Salome didn’t say any of this at that first lunch. Neither did Duberman. He didn’t have to. She knew he understood. He discussed the Palestinians with a certain briskness, like a warden dealing with an unruly cell block. When they were finished, he took her hands and promised to call the next time he came through Jerusalem.
“Don’t know why you were trying so hard,” Raban said after they left. “He likes them way prettier than you.”
“You’re only jealous because he saw you for what you are. A baboon in a suit.”
“I should fire you.”
“Who would keep you from embarrassing yourself?” They’d had this conversation before.
Over the next couple years, Salome saw Duberman whenever he came to Israel. They had breakfast at his villa, or he picked her up on his hour-long drives between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She wondered if they would become lovers. But when she suggested they meet for dinner instead of breakfast, he told her he was too busy. Even before he began dating Orli, Salome saw the truth of Raban’s barb. Duberman preferred his women as conventionally gorgeous as his cars. She wanted to think less of him for his shallow taste, but in reality his unreachability only made him more attractive.
To make sure she didn’t betray her feelings, she kept their meetings as academic as think-tank seminars. She briefed him on the secret operations and strategic analyses that the IDF and Mossad disclosed to Raban’s committee. The information was classified, of course, but Salome never worried about telling him. Duberman believed in Israel as much as any sabra.
On the surface, Israel’s position seemed stronger than ever. With jihadis focused on fighting the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel was enjoying a peaceful period. It had walled off its Palestinian enemies in Gaza and the West Bank. Its strike on a Syrian reactor in 2007 had left Bashar al-Assad with no hope of building a nuclear weapon.
Yet, quietly, it faced increasing danger from Iran. After the United States invaded Iraq, Iran’s leaders had made the bomb their top priority. The mullahs aren’t fools. They can read a map. Armies of American soldiers to the west and east. I think mainly they want nukes to keep the Americans out. But once they get them, who knows what they’ll do?
Salome worried that her focus on Iran might bore Duberman. She was wrong. Their moment of truth came over breakfast on a winter morning in Jerusalem, on the glassed-in patio of Duberman’s villa. A faint dusting of snowflakes coated the Old City, frosting on a golden cake. Snow here was rare but not unprecedented. Jerusalem’s hills rose a half mile above sea level, and winter winds from the north swept down cool air from the mountains around the Sea of Galilee.
In keeping with the weather, Duberman’s chef had prepared bowls of oatmeal heaped with brown sugar and raisins. “Don’t know where he found it,” Duberman said.
Salome fluffed the oatmeal with her spoon. “I’ve never had it before.”
“Never?”
“I’ve only been to the United States and Europe in the summer.”
“Mount Hermon, skiing?”
“Not for me.”
“I think you have to grow up with it.”
Salome tasted the oatmeal, put down her spoon.
“You don’t like it,” he said.
“It tastes like paste.” She had never much cared for polite fibs. “Anyway, I have a briefing in an hour. A new program they want to tell us about. Rumor is it’s good.”
“So why don’t you look happy?”
“They’re trying. But there are things they won’t do.”
“Such as.”
“Attacking those European parasites who sell the Iranians their equipment.”
Duberman’s steward appeared to refill their coffee. “Leave us, please.” The steward vanished. “Tell me.”
“We’ve traced several. A machine tool factory outside Hamburg, a software company in Singapore that specializes in modeling fluid dynamics—”
“Fluid dynamics.”
“To understand what’s happening inside the warhead as the chain reaction takes over—”
“Wait, please. Understand who you’re talking to. I run hotels. I don’t even know what it means to enrich uranium.”
So Salome explained. Uranium existed naturally in several different forms, called isotopes. When it came out of the earth, newly mined uranium ore consisted of 99.3 percent of the U-238 isotope, 0.7 percent U-235. U-235 could be used in a bomb. U-238 could not. The two kinds of uranium had to be separated. Nuclear scientists called the process enrichment.
“Like oil,” Duberman said. “You can’t run your car on crude oil, you have to refine it.”
“Kind of. Anyway, during World War II, the United States figured out how.” American scientists had come up with several ways to enrich uranium. One still in use today combined uranium with fluoride to make it a gas. Then the gas was injected into spinning tubes called centrifuges. The lighter molecules spun out against the centrifuge walls. The heavier molecules stuck to the center. Because U-235 was lighter than U-238, the gas against the wall held more U-235 than natural uranium did. The gas was vacuumed into another centrifuge, where the process was repeated. Slowly but surely, the amount of U-235 increased. Until, finally—
“You have enough of the good stuff. And boom.”
“There are other steps, too, but yes. But the centrifuges need special parts. High-strength steel. Perfectly round bearings because they spin so fast. The fluorine gas is corrosive. All this takes advanced equipment that the Iranians can’t make themselves. They have to buy it. Mainly from Europe.”
“If we stopped the suppliers, would we stop the program?”
“Not necessarily stop it. But slow it down, sure.”
“But isn’t it illegal, what the suppliers are doing? Violating sanctions?”
“Yes. We’ve told the Germans, the French. And so have the Americans. But what we know isn’t always the same as what we can prove. The Iranians are smart. They use front companies from China and Russia to buy the stuff. The Europeans say they can’t be responsible for what happens if they sell equipment to a legitimate buyer in China and then that company sends it to Singapore and then to Dubai and then Iran. And the Chinese won’t listen, they don’t care.”
“But these European companies know?”
“Oh yes. It’s a very specialized business.”
“The Mossad won’t stop them?”
“They’ve said no to attacking the suppliers directly. They’re worried what the Europeans will say. But they’re making a mistake. Someone needs to hit these people.”
“Someone.”
“It wouldn’t be that hard. They aren’t government officials. No bodyguards or police looking after them.”
Duberman pushed back from the table, scratching his chair against the tile floor. His villa sat atop one of Jerusalem’s highest hills, with a view over the gold-encrusted Dome of the Rock and the Mount of Olives. The snow had stopped. The winter air was crystalline, the city’s buildings etched against the gray sky. He stood, looked at the Old City, the narrow alleys where Jews and Muslims and Christians had fought and mingled for fifteen hundred years.
“Whatever I want, it’s mine. Too much money to spend in ten lifetimes. No wife, no family.” At this point, he hadn’t met Orli. “Even if I did. One percent of what I have would be enough for my children and their children and their children, too. What do I do with a fortune like this?” He turned to her. “What is it you’re saying? Clearly, now.”