The Inca Prophecy (8 page)

The four-hectare complex on the banks of the Potomac River took its name from the western steps of the nearby Lincoln Memorial, which had originally been designed as a landing platform for dignitaries arriving by river from nearby Virginia. The five horseshoe-shaped buildings included office blocks and apartment blocks, many of the latter tenanted by congressmen and women, and a
hotel–office complex that had been the scene of the third-rate burglary into the offices of the Democratic National Committee, leading to the eventual downfall of the Nixon presidency.

O’Connor was waiting for Jafari in one of the CIA’s safe apartments at Watergate, this one with sweeping views past the Potomac’s Key Bridge to the north-west, and across Theodore Roosevelt Island towards Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon to the south.

After introductions were made, both men took a seat on the couch. ‘You did very well today,’ O’Connor congratulated Jafari with a grin. ‘You managed to throw off one of our most experienced operators … who right now is pretty pissed.’

Jafari nodded nervously, somewhat relieved. He had been tailed – by the CIA.

‘How do you feel about going back to Iran?’ O’Connor asked, probing for any signs of weakness in his latest charge. O’Connor had run agents out of Moscow, Beijing and the Middle East, but they had been much more experienced than Jafari and there had been more time to train them. Although they’d only just met, O’Connor was far from sure Jafari was up to the task. He wanted to be convinced.

‘I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get my country back,’ Jafari replied. His voice was gravelly, and hinted at controlled anger. ‘Ayatollah Khomeini was very strident in his criticism of the Shah. We loved him for that – everyone hated the Shah and his secret police. But when the revolution gave the ayatollahs control, they were just as brutal in repressing opposition. In the months after Khomeini seized power, almost 10 000 Iranians were murdered. We thought we would finally get democracy with the ousting of the American puppet,’ Jafari added, ‘but instead, we got another dictator in the robes of a cleric.’

O’Connor listened as Jafari vented his anger against the unrestrained power of the
ulema
, the religious scholars. ‘And now it’s Khamenei. The Supreme Leader has absolute power, and as you know, the Council of Guardians underneath him decide who can run for parliament and who can run for president.’

‘And anyone who doesn’t conform to the Ayatollah’s views is not allowed to run.’ It was a statement, not a question. O’Connor had studied Iran for years.

‘They have to conform to the views of the Council as well. Khomeini’s original revolution has been taken over by the fanatics who demand absolute loyalty to an Islamic government, a government that’s totally out of touch with the people,’ Jafari fumed. ‘None of us wanted to be dominated by the West, or by the Communist East, but we don’t want hardline fundamentalist Islam either.’

‘I imagine a lot of Iranians – especially women – feel the same way,’ O’Connor mused.

Jafari laughed, but it held no mirth. ‘Ahmadinejad wants separate lifts and sidewalks, designated for men only and women only. Over a thousand Iranians applied to run in the 2005 presidential election, and the Council of Guardians approved just seven candidates – all men. We might have overthrown the Shah, but as a result we’re back in the dark ages.’

‘How much do you know about the regime’s nuclear plans?’ O’Connor asked.

Jafari’s face clouded. ‘Not as much as my father did, but I’ve learned enough to know that things are about to get very dangerous, especially for the West. But a nuclear-armed Iran should concern Iranians as well.’

‘I’m not sure I follow. Retaliation if Iran strikes first?’

‘Partly …’ Jafari paused. ‘Are you familiar with the nuclear fuel cycle and heavy-water reactors?’

‘Just the basics,’ O’Connor lied easily. The Iranian might hold a Master of Science in nuclear physics but O’Connor was no slouch in that department himself.

‘The CIA will be aware that Iran is constructing a heavy-water production plant for a reactor in a remote area outside the city of Arak, 260 kilometres to the south-west of Tehran. Do you have a pen and paper?’

‘Sure,’ O’Connor responded, retrieving some notepaper from the drawer of the bureau.

‘Heavy water, or D
²
O, is essentially water or H
²
O, but with the hydrogen atoms replaced by deuterium – heavier atoms of hydrogen that contain a neutron as well as the normal proton,’ Jafari explained, penning the formulae for the different types of water. ‘Normal water contains minute quantities of heavy water, but it’s less than one part in 5000, so heavy water’s expensive to separate and it requires leading-edge technology and infrastructure.’

‘I seem to remember the Germans tried to produce it during World War II.’

Jafari nodded. ‘It was a race between the Allies and the Germans as to who could produce the first nuclear bomb. The German program was based on plutonium, but for that, they needed heavy water for their reactors. In the mountains west of Oslo, they came very close to pulling it off – until a team of Norwegian commandos blew up the plant and sank the ferry that was shipping the heavy water across to Germany.’

‘One of the most daring raids of World War II,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘Now it seems we have another plant on our hands.’

Jafari nodded. ‘The Arak plant is part of Iran’s two-pronged approach to gaining nuclear weapons, the other being uranium enrichment to weapons grade. In any nuclear reactor, the process starts with neutrons bombarding uranium in a controlled reaction that splits the atoms, producing more neutrons – and more and more, splitting in a chain reaction,’ he explained, sketching another diagram.

‘This reaction produces an enormous amount of heat, which is used to boil water, with the steam driving the turbines just like a normal power station. But the process needs to be moderated, otherwise the neutrons travel too fast for the reaction to proceed,’ he explained. ‘Heavy water is one of only two moderators that will allow you to use ordinary natural uranium as a fuel, the other being graphite,’ said Jafari, lowering his voice, although he needn’t have bothered. The safe apartment was swept regularly.

‘And since the IAEA doesn’t check on natural uranium usage, the Iranians can keep things under wraps,’ O’Connor observed.

‘Yes. It’s not the reactor itself that Washington should be worried about, but the reason it’s been constructed. Once you have plutonium-239, you’re very close to having a bomb small enough to be placed in a suitcase. The West hasn’t much time left,’ he urged.

O’Connor felt a shiver run down his spine. Jafari’s intelligence was corroborating the information on Ashtar’s thumb drive. O’Connor knew that raw intelligence could be dangerous. It had to be tested and verified from another source, and Jafari had just become the second source.

Chapter 8

‘The Jefferson’s on the corner of 16th and M streets,’ Ryan told Aleta as the cab driver crossed the Potomac on the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, ‘so it will be handy to the Convention Center.’

Aleta nodded numbly, dimly registering the name of the hotel. Her mind was still focused on Machu Picchu. She glanced at her husband, wondering why she’d been so attracted to him when they first met. Ryan came from a wealthy Massachusetts family who had ensured their only son had every privilege, including a Harvard education in political science. The warning signs were there when she’d first met Ryan’s father, Aleta thought. An irascible, ultra-conservative evangelical lawyer-turned-Republican senator, and now one of the Elders on the Hill, Senator Austin Crosier had for many years served on the powerful Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Her
first encounter with him had been a meeting Aleta would never forget.

‘So, Ryan tells me you come from Guatemala, right?’ the bull-faced senator had asked, the first time they were alone on the verandah of the three-storey family mansion overlooking Nantucket Sound. ‘You must find the United States a pleasant change.’

‘I was brought up on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Senator.’ Ryan’s father had not invited her to be on first-name terms, and Aleta stuck to formality, although she was determined not to be intimidated. ‘Aldous Huxley once described it as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world – Lake Como with volcanoes.’

‘Huxley!’ Senator Crosier snorted. ‘An atheist, or good as, damn it! Got mixed up with the Hindus and one of their mystical sects. Ryan tells me you’re a Catholic, though Weizman sounds like a Jewish name. Are you religious? Do you fear the Lord?’

The rapid-fire questioning had taken Aleta aback, and she hesitated, collecting her thoughts, before meeting the senator head on. ‘My father’s parents were both Jewish, Senator, and they both died in the Holocaust. My father escaped from the Mauthausen concentration camp in the back of a laundry truck when he was only ten, along with my aunt Rebekkah, who was just eight. Rebekkah drowned when the freighter they were escaping in collided with another ship in the Bosphorus.’

‘That doesn’t explain why you’re a Catholic, though, does it?’ the Senator demanded. ‘We’ve only ever had one Catholic in the
White House, you know, and he was a Democrat – my father was astounded when the American people voted for him.’

Aleta smiled disarmingly. ‘My father was Jewish, Senator, but he owed his life to the Papal Nuncio in Istanbul, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII. Roncalli used to sit up until three in the morning forging Catholic baptism certificates for Jewish children.’ Aleta fought back tears. ‘Papa used to say that Roncalli was everything a priest should be, and he never forgot Roncalli’s kindness. My grandparents both had great faith, but I think Papa practised his faith as a Catholic out of respect for Roncalli.’

The senator had grunted and got up from his chair. As she followed her future father-in-law back into the grand New England mansion, Aleta reminded herself she wasn’t marrying Ryan’s family.

It was a pity Ryan’s father had not pressed her further on her own faith, Aleta thought, as the cab driver turned on to the E Street expressway. If he had, Aleta would have felt compelled to tell the cranky, one-eyed old bastard that she had long ago abandoned any notion of a wrathful God and the Christians’ claim that they were on the only true path. And that, she thought with a touch of bitterness, might have ended it all. Then she washed her thoughts down an imaginary drain. She had promised to give her marriage one last try.

Once they’d settled into a palatial suite at the hotel, Aleta’s thoughts again returned to the mysterious crystal skulls. ‘Is there
any chance we can go home via Indiana? It would be a pity not to see the Mitchell-Hedges skull while we’re here.’

‘We’ve had this conversation already, Aleta,’ Ryan snapped. ‘Crystal skulls are on a par with voodoo, witchcraft and false prophets, and the Bible is very clear on this – we dabble with them at our peril.’ Ryan took out his old King James Bible from his attaché case and opened it at Paul’s second letter to Timothy. ‘“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” It can’t be clearer than that, can it?’

Aleta sighed inwardly. ‘Okay, well, why don’t we find a nice restaurant and have a quiet dinner downtown?’ She reached for the glossy guide to the capital sitting on the coffee table. ‘Some Chesapeake Bay chowder and a bottle of champagne to celebrate the trip?’

‘You need to watch your drinking, Aleta,’ Ryan warned.

Aleta took a deep breath. ‘I’ll take that as a no?’

‘I need to prepare for tomorrow’s conference. The pastor and his team have done a lot of work on the Israel–Palestine problem, and the least we can do is make sure we’re across the issues.’

‘They’ve done a lot of work on the Israeli side of the problem,’ Aleta shot back, ‘but I can’t see too much evidence of any work on behalf of the Palestinians. They’re people too, Ryan. What does Pastor what’s-his-face —’

‘Buffett!’

‘What does Pastor Buffett suggest we do with the Palestinians and the hundreds of thousands of refugees that have been forced from their homes?’