The Director: A Novel (6 page)

“I multitask,” he answered. “The right hand doesn’t talk to the left hand, but the juggler never drops the ball.”

“You scare me,” she said. “You’re such a good . . . spy.”

They walked on toward the obelisks and pillars that marked the battle that had been fought on this ground on September 17, 1862. Ramona had seemed oblivious of the surroundings, but now she spoke up.

“Do you know how many people died here, Jimmy? It was twenty-three thousand, counting both sides. That’s the most people that were killed in one day in any battle, ever, anywhere.”

She took his hand and pulled him to a stop.

“Close your eyes and you can see the bodies. They’re heaped up, one on top of the other. They’re pleading for water. They want someone to come and shoot them dead, it hurts so much. That’s what war is. Don’t forget that.”

“I don’t,” said Morris.

Kyle still had her eyes closed, smelling death in her nostrils. She took off her dark glasses and looked him full in the face.

“Listen to me, Jimmy: It was five days after Antietam when Lincoln issued the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Do you know why? I think it’s because it had to
mean
something, all this suffering. There was no turning back. It’s the same for you. You can’t stop now.”

“I know.”

Her voice fell. She took his hand.

“Did you bring me anything?”

“Yes,” he said. He took a thumb drive out of the pocket of his jeans and, in one invisible motion, put it in her open palm, which closed around it. She thrust the hand into her own pocket under the bulky sweater.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said. “He can tell you the real story, the secret history.”

“Of what, K?”

“Of the CIA. He’s a historian. He used to work at the agency, retired now. He was a friend of my father’s. It will rock you, what he says. His name is Arthur Peabody. I’ll have someone send you his number.”

“Not now,” said Morris, shaking his head. “In a week or two. It’s too busy now. I have a new boss. The place is vibrating.”

“Is Weber for real?” asked Kyle. “If he’s serious, they’ll destroy him.”

“I don’t know,” answered Morris. “I guess we’ll find out.”

They walked a little longer, but it was getting dark. She nudged him back toward the parking lot and told him to get home before it was too late. “You’re a shit driver,” she said. “They shouldn’t let you have a car.”

She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss.

Kyle called the Boonsboro taxi to come pick her up. She ate dinner alone, as she did most meals. The only decent restaurant in town was a steak house. She was a vegetarian, but they let her make a meal of grilled mushrooms and steamed broccoli.

The next morning Kyle met a fourth visitor. This one was more careful about the rendezvous even than she was. He took a bus to Frederick, then a taxi to Boonsboro, then walked the three miles northeast to Greenbrier State Park, an isolated pocket of woods that was empty even on a good day. He was of medium height, solidly built, his features obscured by a cap and sunglasses. Someone who knew him would have noticed that his well-cut hair was concealed by a shaggy wig. He spoke to others only when he had to, in language-school English that was nearly flawless, so that you barely heard the foreign accent. He called himself “Roger,” in this identity.

The man waited under a wooden shelter as the low October sun cast its beam on the water. The morning was still, almost windless. He didn’t turn when the taxi crested the access road from Route 40 and turned into the parking lot to deposit a passenger. A woman emerged from the backseat and, as the car revved back toward the highway, she strolled toward the lake, taking the long way toward the pavilion to make sure the park was empty.

Kyle sat down on the park bench across from the visitor.

“We only have fifteen minutes,” she said. She leaned toward him across the picnic table and spoke so quietly that even someone sitting at the next bench could not have heard what she said.

6

WASHINGTON

K. J. Sandoval’s message
arrived at Headquarters late Friday morning, Washington time. She sent it in her pseudonym, which wasn’t Kitten or even Helen, but “Mildred G. Mansfield.” It was transmitted on the “restricted handling” channel, personal for the director. In cablese, she described the Swiss walk-in (REF A) to the Hamburg consulate (LOC B); she summarized his claim that the agency’s internal communications had been compromised, including true names of officers of an organization she referenced only by cryptonym.

She sent Rudolf Biel’s true name and the location where he had appeared in separate cables for security. She described his warning that agency systems were insecure, and his supporting evidence in the list of officers’ names in Germany and Switzerland. She noted his references to Friends of Cerberus and the Exchange, but left out his self-description as “Swiss Maggot.” She asked that any traces on him be run off-line. She concluded by saying that he had refused to stay in an agency residence, believing that it was unsafe, and that he would return to the consulate on Monday morning.

The message was restrained and professional, but it rang alarm bells. It was routed to Graham Weber through the Europe Division, to which Sandoval reported, with a copy to the director’s chief of staff, Sandra Bock. When the message landed on the seventh floor, Weber was at lunch on Capitol Hill visiting the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. The communications clerk made sure the chief of staff was notified that the director had an RH message in his queue.

Bock knew the information was urgent as soon as she read it. The worst calamity for an intelligence agency is a penetration agent or a code break, and this hinted at both. She cabled the base in Hamburg and told Sandoval to stay put, pending instructions. Bock was not an excitable person. She was a twenty-year CIA veteran who had risen in the organization through brute competence, starting as a Near East South Asia analyst, then moving to Science and Technology, then serving as station chief in Tunis and finally running the Support directorate. She was a sturdy woman, big all over and allergic to dieting. She dressed in black pants suits every day, as if she were wearing a uniform.

Bock considered alerting the director while he was at lunch. But she decided it would be unsettling for him and might only make the members of Congress ask questions. She checked to see if the head of the Office of Security was in the building, but he was traveling. As a backup, she checked the Information Operations Center, which was located in an office block a few miles away. The director, James Morris, was at lunch, so she left a message asking him to call as soon as he returned.

Finally, she called Weber’s security detail and asked the chief to alert her when the boss was leaving the Capitol on his way back to Langley. She was waiting in his outer office when he returned.

Weber was removing the necktie he had worn for his luncheon at the Capitol when he walked in the door. His cheeks were red. At the congressmen’s insistence, he’d had a glass of wine at lunch. He was hurrying. His face said,
Don’t bother me
.

“What’s up?” he asked Bock, barely looking at her. He wanted her answer to be nothing, so that he could get to work on the pile of paper in his in-box. Listening to the congressmen lecture him about how to run the agency had put him in a bad mood. But she was such a large presence he couldn’t very well walk around her.

“I think you need to take a look at this, Mr. Director,” she said. “It arrived while you were at lunch.” She handed him the cable, clad in a red folder, and followed him into his interior office.

Weber sat down at his big desk and studied the cable and attachments. When he finished, he looked up at her, focusing those marble-blue eyes. He trusted Bock, a tough woman manager who didn’t know how to cut corners. He was sensible enough, in his first week, to take her advice before issuing any orders.

“What the hell does this mean?” he asked.

He motioned for Bock to sit down, but she remained standing.

“We don’t know. But we have to assume that it could be bad.”

“I thought CIA communications were unbreakable. That’s what people have been telling me all week.”

“Nothing is unbreakable, sir. Our systems are supposed to be secure, unless someone is inside the gap.”

CIA systems, in theory, were protected by what was known as an “air gap,” which meant that they were entirely separate, electronically, from the Internet or any other nonsecure computing systems.

Weber thought a moment. There wasn’t passion or anxiety on his face, just the cold calculation of options and possibilities.

“Could this be some kind of provocation from another service?” he asked.

“Maybe,” answered Bock. “Most of our people are declared to the Germans and Swiss. Someone could get those officers’ names through liaison. But I don’t understand how this walk-in would have that information from any normal channel.”

“Why did she let him leave the consulate?”

“She thought she had no choice.”

“Mistake,” said Weber. “There’s always a choice.”

The director thought some more. He put a finger to his lip and traced its outline while his chief of staff waited like a big black crow across from his desk.

“Who’s the best person to manage this? You know the staff. I don’t. Who’s the right one? Start with the case officer. Who’s she?”

“I pulled her file,” said Bock. “Her name is K. J. Sandoval. The ‘K’ is for Kitten, and don’t ask me because I don’t know. She’s a hard worker, good fitness reports, GS-13 but will probably never make supergrade. She has a few recruitments, but nothing spectacular. I’m told EUR gave her the base in Hamburg as a reward for not making trouble.”

“She sounds like mediocrity, squared.”

“I can’t disagree with that, Director.”

“Who else? The Clandestine Service is just sitting around waiting for me to make a mistake. Who’s a superstar over there?”

“The NCS doesn’t do superstars anymore. Operations officers decided that sticking their necks out was dangerous to their health. I’d suggest you ask Mr. Beasley, for starters.”

“Black Jack Beasley is a card counter,” said Weber. “That’s what everyone says. He’ll always stand on seventeen.”

Earl Beasley was the first African-American to head the National Clandestine Service. His nickname “Black Jack” came not from his skin color, but because in his younger days he had hustled every casino from Las Vegas to Atlantic City. He was a math prodigy who had dropped out of Princeton to play cards. His secret advantage had been racism. People just couldn’t imagine back then that a black man could actually keep track of all the numbers. Later, before joining the agency, Beasley had a brief but very lucrative stint as a trader for an investment bank. He was a risk-taker, which Weber liked, but he had become a creature of the CIA culture.

“Who else can we bring in? I want someone who’s smart enough to see around corners. This walk-in is a serious hacker, from what Sandoval says in her cable. What about the young guy who runs Information Ops? I met him last year. He seemed smart as hell.”

“James Morris,” she said, taking a step toward his desk. “He’s the director of the Information Operations Center. The book on him is that he’s a computer genius. He used to be a mathematician, then some kind of hacker. He’s spooky smart, that’s what everyone says.”

Weber’s eyes narrowed. It was part of his character, as a smart man himself, to believe that other smart people could solve problems. He’d been known at his company for picking the brightest kids and giving them lots of responsibility. That was part of his management style, hiring the special while bypassing the ordinary.

“I liked this kid when I met him,” said Weber. “He’s hard to read, but he knows a lot. Get him over here.”

“I called him while you were on the Hill. He was at lunch, but I left an urgent message.”

“Find him. I want to talk with him as soon as I can this afternoon. I have to meet with employees at four. After that let’s have a senior staff meeting at five with Beasley and the general counsel and the DDI and whoever else should be on the card, plus Morris. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, Mr. Director, I’ll let you know when Morris is on his way.” She spoke crisply, without a trace of emotion on her face. That was the problem with Bock. She was so immune to charm and manipulation that she didn’t give any clues what she was thinking beneath the surface.

“And call the base chief in Hamburg. Tell her you’ve briefed me, and to sit tight while we figure out what to do.”

Marie knocked on the director’s door just after three and said that Mr. Morris had arrived. Weber had a sense of anticipation, the way he used to feel before launching a new business deal.

James Morris hadn’t changed from what Weber remembered. He was tall and thin. The glasses were tinted now, and he was wearing a plain black T-shirt and a black linen jacket. He didn’t look like anyone else that Weber had met in his first week at the CIA.

“What do you know?” asked Weber. It was his habitual, informal greeting. He took Morris’s hand. “Good to see you again.”

“You got the big office,” said Morris, trying to reciprocate the informality. “Quieter than Caesar’s Palace.”

“Not anymore,” said Weber.

Weber motioned for Morris to take a seat on the couch, while he settled into the big easy chair. Weber’s office was still undecorated except for a large map of the world and a photograph of the president. What drew the eye was the outdoors, glimpsed through the glass windows. With the trees nearly stripped of their leaves in mid-October, it was a scene painted with a palette of reddish brown, rather than green.

“What have you been doing the past year?” said Weber.

“Working hard, trying some new things, but spinning my wheels a lot of the time. People have been, you know, distracted with the Jankowski thing.”

“That’s why I’m here,” said Weber. “To push ‘restart.’ Tell me about yourself. The details you weren’t supposed to tell me before.”

Morris offered a shy half smile. He had a sparkle in his eye, a glitter. Weber had seen it before with very smart people. They were plugged into an energy that wasn’t on the normal grid.