The Director: A Novel (24 page)

Behind the foreign secretary sat Strachan, the chief of the SIS. When he arrived he had nodded at Weber and offered a half smile.

The president asked each of his principals around the table to say a few words. When it was Weber’s turn, he talked about the challenge of running an intelligence service in an open society, and how much he had learned about the difficulties in his first weeks on the job. O’Keefe at the end of the table made a gesture with his hand that Weber took to mean,
Cut it short
, so the director pitched to Loomis Braden, who talked plausibly for five minutes about the perturbed state of global financial markets.

Then it was O’Keefe’s turn to sum up for the American side, and fifteen minutes for the chancellor and foreign secretary to give their final thoughts, and then after ninety minutes the meeting adjourned for “working groups” at several departments and agencies. As Weber listened to the discussion, he found himself wondering if the world of 1945 and its axiomatic policies had meaning any longer, outside of meetings like this.

While the Treasury secretary steered the chancellor through the West Wing lobby and out to waiting journalists’ microphones, a small group of national security officials, including Weber, passed through the far door of the lobby into a small hallway and down the narrow stairs that led to the Situation Room.

Weber took one of the black leather swivel chairs that lined the long polished wood table, six on a side. It didn’t look like a global command post: there was simple furniture, pale blue wall-to-wall carpeting that might be found in any suburban family room; some video monitors along the wall to display imagery from sensors around the world; a camera pointed at the head of the table where the president sat, for those who might be watching the meeting on video teleconference. Seats had been marked with little name cards, military-style; Weber took a seat on the far side of the table.

O’Keefe stopped by Weber’s chair.

“I’ll want you to say a little something about the economic surveillance program that was in the
Independent
,” O’Keefe whispered. “The Brits are upset.”

Weber nodded. So that was the subtext.

The other principals wandered in, a few stopping off at the Navy Mess next door to get coffee or a cookie. Weber noticed that the outsized figure of Cyril Hoffman had entered the room. He was wearing his usual three-piece suit, blue this time, with notched lapels on the vest, and whatever his efforts, he was not inconspicuous. The president didn’t pretend to be running the gathering. He simply deferred to O’Keefe.

“Everyone in this room knows what makes the ‘special relationship’ special,” began the national security adviser. “It is the quality of intelligence-sharing across the Atlantic. Our two countries depend on the bonds between the CIA and SIS, the NSA and GCHQ, and the FBI and MI5. Everyone here also knows how hard these partnerships have been hit by the disclosures of the last several years. Our most secret programs have made their way into the press. That is our fault. The chief leakers have been Americans, and as we have repeatedly told our British friends at every level, we are sorry.”

There were polite murmurs of thanks and sympathy from the British side. What O’Keefe said was true: From an intelligence standpoint, the disclosures had been calamitous. NSA and GCHQ had been tapping the world’s telephone and Internet traffic pretty much at will for the past decade, thanks to programs with code names such as BULLRUN, TEMPORA and STORMBREW that had been among the world’s most closely guarded secrets, until one day they weren’t. The agencies had officially adopted the ostrich approach on both sides of the Atlantic, insisting that the information was still classified even though it was public knowledge.

“We want to assure our British friends that we will do everything possible to operate in this new space,” said O’Keefe. He tapped one end of his pencil moustache as if to make sure that it was still firmly in place.

“Hear hear,” said Anthony Fair, his British counterpart from 10 Downing Street. He offered the appropriate assurances about how America could always count on British support, and vice versa, he hoped.

O’Keefe turned to a Navy officer in his dress blues, seated several seats away.

“We’d like Admiral Schumer to give you an update on how the NSA is managing SIGINT operations in the new environment, we hope with continuing British cooperation.”

Admiral Lloyd Schumer spent ten minutes reviewing the National Security Agency’s efforts to maintain what he kept describing as “lawful activities.” He didn’t use the code names or offer the wiring-diagram details for this audience. He spoke with a military man’s restrained, eyes-forward manner. You wouldn’t have known, as he reviewed the collection and cryptological capabilities, that he was, in effect, handling shards of glass from a broken window.

O’Keefe then asked Amy Martin, the deputy attorney general, to brief the British on the current review of legal authorities for surveillance and intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended. She was crisp and concise, and uninformative. You would have had no idea from her presentation that many of the activities she described were in a kind of legal limbo, pending review by courts, legal advisers and general counsels across the U.S. government. A British legal adviser responded by describing a similar state of uncertainty there, as politicians and Whitehall mandarins tried to decide what the new rules of the game would be.

Finally, O’Keefe turned to Weber, whom he described as “our new colleague.”

“I have asked Mr. Weber to say a few words about the program that was revealed in the
Independent
, which I gather came as something of a surprise to you.”

Weber didn’t talk long. He told them that the agency was continuing its long-standing practice of collecting intelligence through “open source” information on the Internet and some proprietary data it obtained through other means. That was what Ruth Savin had told him to say.

“Although we are collecting economic information, I want to stress that it is not being shared with American companies.”

“We thought you didn’t do that sort of thing, old boy,” said Fair, with icy precision. “We expect that from the French and the Israelis and the Chinese, but not from our American cousins.”

“We haven’t changed,” answered Weber. The British listened impassively, knowing that the gist of the
Independent
’s story was that the American approach had in fact changed, in the scope of collection if not necessarily in the recipients of the information.

“Business is your world, eh?” pressed Fair. “You’re coming straight out of the corporate technology side; unusual for a CIA director. So perhaps you can see why we were concerned that this initiative seemed to be one of your, what shall I say, early priorities. First week, I believe.”

Weber nodded. He should stop now, before he got in any deeper trouble, but he wanted these people to understand him.

“You should know this program was handed to me when I arrived. Rest assured: I came to the agency to make good changes, not bad ones.”

“Well, we’re pleased to hear that,” said Fair.

The talk moved on. The British still seemed anxious about something. Weber couldn’t put his finger on it. The military men discussed new overhead surveillance architecture, whose fruits would be shared with the Brits, and forward defense against cyber-enemies. It was a bloodless conversation until John Strachan spoke up.

“Here’s the thing,” began the MI6 chief. “We are facing an intelligence threat now that is unprecedented, really. These leakers and whistleblowers would be easier to control if they were paid agents of foreign intelligence services, but unfortunately, for the most part, they are not. That does not, however, make them any less dangerous to our common enterprise.”

Hoffman had been doodling before, but now he spoke up.

“I assure you that we share your concern, John. These liberty addicts are driving us crazy. Timothy has already apologized that we let several of them wander into the sanctum sanctorum. But what do we do about it? How do we pursue an adversary that is, as it proclaims, anonymous and self-perpetuating?”

“We penetrate them,” continued Strachan quietly. “Get inside these hacker cults and turn them upside down.”

“A lovely thought,” said Hoffman. “But I’m afraid that Mr. O’Keefe and his lawyers have concluded that would be illegal.”

“Pity,” said Strachan.

“Isn’t it,” said Hoffman with a pursed smile.

Weber was silent. This wasn’t his world yet, really. But he knew from what Sandra Bock had told him that Hoffman was attempting to do precisely what he had told the British, in this large gathering, could not be done.

As he was leaving the meeting, Weber stopped by to introduce himself properly to Strachan and hand him an index card with the address for their private rendezvous later that afternoon.

21

WASHINGTON

John Strachan out of
the office was like a summer drink, a Pimm’s Cup, say, or a good gin and tonic with a slice of cucumber: pleasant to taste, but with a bite, too. He was a thin man, light on his feet, dressed in suits that could only be made to measure. He’d spent a career overseas for the Secret Intelligence Service, mostly in Africa and South Asia, and he had the facility for languages that seems to come naturally in the British service as part of its postcolonial lineage. When Strachan made an observation about the growth of Baloch nationalism in Quetta, or Tamil unrest in Andhra Pradesh, you could be fairly sure that he had seen it with his own eyes, and perhaps conversed about it with a principal agent in his native language.

Strachan had asked for a walk in the woods, and that was precisely what he got. Sandra Bock had called the club steward in Arlington to say that Mr. Weber wanted to take a stroll around five, hopefully after the last foursome had finished for the day but when there was still enough light to see. The steward wanted to be helpful. The CIA was nearby; he didn’t inquire further about the purpose of the meeting.

Strachan rolled up to the white-pillared clubhouse on Glebe Road in an embassy sedan and was met by a member of Weber’s protection detail. The director was around the other side on the back porch, sitting in a white Adirondack chair and admiring the view. Immediately below was the eighteenth green, with its approach flanked by two other fairways, left and right. In the distance was the Gothic bulk of the National Cathedral, and to the east, downriver, was the obelisk of the Washington monument, slender as a candlestick in the distance. The light was fading; the last foursome had finished and made its way into the clubhouse.

“Jolly nice spot,” said Strachan, approaching his host. He was dressed in brown oxfords with thick rubber soles, a chesterfield coat with a velvet collar, and was a carrying a walking stick.

“Let’s take that walk,” said Weber, bounding up from his chair. He was dressed in the style that is usually called “business casual.”

The director skirted the eighteenth green, circumambulating a large bunker, and headed down the hill into the fairway, toward a topiary hedge three hundred yards away that spelled out the initials of the club’s name. Jack Fong and the security detail had gone ahead, and agents were installed in the woods or by the water hazards; a lone bodyguard trailed behind.

“I’ll come right to the point,” said Strachan when they were a hundred yards from the clubhouse. “We’re nervous about something.”

“Why? Your delegation was smothered in kisses all afternoon. America loves you. People even apologized.”

“That was quite a show, and you’re right, it was tickety-boo. No. I’m thinking about something rather more private. Perhaps we should walk on a bit, eh?”

They were approaching a small pond at the turn of the dogleg on the long eighteenth fairway. Geese were floating silently in the thin light of late afternoon. At the approach of the two men, the birds took wing, beating their way off the surface of the pond and toward the setting sun over the crest of the hill. Except for a brace of security men thirty yards off, they were quite alone.

“What’s worrying you, John? I’m the new boy, but I’ll try to help however I can.”

“No polite way to say it: We’re worried that you have a leak.”

Weber laughed. He didn’t mean to, but it just came out.

“I’m sorry, but everybody has a leak! It’s a condition of life nowa-days. I’ve even noticed some SIS material showing up in the press, if I’m not mistaken. I promise you, I take it seriously. Please don’t think that because I’m an outsider I don’t value secrecy.”

“I know that, of course I do. And I’m not talking about Snowden and his progeny. We’ll survive all that. It’s just that we hear this chatter. From what we gather, you’re rooting around for some sort of penetration of the agency, electronic or otherwise, we don’t know. But it makes us nervous.”

“That’s our business, John. But why should it worry you? We’re on it; we’ll handle it.”

“Well, that’s just the thing. It worries us, either way. If you have a problem, then we have a problem, because we’re joined all over, really; the blood-brain barrier is dissolved with us. But if you
don’t
have a problem, then we want you to stop rumbling around. It frightens your foreign chums.”

There was a somber set to his jaw, but a twinkle in his eye, too.

“I’m not sure I follow you, John. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Of course there is. Always, forever, must be. And you doubtless want me to divulge it.”

“I’m no spy. But I never had a business partner in my life I didn’t trust.”

Strachan nodded. That was the thing about Weber. He might not know much about intelligence, but he was demonstrably a man who understood how the world worked, and had created tens of billions of dollars in value for people in the process.

“So I will be blunt,” said Strachan. “You have a young chap who is your chief boffin, Internet wizard. His name is Morris. Brilliant fellow, everyone says. From what we hear, he’s the one you’ve set out as cat among the pigeons. Trying to find where your leak might be. But the problem is, he also makes us nervous.”