The Good Traitor (8 page)

M
ANHATTAN

The official headquarters of Gnos.is—in fact, the only listed address affiliated with the site—was a loft in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. The work space was only one room, but it was vast. Oversize flat-screen monitors filled the walls between broad windows that offered views of the narrow streets and tightly clustered buildings outside. The grand width of the loft was marked at one end by the entrance; at the other end an assortment of seating faced a large desk.

It was at this desk that Charlie Canyon sat, reviewing figures that illustrated the growth of traffic to Gnos.is’s site, when a tone sounded on the wall intercom, indicating a call from the doorman. He tapped a button on a touch screen to open the line.

“You expecting any visitors, Mr. Canyon?”

“No, Khaled.” There were no meetings on his schedule.

“I figured as much. These guys don’t look like they had an appointment. They’re asking about Mr. Bolívar.”

“Who are they?”

“The man says he’s the assistant attorney general.”

“Of New York?”

There was a muffled exchange before the doorman came back on the line.

“Of the United States of America. He has three federal marshals with him. I checked their badges. Shall I suggest to them that this is a bad time?”

“No, it’s all right, Khaled,” Canyon said, wondering again how much Bolívar paid for the loft space. The building’s staff members were a class act. “I’m sure they just want to chat. Send them up.”

Here we go,
Canyon thought. He darkened the windows, which had a tinting mechanism built into the glass. Then he tuned all the flat-screens in the room to Gnos.is/fact, the news side of the site, and adjusted them to display an assortment of stories he judged to be most objectionable to representatives from the Department of Justice. The last thing he did was glance at the computer network’s intrusion log, which J. D. Jones had designed to record and categorize malicious breach attempts. It was no secret that Gnos.is was a target for cyberattacks, and the US government was high on the list of motivated adversaries with the potential capability to crack Jones’s security wall. To counter this worst-case scenario, Jones had nested a suicide pill within the system. If the Feds raided the loft or got a hacker inside the network, Canyon could, from his desktop computer, quickly strike a command that would encrypt the entire local network in a manner that couldn’t be undone. The data would be gone forever, but at least it couldn’t be seized.

Looking at the intrusion log, Canyon didn’t expect it to come to that. Certainly not today. The log was reporting no hostile activity—at least none outside of the common denial-of-service attacks that Jones’s cybersecurity system easily beat back. If the US government ever launched a strike at Gnos.is, it wouldn’t be with anything as rudimentary as that. Canyon logged off the computer and was reclined in his chair with his feet on the desk when he heard the bell and buzzed the men in.

“Charlie Canyon?” the first man to enter called out. There was half a basketball court’s length of concrete floor between the men and Canyon’s desk.

“That’s me.”

The men, four in total, marched toward him with heads swiveling at their surroundings. They stopped a dozen feet before Canyon, where four chairs were arranged around a coffee table. Canyon did not invite them to sit down.

“I’m Lance Bitman, assistant attorney—”

“Assistant attorney general,” Canyon said, waving away the man’s badge. “I heard. Can I get you anything? Coffee? A drink? A copy of the First Amendment?”

The man smiled combatively. “No, thank you. I don’t drink coffee or booze.” He took several seconds to gaze around at the headlines glowing down at them from the screens. “I’ll be direct. We need to speak with Rafael Bolívar.”

Canyon shrugged. “He isn’t here. Would you like to leave word or come back later?”

“Cut the bullshit, Charlie. We both know Bolívar isn’t going to be here if we come back later. Where is he?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.” This was at best a half lie, and Canyon preferred avoiding those when dealing with people who doled out felony charges for a living. “Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?”

Bitman exhaled, regaining his professional composure. “We’re looking at a gravely serious national security breach. We believe a person with access to highly classified files is using news organizations like Gnos.is to disseminate state secrets. It is crucial to identify the leaker before more harm is done. We’re looking for Gnos.is’s cooperation.”

Canyon nodded at the thick manila envelope the AAG was clutching at his side. “I hope what you’ve brought there are specific examples of the harm that’s been done to national security.”

Bitman narrowed his eyes. “Think about this very carefully, Mr. Canyon. Do you want to live the rest of your life knowing that you endangered Americans—even when you had the opportunity to help them?”

“Which Americans have I endangered? Can you name any of them?”

“I would think that from your own perspective, handling the PR angle for Gnos.is, you would want to avoid the fallout of Mr. Bolívar and Gnos.is appearing un-American in the eyes of the public. I realize you are new to the news game. There is no shame in cooperating with the government in scenarios like this. The
New York Times
is cooperating, as are other news organizations.”

“Gnos.is is not like other news organizations.”

“You’re right.” The AAG stepped forward and slid the thick envelope across the desk toward Canyon. “You’ll want to read that carefully and comply with each court order within twenty-four hours. That includes the subpoena for Bolívar, who is now required to return from Iceland”—the AAG paused briefly to read Canyon’s reaction to this, but Canyon’s smirk was indecipherable, so he kept going—“or wherever he is hiding. We will have him extradited, if necessary.”

Canyon opened the envelope but was in no hurry to absorb its contents.

“We are prepared to argue as high up as the Supreme Court,” Bitman continued, “that Gnos.is is in fact not engaged in the practice of journalism and therefore does not have the protections afforded to journalists by the First Amendment.”

With tedious indifference, Canyon unpacked the envelope, laying out the separate documents across his desk as the men watched. When h
e’d
finished, he made a little show of reclining in the chair. He put his hands behind his head.

“Then we’ll wait twenty-four hours,” Canyon said, “and see what happens.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You are giving Gnos.is twenty-four hours to censor itself voluntarily, and I’m telling you that won’t happen. We’re not taking down any stories. And even if we knew the names of our sources, which we go to great lengths
not
to know, we wouldn’t reveal them to you. If you have evidence against people who have illegally disclosed classified information, indict them, not us.” Canyon leaned forward and pushed one of the documents back toward the AAG. “As for that subpoena, you’ll have to deliver it to Bolívar yourself. I won’t play middleman.”

The AAG and his marshals had not even made their way past the lobby doorman before Canyon began scanning the documents and uploading them to Gnos.is for publication. And because he never missed an opportunity for free publicity, he also attached PDFs of the documents to e-mails, which he fired off to the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
, and a dozen online news sites.

I-70 W
EST

It was Lionel who had taught her how to run. Over two decades in the field, h
e’d
accumulated a cache of knowledge that h
e’d
ingrained into her. Where to purchase untraceable passports and driver’s licenses. In what sort of banks to stash money and documents and how to access them. How to avoid surveillance cameras, and when you can’t, how to tilt your head at just the right angle to foil facial-recognition software. When to sleep and when to move. When to act in the way your pursuers expect you to, and when to do the opposite.

Kera didn’t know what to make of the fact that law enforcement had not descended on Lionel’s quiet neighborhood in the minutes after sh
e’d
left him in the park. Apparently, he hadn’t hurried inside to phone in the traitor sighting. But had he called at all? Had he ordered them to pursue her quietly? Or did he just let it go, believing she would not be found until she was ready?

Training had taught her how to prioritize the retreat points from the park and slip away. But she had not worked out any concrete details beyond that. Sh
e’d
vanished into the cover of the Beltway’s teeming suburbs only to face a new and unfamiliar threat: What to do next? This lack of foresight was more than carelessness; it was an indictment of her state of mind. She had wanted to find Lionel receptive and forgiving. She had wanted it so desperately that she hadn’t seriously considered any alternative.

You have no future at Langley.

Kera needed to drive. It went against her training to move without a destination or a safe path to get there, but she couldn’t summon the discipline to override her instinct to get on the road.

For twelve hours she drove, stopping only for gas. When finally she stretched out on a scratchy comforter at a highway motel and turned on the television, her mind was foggy from a day worrying over the what ifs and now whats. At some point she thought she heard Rafael Bolívar’s name and was certain sh
e’d
lost touch with her faculties. Lionel had taught her ways to test her mental state, and wearily she began to cycle through them. Did she know her precise location? Did she clearly remember her mission? How long before she was expected to check in with her superiors? Could she monitor her heart rate for a full minute without touching a hand to her throat or chest?

She could not.

But then the television newscaster repeated the name, and Kera sat up. She wasn’t imagining it. Bolívar’s face was on the screen. She forgot all about Lionel’s insanity tests.

She activated one of her two remaining prepaid phones—sh
e’d
discarded the first before leaving Seattle—so that she could read online the details of the indictments against Bolívar and Gnos.is that had been handed down by the Department of Justice. She read through the night, and with each hour that passed she began to feel more herself again, more confident of what she had to do next.

L
ANGLEY

Lionel Bright’s encrypted satellite phone rang, mercifully, fifteen minutes into a briefing with the agency’s public relations director. Given that Bright’s job was not supposed to involve any relations with the public, these meetings were, under normal circumstances, notorious for their bureaucratic bullshit. But like a weatherman in a hurricane, the PR department was basking in the shitstorm created by the TERMITE scandal. And, of course, they were under the impression that crafting a statement for the press could somehow make it better. The PR director and her staff had come armed with several drafts, all of which were shot down by the spies. At the moment Bright’s phone vibrated in his pocket, one of his colleagues was reminding the PR flacks of the only phrase they needed to know to do their jobs: “The CIA does not comment on clandestine operations.”

Bright glanced at his phone’s illuminated screen. The number itself was unfamiliar—it was associated with a single-use SIM card—but the display indicated that the call was coming through a secure satellite link originating in Beijing. The only people who had the number for this encrypted sat phone were Bright’s men and women in the field.

Bright excused himself, drawing envious glares from his colleagues, and swiped the phone’s screen to engage the call before it rang out. “Hold on,” he said. He walked down a long hallway and through an exit that took him to the cafeteria kitchen’s loading dock. When he was confident he was alone, he said, “OK, I’m here.”

“This is BLACKFISH.” The voice from seven thousand miles away was cool and accentless.

“Authenticate BLACKFISH.”

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”

“What color is the sky today?”

“Red. Bright fucking red.”

It was BLACKFISH, all right, Bright thought. He hadn’t seen the man in over a year, but his mind produced a vivid memory of broad shoulders, a flat nose, and ginger goatee. “Go ahead.”

“What the fuck, Lionel?” BLACKFISH hissed.

“You’ve been reading the papers?”

“These stories blew us wide open. My team is gone. Do you hear me, Lionel? They’re gone. Missing. This is not a country where you want to go missing.”

Lionel shut his eyes.
ZEUS and HORNET.
The other members of his covert Beijing team. The three of them had been instrumental in establishing the TERMITE program in China, where it had been extremely effective. “Can you get to the embassy?”

“
I’d
rather not, thanks. It hasn’t been a great week for people coming and going from that compound. How did this happen?”

Bright sighed. “There was an online news story. It mentioned details of the TERMITE program. Then other news sites confirmed—”

“I read the goddamn Gnos.is story. And all the rest. But where did it
come
from? Because if this is another civil liberties coward trying to play hero, now they have to answer for two Americans who are being tortured in a Chinese prison.”

Bright permitted this venting session, even though they both knew that no one would be called upon to answer for ZEUS and HORNET, who didn’t exist, not officially. This was the fucked-up thing about leakers: they presumed they were doing good only because they weren’t deep enough in it to even imagine the bad.

“We don’t know where the TERMITE leak came from. We’re working on that.”

“And ZEUS and HORNET?”

“We’re working on that too.”

“Christ, Lionel. Working on it?”

“It’s China. We can’t just fly a Predator drone over the Great Wall. It’s delicate, all right? In the meantime, you’re our key man there. I’m depending on you. ZEUS and HORNET are depending on you. You know more about the situation than anyone.”

“The situation is that we got fucked by our own goddamn media.”

BLACKFISH was isolated, pissed off, and likely sleep deprived. But in the agent’s spirited complaints, Bright was relieved to hear a man who had his wits about him.

“You’re in a safe place?” Bright asked.

“Safer than others here,
I’d
say.”

“Thanks for checking in.” Bright started toward the door that would take him inside.

“Wait. I didn’t call just to bitch and moan,” BLACKFISH said. He paused. “I’ve got something burning a hole in my pocket.”

Bright stopped at the door, then wandered back out across the loading dock. There was no one around. “Go ahead.”

“Before that Gnos.is story broke, I picked up a drop from a contact. It contained a communication from Uncle Orwell that references the ambassador’s plane crash.” Uncle Orwell was the name they had given to Feng Xuri, the minister of state security, China’s equivalent to the American CIA director. “Are you there?” BLACKFISH said.

“Yeah, I heard you. So what? Everyone in Beijing and Washington is talking about that plane crash.”

“They are now, sure. But this communication took place three days before the plane went down.”

Lionel squinted. He was silent for a dozen seconds. “That’s true? You’re sure of that?”

“Yes. It’s a text exchange between Uncle Orwell and a man he calls Peng. I have the screen grabs right here.”

“Screen grabs?”

“My asset took pictures of Uncle Orwell’s phone screen when he went to take a piss.”

“Your asset. This is the hooker?” Bright had been briefed before on a young woman BLACKFISH had recruited who was said to be in the employ of several Communist Party leaders.

“She’s an escort, Lionel. A professional. And incidentally, she was one of our best assets. I don’t think we’ll hear from her again, though. Not after that fucking story.”

Bright cursed to himself. “Just read me the exchange. Is it long?”

“No, a few lines. Hold on. Here it is.” BLACKFISH read aloud the texts that he would later forward to Langley.

A
ND THE AMERICAN FROM THE EMBASSY
?

[P
ENG
]

I
T IS SET
. S
HE IS GOING TO
S
HANGHAI ON THUR. OUR MAN WILL GET IN THE PLANE WHILE IT IS GROUNDED THERE
.

[U
NCLE
O
RWELL
]

A
ND HE IS CONFIDENT ABOUT THIS
?

[P
ENG
]

Y
ES HE IS SKILLED. HE SAYS THE PLANE’S SYSTEM IS NOT COMPLEX
. I
T IS SET
.

[U
NCLE
O
RWELL
]

“Is that your translation from the Mandarin?” Bright asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you say, ‘She is going to Shanghai.’ Not ‘he’?”

“That’s what it says. But you know . . . text messages, autocorrect. The punctuation in these things is a mess. The guy’s got an escort in the room. Maybe he was distracted and typing fast. The point is, they’re discussing tampering with the ambassador’s plane a few days before it crashed.”

“Who is Peng?”

“Don’t know. I’ll send you the screen shots when I can get proper encryption.”

Bright thanked BLACKFISH and hung up, making a mental note to check with the NSA to see what they could do to identify “Peng.” For a few moments, he stood on the loading dock, thinking. Then he returned reluctantly to the PR meeting and sat thinking some more while the flacks rambled on about strategies for winning back the news cycle.

Bright was pulled from his thoughts when several smartphones rattled and chirped suddenly in quick succession, beckoning the attention of their owners.

“What the hell is that?” the head PR spokeswoman said, losing the room to their phones. Bright felt his own phone twitch inside his pocket.

“FBI Director Ellis is starting a news conference,” someone said, summarizing the alert he was reading as the PR spokeswoman switched the screen on the wall behind her over to the news conference. “DOJ’s twenty-four-hour deadline for Gnos.is has passed. The classified content is still live. The Feds are going after Rafael Bolívar.”

“Good luck finding him,” someone else muttered.

Bright was a patriot from head to heart. A prerequisite of that, he believed, was a firm belief in the First Amendment—a belief he couldn’t ever remember questioning before. But then again, h
e’d
never worked so close to such a serious leak of classified files. “Eventually we find everyone,” he whispered, gazing up at Bolívar’s picture on the news broadcast.