Weapons of Mass Deception

CHAPTER 30

The Iranians were telling the truth.

Don sat back in his chair and surveyed the stacks of reports arranged in neat piles around him. The master spreadsheet on his laptop accounted for every gram of fissile material that had ever been bought, refined, enriched, or disposed of by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The IAEA had been through every Iranian nuclear facility and verified anything that was verifiable by measurement.

The bottom line was that the Iranians were telling the truth: their program was for peaceful nuclear power generation. Yes, there had been some additional enrichment of material — significant enrichment, in fact, up into the early 2000s — but the Iranians had come clean about that, too. It seemed all the recent posturing in Congress and in Israel, all the dire warnings about the threat of a nuclear Iran, had been pointless.

He switched screens on his laptop to where his report was in draft form. He’d long gotten over the fact that his work ended up on the President’s desk, but this one seemed like a moment in history to Don.

In a way, it was. Since the Iranian nuclear negotiations had been extended in November 2014, his report might be the proof the President needed to bless the pending P5+1 deal with the Iranians. A “green light” assessment would not play well with the hawks in Congress or in the DOD. Heck, most of the CIA was against dealing with the Iranians — but this was one instance where Don was grateful for Clem. True, the guy was an asshole, but in this case, he was Don’s asshole and had been offering the needed cover from those who wanted to influence the outcome of Don’s report.

It had been Clem’s idea to put Don — and all his data — into a secure conference room, complete with his own printer and supply of Diet Cokes. The large table gave him the chance to spread out all the various reports and charts so he could cross-reference them easily. He couldn’t imagine doing this project back in his tiny cube.

He turned back to the report, updating the Executive Summary with his findings, then moving to the detailed final section where he inserted his Excel tables. In the final analysis, he was able to account for every known transaction of raw material and each enrichment step, within an acceptable margin of error.

But what about unknown transactions?

Don’s eyes drifted to the thick file on the floor beside his chair. While all the other folders in the room were stiff and new, with gleaming classification stickers, this one was weathered with age and overstuffed. The faded Top Secret sticker was partially torn. Across the body of the folder, he’d written ROGUE in block letters with a black marker.

That’s what Don had taken to calling it, the Rogue File — his explanation of what had happened to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. He was tempted to add a section to his report on the possibility that Saddam might have moved nukes to Iran in the days before Operation Iraqi Freedom. A footnote, maybe? Anything to let these people know that there was another potential threat out there.

He shook his head. Apart from being career suicide, this would guarantee that his report would be filed in the deepest, darkest hole the intelligence community could find. No, if he wanted to make a claim like that, he needed hard proof.

Don pushed the laptop back and dropped the file in front of him. It made a satisfying thud on the conference room table. He flipped open the cover and found himself staring at the 8×10 photo of the Blade, aka Alizera Mogadaham, most certainly a false name. While they didn’t know his real identity, they were familiar with his handiwork. Don placed the picture to one side and looked at the next one: a Persian knife, called a pesh-kabz. He studied the wicked edge of the curved blade and the ivory handle worn satiny smooth with use.

The Blade had surfaced during the eight-year-long Iran — Iraq War. They knew he was a Quds officer, and his specialty was interrogations — using a knife. Don had seen pictures of a few of his suspected victims and they turned his stomach. Even experienced case officers chose to look away. By the end of the war, Don was told, even the threat of bringing in the Blade for an interrogation was enough to garner useful intel from an Iraqi victim.

The faked Iranian diplomatic passport photo was the only known picture of him. Whatever he’d done after the Iran — Iraq War, he’d kept a low profile. Using facial recognition matching, they’d been able to tentatively place him in Helsinki in June 2005 for reasons unknown, and Brendan had run across the Blade in Iraq twice: once during the 2007 raid and again at the Iraqi MOJ in November 2011. As far as they knew, that was the extent of the agent’s travel outside of Iran. The CIA had classified him as a low-level operative, not worth spending resources on at this time.

Don studied the sharp jawline, the noble nose, and the dark eyes devoid of expression. It was a handsome face, but the deadness in the eyes made him seem unfriendly. He recalled Brendan’s description of the man, his love of Marlboro cigarettes, and the beautiful knife he carried. Not a lot to go on: a handsome Middle Eastern — looking guy with unfriendly eyes, who likes to smoke and carries a knife. He sighed as he restacked the contents of the folder. He closed the cover and rested his hand on it for a moment.

The act of looking at the Rogue File was oddly comforting, like visiting an old friend. Someday, the puzzle pieces in his mind would snap together and it would all make sense. He was sure of it.

He dropped the file to the floor and pulled his laptop back in front of him. For now, he had a report to finish for the President of the United States.