Palace of Treason (13 page)

Jamshidi’s face was pale.

On cue, Udranka returned with fresh glasses, bending to put the tray down with a metallic thump. Incongruous beside the scotch was a dish of golden cakes dotted with raisins—
shirini keshmeshi
—that Dominika had
asked Udranka to purchase from a Persian bakery in town. Jamshidi goggled at the pastries: Here he was, sitting with a blackmailing Russian intelligence officer, spilling his country’s secrets, and this prostitute was serving him the confections of his childhood.

Udranka sat in another chair, directly opposite Jamshidi, and crossed her legs. The Persian physically twitched, refusing to look, but reduced to fluttering and guilty glances. Nate wondered how things looked from Jamshidi’s vantage point, head-on.

“Think of the furor in your offices at IAEA if Udranka, missing you, unwisely paid a call, asking for you by name,” said Dominika. “These things are so much better managed in discreet venues, like this little apartment.”

Udranka leaned over to take Jamshidi’s glass and poured two fingers of scotch. She took a sip herself and handed the glass to him. He looked at the tangerine lipstick mark on the rim and closed his eyes. Dominika saw that his yellow aura was faded, diluted.

Sparrow manual:
No. 44, “Maximize lascivious impact with incongruous visual, aural, olfactory shock,”
thought Dominika, watching Udranka walk behind the couch, dragging a hand across Jamshidi’s shoulders. Trailing scent like a destroyer escort putting down smoke, she melted back into the bedroom with clicking heels. Nate shifted in his seat, studiously looking at his notes.
God what an engine,
he thought.

Silence in the room. Jamshidi looked at Nate, and then turned to Dominika, glowering, seething, fearful. Dominika’s cobalt eyes held his without blinking.

“The function of centrifuge Hall C …, ” said Dominika, as if the feral charms of a 1.85-meter SVR Sparrow had not been flashed in Jamshidi’s face in the last thirty seconds.

What does the Iranian fear most,
Nate wondered,
exposure to the mullahs or losing off-shore drilling rights with Udranka?
Gable once told him that FEAR stood for “fuck everything and run,” which is what Jamshidi must be feeling right now.

“Enrichment production generally is mired at the two to five percent level,” Jamshidi said woodenly. “The yield to date is approximately six thousand kilograms of low enriched uranium-two-thirty-five. For forty-eight months I have pushed toward the next step in enrichment, thrown all our resources toward making the critical jump to twenty percent. Our uneven
technical expertise has been a hindrance. Assassination of key program scientists at the hands of the Zionists has delayed the push. We have been able to produce only about one hundred ten kilograms of twenty-percent uranium-two-thirty-five.” Jamshidi reached for his scotch, paused for a beat to look at Udranka’s lipstick mark, and took a swallow. He exhaled into the glass, exhausted and beaten.

Nate looked at Dominika to see if she saw the same thing.

“And what does Hall C have to do with this?” said Dominika, relentless.

“I received permission from the Council to assemble ten cascades—seventeen hundred machines—in a separate hall. Hall C is a technical marvel, precisely designed. New machines are being brought in. Quality assemblage, the best technicians, a goal to manage a modest cascade with utterly reliable, uninterrupted performance.” Dominika repeated this to Nate.

“Ask him for what reason,” said Nate to Dominika in Russian.

Another sip of scotch. “We are attempting to boost our limited quantity of twenty-percent enriched stock to ninety percent, even if it is enough for only a single weapon. When Hall C is complete, we are going to push production. In industrial terms, I am commencing a production dash, a
hojoom,
to enrich to weapons-grade uranium.” He lifted his head and pointed his goatee at Dominika. “While the world inspects our facilities and Tel Aviv and Washington and London calculate the months and years it will take the hapless Persians to achieve success in their program, Jamshidi in Hall C will deliver enough material for a weapon, perhaps two, in a very short time, Allah willing.” Dominika translated for Nate, and he could hear the timbre of her voice, unsettled, forcing control.

“When does the dash begin?” said Nate to Dominika.
This intel is going to rock the Intelligence Community,
he thought.
And the politicians in the White House and on the Hill will be wetting their seat cushions, frantically calculating the ramifications.

“The
hojoom
cascade will be tested in stages—primary, secondary, tertiary ranks. We will evaluate individual performance characteristics of the new machines as they are brought online, as well as their collective ability to operate at peak efficiency in a cascade for extended periods of time. This will take a month or two after construction is complete.”

“Ask him if he has current performance figures for each machine,” said Nate. He glanced down at the Line X requirements, way down the list of
questions. “They’re measured in separative work units. SWUs, pronounced
swooz.
”

“I do not have the figures at my fingertips,” said Jamshidi.
Bullshit,
thought Nate.
A scientist—whether Iranian or American—could recite the numbers from memory.

“Doctor,” said Dominika, the acid drip in her voice, “can you give us an estimate?”

Jamshidi looked at them both, his face dark and mottled. He opened his briefcase and took out a slim laptop, put it on the table, and lifted the screen. “I may have some figures in my files.” The laptop emitted a faint whine as it powered up.

Wonder what else is on that hard drive,
thought Nate.
It must be loaded. Maybe time to try something tricky.
Unbeknownst even to Dominika, his TALON device had been recording the entire debrief from inside a slim courier-style strap bag hanging off the back of his chair. Langley wanted it all, the intel, the voices, the Russian requirements, the Sparrow, even how well their own asset DIVA debriefed an agent. Nate felt slightly guilty at deceiving her—especially since this false flag debrief was her idea in the first place—but this was, well,
work.

Nate reached into his bag as if rummaging for a pen, activated a function on the TALON, and put the courier bag on the table, taking care to align the bottom of the bag to be facing and close to Jamshidi’s laptop. If he’d done it right, the TALON would interrogate and download the hard drive via infrared link through an IR transparent acrylic strip along the bottom of the bag. Jamshidi, oblivious, was reading the screen and mumbling.

“I will have to gather SWU values. I do not have them summarized in these files,” he said quickly, unconvincingly.
That’s okay, brother,
thought Nate,
we have them already.

“Next time, then,” said Dominika. “You won’t forget, will you, Doctor?”

Jamshidi shook his head.

“Of course you won’t,” said Dominika. “But let me repeat the question. When does Hall C come online?” Jamshidi’s yellow halo was alternating weak and strong.
He’s conflicted,
she thought,
every fact revealed is causing him physical pain.
They could not continue to squeeze him much longer. He was fading. She began thinking about a second session.

“I will not commence full operations in Hall C without a test period
while we integrate the entire cascade. The seventeen hundred machines are too valuable, our best cascade array,” Jamshidi said. “We still must acquire specialized structural equipment to ensure a stable floor.” Dominika translated this.

“Details,” said Nate to Dominika.

“We are only in the first stages. Procurement agents from our Atomic Energy Organization of Iran are canvassing industry sources.” Nate almost looked at Dominika, who shot him a glance.

“Who are these AEOI reps? What countries? How long?” asked Dominika. Jamshidi abruptly closed the screen of his laptop.

“No more for tonight,” said Jamshidi. “I need to collect more notes, to gather the information you ask for.”
A temporizing delay, but acceptable for now,
thought Dominika. She looked over and nodded at Nate. An agent operating under compromise was delicate, brittle, especially in the early stages. They wouldn’t push him further tonight. Nate nodded back. They had gotten a lot.

“Very well, Doctor,” said Dominika. “We specifically request this information on future procurement of structural equipment. We will meet in seven days, at this apartment, at the same time. Is that convenient for you?”

Jamshidi scowled and muttered, “I suppose so,” stuffed his laptop into his briefcase, and rose from the couch. Nate and Dominika stayed seated—no deference, no respect, keep him down—as he headed to the door.

Again on cue, Udranka came out of the bedroom and helped him shrug on his suit coat. From the entryway, Nate and Dominika heard her low tones and hot-velvet chuckle, telling him in syrupy French that she would see him tomorrow night, make him forget this beastly business; they’d play a little of his favorite game, all right? More laughter, a whisper. Jamshidi said good night and they heard the apartment door close, then the click of Udranka’s heels as she came back into the living room. She poured three fingers of scotch and took a long swallow. She heeled out of one shoe, then kicked off the other, and stood barefoot in front of them, expressionless, her legs elegant and slim in a model’s hipshot pose. If she had been a smokestack she would have been trailing a plume of live steam.

“Guess,” Udranka said to Nate and Dominika. They looked up at her.

“He wanted to come back tonight, late. Can you imagine?”

“It must have been all the talk about enriching uranium,” Dominika said.

Dominika traveled to Moscow the next morning, and Nate flew to Athens the same afternoon. A day later in Athens Station, three twitchy analysts from PROD—none older than twenty seven—had reviewed the (successful) IR download of Jamshidi’s laptop, along with the translated transcript of the debriefing. DCOS Gable, COS Forsyth, and Nate sat in the Station’s acoustically shielded enclosure, on one side of the table, listening to their preliminary readout.

“Some of this is going straight into the President’s Daily Brief,” said an analyst named Westfall. He swallowed approximately once every three seconds, his Adam’s apple bobbing each time. “You have a lot here: production values, enrichment rates, feed stock numbers. PDB lead item for sure. The download of his laptop was awesome.”

“The intelligence about the production dash in Hall C is going to shake up our assessments from Washington to Tel Aviv,” said Barnes, another analyst. “The Israelis will be pleased. This vindicates their estimates.” The wrapper of a candy bar stuck out of his shirt pocket. He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“We’ve prepared follow-up requirements for next week’s meeting,” said the third analyst, clicking her pen incessantly. Her name was Bromley and she had red hair and green eyes.
She would be pretty if it weren’t for the adult braces,
thought Nate. Her face was shiny with sweat. Gable scowled at her.

“You want to stop with the pen, hon?” said Gable. “It’s gonna combust any fucking minute.”

“Sorry,” said Bromley, red faced.

Beside her, Westfall swallowed and said, “Claustrophobia.”

“What?” said Gable.

“Fear of confined spaces,” said Barnes.

“I know what claustrophobia is,” said Gable.

“Bromley doesn’t like closed rooms,” said Westfall, looking at the Lucite walls of the ACR. “This room makes her nervous.” Bromley reached again for her pen, but stopped at Gable’s glance.

“What about airplane toilets?” said Gable, looking at Bromley.

All three analysts shook their heads. “Definitely not,” said Bromley.

“I guess that rules out the Mile-High Club,” said Gable. The analysts looked at one another.

“Forget it,” said Gable.

Forsyth rustled some paper. “Guys, can you highlight the most important questions Nate has to ask the source? What are the missing pieces?”

“Reliability of the seventeen hundred machines working in a cascade. That’s the key,” said Barnes. “Performance test results.”

“Or possibly enrichment curves, once the cascade begins operation,” said Westfall.

“Possibly,” agreed Barnes, “but don’t forget SWU values.” Nate could feel Gable swell in the seat beside him.

“In fucking English, please,” said Gable.

Westfall sat up and swallowed. “Think of a centrifuge cascade as a dense forest of six-foot tubes, thousands of tubes. Each centrifuge is enclosed in an outer casing, and inside it spins at a screaming seventeen thousand revolutions a minute, perfectly balanced. Gaseous, radioactive feed stock is pumped in, and the centrifugal force separates lighter uranium-two-thirty-five, which is pumped out and fed to the next centrifuge in line and so on, in a repetitive, purifying cascading process. The purer the uranium-two-thirty-five, the more enriched it is. In a big cascade, the percentage of uranium enrichment rises constantly, through two, twenty, eighty percent. Ninety percent enriched is weapons grade, material ready to be used in a device.”

“Device, as in a nuke?” said Gable.

Barnes nodded. “The whole process is a little more complicated, because you have uranium hexafluoride and uranium-two-thirty-eight and—”

Gable held up his hand. “Stop. I got everything I need to know.”

“So what’s critical with this new development, this secret Hall C of Jamshidi’s, is the rate of enrichment it can manage, right?” said Forsyth.

“Nope,” said Bromley, leaning forward. It seemed she had forgotten her discomfort. “There’s something special; they’re building it differently from the other halls.” The other two analysts looked at her and nodded their heads.

“He mentioned an advanced design,” said Barnes.

“He wants Hall C to be reliable, no production interruptions,” said Westfall. “Based on what the source told you during the debrief, they’re including a seismic floor.”

“What’s a seismic floor?” asked Nate.

The analysts looked at one another, smiling slightly, as if he had just asked what video games were.

“A cascade hall has to have a floor that’s both level and flat to within one ten-thousandth of an inch over many square feet,” said Bromley. “The cascade also has to be isolated from vibrations caused by earthquakes.”

“Natanz is in an earthquake zone,” said Barnes.

“The Kazerun Fault area,” said Westfall. “We researched it.”

“It’s a strike-slip fault zone,” said Bromley. “That means—”

Gable held up his hand. “Do you guys have a recipe for cherry pie?” The three analysts looked at one another to check, then shook their heads.

“Keep going,” said Gable.

“After we read Jamshidi’s downloaded data, we started looking into high-tolerance, reactive industrial flooring,” said Bromley, looking at Nate. “It’s pretty sophisticated, built for labs and missile silos and precision machine shops.”

“Tell us,” said Nate.

“To simplify it,” said Westfall, looking sideways at Gable, “there’s a framework skeleton of aluminum beams under the honeycomb floor that’s controlled by piezoelectric strain gauges, which measure structural deflection—”

Gable ran his fingers through his brush cut. “Cherry pie, guys,” he said. “Keep it simple.”

“Computerized sensors detect shifts in the earth and minutely move the aluminum beams and joists to keep the floor level,” said Barnes. “Frost heaves, small tremors, or major quakes, the floor adjusts, stays level; the cascades in Hall C keep spinning.”

“How long for Iran to get one of these floors and install it?” asked Forsyth.

“Depends on a lot,” said Bromley. “We have to find out where the Iranians are shopping—they’re good at hiding their procurement activity—and identify the specific company that’s manufacturing the floor.” She clicked her pen as she thought. “At the factory they’ll probably have to assemble and test the floor, then take it apart, pack it, and ship it.”

Nate looked at Gable, thinking that DIVA would have to try to find out what they needed. “How big a shipment?” he asked.

“You’d need to ship by sea,” said Bromley. “Hall C will be eighty thousand square feet, something like the area of twenty-five tennis courts. Flooring, beams, sensors, wiring—it all makes a big package. Not so much heavy as bulky.”

“Okay, so we find the company building the floor for the Persians,” said Forsyth. “What then?”

“We prod them,” said Bromley, looking delightedly at her colleagues. A bursting noise of stifled laughter came from Barnes.

“What the fuck are you guys talking about?” said Gable.

“We prod them,” giggled Bromley. “Prod? As in, Proliferation Division? PROD?”

“It’s an inside joke in the Division,” said Westfall. His face was red.

Gable scowled.

“We mean that we get to the shipment at the factory or in the warehouse and alter the equipment before it even gets to Iran. We PROD them,” Bromley said with a grin. Her smile looked like a maritime knackers’ yard.

“ ‘Alter’ means what, exactly?” said Forsyth.

“It’s pretty technical; we’ve been thinking about something complicated,” said Bromley.

Gable leaned forward. “Honey, there are three kinds of people: those who are good at math, and those who aren’t. Keep it simple.” Nate watched the techs to see who would ask the inevitable question. Gable was floating the old conversational trick used by case officers to measure an interlocutor’s rapidity of mind.

“What’s the third kind of people?” asked Barnes. Bromley put her hand on his arm and shook her head.

“Look, since the late eighties, Iran got smart,” said Bromley. “They’ve stopped buying computers from the West. They inspect everything they import from the outside. What they can’t fabricate in-country, they procure on the sly.” She started clicking her pen again, oblivious to Gable’s baleful stare.

Bromley’s eyes glazed over as she fixed them on a spot on the Lucite wall above Gable’s head. “They’re putting everything deep underground, immune from bombs, unaffected by satellite telemetry or other radio commands,” she mumbled. “Hall C is behind blast doors, the air is controlled and filtered, seventeen hundred centrifuges are humming, and enriched
uranium is flowing through the pipes. And the whole thing will be on an aluminum floor that is almost a living thing, moving and shifting imperceptibly, keeping the cascade plumb level. They’re making a nuclear weapon.” She stirred and looked at Gable, blinking her eyes. “They’re making a nuclear weapon.”

Gable’s eyes narrowed. “Welcome back. Have a nice trip?” he said. Bromley stared at him.

“We get the picture,” said Forsyth, “but what do you guys have in mind?”

Westfall swallowed a couple of times. “We’re still discussing it, but we’re thinking of substituting some of their under-floor aluminum beams with our own. We’d want to do it at the factory before everything is wrapped for shipment.”

“Substitute how many beams?” asked Nate, immediately thinking about the logistics of getting into a warehouse.

“We’d have to calculate it,” said Westfall. “Maybe a hundred out of thousands. Floor like this, each beam is four feet long and very light.”

“So, what, we saw them through halfway, and our beams bend and fuck up the floor?” said Gable.

Westfall shook his head. “The Iranians will inspect every part, every fitting, every sensor—X-rays, spectroscope, weight comparison. The substitute beams have to be identical.” His expression indicated that sawing the beams was, quite frankly, inappropriately primitive, sort of like Gable.

“Talking to you guys is like interviewing Uighurs in a yurt,” said Gable, who actually had interviewed Uighurs in a yurt. “Can you tell us about the substitute beams in the next forty minutes?”

Barnes was doodling on a sheet of paper. “We were thinking about casting the substitute beams with an amalgam—that’s a mix—of aluminum, scandium, and white phosphorus, with the same weight as the factory-made beams. Scandium to provide density to match that of the original beams, white phosphorus to create a fire.”

“Willy Pete?” said Gable quietly. He had seen white phosphorus in use in Laos.

Barnes kept doodling. “WP has a very low ignition point—about eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit—but it burns at five thousand degrees.” He looked around the table. “Aluminum burns at forty-five hundred degrees. It would act as fuel in a WP combustion.”

“That’s gonna take a pretty long fuse,” said Gable.

“The scandium will raise the WP ignition point to safer levels—around two hundred degrees—but the beams are going to have to combust without outside command,” said Westfall. “No timers, no software, no TOW switch—”

“TOW switch?” said Nate.

“Time-of-war switch, you dumbass,” said Gable. That was one thing he knew.

“So the Persians install the floor after inspecting it. What makes it catch fire?” asked Forsyth.

“The S waves of an earthquake. God’s detonator,” said Barnes.

“Try shorter syllables,” said Gable.

Westfall’s smile was lopsided. “We’ve been reading up on earthquakes, too. Seismic shocks are either deep P waves or surface S waves. Both occur during an earthquake, but S waves are what really shake things.” He looked over at Barnes, who was doodling wavy lines. “The strain gauges that detect seismic movement are essentially electric transducers. S waves will make them spark—producing the electricity that’s normally part of the reactive, flexible floor—but in our hundred amalgam beams, the sparks will begin the ignition of the white phosphorus. All the aluminum turns into fuel, including centrifuge rotors and casings.”

“Structural steel, wiring, piping, concrete, desks, chairs … and people all turn into fuel,” said Barnes, putting his pen down.

“Hall C becomes a barbecue pit half as hot as the surface of the sun,” said Bromley in a small voice.

No one spoke for a minute. “How did you guys come up with this?” said Forsyth.

The techs looked at each other. “It was basically her idea,” Westfall said, looking at Bromley.

“Bottom line is that the inside of Hall C looks like a Jackson Pollock,” said Nate.

“Jackson who?” said Bromley.

“You know,” said Barnes, “the guy in the nuke shop at Department of Energy.”

“That’s Johnson at DOE,” said Bromley, “not Jackson.”

“It’s okay, guys,” said Forsyth, smiling.

“My vote is to drop you three inside the fence line at Natanz,” said Gable. “Iran would surrender in about three fucking minutes.” The analysts looked delighted at the compliment from this gruff ops guy.

Gable looked over at Nate. “You get how important this is? Iran’s nuclear program, right? Enough HEU, highly enriched uranium, for a bomb potentially in a year. You make sure that billy goat tells you where they’re shopping for this equipment. Nothing less.”

Nate nodded.

Barnes took a candy bar out of his pocket, peeled the wrapper, and took a bite. Gable looked across the table at him.

“You three done good. Gimme a piece of that.”