The Director: A Novel (4 page)

“Got it. So who did the Office of Security really report to, then, before Monday morning, if not Mr. Pingray?”

Her mouth wrinkled at the edges while she thought about that one.

“I suppose they reported to the director of National Intelligence, Mr. Hoffman. He’s your boss, on paper, so he must be everyone’s, ultimately.”

Weber thought a moment. Could he ask Cyril Hoffman, the man who was responsible for oversight of sixteen intelligence agencies, whether he had been sending secret messages? No, of course he couldn’t. He thought of asking the bright young computer maven he had met a year before in Las Vegas, James Morris, but that wasn’t appropriate.

“Thank you, Marie,” he said.

She headed for the door and then stopped and turned back toward him.

“Mr. Director,” she said. “I just want to say, we’re all very glad that you’re here. People want you to succeed. They think you can fix things.”

Weber laughed, not happily.

“That’s what the president said. He also told me this place was like a haunted house. Do you think that’s true, Marie?”

She nodded, with what Weber thought was a look of institutional pride.

Weber went to the window and looked at the cars of the early arrivals beginning to fill the parking spaces in the agency’s Candy Land collection of color-coded lots. It was interesting how many agency officers drove foreign cars. You wouldn’t find that at an Air Force base, or a Navy yard. The CIA didn’t know whether it wanted to be a blue state or a red state. That was part of its problem.

Weber returned to the desk, which was a toasty brown in the spreading light. How was he going to get this place working again, really? Atop his desk was a notepad crowned with the agency seal and its pugnacious eagle. He took out a pen and wrote down phrases that came to him, and then crumpled the sheet: A week at the CIA and he was thinking in Power-Point. He was about to throw the note in the burn bag when it occurred to him that someone might find it and read it, so he put in his pocket.

3

HAMBURG

Far from Washington,
a young man skittered toward the U.S. Consulate in Hamburg like a shorebird blown by the North Sea wind. He was dressed in low-slung jeans and a zip-up gray hoodie, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. His eyes were dark-rimmed with fatigue, and he was shivering in the cold October breeze that raked the inland lake along the Alsterufer. At the gate, the guard stopped the visitor, but he showed his Swiss passport and said he had an urgent appointment.

Inside the guardhouse, the Marine told the youth to lower his hood so that his face was visible. The top of his head was thin stubble, like a layer of soot. In his right ear were three metal studs. Tattooed on his neck were a dotted line and the Russian words,
. His passport identified him as Rudolf Biel. The guard wanted to send him away, but the young man said slowly and emphatically that he needed to talk to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“I have a message for Graham Weber, CIA director, no one else but him.”

He was a mess. His eyes were bulging and red-veined. His pallid skin was dotted with acne scars, as if he had lived his entire life in a cave. He spoke English with a German accent. His passport said he was from Zurich.

“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Weber?” asked the Marine guard behind the glass. It was a dumb question, but the Marine was confused. He had never seen a walk-in, twenty-five years after the Cold War.

“I must see him, the new CIA director. Mr. Clean. He will want to talk to me, sir, believe me.”

The Marine behind the glass shook his head. He thought for a moment and then handed the man a form with an email address and phone number and told him to make an appointment. But this only made the visitor more agitated and insistent.

“Listen to me: This is a big secret. Email is not safe. I want a face-to-face meeting only, with Mr. Weber.” He pointed his finger as he spoke, to emphasize his point. “No Internet. No electronic message. Otherwise, I am finished.” He said these last words in deadly earnest.

The Marine pointed to the Russian words tattooed on the man’s neck. At least he could start with that.

“What does that mean, in English?”

“It says, ‘Cut here.’” The Swiss youth gave a cockeyed grin and then glowered at the guard. “I mean it,” he said. “I am a dead man if you don’t let me in.”

The guard stared at him a moment longer and then nodded. He told the man to wait outside while he called the regional security officer. He didn’t want to be blamed for letting in the scruffy young man or keeping him out.

The Swiss boy stood shuffling outside, hands stuffed into the pockets of his sweatshirt. The visitor glanced every few seconds over his shoulder, down the Alsterufer toward the bridge on Kennedybrücke, a long block away. A passerby glanced at him and made a distasteful face when he saw the shaved head and scruffy clothes. This was Hamburg’s fanciest neighborhood. What was this clod of dirt doing here?

The visitor stuck his hands deeper against the wind. The waters of the Alster were like corrugated tin. The sun had vanished behind thick clouds, shadowing the lakeside walk in the flat gray of late afternoon. To the south were the towers of old Hamburg, to the west the great docks and freight yards along the Elbe River, and, beyond that, the North Sea and escape.

The regional security officer arrived at the guardhouse, carrying the red binder with the code phrases. He looked at the young man’s passport and summoned him back inside the security hut. He’d been working at the State Department for nearly thirty years, long enough to remember what a defector was.

“Mr. Weber doesn’t work here,” said the security officer. “He works in Washington. Why do you want to see him?”

“I have special information. It is too dangerous to tell anyone else. I know a very big secret.” The Swiss boy stared the State Department functionary dead in the eyes. His hands were open before him, as if he were holding an invisible gift that he wanted to present.

The officer nodded. There was something about the young man’s intensity that made him believable. He looked in his red folder and dialed the number of one of the nominal political officers, K. J. Sandoval.

“Mr. Bolt is here. He says he has a package for Mr. Green.”

There was a long pause. The CIA officer inside had forgotten the walk-in procedures, too, and she needed to look at her own cheat sheet.

“Is this a joke?” she muttered into the phone while searching. “The Cold War is over.”

“No, ma’am.” His voice was clipped. “No joke.”

“Okay. Sorry.” A few more seconds passed, until she found her script. “Did Mr. Bolt say what was in the package?”

“Nope. Just says it’s important.”

There was another pause, as she looked in the list of code phrases for what she wanted to ask. It wasn’t there.

“Is he a nut?”

The security officer studied the man standing on the other side of the glass barrier. He had unzipped his hoodie, revealing a dirty black T-shirt with the faded inscription
DEF CON XX
and a skull and crossbones. On his wrist was a bracelet with metal studs. He was a normal adult’s bad dream, yet his eyes—as fearful and strung out as they were—were alive with intelligence.

“It’s hard to say what he is,” answered the security officer. “He looks like a punk, basically. He’s standing here. Check him out yourself on the closed circuit. It’s your call. I can send him packing if you want.”

She studied the grainy camera image. He looked like a loser, but she was a new base chief, and she’d never had a walk-in. And she was bored with the ever-repeating loop of the European economic crisis. It was the only topic on which anyone in Washington ever queried the consulate or Embassy Berlin these days. It would be a pleasure to think about something different.

“What the hell?” she said. “Bring him up. I’ll be in Conference Room A.”

4

HAMBURG

K. J. Sandoval was
waiting behind a polished teak table when the walk-in arrived upstairs, gangly and frightened, escorted by the security officer. The “K” stood for “Kitten,” her given name. The base chief was a handsome Latina woman in her late thirties, lips freshly glossed, appropriate black suit. She was nearly ten years into her career as a CIA officer, in that awkward period between just getting started and waiting it out until retirement. She knew how to be patient: She was the oldest daughter of a Mexican immigrant from Monterrey who had joined the Marine Corps and risen to gunnery sergeant, E-7, before retiring to Tucson. Her mother had been a waitress until she got her high school equivalency certificate; now she worked for an insurance company. Sandoval had made her way in the agency by hard work and a friendly smile but she was stuck.

Rudolf Biel was buried in the hood of his sweatshirt when he entered the room, but he lowered it when he saw Sandoval. He looked even less healthy close up than he had on camera. Under the fluorescent light of the conference room, his pale, blemished skin had the mottled look of an albino lizard.

“I’m Helen Sturdevant,” she said, giving him a card with her alias name and a phone number and email. He rolled his eyes and made a slight jerk of his head, as if to say,
Right!
She motioned for him to sit down and took a chair opposite. She looked at his passport.

“You’re from Zurich, right? What do you do there?”

“I am a hacker. Okay?
Hakzor.
Sometimes Zurich, sometimes Berlin, sometimes Saint Petersburg. If you knew, well, you would know.”

“Do you want to talk German?
Ich spreche Deutsch.
”

“I like English.
Hakzor spreche English.
”

“What do you hack?”

“Everything. With banks, I am the best. I am Swiss, what else? I am expert in ACH hack. Automated Clearing House. You know what that is?”

“No. Explain.”

“Too complicated. No time.”

“I have plenty of time.”

“No, you don’t, lady. You have a problem, and no time.”

She looked at the passport again, and then at his face. He was smart, whoever he was.

“You said you wanted to meet Mr. Weber, our new director.”

He nodded. “Yes, only Graham Weber. He needs me. It is worse than he thinks at CIA. I can help.”

Sandoval suppressed a smile. Who did this kid think he was, marching into the consulate and demanding to see the director? He looked to be stoned, from the redness of his eyes. Download him and get rid of him.

“What you ask is not possible. Mr. Weber is in Washington. I’m his personal representative here in Hamburg. You can give me your message, and then I’ll tell Mr. Weber. How’s that?”

He shook his head. Under the stubble of hair, you could see the bones of his skull. It wasn’t just that he was unshaven; he was dirty. He pointed a long finger at Sandoval.

“Excuse me, miss, you don’t have time to be wasting it. They are coming for you.”

“Who is coming for us?”

“That’s what I must tell Mr. Weber. How will you deliver my message? If it is in person, this is okay. Otherwise, no deal.”

She studied him. He was cocky, for a beat-up kid in a smelly T-shirt, demanding to talk to a new CIA director who had been in the job less than a week. He must think he had something important; either that or he was tripping. She wanted to throw him out, but she had already messaged Headquarters about the meeting.

“What does it say on your T-shirt?” she said, playing for time while she thought about what to do.

“‘DEF CON.’ It’s where hackers go to show off.”

“Sorry, never heard of it. Where is it?”

“Las Vegas.” He smiled. “One of my friends gave it to me.”

Sandoval nodded, though what he said didn’t make sense: Why would a hacker go to a convention in Las Vegas? She looked at her watch; it was still morning in Washington. She had never handled a walk-in before, but she knew she needed to establish some kind of control and figure out what intelligence, if any, this dirty weirdo possessed.

“Look, Mr. Biel, let’s get serious, okay? Otherwise we’ll never trust each other. So I’ll explain it to you. First, I’ll send Mr. Weber a message, maybe later if he’s interested I’ll talk to him by phone. And then, maybe, if he’s really interested, we can both talk to him in person. But to get started, I have to know why you’re here. What’s this message that’s so special that it has to be delivered to Mr. Weber? You tell me that, and then we’ll see what we can do.”

He put his stubbly head in his hands, scratching the tiny hairs as if he could help the brain inside to think. He looked up and leaned toward her, so the tattoo on his neck was in front of her face.

“You do not understand.”

“No, I don’t. That’s why I want you to explain it to me.”

“You see my tattoo?” He pulled back the sweatshirt so she could see the dotted lines on his neck. “It means, ‘Cut here.’ The people who wrote that on me, they will do it, yes, in a minute, and nobody will know. That’s why I communicate in person. No email. No message. Direct.”

She reached out and tried to take his hand. Empathy, rapport: That had worked with a young woman from the Iranian Embassy in Madrid. But this one was too skittish; he pulled his hand back.