Michael Gruber - The Good Son

LAHORE: Then peace be with you, brother, in God’s name.

KAHUTA: And peace unto you. God is great!

Cynthia typed out the translation on her computer, removed her headset, and sat for several minutes in thought. There was something wrong with the colloquy. For one thing, the conversation was in Urdu, which was fine-Urdu was the official language of Pakistan-but in general, when Pakistanis conversed with people they knew they spoke in their cradle tongues, of which that land had hundreds: Panjabi, Lahnda, Pashto, Sindhi, and on and on. That these two were speaking Urdu to each other meant they were from different origins and the transaction was a commercial one, which didn’t seem right. Terrorist groups were famously tight, especially in that part of the world, with its endemic mistrust of the stranger, one reason why they were nearly impossible to infiltrate. And there was something else: the tone and rhythm of the talk were a little off; there were none of the minor hesitations and repetitions that appear in natural conversations, no ahs, no hmms. It was almost as if they were reading a script.

Or maybe she was losing it. She attached the source header, the sound file, and her translation to an e-mail and zapped it off to Ernie Lotz: READ THIS AND LET’S TALK.

She put the headphones back on and returned to the stolen etheric whispers. Even with the most sophisticated electronic filtering, there was still an enormous amount of dross to get past. A lot of people in South Asia were talking about shipments, many of which were illegal but were of no interest to NSA or to her. The listening at this point was automatic, and her mind was free to drift above the chatter. As she often did, she thought about her career and where it was going. N Section was a fine place to learn the ropes, but it was a dead end. Vital, yes, because obviously terrorists could not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, but it was vital in the way that night watchmen were vital. You didn’t want the factory robbed or burned down, but you also were not going to offer the guy with the square badge a seat on the board. No, N was a springboard to something better, a wider scope…

Something touched her shoulder and she yelped, tore the headset off, and spun around in her chair.

“Jesus, Ernie! Don’t come in and touch me when I’m listening!”

“Sorry,” he said, “but you have to see this.” He handed her a piece of paper.

“Did you get my message?” she asked.

“Yeah, but that’s nothing compared to this.”

It was a few lines of typescript in English.

“Who translated this?”

“No one. It was English in the original. Read it!”

She did.

MAN: Hello, it’s me. Don’t be angry, my dear, but I have to tell you I will not be home to night.

WOMAN: What? Are you mad? To night is the party for Shira and the Sajjids.

MAN: I am sorry, my love, but it is quite impossible. We have an emergency at work.

WOMAN: God help us! Not the reactor?

MAN: No, thank God. But it is almost as bad.

WOMAN: What then? What is more important than your daughter’s happiness?

MAN: I can’t tell you. It is a security issue.

WOMAN: Before God, if you do not give me a proper explanation I will never speak to you again. This is the most outrageous thing I ever heard of. The Sajjids will think it is an intentional insult.

MAN: Be calm, for God’s sake! Look I may be able to get away, we may find the blasted stuff in the wrong place, but I must be here to supervise.

WOMAN: What stuff? What are you talking about?

MAN: I am talking about thirty-three kilograms of ninety-four percent enriched uranium that has gone missing.

WOMAN: Thirty-three kilograms? Is it that valuable?

MAN: Not as such, but it is enough to manufacture several nuclear weapons, and we must find it. If we don’t, I could conceivably be sacked.

WOMAN: Oh, God protect us!

“What’s the source here? Who are these people?” she asked.

“The source tap is from a cell phone out of Kahuta belonging to Jafar Baig Qasir. I looked him up in the database. He’s a nuclear engineer who works at Kahuta and lives in Lahore. He’s one of the people in charge of refining and casting weapons-grade uranium. From the context, I assume he’s talking to his wife.”

“Why are they speaking English?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Cynthia,” replied Lotz, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Why shouldn’t they? A lot of upper-class Pakistanis use English as their second language.”

“Yes, but not on intimate family subjects to their wives. Besides that, don’t you notice anything fishy about the conversation?”

“No. What do you mean?

“It has the same phony tone as the one from the supposed trucker. Did you listen to that one?”

“Yeah, it sounded fine to me, and it just adds to the case. Cynthia, I don’t understand why you’re-”

“And on top of that, don’t you think it’s funny that a senior scientist should talk to his wife on an open cell-phone line about something that should be the most top secret thing that ever happened: a theft of weapons-grade uranium? He makes it sound like a fender bender or a coffee spill on his pants. What’s the traffic like from Pakistani security?”

Lotz said, “I haven’t checked it recently. I wanted you to see this right away.”

“Well, check it. They should be running around like chickens with their heads cut off if this is real.”

“I will, but don’t you think we should get Morgan in on this?”

“No, I don’t. The last thing we need is a premature orgasm, and I can tell he’s ready to pop.”

“You would know,” said Lotz, half under his breath. She didn’t call him on it, and he left her office. Yet another reason for getting the hell out of N Section.

She put her headset back on, but she was too restless to focus on the voices. Instead, she switched to her music collection. The Allegro of Mozart’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra sounded, in her ears, so much more soothing than the chatter of conspirators, a souvenir of a less dangerous, more orderly world.

If they were conspirators. If they had stolen enriched uranium. If they could make a bomb. Cynthia had been through a secret course given by some people from Los Alamos. She knew that making an effective nuclear device was a lot harder than most people supposed. Yes, there was a lot of public information available, but the devil was in the details and in the technical skills through which they were applied, and these were not so generally available. Could a group of terrorists actually steal nuclear materials and manufacture a weapon in some mountain village? Not very likely. Nevertheless, even the possibility was sufficient to provide employment for her, the rest of N Section, and the other parts of the government that worried about such things. On the other hand, a nuclear scam could be mounted with a lot less effort and, if America fell for it, it might be nearly as damaging to its cause as a nuclear explosion. American boots on the ground in some Pakistani village, civilian casualties, the erosion of what little trust remained between the two governments: a cheap victory and intensely embarrassing for the already embattled intelligence community. Cynthia would have recommended such a scam herself, had she been on the other side.

She listened to the music, the familiar melody of the clarinet, soaring, glorious, but always returned to earth by the repetitive thrum of the full orchestra, each phrase sculpted to fit, each original but grounded in its form. That’s how she wanted her life to be, soaring but under control. Her thoughts drifted for a time, lost in Mozart’s structured beauty, and then settled on the figure of Abu Lais.

If there was such a person, if this whole thing was not an elaborate ruse. Here was the paradox of espionage, and especially of the type NSA practiced. NSA snooped; everyone in the world knew NSA snooped; everyone knew that electronic communications were not secure; therefore, anyone with any brains would send into the ether only those things he wanted NSA to know; therefore, what NSA learned with its multibillion-dollar investment in snooping was essentially valueless. But such thoughts, although they occurred to everyone who worked at the agency from time to time, were distinctly not profitable, and Cynthia had no patience for the unprofitable.