up and head back to the airport. Only after they had returned to Bahrain that evening did she even allow herself to think about the man she had seen.
Wendy had first seen him ten years earlier. In those days, Professor Kim Ha Soon had been a top physicist in North Korea's now-dead nuclear weapons program. And he had led the delegation that negotiated away that program for energy and food supplies at the end of the Cold War. Wendy had covered those talks with CNN's field team. She never forgot the war scare that swept the Korean Peninsula back in 1994 and 1995. She had seen him then, and remembered rumors around the press pool. Not only was Kim the brains behind their uranium enrichment program, he had also devised the deception and cover plan that had hid the Korean effort for years. Now he was at an Iranian automobile plant, coming out of a security zone, talking with the plant director. She decided to make a quick detour through Washington, D.C., on the way home, and to take the master tape with her. Her old Georgetown University roommate was now an Army major working for the Defense Nuclear Agency at Fort Belvoir. Wendy thought she might be able to feed this to someone who could make use of it.
Iranian Ministry of Machinery Headquarters, Teheran, Iran, September 15th, 2006
The Iranian Minister of Machinery sat in a high-backed chair and looked over a thick file folder of material about the 'Special Machinery' project at Bushehr. So far security had held, and with only three months to completion, there appeared to be nothing to be concerned about. The CNN interview had shown only what he had wanted them to show, and his own performance had been both soothing and convincing. The image was exactly what he wanted — that his ministry was merely overseeing a plucky country's industrial program, trying to overcome the shackles of an unjust embargo. His own lack of military service (he had trained as a mechanical engineer in France) meant that he probably was not known beyond a thin file at CIA headquarters. He had never been politically active, and was considered rather boring in most trade circles. He was, he thought with a thin smile, the perfect cover for a nuclear weapons program.
The smallest details of security had been considered. For example, graduate students at several Iranian universities published scientific papers on nuclear physics under the names of key scientists in the program, so that their absence would not be noticed by Western scientists. Best of all, it was a small program, with just the two facilities at Bushehr and Bandar al Abbas on the coast 320 miles/512 kilometers to the southwest. Thanks to the new laser-plasma isotope separation process and a secure central computer database, less than 250 personnel were involved.
A folder on the desk held the time line for the final three months of the first production run — a dozen boosted fission weapons with a nominal fifty-kiloton yield, based on an implosion design using plutonium. Half would arm a squadron of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), and the other six would become warheads of Russian-supplied AS-19 cruise missiles, for air-launch by Iran's SU-24 Fencer fighter bombers. These weapons would allow Iran to deter any aggression from the Americans or their Arab lackeys in the Gulf while even more powerful weapons and delivery systems were developed by his ministry.
It had taken a long time. Almost fifteen years earlier, he had read the papers written by his good friend, now-Colonel Gholam Hassanzadeh. Armed with these, he had gone to an old mentor in the Defense Ministry with the proposal for a careful and discreet program to build nuclear warheads and delivery systems. It would take time and patience, but the plan would yield results. The Defense Ministry had entrusted him with industrial responsibility for the project, while Colonel Hassanzadeh handled security. That made them two of the most important men in Iran.
Now the project was about to bear fruit. He looked at the time lines with satisfaction, and mentally reviewed the schedules. Final assembly of the weapons was timed for the American holidays at the end of the year, when their attention would be focused on that bizarre form of football they worshipped more than their God. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the components for the warheads would be moved from the fabrication shop at Automobile Plant #3 to the nuclear plant at Bushehr, where the plutonium was being extracted from the last batch of fuel rods from the twin reactors.
Starting on Christmas Eve, twelve warheads would be assembled in a special facility at Bushehr, over a period of seven days. Finally, the warheads would be brought back to the auto plant for mating to the IRBMs and AS-19s, with delivery to operational units the following day. Once the weapons were deployed, there would be a declaration that Iran was a nuclear power and would no longer submit to unfair treaties or agreements imposed by Western powers. From that moment, they would be the regional superpower. The Iranian people would again be able to seek their destiny, without interference by outsiders.
Russian Embassy, Teheran, Iran, September 26th, 2006
To Yuri Andreevich Rogov, sitting in his embassy office, the CD-ROM in his hand felt like a disk of deadly plutonium. It might as well have been, for it held the very documents and diagrams that the Machinery Minister had been reviewing the night before. The disk had been smuggled out of Bushehr in an audio CD case, labeled as Armenian folk music. Someone had copied an actual audio CD, adding written data to the outside tracks. The disk had been passed to Telfian covertly by one of the Pakistani technicians in the secure area, while they had been in the cafeteria together. Telfian had had no idea what it was at first — not until he inserted the disk into his multimedia laptop computer to listen to it, and accidentally found the data files. Telfian had then used a special code phrase whereby the embassy could request his recall on a phony family emergency. He gave the disk to Rogov, then returned the next day to Bushehr to maintain the cover for the brave Pakistani. Now Rogov had the problem of getting the disk back to SVR headquarters in Moscow. There was really only one way. He made reservations on an Aeroflot flight home in two days, so as not to appear too eager.
Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Bolling AFB, near Washington, D.C., September 30th, 2006
The chairman of the Counterproliferation Coordinating Committee brought the meeting to order, and quickly summarized the data the Russians had forwarded that morning. Combined with other bits and pieces that had come in, they now had a full picture of how Iran planned to join the nuclear 'club.' The documents detailed an exquisite deception and security plan. The Iranians had purchased daily 1-meter-resolution commercial satellite imagery covering every base in the Western world that supported special operations forces. The list read like a mailing roster for a snake-eaters convention. Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Hurlbert Field, Florida; the SEALs training base at Coronado, California. Even the garrison and training facilities for the British SAS and German GSG-9. They had arranged for Iranian nationals to emigrate to each nation and set up businesses, usually things like dry cleaners and pizza-takeout shops, just outside the bases themselves. The Iranian agents reported home though a complex E- mail path over the Internet using encrypted messages. It was an almost perfect system, and it would be noticed immediately if one of the agents were arrested. The result was that special operations units which could neutralize the Iranian weapons program were covered with an Iranian surveillance blanket, making surprise impossible.
What made the situation worse for the intelligence types was that they had done their job. Thanks to their efforts to bring together the intelligence community and build relationships with past enemies, they had achieved an intelligence coup. Yet because of the Iranians' patience and care, it seemed as if nothing could be done. But unless they did something radical soon, the balance of power in the Middle East was about to take a dangerous tilt. The Marine lieutenant colonel broke the gloom with a comment about the Iranian surveillance list. Nowhere on it was even one U.S. Marine Corps base.
