One of the missiles seemed further along than the others: it had a conical device fitted to the front end. This had to be a nuclear reentry vehicle; I would have bet anything. Dozens of colored cables looped from the cone and the device inside to a battery of computers staffed by very serious technicians.
This had to be the nuke in the final phases of preparation. And there were six more cones waiting on trolleys next to their respective Sejil-2s.
I went into full evaluation mode, using rapid-identification techniques that had been ingrained in me over the last three decades and came to the conclusion that the men and women down there were acting as if these were live warheads. As badly as I wanted to believe that I had destroyed the critical electronic components that Morshed had been transporting into the country, the picture wasn’t right.
All the intel I had collected indicated that the Iranians had twenty-one missiles. I had just accounted for fourteen of them. Okay, fine. Where the hell were the other seven?
I recorded as much as possible, then decided I should get the hell out while my luck was still holding. In case it didn’t, I activated my iPhone to transmit the videos and photographs to General Rutledge. I don’t know if I actually expected to get a satellite signal this far underground, but it didn’t happen. Odd, but that made me more nervous than anything I had done in the last two hours. I took a deep breath and told myself to get a grip. Getting a grip really meant a steady, deep breath and driving my heart rate from seventy-six back to sixty-two. It took less than fifteen seconds but the pause still pissed me off.
The skywalk carried me back through four chambers and down to the catwalk in the first room. The catwalk and the tunnel merged again, and I jogged back to the rear entrance and outside. It was 3:36 A.M. The air bit into my skin, and I realized I was sweating.
If you expect the worst, there’s probably a reason. The first thing I saw was a squad of soldiers hustling along the fence. It didn’t look like your normal, everyday perimeter watch. Maybe because they were jogging, and maybe because I could heard their voices all the way across the compound. It was probably a safe bet they were looking for their two missing guards. Too bad they couldn’t ask me, because I really could have saved them a lot of time.
I had a decision to make. Did I trust my disguise and my newly acquired ID badge enough to use the old Daihatsu pickup truck I’d arrived in, or was that just asking for trouble? In either case, I needed my backpack, so I hurried across the compound to the door that led to the underground parking lot. I took the stairs two at a time and cut between three or four dozen cars to the parking space I had chosen more than two hours earlier. I was surprised how many cars had come and gone since I had ventured inside. For some reason, that didn’t sit very well with me, and I decided against the truck.
I sidled up to the Daihatsu, keyed the lock, and reached casually inside. I hoisted my backpack. I went back up top.
I hadn’t gone more than four or five strides when a man in overalls just like mine emerged from a side door of a detached, single-story office building on the far side of the lot. He had a courier bag slung over his back and was adjusting the neck strap of his helmet. He approached a Honda motorcycle and swung one leg over the seat.
There it was, my ticket out of Natanz.
The courier had the engine started and the headlight lit when he saw me coming. I raised my hand and called out to him like a long-lost friend, or at least a colleague in need of a helping hand or a cigarette. He eased back on the throttle and pointed to his helmet as if he hadn’t heard me. He unsnapped the neck strap and lifted the helmet in two hands.
I smiled, said, “Good evening,” in my best Farsi, and clotheslined him. He fell backward, and the motorcycle clattered to the ground.
He rolled to his side with surprising speed and drew a pistol from a belt holster. I had made a mistake: this was no ordinary courier, and I should have seen that even before I’d started his way.
Now I had to kill him. I kicked the gun from his hand and aimed mine at his head. One quick shot between his eyes.
I holstered the Walther, grabbed the collar of his jacket, and dragged him behind the building. I put on his helmet, goggles, and gloves, and slipped the courier bag over the shoulder opposite my backpack.
I walked calmly back to the Honda and jumped aboard. I turned the ignition. I’d grown up riding motorcycles. My biggest problem was always an overwhelming urge to see whether a bike’s speedometer was really accurate once you broke one hundred miles per hour. Of course, once you broke that mark, you didn’t really care about the speedometer.
Not this time. I cruised along the asphalt lane toward the front gate of the complex at a crawl. I beeped the horn and flicked my high beams at the guards. I trusted my instinct that the guards were vigilant about keeping intruders out but not so vigilant keeping them in.
The security bar over the exit lane pivoted, and I scooted through. I goosed the throttle and headed back down the road toward Natanz. I reached the main highway and stopped long enough to access my iPhone, disarm the Russian suitcase bomb, and activate the device’s self-destruct function. Then I turned north, toward Tehran. If I never saw Natanz again, it would be way too soon. Except maybe on the news, engulfed in the flames of a twenty-two-thousand-pound bunker buster.
I didn’t stop until I got to Kashan. I parked the motorcycle a block from the safe house. It was still pitch dark outside and like a ghost town, so I used the alley. I jumped the fence into the backyard, followed a stone path through a rose garden waiting for spring to come, and stopped at the back door. I peered in. If Charlie and Jeri were still there, they were sitting in the dark.
I knocked softly. Knocked again. Jeri was all of a sudden standing behind me.
“Glad I’m one of the good guys,” she whispered.
I turned my head. Smiled. “If you weren’t, you’d be dead.”
“Good to know.” She brushed past me, all business. She turned the knob, and the door opened. “Charlie’s inside. We didn’t know when to expect you.”
Charlie was in the kitchen. He was putting water on the burner of the stove. “Tea?” he said as if I lived next door.
“Hot. Very hot,” I said.
They didn’t say, How’d it go? or, What the hell took you so long?
We drank tea in silence for what seemed a long time. Finally, I said, “There’s seven missiles missing.”
“How inconsiderate,” Charlie said. “Armed?”
“They were arming the other fourteen. I can only assume.” I took out my iPhone. I gave Charlie and Jeri a blow-by-blow of the last twelve hours while I transmitted the videos from inside the plant to General Rutledge and Mr. Elliot. The files were huge. Even with compression technology, the iPhone’s tiny antenna restricted bandwidth, and the process took agonizingly long minutes.
The transmission app finally beeped that the file transfer was completed.
Rutledge sent an alert. He needed to chat. No way he could have reviewed the videos already, so it had to be something else. I had a pretty good idea what it was.
“I saw the file,” he said. “You got in.” He didn’t ask how.
“Academy Award — winning stuff,” I said. “Party time.”
“I’m on it as soon as we hang up.” His face compressed into a ball of deep concentration. I’d seen the look before.
“Problem?”
“Yeah. Several.”
“This have anything to do with Big Tuna?” I asked. We fell into basic tradecraft. Tag names only. Big Tuna: Atash Morshed. “I hope you don’t want a word with him. He’s under a bed in a hotel room. And the room probably doesn’t smell particularly good right about now.”