To Khan’s surprise, his appeal fell flat. The men urged him to remain in Europe, where he had a secure job and a bright future. They told him in hushed tones that they had grave doubts about their country’s ability to ever build a nuclear weapon. “Nobody would appreciate your talents, and you would be disappointed not to find any employment,” one of them explained.

Undeterred, Khan wrote a letter offering his services to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had initiated Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear efforts two years earlier. Khan wrote that he was an expert in uranium enrichment, working on advanced designs for the European consortium, and that he had published many research papers and edited a well-received book on metallurgy. When he received no reply, he sent a second letter on September 17.

Somehow, the second letter caught Bhutto’s eye, and the prime minister asked that inquiries be made about the writer and the legitimacy of his claims. “He seemed to be talking sense,” Bhutto scrawled in the margin of Khan’s letter. The task of evaluating the scientist and his motives was assigned to the embassy in The Hague. “Bhutto asked the embassy to see who this character was,” Khaled Hasan, one of Bhutto’s aides, recalled in an interview. “All kinds of nutcases write.”

By late that month, a Pakistani diplomat confirmed that Khan was the genuine article and that the research center where he worked was involved in nuclear projects. On instructions from Bhutto, the Pakistani ambassador to the Netherlands, J.G. Kharas, contacted Khan, explaining that the prime minister would like Khan to come to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to meet with Major General Imtiaz Ali, Bhutto’s chief military adviser.

Khan finally faced the choice that was to determine his future. He suffered no inner conflict over abandoning the place where he had lived and worked for more than a decade, no remorse about packing up his wife and children and taking them to a country they barely knew. Khan was convinced that his destiny was within his grasp, but he was calculating enough to recognize that he had to be prepared as fully as possible, because there would be no possibility of return.
That meant taking a step beyond simply offering his scientific experience to Pakistan: Khan realized that he needed to be equipped with the actual technical plans that would ensure his success. He explained to the ambassador that he needed to delay the trip because he was on the verge of starting an important new assignment with FDO, one that could provide crucial benefits for Pakistan. While he and his family had made three previous trips to Pakistan for holidays without raising suspicions at FDO, a visit home at this point without his family might attract undue attention, particularly given the new concerns about proliferation in South Asia. Islamabad approved the delay.

Khan’s new project at work began in the fall of 1974, when Urenco decided to replace the Dutch centrifuges with an improved version developed by German scientists, called the G-2. The engineers at the Almelo facility, outside Amsterdam, needed to learn the intricacies of the new machines, but the designs and production specifications were in German. Khan was one of the few scientists in the organization who spoke both German and Dutch, so he was enlisted to translate the documents, which represented the most advanced centrifuge technology in Europe.

For the Dutch scientists and engineers at Urenco, the new project translated into long hours of work and an atmosphere that encouraged the open exchange of information. Security concerns took a backseat. Khan was drawn into the process despite his low-level security clearance, which should have kept him away from the most sensitive aspects of the work. He found himself with access to almost every part of Almelo and involved in every phase of the enrichment process. As part of his job, he helped devise detailed specifications for some of the specialty metals used in the manufacture of the new centrifuges. This work in turn brought him into contact with the outside contractors who were selling components and material to Urenco. He was acquiring information about the cutting edge of centrifuge technology just as he prepared for his next journey home.