Protect And Defend

chapter 4
ISFAHAN NUCLEAR FACILITY, IRAN

The janitor pushed the cart down the hallway at a slow pace that appeared to be the result of either an injured left leg or a lack of enthusiasm for his job. He was wearing faded green coveralls with his security badge clipped to the flap of his left breast pocket. His black hair and beard were shot with gray. Over the last year and a half he had swept, scraped, scrubbed, and mopped virtually every room, hallway, and stairwell in the facility. He was respectful to his superiors, upbeat, and in general, well liked by the other people who supported the important scientific work that was being done.

The name on his security badge was Moshen Norwrasteh. He was sixty-six years old. Born and raised in the southeastern Iranian town of Bam, he had lost his wife, two children, and three grandchildren in a devastating earthquake that had killed over 30,000 people in 2003. Norwrasteh had struggled for years to find work after the quake, and then one day a cousin who worked for the Atomic Energy Organization found him a job at the Isfahan Nuclear facility. At first, his coworkers did not accept him. With unemployment rates so high the competition for any job, even janitor, was extremely intense. The locals whom he worked with were resentful of this outsider taking one of their jobs.

Within a month or two, though, he began to win them over. Norwrasteh had the penchant and the desire to fix almost anything-especially if it was powered by electricity. People brought in their phones, radios, toasters, vacuums-anything with a plug and he would fix it. On the weekends and in the evenings he went to people's houses to help rewire and update their electrical service. He never accepted money, only a warm meal and some much needed companionship to help fill the void left by the death of his entire family.

Norwrasteh had even been to the home of Ardeshir Hassanpour, the famous Iranian scientist who oversaw the country's uranium enrichment program. Hassanpour had come to his ramshackle shop on the ground level and asked him if he could drop by his house and fix a few things. Norwrasteh said that he would be honored. After installing a ceiling fan and fixing two broken lamps, he received neither an offer of payment nor a simple thank-you. Sitting down for a warm meal, even with the house servants, seemed out of the question. Norwrasteh remembered leaving the house and thinking to himself that he would feel no empathy for the man when the hammer fell. For the others, though, the ones who had shown him compassion and friendship, he would do everything in his power to make sure they made it out of the facility unharmed.

Moshen Norwrasteh's real name was Adam Shoshan. He had volunteered for this operation three times before the director general of Mossad and the prime minister finally relented. From the very beginning their greatest reservations lay in the fact that Shoshan himself was volunteering for the mission. The man simply knew too much. He was a senior officer, not some fresh recruit who'd been plucked from the Israeli army.

A twenty-seven-year veteran of one of the world's most feared and respected intelligence agencies, Shoshan was Mossad's resident expert on all things Persian. He was fluent in both Farsi and Arabic, and, most important, he had spent the first twenty years of his life living in Iran. Born in Tehran, Shoshan was the son of a wealthy diamond merchant who was very influential in the Persian Jewish community. As the Iranian revolution began to gain momentum Shoshan's father grew increasingly nervous, and in 1979 he sent his wife and children to live in Vienna with relatives. Once things blew over he planned on bringing the family back. Unfortunately, they never did. Five months after sending his family to safety, Shoshan's father was accused of espionage and sedition and put on trial. The sham of a legal proceeding lasted less than five minutes. He was denied representation and was not allowed to speak on his own behalf. A guilty verdict was handed down and Shoshan's father was taken out back and shot in the head.

Adam Shoshan was the only surviving male relative. Against the wishes of his mother, he moved to Israel and enlisted in the army right as things were once again heating up in the region. A new group called Hezbollah was on the rise, and the PLO was asserting itself in the occupied territories and beyond. In 1982 he was on the front lines of the invasion into Southern Lebanon. While he was on foot patrol his military career was cut short when a Hezbollah suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of Shoshan's platoon. A hot piece of shrapnel sliced through his left leg and damaged his hamstring beyond repair.

He was still in the hospital when Mossad came calling. It turned out they had had their eye on Shoshan practically from the moment he'd enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces. Hezbollah was on the rise and Israel 's top spy agency needed people who could analyze and dissect Iran 's involvement in the Middle East 's newest terrorist organization. Shoshan did exactly that for the next two decades. He went from Collection to Political Action and finally Special Operations, where he rose to the number two position. He had been involved in the planning and execution of dozens of assassinations and paramilitary operations, and he had helped recruit and run spies from Tehran to Damascus and beyond.

The idea of sending someone to Iran who was well past their physical prime was not taken seriously. At least not at first. Shoshan had not participated in an actual field operation in almost a decade, and at no point had he done long-term undercover work. With few alternatives, though, and Iran inching closer to becoming a nuclear power, Shoshan's idea started to look less ridiculous. It was bold, yet simple, and the director general slowly began to see the wisdom of the plan. There was one glaring problem, however. If he was discovered the Iranians would torture him, and contrary to the statements of Amnesty International, torture worked. No matter how tough the individual, a skilled interrogation team always got what they wanted. Shoshan would be operating deep behind enemy lines with almost no backup. It was a huge gamble, but Israel had few choices.

Shoshan rounded the corner with his cart out in front of him. His posture was hunched and submissive but beneath his bushy black and gray eyebrows his eyes were alert, scanning the hall ahead. The signal had been given. Fifteen months of living a lie was about to come to an end one way or another in the next twenty-four hours. Shoshan wouldn't even allow himself to think about his extraction. The mere thought of seeing his beloved Israel again was enough to entice him into abandoning this underground tomb today and to hell with the mission. He'd come too far for that, though. He needed to see this through to the bloody end. Even if it meant his own bloody end.

Up ahead, a door on the left opened and two men stepped into the hallway. Shoshan glanced at the first man and then the other. The man on the left he recognized instantly. He ran the MOIS or Ministry of Intel and Security. His name was Azad Ashani. The man on the right was a ghost. Someone he had been chasing for nearly a quarter of a century. A man who had killed thousands of Israelis with his reign of terror. Shoshan gripped the handle of the cart tightly in an attempt to control his shock. Could he really be so lucky? Shoshan got control of his nerves and looked up for a second glance. He studied the eye sockets and the forehead, two features that were nearly impossible to change. It was him. Shoshan's head began to swirl over the bizarre gift he had been given. He had hunted Imad Mukhtar across three continents, coming close only twice, and here they were, face-to-face in the dank hallway of an Iranian nuclear facility on the very day that it was marked for destruction.

"I have not been impressed with your security thus far," the man on the right said in Farsi.

Shoshan slowed to a near crawl. Ali Farahani, the security chief, joined the two men in the hallway and completely blocked Shoshan's path. Shoshan nudged his cart toward the wall and took on the most passive posture he could muster, which was not easy, considering every fiber of his body wanted to grab a screwdriver from his cart and jab it through Mukhtar's eye socket.

"I want to start with the reactor," Mukhtar stated in a commanding voice.

Shoshan was shocked by the mere mention of the reactor. Iran had gone to great lengths to make the rest of the world think that it was located at the Natanz site some 120 kilometers away. He knew it was beneath them, but he had never heard anyone in the facility speak of it so openly.

Farahani closed the office door. He had a look of extreme discomfort on his face. "That area of the facility is off-limits to you."

"Nothing is off-limits to me. If you would like me to call the president, I will do so, and then I will tell him how incompetent you are and I will make sure you get transferred to the Afghan frontier, where you will spend the rest of your career dealing with those savages."

Farahani hesitated. A defeated look fell across his face as he debated his options. After a moment he relented. "Follow me."

The three men started down the hallway, walking right past Shoshan, neither man paying him the slightest notice. Shoshan breathed a slight sigh of relief and checked his watch. He was supposed to wait for confirmation before he set things in motion, but how could he refuse this gift? Imad Mukhtar, the man responsible for so many indiscriminate bombings and countless deaths, had walked into a facility he was tasked with destroying. It was an opportunity he could not pass up. Surely, his superiors back in Israel would understand. Shoshan picked up his pace. There was much to be done. Especially if he wanted to catch them in the reactor room.