“Na zdrovie!” Shouted Nikita, Zana’s scientific escort from Russia.
He sat at the head of the table of eight intermingled Russian and Iranian scientists, the shot glass poised in his hand. He waited drunkenly for the rest of them around the table to raise their own glasses in salute. In keeping with their religious abstention, the Iranians were drinking apple juice. The Russians didn’t care.
“Ochen horosho!” Nikita roared with approval when he saw that the Russians had downed their shots. He turned his glass over on the table, pleased with himself.
Javad, Zana’s boss, forced an awkward smile. He stood formally to address the delegation. “I may not drink vodka, but I can and will toast us all for completing phase one of the project. Inshallah, may phase two be just weeks away.”
One of the other Iranian scientists spoke Russian. He translated for the table. It was good enough for the Russians to pour themselves more vodka. Javad sat down again, smiling while they drank.
Zana downed his share of apple juice and checked his watch. It was getting on toward midnight. He wanted more than anything for these obnoxious Slavs to get tired and let him go off to his room.
They were all finally in Bushehr, staying near the beach at a single-story forty-room hotel called the Parvaz. On more pleasant occasions, it was considered a hotel for family vacations. But the Energy Ministry had chartered the whole thing for the visiting bigwigs from Russia and their counterparts.
Tomorrow they were to take the political leaders from Iran and Russia on a tour of the nuclear power plant a few miles down the road. The Russians had brought media with them. The idea was to show the deep cooperation between the peoples of Iran and Russia toward a successful, nuclear-powered future.
While the Americans might howl about it at the UN, raging on about violations of the NPT, the rest of the world would see the placid politicians and earnest scientists in league together at this sunny seaside town, working on civilian energy. As a side benefit, the Russians considered it a coup de main to be in bed with the Iranians ahead of the Chinese. The more publicity, the better.
After the ceremony, while the media feasted on a PR tour of the plant, the delegation was to peel off and receive a briefing on yellowcake enrichment.
Zana had thought he’d be long gone by now. In accordance with the bereavement leave he’d been afforded since his daughter’s death, he’d asked to travel to India with his wife. His superiors had denied the request, but granted it for his wife. The commander felt that with the Bushehr summit on the horizon, it was simply too risky to spare anyone from the Tabriz working group.
Rather, the commander had generously suggested that Zana should join them on the Bushehr trip. The commander thought the change of scenery, the sun, the sea, the professional stimulation would all do his senior enrichment scientist some good. Besides, he should celebrate now that the enrichment issues appeared to be fixed. So here Zana sat, looking at the drunk Russians and the bored Iranians, drinking his apple juice.
Javad leaned into him. His smile was gone—no need to be charming to his own team. “Zana, you’re ready for tomorrow?”
An opening, the scientist realized, that could lead to a hasty exit if played correctly. “Javad jon, if you don’t mind, I think it better if I get back to my room to do work on the presentation. I’m not comfortable with some of the figures.”
Javad nodded, grunted. “Probably a good idea. We need to make it look good for tomorrow.”
After the millions they’d poured into the secret complex, Zana’s area, centrifugal enrichment, had finally begun to come through. With the help of the Russians, the Iranians believed they’d finally produced a small quantity of HEU. More was on the way. Self-sufficiency in nuclear weapons development, the ultimate dream of the Twelvers, was finally within reach.
“You have my word, sir,” said Zana. He got up to leave.
Nikita raised another vodka glass toward him and said something indecipherable in slurring Russian. Zana smiled, bowed, and made his way out of the hotel restaurant.
His room was midway down the single-story building. He walked through a pleasant beachfront arcade, listening to the gentle lapping surf of the Persian Gulf just over the sand dunes. It was coal dark out over the water. Bugs bounced against the outdoor phosphorous lights. Two uniformed Guardsmen were leaning against the wall near his room, casting long shadows.
“Going to bed?” one of them asked as Zana prepared to unlock the door.
“I wish,” he responded, shaking his head. “I have some work to do.” They nodded at him. The pasdaran were generally sympathetic to him. He was the nice scientist whose daughter had been killed in the Ukrainian Air disaster.
Safe in his room, he opened his laptop and looked over the presentation materials, making tweaks. Over a forty-minute period, he could hear doors opening and closing down the outdoor arcade as his colleagues made their way back to their rooms.
When all seemed settled, he opened a VPN on a cellular connection and navigated to the Baramar site. He clicked on the designated word on the hidden site and saw a file pop up. He downloaded it. To the uninitiated it looked like electronic gibberish.
He removed the USB stick from the hidden slot in his pocket and inserted it in the laptop. He dragged the file over to an executable on the USB. The electronic gibberish converted itself into English.
His pulse quickened when he saw the message from Reza.
Mr. Rahimi—
May I call you Zana? I finally know your name. Nadia is safe. She is back in Virginia and our people have made her comfortable. I will upload a second file with a message from her and a photo as proof. I’ve held up my end of the bargain. I need you to hold up yours. Let me know the plan. Our people are very worried since they’ve lost visibility—I doubt you have much time once the regime realizes she is gone.
Despite the warning at the close of the message, he sighed with relief. He smiled so widely that his cheeks hurt. Nadia was safe. Reza Shariati, whoever he really was, had managed to come through for him against all odds. His instincts about the man he’d observed so long ago in Montreal had been right.
He opened the second file. It was from Nadia; she’d managed to write it in English.
Zana jon,
It is very nice here and the people are very good. You do not need to worry about me. Instead I am worried about you. Please come as soon as you can. We are very concerned for your safety. The people here think you are a hero. Please come back to me soon. Do it for me. Do it for Sahar. When will you come? Mr. Reza swears he will protect you. The woman in this picture is his wife. He is a good man, as are you. Love.
There was Nadia, standing on the Mall with the Washington Monument in the background, smiling. A lean, serious-looking brunette stood next to her. Together they held a copy of the Washington Post newspaper in front of them to show the date. Zooming in, Zana saw that it was only yesterday.
He sat back on the bed, thinking.
Nadia’s planned sabbatical to the yoga retreat in India was scheduled to last a month. Unless the MOIS men had someone spying on her, then he still had time to bring his plans into effect. He looked at the bedside clock and listened. All was quiet beyond the door. The Russians were finally sleeping off their alcohol. Now was as good a time as any to compose a response. He typed his message.
Mr. Reza,
Thank you for taking care of Nadia. She has been through a lot. You are a man of your word. I am also a man of mine. I need one more week to take care of a few things. I will contact you then.
The next morning, he rose early. He nodded to the two Guardsmen posted outside the rooms and asked if they would mind if he walked on the beach. An apricot dawn glowed over the dusty sea. As he thought of Nadia tucked safely away in America, it filled him with hope.
At ten they boarded a bus for the twenty-minute drive south to the reactor, where they would host the meeting. Four armed Guardsmen sat in the back, acting as security. The four Russians sat up front while the Iranian scientists hovered in the middle. They were very familiar with this seating arrangement. They’d ridden the comfortable coach bus all nine hundred miles south from Tabriz in a marathon of driving.
Except for the uniformed Guardsmen, the Iranians were dressed in shirts and ties. Due to the rising heat of Bushehr, they had been allowed to leave their suit jackets behind.
As they approached the facility, Zana noted the truck-mounted SAMs parked in revetments on either side of the road, dug into the sand, angled toward the sky. The soldiers manning them seemed busy this morning. Diesel smoke poured from the generators at the command trailers that connected them. Considering their deadly purpose and the trigger-happy fools who commanded them, Zana turned away, looking back toward the sea, thinking of Sahar. They were all part of the machine that had murdered her.
When the coach arrived at the security gates for the reactor, Zana had expected to see the long black cars of government ministers waiting for them. But the parking lot was filled with IRGC men in uniforms scurrying about with preoccupied military resolve. The bus was waved toward a side gate, where it sat idling, waiting. A guard told the driver to park there until further notice and keep everyone on board. The driver shut down the engine, which killed the air-conditioning.
Up front, the Russians were sweating, hungover, impatient. One of them threw open a window and complained to the interpreter.
The interpreter turned to Javad, the most senior-ranking scientist and a major in the IRGC. “Mr. Paskarov asks what this is all about. He’s worried we’ll be late for the meeting.”
Javad nodded. “Tell him I’ll find out.”
He got up and exited the van. Before long, Zana could see that Javad was in discussion with other Guardsmen, who then waved him into a small building that Zana took to be the military command post for the garrison charged with guarding the nuclear reactor.
Ten minutes on, Javad emerged, his face stern. He addressed the ten passengers spread across the bus, the interpreter at his side.
“Brothers,” he said in Farsi while the interpreter echoed him in Russian, “the meeting has been postponed. We have received credible information of a threat from the Americans. For our own safety, we are to return to Tabriz immediately. We are all considered to be in secure lockdown from this point forward. No one leaves the bus without an escort.”
Six hundred miles north in Tehran, Kasem sat at his desk in the MOIS office building near the airport disguised as the Iranian Meteorological Center. A young Guardsman knocked on his door and said that Colonel Maloof was looking for him.
Kasem had expected the summons. For the past week, he’d been working with his lieutenants on leaks that might trace back to Reza Shariati, the name he’d picked up from his Hezbollah men when they’d foolishly taken down Yuri Kuznetsov and his deputy.
The search hadn’t been easy. The one link they had to work from was the equipment reseller based in Dubai called Baramar. Reza, whom Kasem knew to be a US operative, had worked for Baramar as a consultant. Baramar’s equipment had primarily ended up at the Tabriz site. It stood to reason that if there was some kind of leak in the entire Zaqqum enterprise, it would be there in Tabriz, connected to Baramar and Reza Shariati.
But over the years, hundreds of workers had come and gone through Tabriz. Many had been in contact in one form or another with Baramar. Still, there were only about fifty who had been given IT access to Baramar directly, and of those, only about ten were still active in the Zaqqum program.
One way or the other, Kasem knew that if he didn’t plug the leak, the colonel was going to find a way to burn him. He reluctantly made the trip down the hall.
The creases in the colonel’s uniform seemed extra sharp this morning. The old man had trimmed his beard and slicked his hair.
He must be expecting a big day with the brass, thought the Quds man.
“All right, Kasem jon,” the colonel started. Kasem took a seat across from his desk. “I’ve been in touch with the Tabriz garrison.”
“Have all ten been confined to the base so I can interview them?”
“I gave the base commander the names.”
“And?”
“Some of the senior scientists on your list are in Bushehr at the program summit meeting.”
“If you’ll give me the helicopter, I could be there in a few hours.”
“No,” said the colonel. “The summit has been canceled.”
“What? Why?”
The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “Do you remember when I told you the Russians were getting nervous?”
“Yes.”
“Well, something’s happened. The Russian ambassador seems to think we have a major espionage problem. They suspect the Americans have a mole. One of their men was getting close to exposing it. But he’s been eliminated, apparently.”
Kasem froze. He thought about the blowback of Kuznetsov and Putov dying at the hands of Hezbollah . . . his hands. If the Russians pulled out, he might find himself in Evin Prison before nightfall.
“Well,” Kasem said, swallowing, “that is unfortunate.”
“Yes, it is.” An edge in the old man’s voice. “Perhaps as the counterintelligence service, we ought to know what the hell is happening!” He balled his fist and bounced it off the desk.
Kasem noted the display. Something about it rang hollow. The colonel was acting, setting the blame trap that would eventually snare the Quds man. Predictable.
“I agree, sir,” he said coolly. “Let me get to those ten men. I’ll find our mole.”
The colonel eyed him warily. If a counterintelligence problem screwed up the oil-for-nukes deal with Russia, heads were going to roll.
“All right,” the senior man finally said. “I’ve told the base commander to sequester your ten technicians. You can interview them tomorrow.”
“Sir, with respect, given the urgency, I should think I need to get up there today.”
“Two of the men you want—Major Javad Mirzadeh and Dr. Zana Rahimi—are driving back. It will take them all day.”
“May I suggest, sir, that they fly? I should interview them right away if I’m to uncover this plot quickly.”
The colonel paused. “Who was your original source for all of this, Colonel Kahlidi?”
Kasem stared at him, unblinking. “You know I can’t tell you that, sir.”
“Hezbollah, I’m guessing.”
Kasem felt a chill. “I can’t say, sir. You understand.”
The MOIS counterintelligence chief acquiesced with a nod. “I’ll tell them to fly the technicians up to Tabriz to save time, as you suggest. You can have the helicopter to meet them there. This investigation is all on you now.”
Back at his Bushehr hotel room by the sea, Zana threw cold water on his face and took several deep breaths. He’d sweated through his undershirt.
Before packing up, he decided he’d better change into a fresh one. He needed to look calm. Javad had given them five minutes to pack up and get moving. The bus was already idling.
Five minutes. It seemed like just enough time to do what he had to do. He pushed the window curtains back an inch and saw the Guardsmen a few doors away. Probably enough time.
It could be now or never. Some cold recess of his mind told him it might be his last few minutes of freedom. He would have liked to have gotten another message to Nadia. But there wouldn’t be time. He had to prioritize.
He powered up the laptop and found the cellular-data connection. Jumping through the hoops of authentication took another minute. He removed the USB from his pocket and prepared to upload the script he’d devised.
Just as he got to the appropriate page and inserted the USB, there was an insistent knock on his door. The Guardsmen. On this slow connection, the upload would take too long. They would soon grow impatient, which, with the bus idling a few yards away, wouldn’t work.
He’d have to figure out how to upload the script on the long ride back to Tabriz. Even if the mobile connection was slow, the drive was long. It had to get done.
He opened the door, his bags over his shoulders.
“Doctor,” the Guardsman said. “Major Mirzadeh wants to see you in the lobby. Now, sir.”
“All right, all right. I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Javad watched them approaching through the big picture window that looked out on the parking lot. His IRGC-issue duffel was at his feet. The bus was idling nearby, its diesel clacking away.
“I’m ready,” Zana said as he approached. “Shall we get on the bus?”
“You’re the last one,” Javad said, taking a long rude look at Zana. “What took you so long?”
“I’ve always been a slow packer.”
The bus revved up. In a cloud of blue exhaust, it began to pull away from the lot, entering the road, leaving them behind.
“We aren’t taking the bus?” Zana asked. “I don’t understand.”
“The base commander has called you and me back immediately. We’ve got a plane instead.”
Zana’s heart skipped. “Just you and me?”
“Yes, and our two Guardsmen friends. We split the security detail between the bus and us. Commander’s orders.”
“Do we know why?”
Javad didn’t answer. He picked up his bag.
A hotel van pulled up. They got in for the short ride to the Bushehr Airport two miles away.