The next day at noon, the British prime minister delivered an unscheduled address from his office at No. 10 Downing Street. The British television networks were given only thirty minutes’ warning to get their cameras in place. The U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square was informed of the address five minutes before the prime minister began to speak. The embassy was told only that it would concern Iran. By the time a frantic call was placed from the White House, it was too late. The prime minister had begun speaking.
The British leader said he was taking the unusual step of revealing a secret intelligence operation. Over the past several months, the British Secret Intelligence Service had obtained new details of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program. They had discovered that the Iranians were experimenting with some of the technologies needed to produce a bomb, but that their research was impeded by serious technical problems the Iranians had not anticipated.
Britain had received secret help from a brave Iranian scientist who worked inside one of the front companies used by the regime to shield its nuclear research, the prime minister continued. During the past several weeks, British intelligence agents had helped that scientist escape from Iran to a third country, where he was debriefed extensively. The scientist described weapons research at a previously unknown covert facility in Mashad. The scientist had bravely agreed to reenter Iran with the team of British intelligence officers who brought him out, so that he could gather more information. He was killed, along with the three members of the British covert team. They were all heroes, the prime minister said. Because of their courageous actions, Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons had been dealt a mortal blow.
The prime minister said that at that hour, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations was turning over a detailed dossier of evidence about Iran’s nuclear program to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council so that these organizations could take appropriate action. He said that Britain would oppose any effort by any nation—he repeated the words “any nation” for emphasis—to impose an embargo against Iran or take other military action. The Iranian nuclear program had been exposed by Britain’s intelligence operations, he said. The proper course now was vigilant monitoring and nonmilitary sanctions to make sure the program was not reconstituted.
The prime minister concluded by saying that he would be consulting soon with the president of the United States to work out a joint position at the United Nations. But he was certain—quite certain—that the United States would cooperate with the policy he had just announced.
Harry Pappas arrived at Heathrow a few hours before the prime minister’s speech. He had one more chore, and he was rather looking forward it. He didn’t like symmetry, normally. Most loops in life don’t get closed, and for good reason: they aren’t really loops but loose strands that only appear to connect. But in this case, there was something that should come full circle, and then stop.
Harry treated himself to a London hotel room when he arrived. He slept through the morning with the television on, just in case, and he was awakened by the sound of the prime minister’s voice. When the speech was over, he dozed for another few hours. He wanted to be fresh for his meeting. He was about to play a game in which he held many good cards, and knew some of what was in the other man’s hand. But a satisfactory outcome would depend nearly as much on his demeanor as on the substance of what he had to say.
Harry arrived at Kamal Atwan’s residence on Mount Street in the late afternoon. It was a brisk November day; loose bits of trash billowed along the streets and alleyways, and low, rain-laden clouds scudded by overhead. The butler said stiffly that Mr. Atwan wasn’t home, but Harry suspected he would say that to any unannounced visitor. So he repeated his name, Harry Pappas, and said to tell the master of the house that he was visiting from Washington and needed to speak to Mr. Atwan urgently, right now, about a matter of great importance. The butler retreated upstairs and descended a minute later to say that Mr. Atwan had returned home and would see his guest immediately.
The art that lined the walls didn’t make quite the same impression on Harry this time. It was so much loot, gathered from the treasure troves of other people less clever or larcenous than the proprietor of Mount Street. Who even knew if it was real? The luminous Monet painting of the water lilies that dominated the entrance hall: How could you know if it was a masterpiece, a brilliant fake, or something in between—an authentic object that had been detached from its original owner and converted to this man’s personal use? “Provenance” was the word art dealers used to describe the ticklish problems presented by such a collection. How did you know where anything came from, and what of its putative history was real and what imagined? That was in fact Kamal Atwan’s business—blurring those lines of provenance so that people weren’t sure whether what they had was true or false.
Atwan was standing at the top of the stairs. He was wearing a new double-breasted smoking jacket, with rich black velvet lapels and a fine paisley print in the body of the garment. His long silver-gray hair was meticulously combed. He looked like an Edwardian dandy, a man out of time.
“How good of you to call, my dear,” he said, taking Harry’s hand as he reached the top step. “Did you hear the prime minister’s speech? Very bold, don’t you think? Preempts any other sort of action, I would say.”
“Good speech,” said Harry. “War with Iran is a bad idea.”
“Your American friends will be angry, I think.”
“They’ll get over it,” said Harry.
Atwan led Harry by the hand into the library and sat him down by a gas fire. On a table between two comfortable chairs was another fat novel by Anthony Trollope, this one titled He Knew He Was Right.
“I have been waiting for your visit, my dear Harry. I have been worrying about you.”
“I’m sure you have, Kamal Bey, worried to death, and for good reason, too. Do you know that someone has been spreading nasty stories about me to the Federal Bureau of Investigation? Can you imagine that? That someone was suggesting I had been doing secret work for the British government. Treasonous work, some people could say, under a false name.”
“How dreadful,” said Atwan, throwing up his hands in apparent horror. He was a good actor, you had to give him that.
“Yes, but that’s all taken care of. I went to see my boss yesterday in Washington. My real boss, the CIA director. He’d been fully informed of what I was doing, obviously, but we talked it through anyway. Not a problem, all over. My lawyer will work out the details with the FBI. But thanks for your concern.”
“Oh good. I am so glad.”
There was a hint of actual mirth in Atwan’s voice. He was a sporting man; he knew that he couldn’t win every rubber.
“I actually came to give you a bit of advice, Kamal. A warning, really.”
“Oh, how thoughtful. And what might that be, my dear?”
“Well, sir, I’ll be frank, even though we’re not in a secure location, and you never know who might be listening. I believe there is an acquaintance of yours who is in a bit of difficulty in Iran. A Lebanese fellow originally, like yourself. His name, or at least the one he was born with, is Kamal Hussein Sadr. He travels under various labels these days, but the one people seem to use most frequently is Al-Majnoun. Does that ring any bells?”
Atwan tried to laugh. It came out dry, more like a croak.
“But my dear Mr. Pappas, this gentleman Sadr, or Majnoun if you like, he died more than twenty years ago. The Israelis killed him, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yeah, right. Well, somehow he’s come back to life. And the problem is that the Iranians are onto him. They suspect he had a hand in our little caper in Mashad. They don’t know all the details yet, so they’re going to arrest and interrogate him, and find out. Unless someone moves pretty damn quick.”
Atwan coughed. He was trying to conceal something, but the tension was evident. “Why should this possibly concern me?”
“Well, the problem is, the Iranians are going to find a little device that was smuggled into a nuclear laboratory. A sophisticated device that could melt parts of computer chips and change code. Supplied by a certain Lebanese businessman who resides in London. We’ve picked up a lot of chatter through our technical collection, as you can imagine, and they seem to know more about you than I would have suspected.”
“So what are you saying?”
“What I am saying, sir, is that unless you do something pretty goddamn fast, a big pile of shit is going to land on your head.”
“What a vulgar expression. That is unworthy of you, my dear Mr. Pappas.”
“Perhaps, but an accurate one. But hey, what do I know? I’m just an American. I don’t understand how really sophisticated people like you operate. Just a word to the wise, that’s all. The facts are that Al-Majnoun was working for you, and that you were working with us—and the Iranians are just naturally going to figure it all out. They’ll realize he killed our guys, and their guys, and they’re going to be pissed off. I would hate to see your business ruined, after all the good work you’ve done.”
Atwan rose and walked to the mantel. Over the fireplace was a pastel by Edgar Degas showing a group of ballerinas preparing for class. Pappas wondered if it was real. The Lebanese businessman stared at the picture for a few moments, composing himself, and then returned to his chair.
“And what do you propose, Mr. Pappas?”
There it was, inevitably: the solicitation of a bid. Atwan was a dealmaker, first and last, and now he was looking to make a bargain.
“I don’t propose anything. Except that you better move quickly to get your man Al-Majnoun out of Iran. To London, probably, where you can keep an eye on him. I think you better do that before he takes you down, and a lot of other people with him. That’s not a threat, obviously. I’m not in the threat business. Just a suggestion. Otherwise, I would have to say that, as we Americans so vulgarly like to put it, you are fucked.”
Atwan looked away, to mask his expression. He was a man in absolute control, always. He was thinking about his options, evidently, weighing what he had to lose, depending on what options he chose. They say there are chess players who can calculate many dozens of moves ahead that flow from the exchange of one piece on the board. Atwan had that facility. He had worked as hard as possible to take risk out of the world’s riskiest business. He turned back toward his guest.
“You’re being quite aggressive, I see,” he said stiffly. “Well then, message received.”
Atwan rose from his chair, still lost in his own private calculations. He didn’t take Harry’s hand this time, just led the way out of the library and back down the stairs. The show was over. That was the virtue of crude speech. It broke through the false layer of politeness that covered the facts, and got down to the bare reality of things. Atwan walked slowly, one step at a time. You might have thought he would be eager to get Harry out of his house, but he was taking his time, weighing another bid.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs in the entrance hall. It was raining outside now. You could hear the beating of the raindrops against Atwan’s leaden windows. He took Harry’s hand again.
“It is not a nice evening out, I think. Beastly, as the British would say. Why don’t you stay a bit longer, Harry, until the clouds have passed.”
Atwan led Harry into a sitting room off the main entrance hall and closed the double doors. Harry took a seat while Atwan went to the intercom. He rang his chief of staff, waited a moment, then said a few words in Arabic.
“I would like a drink tonight,” said Atwan. “I rarely drink, you know, but tonight I think that I should make an exception, with you, my dear. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” said Harry. “I’ll have a whiskey.”
Atwan went to a mirrored bar, set in an alcove of the room, and poured two glasses of whiskey, neat. He paused, and then poured a third.
“Another guest coming?” asked Harry.
“Yes, I think so. A little party. A reunion, you could say. Why not?”
Atwan brought the whiskey to Harry and sat down on the couch next to him. The host took a sip and then a large gulp that nearly drained the glass. There was a knock at the double door. Harry expected that they would be joined by Adrian Winkler, the partner in this bizarre enterprise, but he was mistaken.
The double door swung open, and a man in a black suit entered the room. He walked with a quick, erratic step, almost a scampering. His head was down as he entered the room, and black sunglasses covered his eyes, but when he reached Harry, he stood up straight and removed the shades. It was the oddest human face Harry had ever seen. The eyes were tight at the corners and tilted up slightly, as an Asian man’s might be. The nose was bulbous, as if a new infusion of flesh had been added. The lips were almost feminine, pumped with fat and gel so that they appeared as little pontoons. The face seemed almost to be in motion, the different pieces going in different directions. Scars were visible along the edges, and there was a bit of puffiness, as if the man had just had another operation to recombine and rearrange.
Atwan walked over to this most peculiar gentleman. He was smiling now, as if he were a farmer exhibiting his prize pig. He patted Al-Majnoun gently on the back, and then steered him toward Harry.
“My dear Harry, let me introduce Kamal Hussein Sadr. Al-Majnoun. The Crazy One. You know the name of course, but perhaps not the face.” He laughed to himself, as if this were a private joke.
Harry took Al-Majnoun’s hand in his. The tips of the fingers were like an emery board, from so many efforts over the years to remove identifiable traces of what had once been the man’s fingerprints. When they had shaken hands, Atwan nodded for Al-Majnoun to take a seat in a corner of the room.
“So you’re not fucked,” Harry said.
“Quite so.”
“And my warning wasn’t necessary. The man is already out of Iran, obviously.”
“Oh yes. In the flesh. All the many layers of it. You did not think I would be so stupid as to let the Iranians have my man. After nearly thirty years? That would have been quite unwise. No, he was on his way out of the country as soon as he had done his work.”
“His work.” Harry let that phrase fill the room, and repeated it. “His work. Which included killing three British intelligence officers, I think. Not to mention a brave Iranian agent.”
“Two, my dear. Only two, unless you count that silly Turkmen driver. The others were not my fault. I made a promise to you that I would try to get your Iranian boy out of the country, and I endeavored to keep my word, truly. And I knew that our friend Adrian was bewitched with the girl, so I tried to save her, too. But not everything is possible, my dear, even when we do our best. You should know that, better than anyone. You have suffered a great loss, but it is wrong that you should blame yourself.”
Harry winced at the reference to his son. And he resented that Kamal Atwan presumed to give him personal advice in the presence of a hired killer. But he stayed silent. That was Harry’s weapon, that he could keep the pieces together inside, even when they hurt so much that he wanted to kill with his naked hands the man standing across from him.
“It’s over,” said Harry.
“And why should that be, my dear? In our sort of world, it’s never over. How can it be? The world is too ambiguous a place for endings.”
“The Iranians think it’s over.”
“No they don’t. My dear Harry, I don’t think you’ve grasped the essence of the matter. The Iranians have no idea what is going on. Listen to your famous NSA chatter, and you’ll see. This man, the scar-faced man in black, was said to be an intimate friend of the Leader. Do you think the mullahs can allow themselves to imagine that he was working all the while—all the while!—for a foreign conspiracy? Of course not. It would bring the whole tower down. The Leader himself would be suspect. Who could accept such a thought, or even tolerate it? It would destroy the regime, my dear, root and branch.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Harry.
“Oh come now, don’t be a romantic. You sound like those neoconservatives. Poof! Let us transform the evildoers, at a stroke. That is not the way the world works. It progresses from one shade of gray to another.”
“Bullshit,” said Harry.
“You want to provoke me, my dear, but you will not succeed. The truth is that we have drawn the Iranians, who so much want to see only black and white, into my gray world where nothing is quite the way they want it to be. And in the gray, it is very hard to find your way.”
“They’ll know someone has been diddling their nuclear program. That’s for sure.”
“Well, yes. The prime minister has highlighted the role of that poor young man, Dr. Molavi. But they won’t know how far his deception went. Some will say all the problems at Tohid were his fault, and they will overlook the bias in the equipment we have been selling them. Others will suspect the equipment, too, but they won’t know how to prove it. And then there is the other facility, at Mashad. Will they suspect that, or not? There’s really no way for them to know.”
“The Iranians certainly will know when they find the device Karim was carrying.”
“Ah yes. The device.”
Atwan called out something in Arabic to Al-Majnoun, who rose from his chair in the corner and tiptoed across the room. When he reached Atwan, he put his hand in his black jacket and removed a rectangular object and gave it to his patron.
“Do you mean this device, Mr. Pappas? Recovering this was a major reason I decided to involve my friend Majnoun in the first place. That and to cover over any other tracks that might be left by, you will forgive the term, your tradecraft. My faithful Majnoun took it from the Iranian boy’s coat and planted a piece of plastic. I have learned that when it comes to details, it really is best not to leave anything to chance. Or to the secret services of the United States and Britain, which is roughly the same thing. So in answer to your question, no, I do not think that the Iranians will ‘have a clue,’ as you like to say.”
“So what will the Iranians do? They’re certainly not going to give up.”
“They will keep trying. The UN will have new sanctions, and the IAEA will have new inspections. But the Iranians will come back. They will make new plans. Buy new equipment. And I will be there to sell it to them. Or, I would like to think, we will be there to sell it to them. I have come to admire you, Harry. Despite your Americanisms, you would make a quite suitable associate. Adrian, while he has many virtues, has gone a bit soft around the edges. But I sense you are made of stronger stuff.”
“No fucking way,” said Harry.
“Such an unattractive way of speaking. But it is part of your style, so I suppose I have to accept it in a prospective business partner.”
“I am not your partner. I’m not anyone’s partner. I’m out.”
“Nobody is ever ‘out,’ my dear Harry. That is another of your illusions.”
“Sorry, Kamal, but I’m a black-and-white guy. I don’t do gray. I’m ‘in’ or ‘out,’ and in this case, I’m out.”
Atwan shook his head. “You Americans really should stay at home, where these quaint monochromatic notions of yours have some meaning. I really do not think you understand our part of the world, my dear. There are no endings. Which side of the coin is heads or tails? What time is it? Where is the train going? Who can say, my friend? Who can say? Will Iran get the bomb? Not today, but there are so many tomorrows. And suppose that somehow they succeed and build the little nuclear monster. They will never know if it will work. Never.”
Harry had stopped appreciating the subtlety of it all. He felt something like revulsion.
“Why did you do it, Kamal? Why did you set this murderer Al-Majnoun in motion? You killed a young man I made a promise to. You killed brave British officers. You’re the crazy one. What is wrong with you?”
“I was protecting my investment, my dear. It is not enough to be on one side of a transaction. To be really safe, you must be on both sides. That was why I had Al-Majnoun watching from the first moment you put your little man Molavi in play. To protect, to control. If I had not done so, someone else far more dangerous might have taken my place.”
“Bullshit. You’re an arms dealer. You just wanted to keep selling more crap to Iran, and making more money.”
Atwan shrugged. He gathered the velvet lapels of his smoking jacket so that they were aligned. If Harry didn’t appreciate what he was trying to do, well, so much the worse.
“I am in the ambiguity business, Mr. Pappas. I stand for uncertainty. I stand for the artifice of business, which is the essential reality in our part of the world. I seek to foster the ambiguity that allows each side to continue along its way, without ever coming to a point that we could call the end of the road. Endings are dangerous.”
“You are out of your fucking mind, Kamal. And your friend Mr. Potato Head should spend the rest of his life in a dark cell picking at his scabs.”
Harry didn’t bother to shake hands, make an appropriate phrase, say goodbye. He turned and walked toward the door, but Kamal Atwan called after him.
“Before I let you go, my dear, I must ask you one final question. It matters rather a lot to my future business dealings. How did you know that Mr. Sadr here, the Crazy One, was working for me? That was a rather well-guarded secret. Are your technical tools really that good? That would worry me.”
Harry laughed. It felt like the first good laugh he’d had in a very long time.
“What could possibly be funny about that question, my dear?”
“Nothing, except that it shows you’re a sucker.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The truth is that I didn’t know about Al-Majnoun. I guessed. Until you told me that he was your man, I didn’t know for sure. Lucky I was wearing a microphone to transmit the conversation out to my lame-ass CIA colleagues, in case anyone ever needs it. And you know something? With all due respect, you talk too much.”
And now, Harry did leave. Out the double doors of the sitting room, past the Renoir and the Monet, past the butler hovering at the door and into the London evening. It was pissing rain outside. Harry walked several blocks to Piccadilly, where he found a coffee bar. It was filling up with young people coming off their jobs, many of them not much older than his daughter Lulu.
Harry took out his cell phone and placed a call to an old friend at MI5, the British internal security service, whom he had met many years before in Washington. They talked for nearly a half hour, with the other man taking notes, stopping Harry occasionally for details, but finally they had it all straight.
Then Harry called Adrian Winkler. The SIS chief of staff still sounded soggy, little affect in his voice even when he tried to be cheery, and Harry understood that his British friend really had loved Jackie with her crop and riding boots and extraordinary courage. That made him feel sorrier still for Adrian, but it didn’t change what he had to do.
“Your friend Atwan is going down,” said Harry.
“What do you mean ‘going down,’ old boy? That man is the best asset we’ve got.”
“Exactly what I said. He’s going down. It turns out that Al-Majnoun was his man. The guy who killed your team from the Increment was working for your pal. That’s what Jackie was trying to tell you. He’s with him now. Kamal, your pal, is harboring a terrorist. No other way to slice it. And he’s going down.”
The phone went dead for a moment. You could sense the panic on the other end, and also the anger.
“Say it again, Harry. I want to make sure I heard it right.”
“Al-Majnoun is here. He’s at Atwan’s townhouse on Mount Street. You need to call MI5 and Special Branch right now—this instant.”
“Tall order, Harry.”
“Not so tall. They already know. They’re on their way to make the arrests. That’s why I called you, brother. You’ll go down, too, if you don’t get on the phone to 5 and Scotland Yard right now.”
“I see,” said Adrian. The air went out of his lungs for a moment, but he recovered.
“You think you can stop this, Harry, but you can’t. Who do you think keeps Atwan in business? Do you think it’s me? What a joke. I just take some of the loose goodies that fall off the back of Atwan’s truck. He survives here because he has friends, way up, who think he is valuable to the country. For ‘reasons of state,’ old boy. Morality doesn’t enter into it. Nothing you or I can do about it.”
“Yes there is. I’ve already done it. It’s over.”
“It’s never over, Harry.”
Harry ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. He ordered a coffee, but after taking a sip, he realized he didn’t really want it. It had stopped raining now. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and walked along the gray blocks of concrete, the blinking neon lights of Piccadilly Circus marking his way.