He thought of that metaphor often. Strangely, dwelling on it did little. For years, he told Will where the nuclear program stood, how it was failing, when it was succeeding. Sometimes, relishing his own power, he told him nothing resembling the truth. Often, he returned to it—yet usually when he wanted to, not when Will challenged him. He guessed that Will couldn’t tell when he lied and when he didn’t, though sometimes Hoseyn tried to ascertain if he could. It was spirals on glass ladders in mirrored nests of possibilities. It was ravishing.

Their relationship changed only after 9/11; he assumed that some shift in Will’s assignment had made his contacts less frequent. Hoseyn had seen him once—right after Ahmadinejad took office. The midget, as many called him, revamped the state-security apparatus. Hoseyn judged it would discover his dead drops for Will. He stopped them. He moved the gain from his betrayals—American dollars for spying—to New York accounts controlled by his mother, now a naturalized American.

Their rift had complicated matters. She insisted some of his assets were rightfully hers. A family real-estate deal—his Ann Arbor brother financed a strip shopping mall—had ended badly for everyone concerned. Hoseyn had pledged to put his money in, but never had. Now his mother said his seditious profits should cover her losses. They had argued bitterly, and then she refused to discuss it. It had been years since they had spoken. Hoseyn was not even sure how much of the money was left. He consoled himself that its loss meant that no sign of high living could come to the attention of Iranian counterintelligence. He had never craved the money. His chief hunger was for the psychological maneuvering with Will. He could not, even after the danger the midget posed, give it up.

It might have been well enough. And was, until the reception. Such events never happened before the midget. He thought if he shook your hand you were a sure friend. The colossus of his naïveté shadowed everything. At the event, there were men the small leader invited from IranAir, the favored cover for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, called MOIS; and nuclear men, among them Hoseyn and many of his colleagues. It was a jamboree for foxes among chickens. There were wolves too. One of the MOIS men noticed Hoseyn’s wife. This animal displayed and rutted and sniffed at her, and then, as weeks went by, pursued and played her. The insult, the fear, the knowing that she could not definitively refuse him—for months they shuttled in smothering despair past each relay and switch in the monstrous machine that enclosed them as their tormentor called and manipulated and bumped into her or caught her in an excuse. His wife, defiant, silkily difficult, said she could fend him off. But Hoseyn knew. They were at the mercy of this man.