The Director

10

Graham Weber’s chief of staff, Sandra Bock, lingered in his office after he’d heard the final dismal news from Germany. She knew that he was upset, but he wasn’t a man who invited intimacy or sought consolation. She decided to offer him some unsolicited and anonymous advice. She left on his desk a copy of a book cable that had been sent to all stations and bases ten years before. It had been written by the operations chief in Baghdad for case officers who were deployed to combat zones. It was brief, and to the point:

Weber didn’t say anything to Bock, but he must have known the message came from her because she promptly received a brief, handwritten note on a stiff crème-colored card with the director’s initials that read, Thank you. Graham.

The director needed a walk to clear his head. Jack Fong, the bearish chief of his security detail, insisted on following behind. That seemed silly to Weber, given that he would remain within the protected compound of agency Headquarters, but he was already getting worn down by procedures. It was harder to fix the big problems, he had discovered, when you were nettled with so many little ones.

Weber took a long circumnavigation of the building, turning left out the front door and then left again in a wide arc that skirted the Green lot, the Brown lot, the Purple lot, the Black lot, the Tan lot and the Yellow lot. This color-coded, enforced cheerfulness was characteristic of the agency’s bureaucracy, in its attempt to pretend that this was just like any other workplace. The agency’s bureaucracy tried so hard to be normal, which was the one goal it could not possibly achieve.

While his black SUV followed thirty yards behind, Weber hummed a hymn he remembered from his days as an altar boy at St. Aloysius Parish on Mount Troy Road in Pittsburgh. He was brooding all the while, wondering whom to consult and what to say.

Weber wished he had a board of directors. He had been reporting to boards for the whole of his business career. When something bad happened, or trouble seemed to be lurking around the next corner, he had learned that it was wise to ask board members for counsel. That made it harder for them to blame you later if things went wrong, and sometimes you got some good advice. But Weber didn’t have a board. He served at the pleasure of the president, and the president wasn’t seeing much of anyone outside the White House these days. He was traveling and giving speeches, lost in the misty uplands of his second term. Weber wasn’t sure where else to turn.

When Weber got back to his office, he placed a call to Cyril Hoffman, the director of National Intelligence. Hoffman was technically Weber’s boss, but more than that, he was a seasoned bureaucrat who had seen his share of catastrophes over the years. Weber asked if he could stop by the DNI’s office at Liberty Crossing, a few miles away. The response was theatrical, as always; Hoffman invoked Jesus, Mary and Joseph in one sentence, but he agreed to the visit.

The black Escalade was waiting in the basement garage next to the director’s elevator. Weber got in the backseat and closed his eyes while Oscar, his driver, got the all-clear from the garage-door guard. The big SUV rolled out of the concrete bunker toward Route 123, and then motored the few miles west to the anodyne office complex that housed the DNI and his staff. This ODNI entourage had grown in the dark of secrecy like a vast field of mushrooms sprouting in a cave, and now numbered more than a thousand.

Weber’s trip had been organized in such a hurry that nobody had precleared his arrival, so he went in the front door, through the metal detectors and past the chubby security guards, like any other visitor.

When Weber arrived upstairs at Hoffman’s office, he could hear the low hum of what sounded like cello music. Entering the room, he realized that he was listening to one of the Bach cello suites. It was an incongruous match of sight and sound. The office was appointed in the government’s preferred sunny, cheerless décor, with navy blue carpeting, polished cherrywood tables and maroon leather furniture that was so new and shiny it seemed closer to plastic than any natural substance.

Behind the desk at the far side of the room loomed the fastidious, ample form of Cyril Hoffman. He was dressed in a brown suit today, as ever the gold chain across his waist, its bright links marking his girth. He ambled slowly toward Weber, his feet splayed outward slightly in a way that made his whole body seem to list slightly, left and right, as he took each step. He extended his hand toward Weber.

Hoffman’s secretary and chief of staff were hovering at the door.

“A well-timed visit,” said Hoffman. “Everyone, leave now, please, chop-chop.” He shooed away his two aides, who retreated backward as if leaving a royal personage. Hoffman winked at his visitor.

“The exercise of power is operatic, don’t you think? There are so many supernumeraries and props. It’s just so… overdone. Would you like an espresso? I make it myself. I have my own machine.”

Hoffman pointed to a large appliance along the wall, the sort of espresso machine you might find in a café in Paris. It had large handles and spouts and stainless steel fixtures.

“The security people insisted on taking it apart before they let me bring it up to the office. They thought it might be dangerous. How could that be? You put in beans and water, and out comes coffee. Quite good coffee, too, I would say. Would you like a cup?”

“No, thanks,” said Weber. “Maybe some water.”

“Water, of course. Important to hydrate. Still or sparkling?” He spoke in a patter, as if he were talking to himself.

“Still,” said Weber, taking a seat on one of the maroon leather couches.

“Yes, still, certainly. What was I thinking?”

Hoffman poured from a bottle of Italian mineral water; on the label were testimonials from various Roman medical specialists. He handed the glass to Weber with a proprietary nod of the head.

“So what brings you barreling over here, barely two weeks into the job, to see your Uncle Cyril? It can’t be that you’ve encountered a problem. You are the future of intelligence. The president told me so himself, just a few days ago.”

There was a note of sarcasm in Hoffman’s voice. He was a generous man, but he liked dealing with people on his own terms, and Weber didn’t owe him anything.

“I need advice,” said Weber.

Hoffman leaned forward, so that his belly, neatly wrapped in the brown pin-striped vest, seemed to be resting on the edge of the coffee table.

“I am all ears,” he said.

“Hamburg went south. You probably heard.”

“Indeed. I’m sorry for that young Swiss fellow. Should have taken our advice and stayed in a safe house.”

“I’m wondering whether to fire James Morris. He offered me his resignation today. I told him I wanted to check with a few people.”

Hoffman struck his palm against his forehead.

“Good god, man. This isn’t Japan. People don’t have to fall on their swords when something goes wrong. It wasn’t Morris’s fault, was it?”

“Not really. As you said, the walk-in should have stayed where we could protect him. But it happened on Morris’s watch. He’s supposed to know these hacker groups, supposed to be inside them, he claims. So it’s partly on him. I’ve been saying since I got here that the agency needs more accountability. Well, here’s my chance to show it.”

“A word to the wise — three words, actually: Don’t do it.”

“I thought you’d say that. But isn’t that the problem with the government? Nobody ever gets fired when something goes wrong. The agency has no gag reflex. It will swallow anything. I want to change that.”

“Starting with Morris?”

“Maybe.”

Hoffman looked over the top of his glasses, eyebrows bristling.

“Don’t do it,” he repeated. “Young Mr. Morris may be an odd duck. But he is also well connected.”

“How so?”

“The White House likes him. Timothy O’Keefe, the national security adviser, most especially. He thinks Morris is the new generation. He gives a great briefing, as you might expect. I’m told that when he holds forth in the Situation Room about cyber matters, you could hear a pin drop.”

“Morris briefs the president?”

“Sometimes. He’s quite the eager beaver: apple polisher, crowd-pleaser, all that.”

“He seems shy.”

“He’s a mysterious chap, this Morris. A Protean character. They tell me he’s a reader, and a brooder, always roaming in the archives looking for this and that. He has some peculiar notions. A tad conspiratorial, or so they say.”

“So who says?”

“My spies. They’re everywhere.”

Hoffman chuckled at this notion that he maintained his own private network of information, though Weber was sure it was true.

“One more suggestion,” continued Hoffman. “Go see O’Keefe before you do anything. Make sure he’s on board. Morris has been running some sensitive operations. They’re not all on Ruth Savin’s official books. Ask Beasley about them. You will be, what should I say? Amused. He’s quite a creative fellow, young Morris, no matter how many threads he occasionally drops.”

Weber was pleased, inwardly, to hear this testimonial to Morris’s ingenuity and political clout. It affirmed his initial instinct in giving him responsibility, even if things hadn’t worked out as planned.

“I’ll see O’Keefe,” said Weber. “And I have one more request. What should I do to protect our communications systems from whatever is coming at us? I don’t want to panic people at the agency, but we need an independent scrub. Since you oversee the NSA, I thought maybe they could help us.”

“Do you want the correct answer or the real answer?”

“The real answer, obviously.”

“The correct answer is yes, of course, we can call in the NSA and sweep up everything in sight. Panic the children and small animals. The real answer is no. Be careful. Do this discreetly until you know what it is.”

Weber nodded. This was all new to him, but he understood immediately that Hoffman was right.

“How should I proceed?”

“Do what I advised last week. Sweep this and that. Concentrate on the known leaks from Germany and Switzerland. Don’t sit on the bayonet. I will lend you a technical team from my staff, on condition that they report back to me, each step of the way, what they’re finding. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like good advice, actually. I appreciate the help.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” said Hoffman merrily. “Want a last bit of counsel?”

“Of course. I need all I can get.”

“The thing that you have to remember about this job is that you are not just a manager, but also a magician. And as any professional magician will tell you, every magic trick has three parts: what people see; what they remember; and what they tell others about what they saw. You want the audience to swear the body disappeared, or the rabbit jumped out of the hat. But they will say so only because, at the critical moment, you made them look somewhere else.”

“I’ll think about that, Cyril. I’ll remember it, even better. But to me, you sound like a good manager.”

“Ah, excellent,” said Hoffman, smiling. “That means you did not see the trick.”

Weber bade the DNI goodbye, grateful for his advice, but not at all sure whether he was dealing with an ally or an adversary. When Weber left the office, Hoffman turned up the cello music again.