The room was silent. Murray fumed. Zalinsky maintained a poker face. David was about to speak for himself, but the director cut him off.
“Agent Fischer, I appreciate enormously what you and your colleagues have done, including Agent Shirazi. You all have this Agency’s highest thanks, and particularly mine. I know the risks you’re all taking, and I assure you that I don’t take those lightly. What’s more, I can promise you that if I make the decision to ask any of you to put his or her life at risk, you will be fully backed by all the resources at this Agency’s disposal.”
Allen let that sink in for a moment.
“That said,” he continued, “perhaps it’s a little premature to talk about sending anyone to Iran at the moment. There are a range of questions we need to answer first. Starting with this one: was Iran’s nuclear weapons test near Hamadan successful, and if so, how are we defining success? The answers make a big impact on how we proceed. The president is asking specifically about this. What do we know so far?”
“Well, sir, from everything we can gather,” Murray replied, “from the magnitude of the blast as determined by the Richter scale measurements of the earthquake the blast triggered, the damage that earthquake did, and the readings from the Constant Phoenix flight over Hamadan, the guys in the analysis division are judging the test successful. They believe the warhead is likely based on the Pakistani designs sold to Iran by A. Q. Khan.”
“Weren’t they tinkering with North Korean designs as well?” the director asked.
“They were, but based on a bunch of technical readouts I won’t bore you with now, the analysis guys say the warhead they tested was the Pakistani version,” Murray explained. “Now, by successful, what they mean is that they believe the bomb was built properly, detonated as expected, and had a two-hundred-kiloton yield. We’re not talking about a suitcase nuke here. That’s a pretty hefty warhead. If it was detonated in the center of Tel Aviv or London or Manhattan or here in DC, it would completely obliterate every structure within a mile radius of the blast. It would destroy most civilian buildings and kill every person within about three miles. It would also set every structure on fire another mile after that, and anyone within five to ten miles — possibly more, depending on the prevailing winds and other factors at the time — would receive massive radiation doses. Many of them would die within days or weeks.”
“So pretty successful,” Allen said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“The president also wants to know if the Iranians can deliver one of these warheads by missile at the moment,” Allen said.
Zalinsky took that one. “We don’t think so, sir — not yet.”
“How confident are you in that assessment?”
“Ninety-five percent.”
“So there’s still a chance.”
“There’s a chance, sir — it’s small, but I agree it’s something we need to push on and find out for sure.”
“Director Allen, if I may?” Eva asked.
“Please.”
“The reason we’re as confident as we are on the missile issue is the material David here was able to acquire from the computer of Dr. Saddaji, the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
“The one who was assassinated two weeks ago.”
“Correct. And what we’ve learned from our subsequent interrogations of Saddaji’s son-in-law, Dr. Najjar Malik—”
“The scientist David smuggled out of the country.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was Saddaji’s right-hand man?”
“Correct.”
“Okay, proceed.”
“Well, sir, while it’s true that Saddaji wasn’t running Iran’s ballistic missile program, the fact is we now have volumes of highly classified e-mail correspondence between Saddaji and the head of the missile program. When you go through it all, it becomes clear that Saddaji was being told that his colleagues were still several months — possibly even a year or more — away from perfecting the detonation of a warhead on an incoming ballistic missile.”
“A few months isn’t that much time,” Allen noted.
“That’s true, sir,” Eva agreed. “My point is only that we’re highly confident that the Iranians aren’t there yet — though you’re right, they’re not far off. What’s also troubling is that we have e-mails between Saddaji and high-ranking military officials with plans and memos discussing how to transport the warheads by truck, what kind of safeguards need to be in place, how many men would need to be part of the transportation team, whether detonation control would be in the hands of the on-the-ground commander or could be with someone more senior back in Tehran, and so forth.”
“Good. Now, the next thing the president needs to know — and this is his highest priority — is the exact location of all eight warheads at the moment.”
“Right — Jack, you want to talk about that?” Murray asked.
Zalinsky nodded and leaned forward in his seat. “Sir, we have retasked a Keyhole satellite over Hamadan,” he began. “We’re watching all movement in and around that nuclear facility and have been since the earthquake. If all the warheads were built there — and based on all the documentation we have from Dr. Saddaji’s computers, we believe that’s the case — then some, if not all, could still be there.”
The director interrupted. “I thought David had a highly placed source who told him all the warheads had been moved.”
“Yes,” Zalinsky agreed. “You’re referring to the source we’ve code-named Chameleon. He is a longtime personal friend and advisor to President Darazi and Ayatollah Hosseini. The three had lunch recently — we don’t have the exact date, but it was about three weeks ago — and Chameleon obtained direct intel that ‘large nuclear bombs’ had been dispersed to secure locations all throughout the country.”
“How reliable is the source?” the director asked.