"Oh, hello, Ben."

"Hi, boss. Nice day for October, isn't it?"

"Mhm."

Hi, I'm Ben Orner, UMD graduate, biochemical engineer and employee at Vadraco, Ltd. My boss, Vlad Draco, runs Vadraco, Ltd., a Romanian company headquartered in Târgovişte. You probably never heard of it but it was the capital city of Wallachia in the reign of Vlad Dracula III "The Impaler." Yeah, that Dracula. My boss is his descendant and also his reincarnation. I told you all that. Vadraco specializes in technology for chemical detection to improve health and the environment. My wife Rhonda, nee Wasserstein, also works here. She's an energy specialist.

Draco and I talk from time to time about different stuff. I know enough about him so that he can discuss personal things with me without having to go the whole way back to the beginning. Lately I could see he was on the verge of one of those discussions. When he comes to dinner, or invites us over, sometimes he looks jealous when he watches Rhonda and me. He's still single, you see, although he's almost 50. His pre-nuptial requirements in a wife - like virginity -are pretty stringent but he might be getting ready to settle for something less. Especially after taking such a liking to Moshe, our firstborn.

"How's Moshe?" he asked.

I smiled but didn't laugh. Typical of him. "Good. We spent the weekend moving all the fragile stuff into locked rooms or five feet above the floor. He's starting to cruise and we didn't want to get caught flat-footed when he goes completely mobile. Rhonda hates keeping him in a playpen and he screams if she leaves him there more than half an hour at a time. Speaking of which."

"Yes?"

"OK I know you were wondering why I was walking the golden mile." There's a garden around Vadraco headquarters with yellow sand on the path between the shrubs and flowers. When a project team hits a wall it's a ritual to go out and walk in the garden and get away from whatever is blocking everybody's inventiveness. Usually it takes half an hour to loosen things up. Plenty of personal problems have gotten worked out there, too, but it's the projects that earn our income. "Rhonda and I have been talking about leaving here. But we're conflicted about where to go."

"For example?"

"Israel, or home. Our parents are screaming about only getting to see Moshe on Skype. But all things considered, we've had some nibbles from Israel."

"Hm."

"Problem, boss?"

Draco and I made about a dozen paces and then he said, "Be in my office at 1:30 today. There are some things you need to hear."

Draco's secretary showed in two people, a man carrying himself like a ramrod and a woman with magnificent auburn hair and brown eyes. Just another example of all the gorgeous, brainy women who somehow get involved in Draco's projects. Behind them, a server from the company dining room brought in a cart of hot drink urns, creamers, sugar bowls, a crystal dish of lemon sections, and another of fruit and wrapped confections. When everybody had been served, Draco said, "Let's not waste time. I've been listening to the news. What have they not broadcast yet?"

Ms. Maguire looked at Mr. (probably Major or Colonel or something) Roth and shrugged. "You warned me but I didn't believe you," she said. "All right. We've about come to the end of our rope with assassinations and besides, drone-building and control aren't nearly as hard to teach as nuclear science. And the drones make excellent dirty bombs."

Draco nodded. "Can you interdict uranium shipments?"

"We're almost ready," Roth said. "Public opinion helps. Nobody wants to get into the news any more as helping Iran because nobody believes their nuclear program is peaceful. They may not believe this tit for tat is a proxy war on NATO, but the idea is sitting there in their subconscious ready to explode."

"So you believe that the U.S. is helping you as much as possible, but not Russia."

Roth smiled slightly. "Russia just got egg on their faces. Imagine how NATO feels about three of their members buying natural gas from somebody who is helping attack a NATO nation. Now imagine what happens if the press picks up on a uranium market between Russian and Iran."

"And Vadraco's role is what?" Draco asked.

Again a look between Maguire and Roth. "Not Vadraco. You."

"I basically am Vadraco."

"Not in this sense." Roth leaned forward. "We've been watching you since the Zahavi case started. You're feeding the New York prosecutors, aren't you?"

"No."

Roth smiled. "Not now. You gave them all they needed. How you got it I don't know, but now we want you to get the info on the uranium market."

Draco smiled that thin smile of his that shows his pointy teeth. I saw their faces stiffen. It's not a nice smile. "I'm disappointed. I thought you were going to ask me to go after the bunker at Natanz."

Roth called and raised. "You couldn't do anything about Fordow?"

"Define anything."

"We get you the satellite pictures, and you define what 'anything' is."

"For starters, flyers in Qom." Draco rubbed that sharp chin of his.

"You're going to tell them you're coming?" Maguire asked.

"You're going to do it," Draco returned. "Show them what radiation poisoning looks like. Morph the images onto pictures of their greatest scholars and the women and children."

Maguire scoffed, "That's ridiculous. Believe me, even if they have the remotest clue that it's true, they'll ignore it unless and until IRIB announces it straight from Khamenei's mouth."

"They won't say anything, and they won't know that they are in the blast range, but they will start watching the skies for the planes with the bunker busters."

"They won't be able to see them," Maguire objected again.

"They won't know that," Draco hissed. "What would you do for a diversion?"

"We don't need a diversion," she said. "We need action. Soon. We know the first drone used Russian parts, and that the cargo of that Syrian plane could be used to build and control more. How long before a drone carrying a dirty bomb lands in Israel?"

Draco nodded. "How do I move equipment inside Fordow?"

"You don't," Maguire said. "You get us info, we'll do the rest." Silence. She got an impatient look on her face. "The vents. The exits. All we need is confirmation from the ground."

"And all I need is to get out alive," Draco shot back. "Understand: this is not one of those corporations that can survive on its own momentum for decades. It would not succeed at all except for my personal vision and charisma. I not only need to get the information, I have to get out with it over some 2000 kilometers of hostile territory."

And that's when I spoke up. "Boss, can we take a break?"

"Of course, Ben."

I dragged him into the outer office and then into his private space. "Boss, why do you have to go?"

He looked startled. "Ben, you know damned well why they expect me to be able to get in and get out, even if they don't."

Draco can turn into a snake at will. That's how he gets info like, for example, the secret plans of Tata Steel to close down Corus Dyecell solar cell plants in Wales. Oh, wait, I didn't tell you that one. OK, we'll save it. Right now we're after Iran's nuclear program. "I don't have to do that," I said. "If they caught you, they would know you're not one of them. Me, I'm a different matter." I stopped and thought. "Unless there's something I don't know about you personally. Physically."

Draco stared at me a moment and then broke up completely. "Just when I thought I wasn't going to have any fun with this. No, Ben, you're right. There's one way they could definitely tell me apart from them. But there's a way they can tell you apart from them. Or is there something I don't know about you personally. And not physically."

"Boss, after China I realized that being your average monolingual American didn't work any more. Rhonda's been studying Arabic and I've been going after Persian for about six months now. I make a fairly believable Iranian retard, according to a close personal friend."

"Some friend," he said, rubbing his chin again. "And about that other thing, stay after work for about an hour."

We went back to the meeting and I sat through the rest of it without hearing a word. Unless I qualified as a multinational retard, Draco had just suggested that I could snakify myself. When we broke for the day I noticed Roth's locked jaw and the angry flush across Maguire's cheekbones. Nice cheekbones, too. Not that a married man like me should be noticing those things.

I used the secretary's phone for an internal call to the energy office. "Rhonda," I said, "I have to meet with Draco. Don't know how long it will take. I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Right. I'll just take my bubble bath with Moshe instead of you," she answered.

"Hmm. Would you be interested in two bubble baths?" I asked.

"No. I'll be asleep by the time you get home. And all worn out, if you get my drift."

I did. Luckily Rhonda doesn't hold grudges long. Not more than a day. So far. Anyway, I reported to Draco's private office and sat there for a while and thought.

When he came in, I could tell Draco had been doing some thinking, too, and he didn't even land in his chair before he said, "Ben, have you really thought about this? I'm essential to the company, but you're essential, too."

"I have thought about it, boss, and I have two answers for you." He nodded. "Satellite records. We have Envisat access. We can get within five meters of the vents."

"Then you've decided you don't really want to go snake the drains?"

"Hell, yes, I want to see what it's like! But the fastest snake in the world only travels about 20 km an hour, and it's native to Africa. The guards catch me on raw rock, and next thing you know I'm in little bitty pieces. Otherwise, I'd have you give me a stripped down Tectec Mark X with a laser sensor, so I can beam the vent locations straight up to oh, say, a spyplane too high up for artillery to reach. Now, tell me your doohicky isn't multiple choice."

"In fact, it is," Draco answered. "I was a cottonmouth in Maryland and a cobra in Beijing. But you're right. They didn't know what they were asking. And I can't ask it of you."

"Somehow I don't think they'll settle for satellite data. If they didn't already check that out, their heads aren't pointy enough."

"They did."

"Then it's me. They can't drop me in a superlight stealth plane, can they?"

And that's what we did. I whispered a few words in Rhonda's ear, then collected my gear and let them drop me in a superlight covered with carbon nanotube paint. It was sheer screaming fright until the engine kicked in and I felt the wings grab air, and I prayed a lot faster than I've ever before done in fifteen minutes, even in the Neilah service which is the last prayer you say on Yom Kippur before you can eat. Then, knowing that I can't move 20 kph, I snaked up and headed out.

It's a good thing snakes are adapted for moving over rock and sand on a bare stomach, otherwise I'd have scraped my six-pack into bloody rags. (Yes, I still have one. You try keeping up with a baby who can go under things you have to go around.) Even then it wasn't very comfortable. And then something else came up. I got hungry. Now, I like sushi but it never occurred to me to try raw anything else, especially mice or other snakes. When my stomach started feeling uncomfortably empty, I might have quit right there but I hated to think of the look in the boss's eyes when I came home empty-handed. So when something registered on my snake senses as delectably warm, I trusted that instinct would help me out.

It was a mouse. Thank God. I figured it wouldn't take me as long to be ready to move again as if it was, say, a young antelope. So I struck and swallowed and crawled behind a rock to hide until it moved an acceptable distance down my throat. Then I moved out again. It took me most of daylight to get to Fordow and there was damned little cover around the perimeter.

The Tectec was preset to respond to certain levels of carbon dioxide and to turn the laser on as soon as levels got so high that I had to have reached a vent. Another thing none of us counted on: black mambas are slim compared to their length, and I had nothing to brace me when the laser lit off. It didn't jerk like a gun, it just vibrated a little - compared to the weight of a human, that is, but enough to rock my world. After a while I got to know the sort of rubble that the builders had left around the vents, and when I reached some I would just take a deep breath and crawl among the clods waiting for the shaking to start, and when it was over I'd let my breath out and crawl off.

I was still on my way back to the superlight when the first drop happened. You can hear fifty kilos hit the ground a hundred miles off when it drops from four kilometers up. It doesn't have to explode, and in this case we didn't want it to. We just wanted it to block the vent, punch through, and drop the secondary payload. The latter was supposed to roll some distance through the duct and then release the tertiary payload. As I crawled, the crashes got quieter and quieter. I counted forty. When I reached the superlight I slipped out of my harness, became human again, picked up the technology and took off heading roughly west by north. In four hours I landed at Târgovişte. The survival part of the mission had succeeded.

Now, I know you're saying to yourself, why didn't the guards just pry up the concrete covering the vents? That's where chemistry comes in. We used an epoxy that heated up to over 120 degrees Centigrade and stayed at least that hot for over two hours. Long before they could get to most of the vents, the tertiary payload was already releasing its radiation… oops. Well, now that the cat's out of the bag, yes, we did use radiation poisoning on the Fordow facility. Even if they detected the radiation and evacuated everybody safely, the whole bunker will slowly become too poisonous to use. Then it's back to Natanz. And replace all those centrifuges. With the world watching - now.

When I had washed up and eaten a real meal and given Moshe his bubble bath and Rhonda a massage, I rolled her over on the bed and - hey, get your mind out of the gutter. I just looked at her and she nodded and said, "You were right. I don't know how you knew, but you were right. They went out to dinner every night and Alexandra said something at lunch about needing to get her hair done for dinner tonight." Alexandra is Draco's sister. "So how did you know?"

I could feel the grin stretching my cheeks. "She had on a crucifix. Not just a cross but a crucifix with Jesus on it. Ergo, Catholic. When Draco came to his office after seeing them out, he was rubbing the bracelet on his wrist. That bracelet can signal him if a woman is a virgin or not. And his face was all flushed. That's why I told you to watch out for him making a full-court press on her. Honey, we are probably going to be invited to a wedding pretty soon."

And we were.