The Tenth Circle Read Online Free

dull in others.
    The new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani’s successor, had made no secret of his desire to chronicle Iran’s greatest technological achievement ever. When the time was right, he wanted the world to see the true scope of his country’s accomplishment, so long hidden behind innuendo and subterfuge.
    The true Hakeem Najjar, the award-winning Iranian filmmaker chosen for that task, was virtually the same height and weight as McCracken and the two men bore more than a passing resemblance to each other, right up to the scruffiness of their tightly trimmed beards. Of course, the plan was not without its flaws. Most notably, McCracken had no idea when Najjar would be summoned to capture the Natanz facility in all its glory. Based on the current timetable for the Iranians’ ability to generate enough fissionable material from the refuse of their vast centrifuges, though, he guessed no more than six months.
    It turned out to be only two.
    The filmmaker Najjar was already under twenty-four-hour surveillance by Israeli Mossad agents long entrenched within Iranian society. Barely an hour after the filmmaker was contacted by Minister Hosseini’s office on extremely short notice, McCracken boarded a private jet with a makeup specialist on board to finish the job of matching his appearance as closely as possible to Najjar’s. The result, after a laborious process that took much of the flight, exceeded even his expectations. The lone oversight had been not to disguise the scar through McCracken’s left eyebrow from a wayward bullet decades before. Although Minister Hosseini had clearly noticed it, he seemed unbothered by its presence.
    While Najjar waited in his apartment for his government car to arrive, a fresh Mossad team, just in the country, entered his apartment by using a key fit to the specifications of his lock based on the serial number. The filmmaker, who was still packing, was unconscious in seconds, with McCracken ready in his stead, equipment in hand, as soon as the car arrived for the first leg of his journey.
    Once out of the elevator, McCracken knew he was about to encounter plenty not mentioned in David’s reports on the structure and its schematics. Israel’s intelligence on the Natanz facility was an amalgamation of satellite reconnaissance; prisoner and defector interrogations; and four separate brilliantly crafted infiltrations. Each of these had provided the particulars of at least a section of the facility, but even taken in sum, they didn’t offer a thorough rendering of all of it.
    The assembled intelligence did reveal a sprawling single-level underground facility. The original plans had called for multiple levels, but this had proven too onerous from both construction and security standpoints. Natanz had been chosen for the site of the plant specifically because of the heavy layers of limestone and shale beneath which it would be contained, along with an underlayer of nearly impenetrable volcanic rock formed in prehistoric times. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the nuclear generating plant that sat at ground level was not positioned directly over the underground facility at all; rather, it served as effective camouflage for the vast tunneling efforts that had forged Natanz from the side instead of from above. The facility was laid out roughly in a square, the size of six football fields placed next to one another, and featured the sophisticated technology required to enrich uranium along with the centrifuges responsible for generating it, a process that undoubtedly included the massive pumps and water systems required for cooling.
    But the very features that made Natanz impenetrable to an attack from above made it vulnerable to what McCracken was planning from within.
    David versus Goliath indeed.
    “One more thing before we get started,” Hosseini said, opening a door McCracken hadn’t noticed before. “If you’d join me inside here …”
    It was a locker room, more or less, each