Perilous Panacea
Authors: Ronald Klueh
Published in the USA by Savant Books and Publications
2630 Kapiolani Blvd #1601
Honolulu, HI 96826
http://www.savantbooksandpublications.com
Printed in the USA
Edited by Jonathan Marcantoni
Cover images from U.S. Department of Energy photographs in the public domain
Front and back cover design by Helen Babali
Copyright 2010 Ronald Klueh. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced without the prior written permission of the author.
10-digit ISBN: 0-9845552-3-4
13-digit ISBN: 978-0-9845552-3-9
All names, characters, places and incidents are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, and any places or events is purely coincidental.
Dedication
To Helen:
For your constant encouragement and for always believing.
Acknowledgement
I am especially grateful to Jonathan Marcantoni, my editor, for taking my manuscript and finding the flaws, and then, despite my reluctance, having me see he was correct. This eventually led to an improved story, and in the end, it provided an education that should make me a better writer in the future.
Likewise, I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Daniel Janik, Publisher of Savant Books and Publications, for reading my submission, finding something there of merit, and giving me the opportunity to see the book I labored on for many years freed from its electronic file.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Ian Deby arrived home from work, checked his e-mail, and found a message from his sister in England.
Dear Hassan,
Did you hear the rumors about Iran being invaded by the Israelis and Americans?
Can this be what we are praying for?
Love,
BahAmin
Deby checked his watch: almost 6:30. He grabbed the remote from the end of the couch, clicked on the TV, dropped onto the couch, and pondered BahAmin’s words while he waited for the commercials to end.
“Good Evening on this Tuesday, January 4,” the anchor woman for CBS Evening News said, and then continued:
Today’s top story is the surprise military attack carried out on nuclear installations in Iran, the objective presumably being the destruction of Iran’s nuclear-processing capability to produce weapons-grade uranium that they have allegedly acquired over the past decade. Radio Tehran alerted the world to the raid late last night, when they reported an air attack on military and civilian installations. Iranian officials accused the U.S. and Israelis of making an unprovoked attack. Although Iranian officials have blocked all foreign news reporters from sending out pictures, Tehran has released video showing protesters in the streets with signs castigating The Great Satan and their Israeli lapdogs.
Earlier this afternoon, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office released a statement confirming that they had carried out the raid, justifying the attack by citing the recent verbal threats by Iranian officials and stating that they could not stand idly by as Iran manufactured nuclear weapons. No U.S. involvement was indicated in the statement, in spite of reports of meetings between the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense that lasted well into the evening. Until an hour ago, there had been no official response to the Iranian accusations from the Gordono Administration. For details, we take you to Stuart Warner at the Pentagon.
Deby thought about his parents and his sisters and brother in Iran. What now? Would there be an uprising like after the elections last year? Would the U.S. attack Iran and help any revolt by the opposition? He turned his attention back to the TV.
The Gordono administration’s response was delivered at the Pentagon by Press Secretary Jason Mayo who read a brief statement from Defense Secretary Romig denying U.S. involvement in the alleged attack. The statement said the United States understands Israeli concern about a nuclear presence in the area, but…
On the screen, the press secretary read his statement that added nothing new, after which the reporter came back on.
CBS has learned from various sources that at about 5 a.m. this morning in Iran, 8 p.m. last night Eastern Standard Time in the U.S., Israeli fighter planes attacked a secret installation thought to contain centrifuges to produce bomb-grade uranium. The raid destroyed the above-ground installation twenty-five miles southwest of the town of Turut on the northern edge of the Dasht-e-Kavir Desert. Israeli commandos invaded the site prior to the air raid and demolished strategic portions of the underground facilities with explosives, thus making them more vulnerable to the bomber attack. If, as reported, helicopters were used to transport the commandos, it would have been by sea, a capability the Israelis are not thought to possess.
Iran claims they are only interested in peaceful nuclear power and not in bombs. They are signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and claim they are living up to the provisions of that agreement.
Russia and China condemned the attack, as did several European and South American countries. Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations called for a Security Council meeting to condemn the actions of the United States and Israel. The Venezuelan ambassador called for…
Ian clicked off the reporter in mid-sentence, his thoughts turning to his father in an Iranian prison. Would this be his chance to get out? Would it be possible to get his family out of Iran to be with him and BahAmin? He dug his cell phone from his pocket and dialed BahAmin’s number.
Chapter One
Ian Deby switched the grocery bag to his left arm, unlocked the door, flicked the light switch, and bumped the door shut with his hip. The door rebounded, and the doorknob banged his hip.
A dark complected stranger stood in the doorway. “Hassan Mohammed Nagubi?” the stranger asked in slightly accented English.
“You’ve got the wrong person, my name is Ian Deby.”
Of slight build and Deby’s height—five-foot-ten—in a light-brown suit, white shirt, dark-brown tie, he pushed past Deby and glanced around the tiny living room. “Regardless of what you call yourself, you are Iranian, and your name is Hassan Mohammed Nagubi.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ahmed Sherbani, a representative of your Iranian government. We know who you really are.”
He had short black hair, a gaunt, clean-shaven face and intense dark-brown eyes. A smile played on his lips, as if Deby’s confusion amused him. “Your mother, brother, and two sisters are still in Iran, in Mashhad. They left Teheran to go back to her people after your father went away. You write to her every two months.”
Deby studied Sherbani more closely. For a moment, he thought he was about to be scolded for not writing often enough. Sherbani was probably around his father’s age, mid-fifties, his black hair flecked with gray.
“My father did not go away,” Deby said as he wondered about the color of his father’s hair. “The Iranian government put him in prison.”
Recently, he hadn’t thought about those days twenty-one years ago when he was seven, a distant time now that he was submerged in his new and busy life. His father planned to get the family out and sent him and his older sister BahAmin ahead with Uncle Behrouz. He was arrested a week later.
“Your father was plotting against the government, plotting an assassination of the President.”
“No way,” Deby said, his voice breaking. He wondered about his father: was he a freedom fighter, or was he falsely accused by the Revolutionary Guards? “The Revolutionary Guards said…”
“They are the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution,” Sherbani snapped. “They are protectors of the Iranian people. They are true Muslims.”
“My father loves Allah as much as any man. He taught us the Koran and
Sharia
; the
Hajji
was in all his children’s future.”
“It has been a terrible time for Muslims for too long. It is even worse when Muslims fight Muslims, Iranians fight Iranians.”
“You mean like what happened last year after the rigged election when the Revolutionary Guards shot protesters?”
“The election was fair. A few trouble makers decided to stir up the people by claiming the election was stolen. It wasn’t. The majority of our people rejected them.”
Deby knew it was useless to argue the point. He set the groceries on the floor next to the wall and turned to face the man. “What do you want with me?”
“I am told you are a brilliant nuclear engineer, and we need you,” Sherbani said, stepping forward and stopping a couple feet from Deby, his gaze fixed on Deby’s eyes. “We are going to build an atomic bomb. You’ve heard of the Islamic Bomb of Pakistan. We’re going to build the real Islamic bomb.”
“I am no longer a Muslim.” It dawned on him that he had never said that before, or even thought it.
“A tiger cannot change his stripes, and you cannot change your birth. How can you live among these devils that invaded our country last month, invaded your country? Their women wear clothing that reveals their navel, their legs, their thighs. Would you want your sisters to dress like that? You are Muslim, and I am here to enlist you in the struggle of Islam.”
“It’s not my struggle,” Deby said as his mind flashed to the young suicide bombers that kept blowing up themselves and others. What was the struggle? Were the Tehran protesters against the government his part of the struggle?
“Iran is a difficult land, thanks to our war with the Great Satan, and their Little Satan, their Israeli lapdogs. Iran is very difficult for a woman without a man. Your mother tries hard, but things could become difficult. And then there is your uncle in England who raised you. Like your father, he is a traitor. I think you know why you will help.”
Deby understood. His Uncle Behrouz was a lawyer in Iran; he now owned a restaurant in Birmingham, England, and lived in constant terror, expecting the “Ayatollah’s men” to pounce at any moment, even though his Ayatollah, the Ayatollah Khomeini, died in 1989, the year they got out of Iran.
Yet, in every letter from Uncle Behrouz, he warned Deby to be wary of his father’s jailers. To Deby, a dead Ayatollah had always been a dead threat, just as the present Ayatollah had never seemed a threat to him. He was wrong.
“I do not wish to threaten,” Sherbani said. “I just explain how things are. Muslims are besieged everywhere, from Afghanistan to France, from Iraq to Indonesia to the United States. Look at the Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan and the oppression they live under on the West Bank and Gaza. The Israelis shoot women and children. Muslims are made fun of in books and the press. We Muslims are not vindictive, but the Koran says: ‘And fight for the cause of God against those that fight against you; but commit not the injustice of attacking them first; verily God loveth not the unjust.’”
Deby remembered the passage:
Jihad
, The Holy War. “I’m not a Muslim. I am a British citizen.”
“A
British
citizen? What a joke. You acquired a British passport and a British accent, but did your fellow students at the University of Birmingham accept you as British? No. Not even after you Anglicized your name. You were still a turban head. And things did not change at UCLA, did they? You worked for a Muslim professor for your PhD. Are things better here at the great Princeton University?”
Sherbani’s mention of his British accent reminded him of torturous hours spent eliminating his Iranian accent and refining the speech patterns and mannerisms of his new British self. For years, he sought out Michael Caine movies and patterned his speech after him. He learned British slang and sayings so well Americans sometimes didn’t understand him. All that work was about to pay off, for he would soon have a permanent academic position. His UCLA professor called last week about a faculty opening at the University of Wisconsin.
“To the Americans, you are a foreign lackey. To us, you are important. You can do much for your people. You can help them regain the respect Allah has deemed for us.”
“I will not help a government that shoots its own people when they protest in the street, a government that arrests someone for disagreeing with them, like they did to my father.”
“We will see,” Sherbani said and turned to leave. At the door, he stopped and looked back. “You want to see your father free, do you not?” Then he was gone.
- - - - -
Deby was in his bed above Uncle Behrouz’s restaurant when the burglar alarm screamed, stopped, and then screamed again. He fought free of sleep, recognized he was dreaming, and the burglar alarm was the phone next to his bed in Princeton.
“Hassan? Is that you, Hassan?” a familiar voice asked in Farsi.
“Mother.” He spoke in Farsi, his first use of the language in months. This was her first call ever. She didn’t have his phone number, and she didn’t have a phone or the money to make such a call.
After she gained control of her voice—they hadn’t spoken in 15 years—they talked about family things. Then she mentioned a visit from a government man. “He said my job might be in danger, and we might have to move to a smaller apartment if you do not do what they want you to do. He said to tell you that, and now I did. Hassan, do what you need to do. That is what your father would want, and…”
The phone went dead.
- - - - -
That evening, Sherbani appeared carrying a thin black briefcase. He pushed past Deby, led him across the room, sat on the brown couch and motioned Deby to sit next to him. He spoke again about the difficulties of being Muslim. “But things are changing. Praised be Allah! Iran now has the leaders we need to win back respect.”
“Israel just took away your bombs. They won’t let you get another one.”
“The U.S. devils took it away, but revenge is the father of glory.”
“Do you have a scientific staff for the job? Do you have the nuclear material?”
Sherbani shook his head. “We have you, a brilliant nuclear engineer.” He snapped open the briefcase and removed a book and a stack of papers—newspaper clippings. “Here is the answer to our bomb.”
The book: The Curve of Binding Energy by John McPhee published in 1973. According to the dust jacket, the book explained the dangers of nuclear material being stolen from the United States nuclear program and used to make an atom bomb. Deby shuffled through the copies of newspaper clippings, which dealt with the potential for diversion of nuclear material. Most of the clippings were from the last century—the seventies and early eighties. Headlines of two of them:
245 Pounds of Uranium Lost at Plant Since 1968
and
Could Steal Enough for Bomb without Detection
, the latter a quote from a U.S. General Accounting Office report. The New York Times article from 1978 began, “Enough plutonium for a nuclear bomb could be easily stolen from a federal reprocessing plant, and the government might not even detect it.”
“This book and the newspaper stories are over thirty-years old,” Deby said. “U.S. security has tightened since the 1970s. Do you have some of this nuclear material?”
“No. That is what we want you for.”
”
Me? Steal it
? Then get it out of the country and make a bomb?”
“It could be difficult, but for Allah, nothing is impossible. We will give you all the assistance you need. Think about it. Read that material.”
“I could never…”
“You will need to recruit scientific help. You have a friend who works for the U.S. government, a very bright and ambitious computer expert. Our scientists say computers are the reason we will succeed. Your friend is like most Americans, who will sell their mother for enough money.”
“I could never ask him.”
“We will pay several million dollars to you and any others that help. If you refuse, it could be difficult for your mother, brother, sisters, and your father.”
“Could I get my father out of jail? Could I get my family out of Iran?”
Sherbani smiled. “It could be arranged. But remember, Hassan, you are one of us. Instead of your family leaving, you should come back to Iran. Come back to your Muslim roots. If you do this, you will be a hero.”
Sherbani’s offer to free his father stirred Deby’s guilt. He dreamed of helping them. As the eldest son, his father expected it. Now he had a chance. Although there was no way he could do something like building a nuclear weapon, he said, “I’ll think about it.”
“There is nothing to think about. You
will
do it.”
- - - - -
The day after Sherbani’s visit, Deby picked up the phone to hear his Aunt in England, her Farsi words jumbled by deep sobs. “Auntie Goli? What is wrong?”
Uncle Behrouz came on the line. “I didn’t want her to call, but she insisted. Somebody set the restaurant on fire, but the damage was minor.”
“Who did it?” Deby asked, but he knew the answer.
“We had a visitor last week who said something bad would happen if we didn’t tell you to do what they wanted you to do. I told him to go to hell.”
“You should have told me.”
“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do. We are not in Iran anymore.”
Early the next morning, his mother called to tell of another visit from the police. They spoke of catastrophes that could befall his sisters, like the young Iranian women who are kidnapped and taken to France to act as prostitutes; they said his brother could be arrested for plotting against the government, just as his father had been; they talked about bad things that happen to people in jail: “They often commit suicide by hanging themselves. It’s the way it is.”
That night Sherbani appeared and assumed his seat on the couch. He ignored Deby’s pleas to leave his family alone and spoke of Dr. Austin, Deby’s U. S. government friend. Sherbani said he learned about him when they investigated Deby. “We know your friend Austin is a computer expert at the Department of Energy in Washington. Presumably, he would have helpful information on the nuclear material we want to acquire.”
“I’ll do what you want. Just leave my family alone.”
Sherbani smiled. “It is written in the Koran, ‘War is prescribed to you; but to this ye have repugnance.’ Hassan, my friend, you will be well rewarded by Allah.”