The gray eyes turned ominous. “You’ve sacrificed a lot of good men for this cause, Director.”

“No one understands that better than I. Yet in light of what you’ve just told me—there is one more important matter. In your early days with Mossad, did you ever work with a man named Yaniv Stein?”

The kidon’s eyes narrowed. “Many times. Yaniv was a competent operator—a solid soldier who followed orders.”

“Was?” Nurin repeated cagily. “A curious use of the past tense.”

“It’s my understanding that he was one of the victims of your disaster in Iran a few weeks ago. Yaniv Stein died outside Qom.”

For the first time since arriving in France, the spymaster smiled. “And this, I think, is something we should talk about…”

Chapter 57

FIFTY-SEVEN

Three days later
East of Qom, Iran

The little car fishtailed and nearly slid from the road as Ibrahim Hamedi rounded a corner at a patently unsafe speed. He eased off the accelerator, but only slightly, his eyes squinting to see through a dust-encrusted windshield that was further obscured by the low sun. He checked the rearview mirror again, but saw nothing more than a swirling cloud of dust that could have masked a convoy.

The car was owned by his best friend, a brilliant young technician named Hassan. When Hamedi first returned to Iran from Europe, he’d made a private rule to never become attached to his coworkers. This served a dual purpose: it promoted his image as a distant authoritarian, but also allowed for fewer reservations when the end came. And that end was today. Hassan, however, had been the exception. A young man as likable as he was hardworking, he was fresh out of university and an expert in computer modeling. The two had endured countless late-night sessions, hunched over bitter coffee and whirring laptops, in which they formulated implosion simulations and yield efficiency estimates. Yet even against such a sobering backdrop, the kid had made Hamedi smile. Hassan had been his one allowance. Early this morning Hamedi had sent him to Natanz on short notice, hustling him out on a fool’s errand and insisting he take the bus that shuttled twice daily between the two facilities. Once he was gone, Hamedi had rummaged through Hassan’s desk and found the keys to his rattletrap car right where he knew they would be.

Hamedi’s next hour was spent initiating the sequence that had been branded into his mind by a hundred sleepless nights. Warnings overridden. Security codes activated. And the crowning touch, a malware he’d personally written to create a diversion—spurious air-raid warnings to indicate an imminent Israeli airstrike. From his desk on the fourth level, Hamedi had initiated all of it, and then a final keystroke to set the backward-running clock on its silent countdown.