The Increment By David Ignatious

Once you begin reading this novel, you will not put it down until it ends!

A young Iranian, nuclear, scientist working a secret project to build a nuclear weapon, sends an encrypted message to the CIA. The team leader and his staff must determine, first, if the message is real and then what does the message mean. Analysis of the message indicates that the message has to do with measurements of uranium enrichment which could mean that Iran is building a bomb and perhaps working on a heavy water reactor to make a plutonium bomb. This causes considerable excitement in the agency but the team leader, Harry Pappas remembering only too well how misleading and poorly interpreted “intelligence’ got us into the Iraq fiasco insists on learning much more about the sender and the message before the information is carried “up the ladder”. The sender has given the CIA a way to respond; a response is crafted and after a time a second message is received along with a technical document, a lab report about the malfunction of a neutron generator which reinforces the idea of a bomb and the creation of a trigger device. Still vague information; they need to meet the sender, learn about him (or her) and set up a way to find out what the sender is trying to say.

One of Harry’s senior staff members is very ambitious and has connections in the White House. He is convinced that Iran has a bomb and the means to trigger it and that this is a serious threat to the U.S. and the Middle East. He has already told the CIA Director and the national security advisor and now wants to go to the President. Pappas, reluctantly, agrees and the war hawk mentality quickly sets in among the politicians. Pappas is criticized for his conservative thinking while the President, the head of the CIA and the NCA have taken over and are thinking about bombing the Iranian facility within the next few days. A very tense and action filled scenario develops as Pappas , secretly, gets agents into Iran to learn the identity of the message sender, find out his intent and learn just what the Iranian’s actually have.

David Ignatious is very knowledgeable about the Middle East and he writes about something that could very possibly happen if hot headed politicians are allowed to push us into another war. This is a very contemporary novel about a very real threat.