Over the next year, Mason and his team kept killing.
Yet the Iranian program steamed ahead. Then Raban told her that the Mossad had pilfered the most recent American National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The NIE reported that Iran remained determined to build a bomb and would complete one in two years, three at most.
Their work had failed. Tehran was too determined. Only obliterating Iran’s nuclear facilities could stop its program.
In her twenties, Salome had fallen into a depression so deep that it seemed as if every cell in her mind was misfiring at once. Merely breathing became unbearably painful. The word depression didn’t begin to describe how she felt. She had slid to the bottom of a crevasse five hundred meters deep, the kind that swallowed climbers on Everest. Not only could she not see the sun, she couldn’t even be sure it existed.
She was at her lowest for only a few weeks, but the experience stamped her, changed her deep in her bones. To this day, she wasn’t sure what had brought her down. The experience forced her to face her own mind’s fragility. Yet, paradoxically, it had given her a sense of invulnerability. She no longer feared the world. It couldn’t hurt her as much as she could hurt herself.
Hearing about the NIE didn’t instantly send her back down the hole. But it did make her remember what those days had been like, and to realize she was at risk. If this project failed, she’d lose everything. The Iranians would have the bomb, and she would know she had missed her chance to stop them.
She forced herself to retreat. To think. She still had Mason and his team. She needed a new way to use them. She drove east and south from Jerusalem into the desert, to the Dead Sea. The lowest point on earth, hundreds of feet below sea level. A depression, yes. Mountains on either side flanked the grandly named sea, in reality nothing more than a narrow salt-filled lake. Third-rate hotels clustered in a resort community midway down its shore, offering Dead Sea mudbaths and all-you-can-eat buffets, salmonella included. They catered to Russian immigrants and pensioners who didn’t have the money to go anywhere else. Yet Salome felt strangely rejuvenated when she came to this ugly place. Maybe because of the sulfurous warmth. The fear that threatened her was cold.
On her third day, she watched Russian television, the foreign minister complaining about the White House. “The Americans think they can do whatever they like,” he said. “They invade this country and that country. They pay no attention to national sovereignty. One day they will see the rest of the world does not jump to their drum.”
They invade this country and that country…
Only the American military was powerful enough to destroy Iran’s weapons program. But the White House didn’t see the danger Iran posed. Or it feared another war in the Middle East too much to respond. Salome needed to force the United States to see the risk of allowing Iran to build a bomb. If the Iranians weren’t yet ready to threaten America, she would threaten it for them. She would foretell the future, in order to prevent it.
She spent the next day figuring out realistic ways she might bait the United States. Then she flew halfway around the world to meet Mason in Indonesia. He told her she was insane.
Then he told her what she needed to do to succeed.
She knew she’d have to tell Duberman face-to-face what she wanted. They rarely saw each other. The rest of his inner circle would notice if they spent too much time together. Anyway, he was married now. She had seen his wife Orli in magazines. She was Israeli, the daughter of Russian emigrants. In the photos, she was absurdly gorgeous, with long blond hair and hazel eyes. Salome hadn’t been invited to the wedding. Hah.
Salome came to Duberman’s mansion in Tel Aviv, catching a glimpse of Orli on her way to do whatever supermodels did in the morning. Pilates? A Botox refresher? Orli wore a long black T-shirt and yoga pants. She was as beautiful as her photos. Two men in suits waited at the front door, one large and one small. Her bodyguards. The muscle and the shooter. Salome felt the need to say something as she walked by.
“I work for your husband.”
“Don’t we all.” Orli gave Salome the brilliant white smile that had sold a million Kias. Salome found herself unexpectedly charmed.
Duberman waited for her in his office. No hammerhead shark this time, no small talk. The international version of CNN played on a television behind her. He muted it but left it on. Letting her know that her visit was an interruption.
“We have a problem.” She told him about the National Intelligence Estimate. He listened with hands folded, eyes hooded. As if she were a casino manager explaining a $20 million loss.
“I’d say that’s more than a problem,” he said. “I’d say we’re done.”
“This makes it even more critical we don’t give up.”
“Then I hope you have a better idea.”
“I do.”
He reached for the remote control, turned the television off.
“The spies call this a false flag.” She explained her plan, that they needed to make America attack Iran.
“Impossible,” he said when she was finished. “Even if you could pull it off, which you can’t — you know what she tells me, the last few times we talked?”
“She?”
Duberman looked vaguely irritated that Salome couldn’t read his mind. “Donna.” Meaning Donna Green, the National Security Advisor, as close to the President as anyone. “I’ve pushed her. I mean, carefully, I don’t want to make her mad. But she knows where I stand, and she knows I’m connected over here, so she half expects it. I say, Donna, you can’t trust them, no matter how many cups of coffee you drink with them in Vienna. Even if they sign an agreement, it doesn’t matter. She tells me, we don’t want Iran to get a bomb either. And I say, tell me that they’re not getting close. She says, maybe. I say, I know that means they are getting close. I say, the Israelis want you to get out your pen, draw some red lines. She says, it’s great to hear from you. Next time you’re in Washington, come by, let’s meet in person. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
As if she hadn’t spoken, he repeated the question. “Do you understand? They are not going to war with Iran.”
“Unless we make them.”
He laughed. A dry, asthmatic sound, the sound of someone trying to reason with a crazy person. “Make the United States go to war?”
“The uranium. If we can get that.” What Mason had told her in Jakarta. Get the HEU, they’ll have to listen.
“You have a source?”
“Not yet, but I will.” Though Mason had also said that finding weapons-grade uranium would be impossible. Nothing on earth was guarded more closely.
“And our current guys, none would wonder about this change in strategy?”
“These men, you give them a mission, that’s what they do. Long as they get paid. So—”
He reached into the desk, came out with a battered deck of cards. He shuffled them expertly, a perfect riff. Another new trick. Their backs were powder blue, with Hs in white.
“These are almost forty years old, these cards. Hilton made new managers work the floor. To learn the business up close. There were no mechanical shufflers back then. So I learned.” He flipped through the cards. “My boss back then, he liked to say, ‘Your first loss is your best loss.’ You understand? If it’s not working, walk away.”
“That’s how you see this? A deal gone bad? A game? I guess I underestimated you.”