The Fox

At 00.42 all eight launched their payloads. None missed. At 00.45 the team leader radioed the single word ‘Arizona’ – target obliterated. The squadron turned north, made the Turkish border and followed it west until they were back over the sea. Then they turned again for home, still hugging ‘the deck’.

The destruction of the Cube did not concern Iran directly, but it taught a lesson. When the Iranians began a nuclear-bomb programme, they went deep underground, into a series of bomb-proof caverns. In these they began to purify uranium-235 to create a stock of bomb-grade uranium.

It is known that there were two purification plants. The smaller, called Natanz, was inside a hollowed-out mountain in the north of the country. The far bigger one was called Fordow, deep under the desert, so far down as to be immune to the most powerful of deep-penetration bombs.

Row upon row of centrifuges, called cyclotrons in the early days, are employed in the purification process. These are extremely dangerous machines to operate. They are vertical columns six to eight feet tall whose cores spin at a staggering 50,000 revolutions per minute. They stand in ranks called cascades. The estimate was that Iran had 20,000 of them, linked in cascades of 128 each in the main centrifuge hall.

The reason for having so many is that they purify the uranium ore extremely slowly, extracting only a few precious grains per day, which are carefully stored. The reason they are so dangerous is that they spin on bearings which have to be delicately balanced. The slightest variation in spin-speed or balance can cause them to either overheat or rip themselves off their bearings, or both. In that event, the entire hall would become a charnel house, with body parts of the attendant technicians flying in all directions and the deranged centrifuges tearing themselves and their neighbouring machines to molten fragments.

To prevent this, the entire operation was controlled by a master computer, guided by a database so skilfully protected by layer after layer of firewall that only the on-site Iranian operators, armed with the access codes, could enter it. It was these impossible-to-obtain access codes that the teenager sitting beside Dr Hendricks at Chandler’s Court had secured.

No warning was spotted at Fordow, so nothing needed to be done. The possession of the access codes was enough. It was these that Sir Adrian, with the permission of the Prime Minister, handed over to a senior nuclear official in the Israeli embassy at Palace Green, London.

A week or so later, at the beginning of July, something very strange happened far beneath the Iranian desert. A minuscule variation appeared on the master computer. The rotating speed of the bearings in one cascade of centrifuges began to increase. A white-coated engineer at the master console instructed the database to correct it. The technology took no notice. Other hands, in the Negev Desert, were issuing new orders. The rotation speed continued to accelerate.

The worried engineer at Fordow called a superior. Puzzled, the senior technician entered the corrector codes. They were ignored. The gauge monitoring the temperatures of the bearings began to rise. Concern became worry, then, finally, panic. The database refused to obey. The spin-rate escalated, as did the temperature of the bearings. A red line was passed. The senior technician punched a red button. In the vast hall housing the centrifuges a klaxon blared. Men in white coats scurried towards the enormous steel doors. The wail of the klaxon persisted. The scurry became a mad run, a life-saving race as the first cascade was wrenched from its bearings. Metal glowed scarlet from the uncontainable friction. The running men fought each other for the now open doors.

The initial report that reached the supreme authority of the republic, Ayatollah Khamenei, related that the last technician made it out just in time. The doors hissed and began to close, sealing the inferno in the hangar-sized hall. The men were saved, but the centrifuges, cascade by cascade, destroyed themselves as they spun from their bearings to bring down the next cascade in line.

The Ayatollah, venerated and bent with age, forced himself to read the last line of the report as a row of ashen-faced scientists stood in front of him in his modest residence on Pasteur Street in Tehran.

Twenty years was the estimate. Twenty years of unrelenting hard work and expenditure had been wiped out in one catastrophic hour. There would be an inquiry, of course. He would order it. The finest brains in Iran would delve and probe. They would report to him. They would tell him what had happened, how, why and, most importantly, at whose hand. He dismissed the scientists before him and retired to his private mosque to pray.

Of course, behind it must have been the Israelis, may Allah damn them to hell. But how had they gained access to the codes? They had tried for years and failed. The malware Stuxnet, developed by the Israelis and the Americans years earlier, had done damage, but it had not got past the codes. Now, someone had. Could it have been the Israelis themselves? The Iranians could not know it was in fact someone else far away, the greatest hacker the world had ever seen – or, in this case, never seen.

The Supreme Leader had not the faintest idea about computers and was thus wholly dependent on his experts. What they told him after the detailed inquiry was that the hands that had typed the order into the master computer to instruct the bearings in the centrifuges to increase their spin-speed to manic levels, causing the centrifuges to auto-destruct, were probably Israeli.

But the key quandary concerned the access codes. These would have been vital. Without them, no one could give suicidal instructions to the controlling master computer. With them, all was possible.

The Iranian disaster did not remain secret for long. The news could not be contained. Men, even scientists, who have been subjected to a traumatic experience, talk. They talk to their colleagues, those present and those who were not there. They tell their families. Word spread. It leaked into that worldwide community of scientists whose life’s work is to study, on behalf of their governments, the progress of others in the same field. What had happened at Fordow was too similar to the computer disaster at Murmansk.

In the end, the enigma was not solved in Tehran, but in Moscow: Moscow knew who it was and where he was.

Two days later the Russian ambassador in Tehran sought a private audience with the Supreme Leader. He bore a personal message from the Vozhd. It concerned an isolated manor house in the countryside of England and a teenage hacker who could do the impossible.

In fulfilment of a promise made by Sir Adrian a copious report reached the man in the White House. A similar report saying much the same thing also arrived via the CIA. Each confirmed the contents of the other. The President realized he had been lied to. He had in any case long denounced the treaty which had caused the US to relax the financial penalties imposed on Iran in exchange for a cessation of nuclear research, let alone uranium purification. He tore up the treaty and reimposed the ruinous economic sanctions.

At about that hour, Sir Adrian received a letter at his Admiralty Arch apartment. It intrigued him. Very few people knew that address, and the envelope had been hand-delivered. The contents were brief and courteous. The writer suggested that a meeting might be mutually valuable and invited Sir Adrian to visit him for a discussion. The letterhead was that of the Israeli embassy. The signature was of Avigdor Hirsch, a name he did not know.

In his time with MI6,

Sir Adrian had been a specialist on Russia, the USSR and the Soviet empire’s East European satellites. The Middle East had not been his terrain and over a decade had now passed since his retirement. Others had also retired, and there had been promotions, postings, departures – some voluntary, some encouraged. But he still had contacts, and one was the man who had ‘run’ the Middle East and who, being younger, was still in post at Vauxhall Cross. Name of Christopher.

‘Avi Hirsch? Of course I know him,’ said the voice on the secure line. ‘Been here three years, head of station for Mossad. Very bright.’

‘Anything more?’

‘Well, he started as a lawyer after national service in their Special Forces. Qualified in three jurisdictions – his own, ours and the USA. Got his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. Absolutely not a horny-handed kibbutznik. We regard him as a rather good egg. What does he want?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Sir Adrian.

‘You’ve heard about the disaster at Fordow?’

‘Of course. And the US response.’

‘Well, my department is working round the clock. Good luck with Avi.’

The Israeli embassy in London has extreme security. It needs it. There have been attempts at attack and numerous placard-waving demonstrations outside. Sir Adrian’s car drew up at the wrought-iron gates and his identification was minutely examined. Calls were made from the gatehouse. Then he was waved inside. Another security officer pointed to a parking place and when his driver had parked he was escorted into the building.