The Director: A Novel (43 page)

The French host, Camille de Monceau, bade Hoffman farewell on the tarmac. The American, cleared by a special permission from the French air-traffic authority, flew directly back to Washington, arcing out across the English Channel and the Irish Sea. De Monceau returned by helicopter to Paris, where he was back at his desk before dusk.

36

WASHINGTON

As it happened, James
Morris flew back to Washington via Paris. It was time to come home: All his software and hardware were in place; he needed only to hit the “execute” button. His new identity was solid, but he hadn’t wanted to face the extra layers of security at Heathrow for a U.S.-bound flight. So he made arrangements with one of Beatrix’s friends in Paris and stayed overnight in her establishment. He was spoiling himself: He knew that the alarm bells were ringing in Washington and that the game was up. But at least he could get home: His clandestine identities and special authorities remained intact. And he had the one real advantage that the spy always possesses, which was that he knew what he planned to do, and others didn’t.

When Morris’s plane landed at Dulles, he took a taxi to his apartment in Dupont Circle. It was cold and musty when he opened the door. The mail was piled up on the floor just inside his front door. Why did they even have mail anymore? Morris took off the wig and oversized glasses. He put the extra passports and credit cards and cell phones in the safe that was bolted into his closet. He took a shower to wash off the grit of the plane. He scrubbed his body with the flannel cloth until it hurt. When he emerged, wrapped in a towel, he cleared the steam from the mirror and looked at his face. He was thinner than when he had left. He could see the bones in his cheeks and the knobby cleft in his chin. In his eyes, he saw deep fatigue; it was an exhaustion that couldn’t be erased by a hundred years of sleep. As tired as he was, his face looked flushed, as if his brain were too hot for his skin. He felt for his penis; it was limp and unwired.

Morris dressed, but he stayed in his apartment. He ordered groceries from Peapod. For dinner, he was too tired to make anything, so he ordered takeout from a Thai restaurant in the neighborhood. The smell of garlic filled his apartment. He opened a window to clear the air and threw the food away, uneaten. He took a slice of bread from the bag of groceries, and then another. He had the feeling that his body was an encumbrance; it was a chore feeding it. He went to sleep for a while; when he woke up in the predawn, he took a pill, but it didn’t work.

Graham Weber summoned Ariel Weiss to his office. Weber was restless now, ready to pounce. His visit two days before with Hoffman had made him hungry. Marie knocked to announce the arrival of Miss Weiss. He looked at his face in the mirror over the credenza and saw that there was still color on his cheeks from two days before.

“Somebody’s been in the sun,” said Weiss when Marie had closed the door. She removed the black overcoat and red cashmere scarf she had worn against the afternoon chill and handed them to Weber, who hung them in his closet. She took a seat across from Weber’s desk. She had two folders in her hand.

“Where have you been, anyway?” she asked, studying the unlikely November sunburn. “Tell me it’s the Bahamas.”

“On the Potomac,” said Weber. “The director of National Intelligence invited me to go sailing.”

“Cyril Hoffman? That old man? I can’t imagine him in anything but an easy chair.”

Weiss didn’t mention the fact that she had recently seen Hoffman herself, and that she knew he had traveled urgently overseas to see a Russian. Concealment quickly becomes a habit.

“Hoffman is a man of many talents,” said Weber. “He wanted to tell me confidentially that James Morris is working for the Chinese. Or at least that’s what he claimed. You never know what’s really inside Hoffman’s head.”

“You can ask Morris yourself, Graham. He’s coming home today. In fact, he should have arrived at the airport from Paris a few hours ago.”

“This is my day for surprises. How do you know that?”

“Because he told me so. He sent me a message, copying you and Beasley and Ruth Savin.”

“An open email? That doesn’t sound like Morris.”

“He’s in from the cold. He sent the message to our public addresses. Maybe he posted it on Facebook, too.”

Weber stared up at the ceiling for a moment and then tilted back toward her. His eyes sparkled with the light of a man who thinks he has solved a puzzle.

“Morris is the fall guy. He’s gotten a summons home from Control. It’s a one-way ticket. He has become expendable. Whoever was running him doesn’t need him. That’s it!”

She looked at him with her head cocked, as if he had misspoken.

“But I thought Morris was the mastermind. How can he become the chump?”

“Morris is a dazzling performer, but he is not the ringmaster.”

“I’m processing that, Mr. Director. ‘Recalculating route,’ as my GPS system is always telling me. Meanwhile, I have some new morsels for you.”

Weiss handed the first file to Weber.

“Morris definitely has friends in China,” she said. “Hoffman is right about that. I have the documentation.”

Weber examined the file. It listed the employees of the Fudan–East Anglia Research Centre, along with more traces Weiss had run on Dr. Emmanuel Li and his intelligence activities on China’s behalf, under a different alias.

Weber closed the file. He stared out the window, across the bare treetops.

“The Chinese are all over Morris,” he said. “That’s the line Hoffman was selling. But we don’t see them doing anything. If it’s an operation, what’s the point?”

“Maybe Morris is a sleeper.”

“Morris? Are you kidding? He’s too noisy. That was another thing Hoffman wanted to tell me, by the way. He said Morris likes kinky sex. Is that true?”

“How should I know? Morris is my supervisor. I don’t ask who he sleeps with.”

“Hoffman claimed that extreme sex is part of the hacker culture, although for Hoffman any kind of sex is probably extreme. He said I should ask you.”

“Thanks for that.” She was blushing.

“As a technical expert on hackers,” Weber said gently, “help me out.”

“Well . . . it’s certainly true that hackers get interested in weird stuff. ‘If something exists, there’s pornography of it.’ That’s one of the rules of the Internet. I’m sure Pownzor has seen plenty of bizarre material, and maybe he likes some of it. ‘Nothing is sacred.’ That’s another rule of the Internet. But Pownzor is good at what he does. He wouldn’t get caught unless Mr. Hoffman was looking very hard.”

“Sorry, that was probably none of my business,” said Weber, embarrassed now. “What else have you got for me, besides the fact that your boss is back and that he has Chinese friends?”

“We picked up something strange at the Information Operations Center. We’re not sure why, but a new beacon started flashing this week inside the Bank for International Settlements. I phoned the NSA and they’ve been monitoring the same thing. I’m sure Hoffman knows about it.”

“So what is this beacon telling you?”

“Probably that someone is getting ready to do a hack. They are moving the pieces in place for something. But we don’t know what it is.”

“Morris knows,” said Weber.

“Go ask him, Graham. He’ll probably be back in the office tomorrow. You can go over and surprise him. I’ll message you when he’s there.”

“Morris may not realize it, but he has hit the wall,” said Weber. “He’s finished. He’ll end up in prison.”

“Okay, boss,” she said. She wondered if Weber could pull it off. He kept surprising her, but she suspected he didn’t understand how many enemies he had.

The next morning, after Weber had received his intelligence briefing from Loomis Braden and reviewed the overnight cables with Sandra Bock, there was a knock on the door. Marie said that the deputy chief of the Information Operations Center had called and left a message that the director, Mr. Morris, had returned to the office.

Weber summoned the security detail and made the short drive to the office park where the IOC was hidden away. It was ten, well past starting time for most government workers, but a few young people in T-shirts were still arriving.

Weber passed through the security gate downstairs and walked into the big operations room in the center of the building, where Weiss and Morris had their offices. Many younger employees were at their desks, working their two screens, jumping in and out of classified chat rooms. Their faces had the awkwardness of abnormally smart people whose talents had blossomed through antisocial behavior.

An Asian-American woman looked up from her screens as Weber was passing and was startled, as if she had just seen a celebrity.

“Oh, my god, Mr. Director,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

Weber put his finger to his lips. “Shhh,” he said. “It’s a surprise visit.”

He continued walking, past the glass-enclosed space where Ariel Weiss worked. She was at her machines, but she looked up at Weber and smiled.

A few dozen more paces, and Weber arrived at the metal door at the far end of the atrium that guarded James Morris’s office. It had two electronic locks and an intercom to call inside. Where the rest of the center had the open feel of a communal workspace, this was a closed zone: a secure compartment within a top-secret facility.

Weber knocked three times on the door, harder with each rap. There was no answer. Next, he pressed the intercom buzzer. There was no answer to that, either, at first, but he kept his finger on the button until he got a response.

“Go away. I’m not seeing anyone,” said a voice through the speaker.

Weber pressed the intercom buzzer again, and held his finger down for a full twenty seconds until the voice returned.

“Stop bothering me, damn it. Who the hell is this?”

Weber leaned toward the speaker. He spoke quietly so the rest of the office wouldn’t hear him.

“This is your boss, Graham Weber. Open up, now, or I’ll blow the fucking door off its hinges.”

There was a pause of about twenty seconds, and then a buzz and the door opened. As Weber entered the inner office, he could hear the metallic teeth of a shredder. The door closed behind him, and there was a soft whirr as the locks automatically rebolted the door.

Morris approached Weber. His hair was longer than last time, cropped at different angles. Under his eyes were deep circles, beyond fatigue. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a short black jacket that barely reached his waist. He had lost so much weight that his body seemed to have too much skin; the wrists looked fragile enough to break. On his feet were a pair of black Chuck Taylor sneakers with yellow laces. Only his fingers, long and delicate, looked undamaged.

“You look like hell,” said Weber.

“I just got home,” said Morris. “I’ve been traveling for a while. I was going to call.”

“But you didn’t. So I came myself.”

Morris bit his lip. His usual bland self-assurance was gone.

“Are you going to fire me?”

“Yes. And arrest you, too. Can you give me any reason not to?”

“No. Please do. Get me out of here. Honestly. I hate this place.”

“What’s wrong, James? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Tell me.”

“I can’t.” His eyes had lost their spark.

“Okay,” said Weber. “Then I’ll tell you.”

The director spoke in the direct, assertive tone he had used in a thousand business meetings.

“You’re in deep shit, my friend. The Chinese own you. Maybe the Russians, too. Your sexual fetishes are common gossip. You’re trying to pull off a big hack at the BIS, thinking nobody’s watching, but you’re sloppy and you’re about to get caught. So I would say, yes, you’re in very deep shit. And the only person who can get you out is Graham Weber. But you have to level with me.”

Morris shook his head and uttered a thin, nasally laugh, almost a snicker.

“You sound like the CIA director.”

“I am the CIA director, Morris, and you are going down unless you start telling me the truth.”

Weber pounded the desk as he spoke. The sound reverberated in the small, enclosed office. Morris was startled for a moment, but then looked away.

“I believed in you, at first,” said Morris. “I thought you wanted to change things. But you don’t. You want to keep them the same. I feel sorry for you. They’ll destroy you.”

The director pointed a finger at Morris.

“Save it for your prison memoirs. You piss me off. And you know what? I am an ornery son of a bitch when I get angry. I may not know everything, but I know more than you think I do. And I promise you, you will regret not taking my offer of help.”

Morris shrugged. “I’d love your help, really. But it wouldn’t do me any good. You can’t do anything for me, Mr. Director. You’re the anvil, not the hammer.”

“Who’s running this show? I’ll bet you don’t even know yourself.”

“Ask Mr. Hoffman.”

“I already did,” said Weber. “He said that you’re going down. He’s going to burn you on China and on your sex games.”

Morris shrugged again.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “But you should ask yourself why he threw me up as the bait. Why now?”

“Good question. What’s the answer?”

“Hoffman thinks you’re stupid. He thinks you’ll go for the sizzle and forget about the steak.”

Weber reached into his coat pocket and removed one of his Nokia “burner” phones and handed it to Morris, along with a slip of paper with his number written on it.

“Call me,” said Weber. “It’s off-line. You don’t have much time. You may not want my help now, but you will soon. Either that or you’re dumber than everyone has been telling me.”

Morris looked at him skeptically, but he took the phone.

Weber exited the big bolted door and marched across the operations room, drawing more stares. The lights were on in Ariel Weiss’s office along the side wall, but she wasn’t visible through the windows. That was just as well: Weber needed time alone. The big black car was waiting, its engine idling. Weber told Oscar the driver to put the flashing lights on and get back to Langley in a hurry.

It was a frosty day, the first hint of winter in the air. From Weber’s office on the seventh floor, he could see the dry leaves billowing in little whirlwinds, and fluttering across the entrance to the Headquarters building.