31

Back on the sixth floor, they signed out a conference room.

Zalinsky ordered some Chinese food from the commissary, and the three of them locked themselves away for the rest of the day. Only then did Zalinsky hand David and Eva a thick briefing book on the mission ahead of them.

“Memorize it, both of you,” Zalinsky said when they had finally settled in. “I’m sure you’ve already figured this out, David, but Eva is going in too. Her cover will be the MDS project manager. In reality, she’ll also be running the Agency’s operation on the ground and reporting back directly to me. Her code name is Themis.”

The Greek goddess of divine law and order? She was going to be insufferable, David concluded.

Zalinsky, however, didn’t give David time to ponder the implications. He cut straight to the bottom line. “Time is of the essence. I can’t stress this enough. I’ve talked to all of the Agency’s best Iran analysts in the intelligence directorate. Most believe Tehran could have functional nuclear weapons in two to three years. Some say it will take them longer. But the problem is, the Israelis don’t trust our analysis. They’re worried we’re making another catastrophic error of judgment.”

“You mean 1998—India and Pakistan,” David said.

Zalinsky nodded. “We knew both countries had been racing to build the Bomb for decades, but we were caught completely off guard when they both tested nukes within days of each other. We had no idea they had crossed the nuclear finish line and built dozens of nuclear weapons until it was too late to do anything about it. And that’s just one example. The Agency had no idea the Soviets were so close to testing their first nuclear weapon in 1949 until the test actually occurred. And don’t forget Saddam Hussein in 1981; we didn’t realize just how close he was to building nuclear weapons until the Israelis took out the Osirak nuclear reactor just before it went hot.”

“And then there’s Iraq again in 2003,” Eva chimed in.

No kidding, David thought. Arguably the Agency’s most disastrous mistake to date was having convinced President George W. Bush that Iraq had large and dangerous stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction—and that the case for proving it to the international community was, in the now-infamous turn of phrase by the director of central intelligence at the time, “a slam dunk.” To be sure, some WMDs were found in Iraq after the liberation of the country by U.S. and coalition forces. But the weapons that were discovered were neither the types nor quantities of WMDs the U.S. and the world had expected to find. Nor were they the types and quantities the CIA had warned about. As a result, the credibility of the CIA and her sister agencies throughout the American government had been so badly damaged that they still had not fully recovered.

“So the problem,” Zalinsky concluded, “is that we now have to be very careful about assessing the WMD capabilities of enemy nations, Iran included. The analysts in the CIA’s intelligence directorate are terrified of making mistakes and of being accused of overstating what they know. So they hedge their written and oral assessments. No one wants to sound too concerned about Iran getting the Bomb for fear of looking like they’re goading the president into another war.”

“So let me get this straight,” David said. “The Israelis think we blew the call in the past by not realizing just how close Saddam and India and Pakistan and others were to getting the Bomb. And the Israelis think we blew the call a few years ago by thinking Saddam was closer to building the Bomb and stockpiling WMDs than he really was. So when our best analysts say Iran is still several years away from getting the Bomb, the Israelis think we’re smoking crack?”

“Let’s just say they’re not brimming with confidence,” Zalinsky said. “But it’s even worse than that.”

“How so?”

“A few weeks ago while you were in Karachi, David, and you, Eva, were in Dubai, I had lunch in Jerusalem with Israel’s top spook at the Mossad. He told me, look, the world already knows Iran is building nuclear facilities. The world already knows they’re training nuclear scientists and enriching uranium at a breakneck pace and building ballistic missiles that can reach not only Israel but Europe as well. The world has already heard the Iranian leadership repeatedly threaten to annihilate Judeo-Christian civilization and wipe Israel and the U.S. off the map. So why isn’t the world taking decisive action to stop Iran from getting the Bomb? Why isn’t the U.S. building a coalition to invade Iran and change this fanatical regime? The world, he noted, went to war with Iraq in 2003 with far less evidence. I told him there is simply no appetite—and no money—in the U.S. or Europe or anywhere for another war in the Middle East. So he asked, doesn’t Israel, then, have not only the legal right but the moral responsibility to go to war with Iran now, if the world is just going to sit on its hands and do nothing?”

“I hear his point,” David said. “But given the fact that a war between Israel and Iran could set the region on fire and seriously impact the global economy, do we really want Israel to be deciding the fate of the region and the world all by itself?”

“No, we don’t,” Zalinsky said. “And that’s what I told him. That’s why the secretary of defense is en route to Tel Aviv as we speak to warn the Israelis not to take matters into their own hands. That’s why President Jackson has had no less than three phone conversations with Prime Minister Naphtali in the past month urging him to let us ramp up covert efforts rather than drag the world into a war no one wants. Which brings the three of us to this room. Last week the president quietly signed a highly classified national intelligence directive. It authorizes the CIA ‘to use all means necessary to disrupt and, if necessary, destroy Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities in order to prevent the eruption of another cataclysmic war in the Middle East.’”

Zalinsky then reached into his briefcase, pulled out a copy of the directive, and slid it across the table for David and Eva to read for themselves.

As David read the one-page document, Eva asked, “How much time does the Mossad think they have before Iran has an operational nuclear weapon?”

Zalinsky took back the “eyes only” directive and returned it to his briefcase, then answered the question. “They’re convinced Iran will have the Bomb by the end of the year . . . and an operational warhead by the end of next year.”

David tensed. Even if the Israelis were wrong, even if they were being too pessimistic, their assessment could mean only one thing—if the U.S. did nothing, the Israelis were going to launch a massive strike against Iran, and soon.