The Disciple

CHAPTER TWO

The air attack upon and destruction of Syria’s nuclear reactor was a media nonevent. Nothing about the attack appeared in either Syrian or Israeli newspapers or broadcasts. The Syrians quickly began cleaning up the reactor site, using the expedient of pushing dirt into the hole with bulldozers, then pouring in concrete. Syria did, however, ask the UN for sanctions against Israel for violating Syrian airspace and attacking a “military storage area.” These sanctions failed when Syria refused to allow an inspection of the attack site and, attempting to silence rumors, denied that it even had a nuclear reactor.

Still, whispers swirled through the diplomatic community worldwide. Unable to stonewall any longer, the Syrians decided to change the lie. A week after the event, the Syrian minister of information acknowledged that Syria had had a reactor under construction, a reactor at least seven years from completion, and that was the site bombed by the Israelis.

Still, the Western press generally ignored the story. Without verifiable facts the story had no legs, and, after all, even if there had been a reactor, the Syrians didn’t have one now.

The unofficial, nonpublic reaction in various capitals around the world was less tepid.

In Washington the president was briefed on the attack over breakfast by his new national security adviser, Dr. Jurgen Schulz, and the director of the CIA, William S. Wilkins. Rounding out the foursome was presidential aide Sal Molina, who this morning was togged out in a sports coat that didn’t go with his trousers. Schulz was dressed as usual in a tailored wool suit and silk tie; he was trim, with a full head of dyed hair, thickened, some suspected, with hair implants. He looked like a natty Harvard professor on government leave, which he was.

Wilkins never made that kind of effort. He was a career intelligence bureaucrat and looked it. He was balding and slightly overweight and wore trifocals, a suit from Sears and a cheap, out-of-date tie.

Since he had just come from his morning workout, the president was wearing sweats.

As breakfast was served by the White House staff-yogurt with fruit, cereal and 2 percent milk-Wilkins asked Schulz, “How come so many of the national security advisers have had German names?”

“It’s fashionable,” Schulz said with a straight face.

When the staff had retired, leaving the four alone, the president said, “What do you have, Bill?”

Wilkins ran through the facts of the attack and the poststrike assessment.

“So the Israelis are at it again,” Schulz remarked. “What are the chances they’ll decide to derail Iran’s nuclear program?”

“The distances are too great,” Wilkins said. “They’ll need our help, and it won’t be a one-location strike. The Iranians have two reactors, three enrichment facilities-centrifuge, laser and heavy water-and an underground bomb-making plant that is impervious to conventional attack.”

“I thought the National Security assessment was that Iran didn’t have a weapons program.”

“Your predeces sor thought so,” Wilkins said drily, “and you know how that came about.”

Indeed, they all did. After the American intelligence community concluded, based on circumstantial evidence, much of it manufactured by Saddam Hussein in the hopes of deterring Iranian aggression, that Iraq had nuclear weapons, the administration had used the erroneous assessment as justification for invasion. The discovery that Saddam did not possess, nor was he building, nuclear weapons had proven to be a major embarrassment. The intelligence agencies were even more embarrassed, and the discredited professionals had decided to insist on verifiable facts before they would again put their reputations on the political chopping block. The entire basis of a sound foreign policy, good intelligence, had gone off the track. Arguably, the assessments immediately went from too aggressive to too conservative-and one was as bad as the other.

“To the best of our knowledge,” Wilkins continued, “the Iranians are enriching uranium. They are not presently manufacturing weapons.”

“What will it take to convince you?” Schulz asked.

“An explosion with a mushroom cloud,” Sal Molina said heavily. A Hispanic lawyer who had been with the president since he started his political career, Molina didn’t have a big title at the White House. In fact, no one seemed to know just what his title was; his refusal to make speeches, attend parties or fund-raisers or talk to the press added to his aura of mystery.

The president broke the silence that followed. “I have read the assessments, read the raw reports the assessments were constructed from, and I’ve looked at the satellite photos. It is beyond dispute that they are spending billions on enrichment facilities. I am convinced Iran is gearing up to make bombs. There is no other logical explanation.”

The president paused to gather his thoughts, then continued. “A nuclear Iran may well prompt other nations in the Mideast to go nuclear. Iran’s leaders are unstable men. Ahmadinejad is a megalomaniac, and God whispers to Khamenei. It’s within the realm of possibility that they could go on a nuclear jihad to wipe out Israel and conquer the Middle East.”

“We can’t attack those nuclear sites,” Schulz said. “If we do, we are likely to release a cloud of radioactivity that will drift God knows where. The Israelis did it and got away with it, but if we do it, the political fallout in this country will be awe-inspiring. Every tree-hugger, green weenie, peacenik and left-wing radical between Canada and Mexico will go ballistic. The firestorm will be even worse in the Middle East; it’ll bring down every pro-Western government, shatter the Middle East like Humpty Dumpty. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put the Middle East back together, not in our lifetimes.”

The president glanced at Schulz, measuring him, perhaps. “No doubt you’re right,” he said, “but I’m not going to sit on my thumb doing nothing while those religious crackpots nuke Israel. When we know precisely what the threat is and how much time we have, then we can figure out the best way to get this mess unscrewed.”

“How much time do we have?” Sal Molina asked the CIA director, who was frowning at his cereal, which tasted, Wilkins thought, like ground-up cardboard.

“I don’t know,” Wilkins said. “Six months, a year, two years…” He shrugged. “Getting good intelligence out of Tehran is extremely difficult.”

“We need it in spades this time,” Jurgen Schulz remarked.

The president put down his spoon and stared at Wilkins. “I know they are gearing up to make bombs. I accept that as proved. I want the CIA to answer two questions: When will the Iranians get operational warheads for their missiles, and, once they have them, what do they intend to do with them?”

Wilkins nodded.

“I don’t want reports quoting some unhappy Iranian scientist or guesses from the analysts. I want absolute, incontrovertible proof. In writing, signed by Ahmadinejad, with his and Khamenei’s fingerprints all over the paper.”

Wilkins looked from face to face, then returned his gaze to the president. “You are asking the impossible.”

“Absolute proof,” Schulz said.

Wilkins took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “We’ll do our best.”

“Keep Sal advised,” the president said. “He can brief me and Jurgen.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wilkins glanced morosely at his cereal, then reached for his coffee cup, which was empty. Sal Molina snagged the insulated decanter and poured him another cup.

Two days after the attack, in downtown Jakarta, Indonesia, a limo with dark windows drifted to a stop by a sidewalk café. A man sitting in one of the chairs near the street rose carefully to his feet and motioned to the waiter. He tossed several bills on the table, then hoisted two attaché cases from the chair beside him as the driver held open the rear passenger door. The man seated himself, the driver closed the door and resumed his seat, and the car pulled away into traffic.

Inside the car the man with the cases sat looking at the backseat passenger, a middle-aged man in an army uniform, one with short sleeves. He had stars on the flaps of the shirt and an impressive array of ribbons on his left breast.

“General Darma. Good to see you again,” the man said.

The general nodded. He knew the man as Hyman Fineberg, but knew that was not his real name. He took his time examining Fineberg’s face. The left side was heavily scarred and didn’t match the right, and his left eye didn’t track. It was artificial, of course, inserted into the socket merely to fill it. Fineberg also had an artificial left foot and ankle, but he walked so well that his gait was normal to a casual observer.

Fineberg’s left sleeve was longer than usual to hide some of the scars on his left hand. The general, who had never seen a day of combat in his life, wondered-again, for this was the third time he had met Fineberg personally-what the rest of Fineberg’s anatomy looked like. He would have been shocked, had he known. Fineberg was the sole survivor when a sabot round destroyed his tank, and there had been days when he wished he had also died. That was years ago, though, when he was young. Now Fineberg lived with his disabilities and tried to ignore them.

The car glided expertly through traffic, even though it was armored and weighed almost four tons. Meanwhile, the general realized his scrutiny of Fineberg was impolite and averted his gaze to the aircraft-aluminum attaché cases.

Fineberg glanced at the back of the driver’s head.

“My son,” the general said.

Fineberg pulled the closest case onto his lap, used a key to unlock both the locks that held it and moved it over to the general’s lap.

The first case was filled with U.S. currency, packs of hundred-dollar bills stuffed tightly inside.

The second case was as full as the first.

“Your down payment,” Fineberg said.

The general closed the cases and arranged them in the middle of the seat. Fineberg handed him the two keys.

“So,” said the general, “have you decided where it will occur?”

Hyman Fineberg took his time answering. “The lobby of the hotel, I think. He stayed in the presidential suite on his last visit. Your people kept the lobby empty for his arrivals and departures. There will be no witnesses, no cameras, no innocent bystanders.”

“He may choose a different hotel.”

“He might,” Fineberg acknowledged, “but he is a creature of habit. One suspects it will be the same hotel, the same suite.”

“He had four bodyguards,” the general mused, “and they were armed. We allowed them their weapons as a courtesy.”

“Of course.”

“How many of you will there be?”

“Four,” said Hyman Fineberg. “We have the money to purchase only one chance, so we must prepare for it wisely and use it well.”

The general smiled and ran his left hand over the top of the attaché cases. “You may not wear uniforms. Civilian clothes only.”

“Of course.”

“No one else must be harmed.”

“I understand,” said Hyman Fineberg. He pushed the button on his left armrest to lower his window an inch, then removed a pack of cigarettes from a pocket. He offered one to the general, who refused, then lit one for himself.

They discussed the murder as if it were a magazine photo op and agreed that whenever another visit was announced, Fineberg would again make contact.

General Syafi’i Darma was philosophical. “No one lives forever,” he muttered. “Life must go on.”

Dag Mosher’s office in downtown Tel Aviv was in a drab, nondescript building a few blocks from the sun-washed Mediterranean. His guest today, Jake Grafton, got the only padded chair in front of his desk. The two technicians who joined Mosher and Grafton sat in metal folding chairs and held their graphs and reports on their knees. They talked for ten minutes. Summing up, the senior tech, a woman in a print dress with iron gray hair that she pulled back in a bun, held a graph where Grafton and Mosher could see it and said, “There was no increase in Syrian electronic activity immediately before or during the attack. This graph shows activity in ten major wavelengths, and as you can see, the lines are essentially flat.”

Mosher nodded.

The junior tech, a man wearing eyeglasses so thick they distorted other people’s view of his eyes, said, “The ECM tapes from the planes show nothing but routine search radar scans were detected. The pilots reported no antiair activity. No interceptors were scrambled by the Syrians. The conclusion is inescapable; the Syrians never detected our planes.”

Mosher nodded and glanced at Grafton to see if he had any questions. He didn’t. Mosher thanked the techs, and they gathered their stuff in their arms and left, closing the door behind them.

“That ALQ-199 is quite a gadget,” Mosher said.

“It is until someone steals the software and sells or gives it to the Russians,” Grafton remarked. “After your attack on Syria, I have a sneaking suspicion that acquiring an operable ALQ-199 or the software that drives it became the number one priority of the Russians.”

“And the Iranians…” Dag Mosher mused.

“And the North Koreans and Chinese. We could make a list.”

“So how are we going to get them one?”

A smile flitted across Jake Grafton’s face. “I am sure you and I can think of something,” he murmured.

A week after the destruction of the Syrian reactor, a tall, lean man in an expensive suit stepped out of a hotel in Tehran and, despite the severe air pollution, lit a cigarette. He had only had a few puffs, however, when a black limousine pulled up in front of the hotel. A man got out of the right front seat and held open the rear passenger door. The tall man flipped his cigarette onto the sidewalk and climbed in.

The tall man was Janos Ilin, and he was a very senior officer in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki), the bureaucratic successor to the First Chief Directorate of the Soviet-era KGB.

After an hour’s creep through horrendous traffic, the limo eased to a stop in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense. The man on the curb who opened the door was in his late twenties and clean-shaven and wore a suit without a tie. Ilin noticed a bulge under his left armpit.

“This way, please,” the man muttered and gestured toward the door. Then he led the way.

Inside the foyer stood two desks, one on either side of the room. At each desk sat two armed soldiers in uniform. Their AK-47s lay on the desk in front of them, and they wore sidearms in belt holsters. A wire mesh ran from floor to ceiling in front of the desks so that visitors couldn’t grab at the weapons. Today there were three people in front of one desk and one in front of another, all in earnest discussion with the uniformed officers.

Trying to talk their way in, Ilin thought.

His escort didn’t bother with the guards but walked straight to the door at the rear of the room. It opened as he approached, and he led Ilin through. There was no visible magnetometer or X-ray machine.

Five minutes and four flights of stairs later, Ilin was ushered into the office of the minister of defense, who was there waiting. His name was Habib Sultani. He was of medium height and wore the fashionable short beard and, although he was a major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-the IRGC-a cheap, rumpled dark suit that looked as if it came off the rack of a Moscow department store. The escort stood in the back of the room with his arms folded across his chest.

Ilin nodded at Sultani and paused to survey the room, which was large. On one wall was a banner that proclaimed in English, in letters a foot high, death to america. On another wall was a large portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.

Ilin glanced back at the escort. This must be the minister’s nephew Ghasem.

General Sultani shook hands perfunctorily, motioned toward a chair and pushed an ashtray across his desk. “You may smoke, if you wish,” he said, then seated himself behind his desk.

Ilin settled into the indicated chair, crossed his legs and took out his silver cigarette case from an inside coat pocket. He selected a cancer stick and snapped the case shut. “Being a good Muslim, of course you don’t smoke,” he said as he stored the case back in his pocket.

“No,” Sultani muttered.

“Too bad,” said Ilin, then lit his weed. When it was giving off smoke, he added, “Every man should have at least one antisocial habit.”

“This attack on the Syrian reactor… The Syrians tell us that the S-300 anti aircraft defense system did not function. Not a missile was launched at the attacking planes; not a single shot was fired.”

Ilin nodded his head once, a silent yes.

“You sold us the same systems.”

Ilin’s nod was barely discernible. He puffed at his cigarette.

“General Ilin… May I call you that?” Habib Sultani paused, then rolled on. “General Ilin, we have the great misfortune, like the Syrians, of dealing with you incompetent, perfidious Russians. The Americans are on three sides of Iran-in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Even as we speak warplanes may be on their way to attack us.”

Ilin examined the glowing tip of his cigarette. “You people are producing highly enriched uranium, and you promised you wouldn’t.”

“Iran must have a stable, modern source of electrical power.”

“Don’t give me that! We both know the mullahs want nuclear weapons and they’ve squandered billions on the facilities to make them.”

Sultani’s voice rose to a roar, and he came out of his chair. “Lies, all lies! You justify an attack on the nation of God with lies! We will not listen. Russia took our money, made promises, and we are left with useless hardware, defenseless against powerful enemies. You tell your Premier Putin that he cannot play us for fools. If he wants cooperation and respect, he will have to earn it. So far he has earned nothing but contempt. Tell him that.”

Sultani sat and mopped his face with one hand.

In the smoky silence that followed, Ilin said, “Obviously, the Israelis were using secret American electronic countermeasures technology to shield their planes from detection.”

“Americans invent, innovate, research… and Russians lie, cheat and steal. Your ambassador assured us that the S-300 system could detect and defeat the latest frontline American and Israeli fighters. We wouldn’t have bought it without that promise, and you and the ambassador and Vladimir Putin know it.” His voice began to rise. “We do not need any more long-winded technical explanations of how clever the Americans are or how they outwitted you Russian geniuses. Nor do we need any more worthless, obsolete equipment that doesn’t work-we already have hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of that.” Sultani opened the top button of his shirt.

“General Sultani, if your reactors are used for peaceful power generation and you don’t enrich the spent fuel for fissile material,” Ilin said coolly, “as you promised us and the international community, you probably have nothing to worry about from the Americans and Israelis.”

“Don’t lecture me or try to dictate foreign policy to the Iranian government,” Sultani snarled. “We are surrounded on three sides by enemies of God. Keep your promises. Give us an antiaircraft defense system that works as you said it would.”

Janos Ilin was still as cool as he was when he walked into Sultani’s office. “The latest American CIA assessment, which they made public, said Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Is that true or false?”

Sultani’s eyes narrowed to slits.

Ilin stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and rose to go.

Habib Sultani stared at Ilin’s back as he walked out, followed by the escort, Ghasem.