The Bin Laden Plot

“Not a good plan,” McFarland replied. “Without getting our hands on ship manifests, we can’t figure out which containers the centrifuges are stored in.”

“What about the uranium-enrichment facility?” Harrison asked. “Can that be destroyed instead, once the centrifuges reach their destination?”

McFarland shook her head. “Their primary uranium-enrichment plant is at Natanz, deep underground in a hardened complex beneath the Karkas Mountains. There’s no assurance we can destroy the facility with conventional weapons. Plus, we’d be talking about a strike against a target on Iranian soil, rather than at sea in international waters. If we want to prevent the centrifuges from reaching their intended destination, it looks like our best option is to sink the merchant.”

“How do we do that without engaging the Russian ships, or is that even possible?” Bryant asked.

“That’ll be up to the president and secretary of defense,” Christine answered. “I’ll have to brief them right away.” She turned to McFarland. “Pull a presentation together — I’ll need something in an hour.”

As Christine rose to leave the conference room, McFarland spoke.

“There’s one more issue. I located the radio taken from the third floor of the Abbottabad house. It’s in an agency storage facility in Leesburg, Virginia.” McFarland pulled up a slide with the facility name and storage container ID. “I can send someone over to get it, but it might be a good idea to keep the issue between the six of us.”

“I agree,” Christine said. “I’ll pick it up after I brief the president today. Send me the location address.”

59 WASHINGTON, D.C.

The desired cast of participants for this afternoon’s meeting had been hastily assembled, with Christine about to begin her brief in the Situation Room in the West Wing. The president and Christine were joined by Secretary of Defense Tom Glass, Secretary of the Navy Brenda Verbeck, Secretary of State Marcy Perini, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Joe Sites, Captain Glen McGlothin — the president’s senior military advisor — plus Thom Parham, the president’s national security advisor. The first slide of Christine’s presentation was displayed on the video screen on the wall opposite the president, and he signaled for Christine to begin.

The first few slides briefed the participants on the basic issue: over one hundred advanced gas centrifuges had been sold by Snyder Industries to Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions against the country. The centrifuges were currently in transit, scheduled to arrive in an Iranian port in fourteen hours. Verbeck hadn’t been pre-briefed on the details, and when Christine revealed that the centrifuges had been linked to Snyder Industries, Verbeck’s face paled.

Christine didn’t delve into the issue of Secretary Verbeck’s relationship with the CEO of Snyder Industries; it was far too sensitive of an issue to discuss in the present forum. Plus, the SecNav-UUV-gas-centrifuge investigation was incomplete. There was no direct link yet between Verbeck and the gas centrifuges, although her relationship with Dan Snyder, the suspicious deaths of her military aide and senior Pentagon supervisor, and the fabricated UUV stories she had told to Murray Wilson were highly suspect. Whether she was an innocent pawn, master puppeteer, or something in between had not yet become clear.

After the problem was articulated, the brief shifted to the U.S. response: Should action be taken, and if so — what and when? It quickly became clear that those around the table held the same opinion as Christine and her agency colleagues: they could not allow Iran to take custody of the gas centrifuges. The topic then turned to the options available, with intervention while the centrifuges were still aboard the merchant being the preferred alternative, to avoid a sensitive military attack or clandestine operation on Iranian soil. Once an attack at sea had been settled upon, Secretary of Defense Tom Glass took the lead.

Satellite imagery of the Persian Gulf appeared on the Situation Room display, with the image zooming in to the merchant in question, Vayenga Maersk, being escorted by four Russian frigates. In addition, a red symbol appeared ahead of the five-ship convoy, in the shape indicating a submerged contact.

“In addition to the four Russian surface combatants, the merchant is being escorted by a Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine. Its exact location is currently unknown, but we do know it’s in the Persian Gulf. It was detected by our SOSUS arrays on the ocean floor, passing through the Strait of Hormuz a few miles ahead of Vayenga Maersk and the four Russian surface warships.