The Director

23

James Morris had vanished. He wasn’t answering his phones and he was ignoring all electronic messages. His location was concealed from his CIA colleagues, and even from the staff who worked for him in the joint NSA cover office in Denver. He had given his contact information in East Anglia to only one person. So Morris knew that it could only be that very particular friend who left an unsigned letter for him with the receptionist downstairs at the Fudan — East Anglia Research Centre. The note read: Meet me at 5:00 at The Silver Locket. The handwriting was distinctive, small letters, sharply formed, branching like spindly roots.

When Morris received the note, it was nearly four-thirty. He told Dr. Li to delay the last interview; he needed to take a walk and would be back as soon as he could. It was dusk when Morris set out, and in the low light the fields were plush green and the furrows and hedgerows a deep velvet. He walked quickly toward the pub on the outskirts of the little town. Morris passed the memorial to Rupert Brooke, the World War I poet who had made the village modestly famous. Morris didn’t care about poetry. The only poems he could remember liking had been generated by an AI program he’d created when he was at Stanford: You typed in the theme, say love, and the names of the characters, the setting and a metric scheme, and out came a poem.

Morris went into the Silver Locket and asked the barman for a pint of lager. It took a few moments before his eyes adjusted to the light. Then he saw Ramona Kyle, sitting at a table in the corner. She was drinking a glass of fruit juice. Morris sat down beside her. She was wearing a wool sweater with a crew neck, the kind that teenage boys wear in prep school. Her red curls were tied in a tight ponytail. She closed her eyes and formed a kiss with her lips, without touching him. He smiled.

“Hey, you,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I was in England seeing some people, and I got worried about you. I thought you might be lonely.”

“Me? No way. I hate people. I like being alone.”

Kyle smiled. She looked to the other tables. The pub was beginning to fill with people coming in after work.

“That’s my man,” she murmured. She put a finger to her lips for quiet.

“Seriously,” he whispered, “why did you come? I’m okay. Nobody knows I’m here. I want to keep it that way.”

“The truth?”

“Always.”

“I was afraid you might be getting cold feet. I wanted to check your temperature.”

“I’m chill. I’m recruiting my last engineers now. This is going to be the hack of the century. Don’t be nervous about me, K. I’m all in.”

“Good. You have to move soon. The heat is on the Independent again after that story. Eventually it will be on you.”

Morris’s face lost what little color it had. He licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. He leaned toward her and spoke in her ear.

“Did you plant that?”

“Don’t ask,” she said. “That’s our deal.”

He took his beer and drained the glass.

“I don’t care anymore. Let’s blow it all up.”

“Shhh!” she said, her finger to her lips again. “You need to be careful, Jimmy.”

“I am. That’s why I’m here. You’re the one who broke security.”

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said, very quietly now. “That’s the other reason I came.”

“I’m not meeting people now.”

“He’s over there.” She looked across the lounge to a muscular young man in a blue blazer and a purple and white college scarf. Morris followed her eyes. The other man looked like a Cambridge undergraduate, almost. He nodded. He’d seen Ramona before, in a desolate park in Maryland.

“His name is Roger. At least that’s his work name. When I get up, he’s going to come over here and introduce himself.”

“What if I don’t want to meet him? I told you, I don’t like people.”

“Not an option. But you’ll appreciate him. He can help.”

Ramona Kyle finished the last of her fruit juice and donned a raincoat over her sweater. She leaned toward Morris.

“I am so proud of you,” she said. “Most people do nothing. You’re doing everything.”

She walked away. The front of the bar was full now; she disappeared into a knot of people before she reached the door.

The young man in the scarf came over and sat down next to Morris, where Ramona had been. Someone watching them would have guessed it was a gay pickup. He was carrying a paperback book on “Scala,” a new high-level programming language.

“How are you doing, man?” he began. There was a slight accent in his voice. Morris couldn’t place it, but it was east of Germany. “I’m Roger. Can I buy you a beer?”

“I have to go,” said Morris. “I have an appointment.”

“No problem, man.” He put his hand on Morris’s knee. Morris was startled, but he didn’t move.

“When you get up to go, take the book with you.”

“I have plenty to read,” said Morris.

“Take the book,” whispered the man. “It has some information that will be helpful for you. It also has the time and place of our next meeting.”

Roger stared into Morris’s eyes. He was a powerful person, handsome, but more than that. He had an operative’s way of subtly establishing rapport and control at once,

Morris removed the man’s hand from his leg and stood up. “I’ll think about it,” he said. He turned and walked toward the door. Under his arm was the Scala book.

Dr. Li was waiting just inside the door when Morris returned to the office. He was looking at his watch. It was after six. The five-thirty appointment had already arrived, with annoying punctuality. Morris muttered an apology. He went upstairs and locked Roger’s book in his safe. He wanted to lock himself away, too, but it was too late for that. The time for deliberating or holding back had passed, he wasn’t sure when, but the opportunity to withdraw was gone. Now he had to execute.

The last appointment was a Chinese research student named Bo Guafeng. Dr. Li had found him through a friend who was a fellow of Girton College, where Bo was a research student. Dr. Li learned that he was from Wuhan in the interior, which probably meant that he wasn’t from a rich family and needed money. He was proficient in computer science, and he had something of a reputation as a hacker. Within the Chinese student community, he was known as a rebel who wore his hair long and dressed in a leather jacket.

Can be controlled, wrote Dr. Li on the margin of the young man’s résumé.

Morris nodded. He was trying to pay attention, but he was distracted.

Young Mr. Bo was wearing a black gabardine suit with his hair trussed in a ponytail. From the moment he shook Morris’s hand, it was obvious that he was trying hard to appear to be a diligent student, as opposed to his natural demeanor of mildly antisocial rebellion. That was precisely the wrong strategy to adopt for a meeting with Morris, but there was no way for the Chinese student to know that, and enough bits of maladapted behavior showed through to make him a believable hacker.

As before, the applicant was seated at a computer keyboard, in front of a screen, with a companion monitor facing the interviewers. This time Morris let Dr. Li do most of the talking. He was tired, and he wanted his Chinese colleague to have “face” with Bo, in the event that he was hired. Dr. Li began with a largely fictitious description of the activities of the Fudan — East Anglia Research Centre. Dr. Li was an excellent liar, whatever his other limits.

Morris introduced himself as a former employee of Hubang Networks’ subsidiary in Britain that marketed their routers and other hardware to European clients. This identity was backstopped, in case Bo bothered to check. The spurious Chinese connection would reassure Bo that he would not be courting prosecution by the Public Security Bureau when he returned home.

Morris gave a rote description of the particular fellowship position they were looking to fill. Bo looked at him intently, evidently curious about this American who seemed so well connected with Chinese information technology.

“We need a shopper,” said Morris, “someone who can research the things that might be dangerous to our clients — so that they can take defensive measures. You understand, Mr. Bo?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Birkman,” he said eagerly. “Dr. Li told me what you want. I am ready to show my skills.”

“We are waiting,” said Dr. Li, gesturing to the keyboard. “You take us on a shopping trip.”

Dr. Li gave him the guest username and password, and Bo opened his browser. He looked up and saw that they were waiting for him to display his hacking expertise.

“First, I think we must open TOR account for Onion links.”

Bo typed quickly and the browser interface for torproject.org appeared on the monitors.

“I think now we would like to go to TOR Hidden Service Directory. We will see what they have there.”

He looked at a sheet he had brought along and typed a sixteen-letter address, starting with dppm and continuing with a string of seemingly random letters. This opened a browser screen that displayed service providers that were running TOR, too, so that the connection was double-blind; triple-encrypted.

“Okay, easy stuff,” said Dr. Li.

“Now I think maybe you want to look at what people can buy from the Russian carders, which could harm your clients.”

The Chinese research student looked again at his crib sheet and typed another sixteen-letter string, this time beginning with, and up came a price list. For one hundred credit cards, the price today was $5,000. This was a competitive market. There was so much identity theft these days that prices were falling.

“Not bad,” said Dr. Li. He was stingy with his praise.

“I will look now at stolen PayPal accounts.”

This time the young man typed a shorter address, starting with ivu4, and in an instant the current market in PayPal money online was displayed.

“Maybe it is U.S. user account information that is a problem for your clients. These names are Social Security numbers, DOBs, which is the date of the birth, and the address and phone number, of course.”

Another glance at the sheet and few more keystrokes, here beginning jppc, and he was once again inside an online warehouse of data, with identities priced by the thousands this time.

“Better,” said Dr. Li.

“And now, finally, I will take you to Silk Road, famous online market, where you can see many more services that can be harmful, even drugs, you will see, very dangerous even to be here online.”

This time Bo typed in an http address that began with silkroad, which did indeed take them to a marketplace of illicit goods and services that could be acquired online. It required a username and password, and then a PIN number, all of which he executed flawlessly. Obviously, he had been to these places before.

“Acceptable,” said Dr. Li.

Li looked toward Morris, who passed him a note with one word, mule, dashed on the paper. Li nodded.

“Is there anything else you would like me to perform?” asked the student.

“No, Mr. Bo. Mr. Birkman and I can see that you are a diligent man. Do you have any questions?”

“Well, let me think…” Bo knew that you are always supposed to ask a question in an interview, but he was stumped for a moment. Then a query occurred to him.

“Are you connected to Fudan University in Shanghai?” He looked at Morris, then at Dr. Li. Both were silent for a moment while they considered what lie to tell, for in truth they had no connection whatsoever. The American spoke up.

“We work with some of the best Fudan faculty. Not with the university itself, of course, but with some of their top computer science people.”

“Thank you very much.” Bo seemed relieved at the thought that there would be Chinese academics along for the ride, whatever this vehicle was.

Dr. Li looked again at Morris, who rolled his hand in a gesture that said, Let’s get on with it.

“We can offer you work here,” said Dr. Li. “We pay rather well, I think.”

Bo Guafeng could not suppress a quick smile. It was the first unrehearsed gesture of the interview.

Morris handed over another One World contract. He repeated the ritual of the nondisclosure agreement, this time not quite as aggressively as with the Israeli. He wanted to get the details finished so he could hand the Chinese kid off to Dr. Li. He didn’t have to elaborate the legal details. He could tell from the look on the Chinese man’s face that he already knew that Morris “owned” him, had owned him from the moment he walked in the door.

“We are going to need you to do some traveling for us. Do you like to travel, Mr. Bo?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Chinese student. “I like travel.”

“Good. Because we’re going to send you to Switzerland. You have your passport, right, no visa problems, no difficulty getting in and out of Britain?”

“My passport is fine, Mr. Birkman. What do you want me to do in Switzerland?”

Morris shook his head. He was tired. He’d had too much sex and too much anxiety, and now one too many conversations with people who were irrelevant to him, except as tools in his kit.

“Tomorrow,” said Morris. “Dr. Li and I will explain it all to you tomorrow. But tonight we want you to stay here with us at the institute. We have a bedroom upstairs, where some of the other fellows will be staying, too. We can send someone to Girton to get anything you need tonight. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know,” said the Chinese.

Morris’s voice was sharper now. This was not the time to challenge him, not when he needed to crash.

“I’m sorry, I must not have heard you right, Mr. Bo. Did you say, ‘I don’t know’? That’s the wrong answer. The right answer is, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Birkman. Yes, I would be happy to stay here with you and Dr. Li.’”

The Chinese nodded. Morris called for Dr. Li and the guard to get the kid out of the way so he could sleep.

Before he went to bed, Morris opened the Scala manual that Roger had given him. Stuck between several pages in the middle were an index card and a stapled list of information that ran several sheets.

Morris studied the list. It showed the usernames and passwords of the systems administrators of several dozen central banks around the world, along with their routing codes and SWIFT addresses for depositing payments or making withdrawals. It was a carefully chosen list: Some of the banks represented countries that were very rich, and others were from impoverished nations where people lived on several hundred dollars a year. Included with the information for each bank was the account number and administrator password for its treasury account at the Bank for International Settlements. It was information that could only come through an intelligence service, but Morris knew that it wasn’t one associated with the United States.

He put the stapled list in his safe. It was a sublimely useful document, in the way that Ramona Kyle knew it would be.

Morris looked at the index card, which was the other item tucked into the computer book. It listed an address in London and a time and date less than a week hence. Morris told himself that he would stay away from this meeting; he would use this “Roger’s” material, wherever it came from, but he would keep his distance from the man himself.