Conspiracy

6

“So, Mr. Rubens, you don’t believe that the National Security Agency should spy on Americans?”

William Rubens took a slow breath before answering, very conscious that he was being set up.

“Our job is to provide intelligence, Senator,” the NSA’s deputy director said. “We have strict guidelines for gathering and disseminating information, and we follow them.”

“But you believe that Americans should be spied on.”

“Senator, my role is to follow the law regardless of what I believe,” said Rubens. “And no, as a personal matter, I do not believe that.”

Senator Gideon McSweeney smiled broadly, looking around the committee room as if he had just scored some massive point.

“And was the law followed in the so-called American Taliban case?” McSweeney asked.

“Speaking for my agency’s actions, absolutely.”

“Without qualification?”

“The law was absolutely followed. No qualifications.” The senator paused, looking down at the papers in front of him.

“Did you obtain subpoenas before gathering your intelligence?” McSweeney asked finally.

Rubens leaned back in the chair. Ordinarily his boss, NSA Director Admiral Devlin Brown, would be sitting in this chair, doing his best not to tell the senators what he really thought of them. But Brown had suffered a heart attack three weeks before, leaving Rubens to take the hot seat while he recovered.

“We followed the law, as always,” said Rubens.

“Did you obtain subpoenas?” McSweeney asked again.

“Where necessary.”

“And where were they necessary?” Rubens had been instructed by the President not to be specific about the intelligence gathering in the case, which had involved a misguided young man from Detroit who had unfortunately gotten himself involved in a plot to destroy a crude oil receiving station in the Mexican Gulf.

Much of the information had come via a high-ranking al Qaeda operative who had come to the United States to make contact with sympathizers. Deep Black had implanted a bugging device in his skull; the device was still there, continuing to transmit valuable information to the NSA. Describing the subpoenas could, conceivably, lead to information about the operation itself, and Rubens had no intention of revealing anything that had not already been made public.

“I can only say, Senator, that the law was followed,” Rubens said.

“A law in which there are no checks and balances, since the subpoenas are handed down in secret and need never be revealed.”

“There is a system in place,” said Rubens. “I can elaborate if you wish.”

McSweeney had no intention of letting Rubens take up the rest of his allotted time with an explanation of how the in de pen dent but secret judicial panel did its job, an explanation that would include the fact that more than 30 percent of the requests for subpoenas were turned down and that roughly 85 percent of the subpoenas resulted in an arrest or a documented disruption of a terrorist plot. Instead, McSweeney gave a short speech that invoked everyone from Thomas Jefferson to John Sirica as he discoursed on the need to uphold basic American values in the continuing war against terrorism.

Neither Rubens nor anyone in the room could have possibly disagreed with McSweeney, but his unspoken implication that the administration did not follow the law nettled. Rubens felt like asking if the senator thought the government should have let terrorists blow up the offshore oil port, with the sub-sequent loss of perhaps a third of the country’s petroleum import capabilities.

But as satisfying as that might have been momentarily, it was entirely the wrong thing to do. Senator McSweeney was running for his party’s presidential nomination. The purpose of his speech was not so much to make the present administration look bad — though he certainly didn’t mind doing that — as it was to make him appear both concerned and informed. Appearances to the contrary, he had no personal animosity toward the NSA and in fact had supported supplemental bud get allocations for the agency several times in the past. As long as Rubens allowed himself to be used as a punching bag, McSweeney would still consider himself a friend when the supplemental bud get came up for a vote in a few months.

Make McSweeney look like a fool, however, and there would be no end of trouble.

Rubens pressed his thumb against his forefinger, digging the nail into the fingertip, to keep himself quiet.

“Time, Senator,” said the committee aide keeping track of the allotted time.

“Of course, I hope that my remarks will not be interpreted as a criticism of the National Security Agency, which has done and continues to do an excellent job,” said McSweeney quickly, throwing Rubens and the agency a bone for being a good punching bag. “I would extend that praise to you as well, Mr. Rubens. I know you to be a man of the highest personal integrity.”

Somehow, the remark irritated Rubens more than anything else the senator had said.

Finally dismissed, Rubens tried hard to make his thank-yous seem something other than perfunctory, rose, and walked swiftly to the door at the back of the room. The sparse audience was about evenly divided between congressional aides and media types. The latter swarmed toward the door, eager to ask follow-up questions. Unlike the senators, there was no need to accommodate the reporters, and Rubens merely waved at them with the barest hint of a smile, continuing swiftly into the hall.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, head tilted forward, his pace picking up. “Already very late. You’re interested in the senators, not me.”

He succeeded in distancing himself from the pack, and was so focused on getting out of the building that he nearly ran over Jed Frey as he turned the corner toward the side entrance. Frey, a short but athletic man in his late fifties, caught Rubens with both hands as he veered back in surprise.

“William, how are you?”

“Jed. I’m sorry. Are you here on business?”

“In a way. Do you have a few minutes?” Frey was the director of the Secret Service. A lifetime government employee, he had held a number of jobs in the Trea sury and State Departments after beginning as a Secret Service special agent.

“I’m due back at Fort Meade,” said Rubens, referring to the NSA’s headquarters, often called Crypto City.

“Perhaps I can ride with you awhile.”

“Naturally,” said Rubens, starting toward his car. “President still giving you fits?”

“Hmmmm,” said Frey noncommittally.

Even more so than his recent predecessor, President Jeffrey Marcke seemed to delight in overruling or even ignoring the advice of the Secret Service. Marcke never saw a crowd he didn’t want to plunge into, much to the dismay of his bodyguards, and liked to point out that during George Washington’s day and for many presidencies afterward, anyone could walk into the executive mansion. Rubens knew of at least a dozen times when Marcke had gone places despite warnings from the Secret Service; Frey surely knew many more.

But the director did not like criticizing his boss, and changed the subject. “You spoke at the hearing without an aide?” he asked Rubens.

“I see no purpose in wasting someone else’s time as well as my own.”

Though Frey laughed heartily, Rubens did not mean this as a joke. In fact, he had only taken a driver rather than driving himself because he knew he could get some work done on the way.

Frey called his own driver, then joined Rubens in the backseat of Admiral Brown’s Lincoln.

Rubens liked Frey; he was consistently honest and unpretentious. He also tended toward the laconic, a quality Rubens shared. In nearly every other way, however, the men were exact opposites. Frey’s father had been a policeman in Detroit, and Jed had grown up in one of the city’s tougher neighborhoods. The street still clung to him; though he was short and relatively thin, Frey had a way of dominating a space and did so now, shoulders squared and head pushed forward.

His biceps bulged in his shirtsleeves as he folded his arms in front of his chest. The light gray hair on his forearms matched the color on his head.

“This involves one of my agents, a man named Gerald Forester. You know about him?”

Rubens shook his head.

Frey’s entire body rose and fell as he took a deep breath.

“Supposedly it’s suicide. But I don’t buy it.”