked the drum to see what had been copied. Instead, he used a sheet of paper from a notebook to write down everything that was on the secret paper, including the title. He triple-checked the numbers to ensure he had copied them correctly, then folded and refolded the sheet into the smallest square possible and inserted it into a small cavity in the heel of his shoe.

That done, he replaced the secret paper in its important envelope and set off to give new instructions to the department that sent technicians to service the missile guidance systems.

The copy in his shoe he would place in a secret drop, one serviced by his Russian handler. With that small act, he would help the forces of truth overcome the forces of falsehood and evil.

Ahmad Fassihi felt good about himself.