The Increment [Hardcover]

My initial encounter with The Increment was unpromising: an omniscient narrator remarking about the actions of the central characters in Tehran and Washington. Fortunately, the narrator's voice was soon muted, and we were embroiled in a beautifully contrived tale of espionage, betrayal, and geopolitics. On one hand, the idealists; on the other, the cynical opportunists; caught in the middle, those who are revolted by both extremes.

I won't provide any spoilers, because you really should experience the twists and turns of this narrative for yourself. Ignatius gets extra points for the compelling picture he conjures up of contemporary Tehran (and the rest of Iran). However he loses a star for the gung-ho use of technology, and for a couple of lazily stereotyped characters. Taken together, these factors made a couple of his plot twists wholly implausible. But never mind: it's a most enjoyable read.

WAPO foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius has turned out an anti-war spy thriller for liberals - and anyone else who likes heart-pounding adventure with a side of smarts. An Iranian nuclear scientist does a virtual walk-in and reports Iran is working on the nuclear trigger. Career CIA officer Harry Pappas soon is in a race against White House war fever to find out what this "Dr. Ali" is really saying. The Iranians are trying to build the bomb, but progress is oddly evasive.

Suffering deep guilt for not having warned off his now dead Marine son about the stupidity of the Iraq effort, Pappas uses a back-channel to hook up with the Brits for access to their agents inside Iran. Or rather he hooks up with a particular Brit who Pappas worked with in the past. Pappas soon finds himself in the inevitable hall of mirrors where the question of who is doing what for whom always has two or three plausible answers.

The Brits mobilize a special unit called The Increment to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Dr. Ali - by penetrating Iran with a 3-person team. The members of the Increment have the `00' license-to-kill and they need it. Besides Iranian security, they are also up against an opponent who lives and kills in the shadows.

Ignatius also plays out a large part of the book inside Iran, which is interesting in its own right due to the relative lack of information in the US about life in Iran. However, the motivations of the Iranian scientist could be more fully and plausibly developed.

Ignatius strains credulity at times, but one suspects he intends to do so. The Increment backmatter touts echoes of Graham Greene and John Le Carre`, I would add Ian Fleming to that list. A satisfying read for fans of the spy thriller genre.

A young Iranian scientist, working on his country's own Manhattan project decides, more or less out of the blue, that he'd rather be a traitor than continue with his life as a privileged and respected scientist. It's easy for Iranians to pass the CIA some of the most classified Iranian documents - they simply log into CIA's Web site and upload them. Or so this story goes. The evidence is exactly what some of the more bellicose US presidential advisers are looking for - the pretext to "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" as one of the more humor-gifted US presidential candidates used to joke - and, following the glorious freedom-spreading successes in Iraq, the US is poised to whack Iran into liberty, democracy and unrestricted rock & roll.

This is where Pappas, the head of the Iranian desk at the CIA comes to shine. He goes beyond his call of duty to prevent the upcoming war. It's not easy but Pappas is resourceful and determined and his British friends seem to be on his side even when they are really implementing someone else's private agenda.

A lot of the book is atmosphere as the author seems to attempt to inject a large dose of Euro-Middle Eastern sophistication and ambiguity into his work - and he makes sure that we are made aware of it. The Iran of this book, as the author himself admits, is a product of his imagination aided by some readings from sources such as 'The Lonely Planet' and the author's own 2-week recent stay in Tehran. It's the well-meaning CIA vs. the crazy warmongers prodding the president toward a new war and sometimes it feels like we are re-reading the newspaper and magazine articles of a few years ago. It's the British secret service, corrupt and corrupting. It's hundreds of pages of competently written prose where not much is happening but the stage is being set for a possible final confruntation which, consistent to the 'shades of gray' and Euro-Middle Eastern sophistication theme never really takes place. The Iranian traitor is afraid but he cries himself into staying a likable traitor and further helping the CIA to help the US destroy his country. The CIA chief has personal issues but he manages to stay clean even though he sometimes succumbs to the world stage ambiguities and he finds himself shaking hands with 'the terrorist'. The Brit agent is rotten to the core but he can be a good friend, the Arab businessman is sophisticated and nuanced beyond comprehension with more penumbras than Rembrandt could have ever dreamed, the Iranians other than the youthful traitor are all the simplistic cliches we read about in America's monthlies.

In the end, the story is unconvincing on more than one level. The Iranian traitor's motivation is way too thin to persuade. Since the author insists in portraying him as a 'good guy' who does it all out of high principles it's hard to understand the principles behind him offering his country's enemy a pretext to kill thousands of his fellow Iranians. The shadowy Arab puppet master, holding the MI5 in one pocket and the Iranian leadership in another is even less believable. The technology and the gadgets are laughable. Not replying to an email received on a Blackberry does NOT prevent the CIA or the NSA or even the phone company from knowing that the Blackberry was physically in London when the email was delivered. Satellites, even the secret ones, can NOT monitor an entire country continuously, allowing the CIA bosses to watch videos of past events anywhere - it would be a long explanation but the bottom line is that the CIA can't bypass the laws of physics. A device that can 'reprogram' microprocessors from a distance is not possible with today's technology and it's unlikely to be possible in 100 years. Oh, and the plugs for Fareed Zacharia's and Thomas Friedman's books are somewhat bizarre - the author's friends, I suppose - and they appear to be forced into the narration.

As far as spook thrillers go, the Increment does raise to the level of a passable airport book. The exotic locales and the author's apparent familiarity with the local topography and customs did keep me interested and did motivate me to finish the book, hoping for some unexpected and climactic finale. But, here I am, having read the last page and the author's afterword and... no climax.

It's three stars for the sometimes good research - gadgetry and technologies excluded - and for the author managing to produce a largely readable tome. I have little doubt that Mr. Ignatius is capable of much, much better. He should try harder.

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