The general's rage cooled down and he said that he would indeed form a committee to address the issue, and nominated Rahman to be his representative there. Prof. Malick would be appointed as chairman and he was asked to invite five top experts on nuclear physics in Pakistan, provided that they could be trusted to keep the secret. The professor said that it would be of the highest priority and he expected the first meeting to take place the following day.
David Avivi returned to Mossad headquarters in Tel-Aviv and briefed Haim Shimony, the Mossad chief, on the events that had taken place in Germany and in Brussels. He said that they were ahead of the other intelligence agencies that took an interest in Nagib and Alia and in the information they had acquired, but always a step or two behind the couple. He also added that there was not much Mossad could do inside Pakistan and that they had to wait until the couple left that country and hopefully that it wouldn't be too late. Shimony told him that the Israeli Security Agency, the ISA, had interrogated Nagib's parents and all the relatives they could locate, but none seemed to have any idea about Nagib's plans. They were surprised to learn that he had left the United States as they were convinced that he was enjoying his life there and was prospering professionally and financially. Alia's relatives were also questioned but the last they had heard about her, from her parents, was that she had married a Palestinian and both were gainfully employed by the US federal government. David asked Shimony about contacting the cooperative scientist in the Pakistani nuclear establishment but was told that he would contact them if anything relevant came his way.
The North Korean embassy in Pakistan was situated at House No. 9, on Street No. 18, F-8/2 in Islamabad, far from the US embassy and Diplomatic Enclave where many of the foreign institutions and embassies were located. Apparently the North Korean didn't feel threatened in Pakistan, after all the two countries cooperated in the fields of missile development and nuclear technology, although there was practically very little exchange of commercial goods between these two poor countries. Kim arrived at the embassy the previous night and convened with the ambassador and the military attaché and briefed them about the invaluable information that Nagib intended to hand over to the Pakistanis. He asked them if they had connections within the intelligence service and the PAEC that could inform them if the classified data was transferred and more to the point if the DPRK could also get a copy of the blueprints. The attaché was skeptical if the Pakistanis would share such information with anyone, but believed that for the proper price a copy could be obtained. The ambassador was less optimistic and said that the cooperation between the two countries had its limits. Kim said that he would stay in Islamabad for a few days to see how the situation developed.
The embassy of Iran in Islamabad was also in the Diplomatic Enclave as the Shiite Muslims didn't feel very much at home amidst the mostly Sunni Pakistanis. Mahmoud arrived at the embassy when it opened in the morning and asked for a meeting with the ambassador who was an appointee of the Revolutionary Guards to which he also belonged. The ambassador was pleased to see Mahmoud and listened attentively to his story about Nagib and Alia and the classified information they possessed. He said that these blueprints and advanced designs were exactly what Iran needed to deter the Big Satan America and the Little Satan Israel from attacking the nuclear facilities in Iran. They both knew that Iran was a threshold nuclear power — it had the technology to produce fissile materials, had done testing to simulate real atomic bombs and had delivery systems in the form of missiles of various ranges and capabilities — but as yet Iran had not crossed this threshold mainly because it feared the reaction from both the Big Satan and the Little Satan. The cooperation between Pakistan and Iran had its ups and downs but as a testament to the close relations was the fact that Iran had the embassy in Islamabad as well as three consulates in Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta while Pakistan had its embassy in Tehran and consulates in Mashad and Zahedan. Pakistan provided great assistance to Iran when it started working on uranium enrichment centrifuge technology. Part of the help was through official governmental channels and part was through the AQ Khan network. The countries also shared some aspects of missile technology. The ambassador said that he would reach out to his contacts in the Pakistani nuclear industry and the military but was doubtful that they will share the information with Iran unless promised something big in return. Mahmoud said that he would hang around for a few days in case something came up.
Chapter 11
Prof. Malick called the committee meeting to order. Rahman looked at the nuclear physicists that were gathered around the table and felt like the village idiot. Here were five of the most talented and intelligent people that lived in Pakistan, in addition to the professor and Dr. Ansari, and he, who had a bachelor's degree in engineering, was supposed to follow their discussion and report to General Masood. Before the professor could start the scientific part of the debate Rahman asked for permission to speak. He said that they had all been vetted by the Pakistani Intelligence service and were cleared to share the state's most sensitive information, but what they were about to see was much more sensitive as it could reflect on Pakistan's international relations, and potentially could even lead to the annihilation of the country. He glanced around the table again and saw the skeptical looks and the curiosity on the faces of the five physicists so he added that Professor Malick will explain what he was referring to but it was his duty to caution them that this was far beyond the usual top-secret material they had all dealt with before.
Prof. Malick gave an abbreviated version of the events that led to possession of the advanced designs for the small warheads they were about to see on the screen and turned on the projector. The scientists were not initially impressed as they had seen designs that superficially looked quite similar to the one displayed on the screen. They were all familiar with the "football design" that included two subcritical masses of plutonium each shaped like half an American football (or a rugby ball in the rest of the world) that were placed inside a metal pipe and when compressed by detonating conventional explosives at both ends they reached a critical density and configuration. This was much simpler and lighter than the classical implosion device that required precisely timed detonation of several dozen shaped explosives to compress a sphere of plutonium into the high density required for criticality. The professor reminded the scientists, not that they really needed it, that the committee headed by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana), who was also one of the few supporters of Pakistan against India in the US Congress, displayed a mock-up hypothetical "suitcase nuke" at a press conference in the year 2000. This was supposed to demonstrate a model of the devices that General Lebed reported as missing after the dismemberment of the USSR.