The Director

26

Dr. Ariel Weiss put a hand-lettered notice on her door that read CONSULT THE DOCUMENTATION. That was a geek-speak way of saying, Solve it yourself, to the young officers of the Information Operations Center who were accustomed to wandering by her desk and asking her advice. In every office, there’s someone to whom people turn when they have problems, and Weiss had become that person since she’d come to work for James Morris, who had the people skills of a mollusk. But Weiss’s life was more complicated now, and she no longer had time to be anyone’s big sister.

Weber had given her the assignment of turning her boss’s operations upside down — to pull at the threads of Morris’s cloak until the fabric gave way. But her search had proven far more difficult than she had expected. Ed Junot’s cover identity had crumpled in Germany, but now he had disappeared again, and Weiss didn’t know where to look for him. She suspected that Morris must have secret help from somewhere else in the government, or somewhere outside, or perhaps both. But his movements were too well hidden.

Weiss had been staring at her twin computer screens for several hours, searching for traces of Morris’s movements, and she needed a rest. She opened her door and stepped out into the indoor cavern that was the operations room of her center.

The floor was laid out like a Silicon Valley start-up or a Google research lab — the sort of places where her colleagues had worked before joining the agency. At the far end of the room was an open refreshment area with free food and drinks; stockpiles of caffeine to keep the code writers humming. These were Weiss’s people more than Morris’s. They were loyal, attentive and needy: a community of hyper-intelligent people who had decided to invest their brainpower on behalf of their country, rather than with big corporations. They wanted a psychic return, if not a financial one.

Weiss was dressed in her usual uniform of black tapered slacks, a close-fitting white cotton shirt and the tailored leather jacket she’d bought the day Morris made her his deputy. She left her office heading for the free food. She wanted something hot and something cold, a coffee and a Diet Coke, and maybe something sweet, and then she would go back to cracking the massively encrypted code that was James Morris.

Alvin Crump, the leader of one of the Iran cyber-teams, saw Weiss leave the office with her head down, lost in thought. His desk was in her path. He rolled out his chair so she would trip over him if she didn’t stop.

“Hey, Dr. Weiss, ’sup?” he asked.

Weiss’s eyes opened wide as if waking from a trance. She came to an abrupt stop in front of Crump’s desk.

“The usual,” she said. “Lots of subroutines, but no compiler. How about you, Crump? Have you located the Supreme Leader’s opium connection yet?”

“Working on it,” said the young man. He ran electronic operations against leadership figures in Tehran, using bits of malware and trapdoors installed so widely that the Iranians must wonder if the computer bugs flowed in with the electricity and water. Weiss’s reference to the opium dealer was a joke, but just barely. Crump’s team had tracked every movement of the top Iranian leaders for so long they might have written the ayatollahs’ personal calendars.

Weiss started off toward the coffee bar, but Crump was still in her way.

“Is everything okay?” asked the software engineer. “You’re scaring us a little, honestly. We’ve never seen you work so hard. Your door is always closed, and the screens are turned so nobody can see what you’re working on. Are we going to war or something?”

Weiss laughed, but she could see the concern on Crump’s face. People from nearby cubicles were listening, too. Weiss made these people think that what they did was cool and sexy. When she was preoccupied, so were they. She turned to Crump and the half dozen others nearby who were craning toward her.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a poop the last few days. I’m crashing on something for Pownzor, and you all know how crazy he can get. But everything’s cool. If there was any trouble, he’d be back here to micromanage it, right?”

“We’re beginning to wonder if Pownzor really exists,” said Crump. “Has he been fired?”

“Of course not!” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Whatever made you think that?”

“Gossip. It’s all over the building.”

Weiss deflected the query with another brush of her hand.

“That’s all bullshit. Would I still be here, if Pownzor was in trouble? Answer: No. So everyone chill, please.”

“If you say so,” said Crump. He looked relieved. So did the others who were near enough to hear the conversation, many of whom were already sending messages to their colleagues on the chat screen. Dr. Weiss said everything was fine, so it must be true. This might be an organization of professional liars, but Weiss was seen by her colleagues as someone who never lied.

She got her coffee and Coke — real, not diet — and took two cookies, one oatmeal and one chocolate chip with macadamia nuts. It was as many calories as she normally ate in a day, but she needed energy in a hurry.

When Weiss returned to her office, she printed out copies of the budget items she had been studying all morning on-screen. Weber had asked her for a picture and she would give him one: She laid out the sheets on her desk like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and began to look for the straight edges that formed a border. She needed to find patterns in the data that could tell a story of what Morris was doing.

It took Weiss many long hours, but eventually she found symmetry in Morris’s movements, once she stripped away the random noise. He always traveled overseas in alias; she could show that because she had access to his real-name credit card accounts. They were never used when he was away. That meant that the overseas trips were undeclared to the local intelligence services, who knew Morris by his true name. Whatever platforms Morris used overseas weren’t part of the IOC’s regular structure. Weiss could show that because she reviewed all the IOC’s official foreign basing and travel expenditures and signed off on them once a quarter for the inspector general.

There was another recurring feature, so predictable that it was a marker. At some point every six weeks or so, Morris traveled to Denver, sometimes only for a few hours. Weiss knew about the trips because she had access to Morris’s IOC calendar, to coordinate his Washington schedule. She could see the repeated notations: “DEN,” which was the airport code for Denver International Airport. She never saw the bills, which weren’t handled in the IOC’s regular accounting channel. That meant Morris must have a different compartmented spending authority, separate from his regular line. They were off-budget trips, in other words. It was as if Morris were visiting a second information ops center, except that the organization didn’t have an official presence in Denver.

Overlaying one anomaly on top of the other, Weiss could hypothesize a larger shape: Morris was running a separate network of agents and operations overseas, and he was coordinating these activities through a covert base in Denver. She’d heard talk over the last year about joint operations with the NSA, but they were never discussed. Perhaps that’s what the Denver office was about. It was a plausible structure for his operations, but it didn’t explain what he was doing.

To fill in the picture, Weiss needed evidence of how Morris’s off-book operation had been spending money. At first that seemed impossible: How could she assess the budget of a compartmented program to which she didn’t have access? But after a day of spinning her wheels, Weiss had an idea. Even if she wasn’t authorized to enter this black area, she still might be able to observe what was going in and out.

Weiss needed to tell the story in a way that Graham Weber would understand. She spent another few days assembling her jigsaw pieces. They came in the form of budget authorization numbers. Morris had given her passwords to request operational funds from the comptroller in his absence. He would give her the numerical code of the item for payment, and she would make the formal request to release funds. It saved him time, and allowed a continuous flow of funds when he was traveling.

But as Weiss went deeper into Morris’s password-protected accounts, she saw that not all of the fund requests went to the numbered budget accounts that were controlled by the CIA. Some went to unspecified “interagency” accounts whose provenance was unknown to Weiss. She went through the painstaking work of examining every payment request that had passed through any of Morris’s password accounts and checked them against line accounts for IOC’s official activities. When she had finished her culling, she had identified five payment requests outside CIA internal controls.

The rogue payments varied in size, from a few hundred thousand dollars up to a recent authorization for $8.3 million that Weiss had submitted a week or so back. Who was receiving these funds? She didn’t have official access to that information, but Weiss had been a hacker long enough to understand the subtle ways to trick people into revealing secrets, through techniques that were politely known as “social engineering.”

Late in the afternoon, Weiss called the executive director’s office, which handled daily management of the agency and also liaison with other parts of the intelligence community. She asked for Rosamund Burke, a budget officer who normally supervised her IOC accounts. She called in the afternoon, in the expectation that Burke wouldn’t want to hassle with procedures and red tape late in the day.

“Hi, Rosie. It’s Ariel. I need a favor.”

“Just ask,” said Burke, who was part of the old-girls’ mafia that was increasingly powerful in the agency.

“I need something. My boss is traveling again and he wanted me to chase something down.”

“That man is a whirling dervish. Is he married?”

“Pownzor? No way. He can’t stay put.”

“What do you need, girl?”

“He wants me to double-check some items we sent up for payment. He thinks he may have miscoded some of them.”

“Typical. Which ones are they?”

Ariel ran through the five numbered accounts from the off-budget group. She added three more normal payment orders to mask her intent. When Weiss had finished the list, Burke read it back to make sure she had the digits right.

“Are these all yours?” she asked. It was a normal question, not a suspicious query.

Weiss wondered whether to bluff. No, she thought. The best lies are the ones coated in truth.

“They’re a mix,” she answered. “Some are IOC accounts and others are ones Morris is running separately, where he asks me to handle the paperwork. Protect me. I don’t want to get him in trouble. He’s worried we’re paying the wrong people.”

“He’s a little ragged around the edges, isn’t he, your boss? Not the first. What do you need?”

“Payment information: Where the money goes.”

“You want to do this off-line, by phone?”

“That’s what Morris wants. He doesn’t want a paper trail, in case he screwed up.”

“This is way off-line, dearie. Some of those budget accounts are run through the DNI’s office. I get cc’d with a payment notification, but I’m not supposed to circulate them even on the seventh floor.”

“Right, Morris mentioned something about that,” Weiss lied.

“Okay. This call didn’t happen. And if there’s any question, you’re going to need to call Hazel Philby in the DNI comptroller’s office.”

“Sorry for the hassle. I just don’t want my boss to get in trouble for late payments.”

“Okay. Here goes nothing. I don’t have true names for recipients, obviously. Crypts only.”

“I don’t even need the crypts. I just want to confirm the payments.”

Burke punched the most recent payment order number into her computer and then read out the detail.

“FJBULLET is the latest. That was requested last week. He’s German, from that digraph. Eight-point-three million dollars, payable immediately to an account in Liechtenstein. That one says ‘EJ’ in parenthesis, after the crypt.”

“Uh-huh.” Her voice was flat, but the initials got her attention.

“You need the account number?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Next, SMTOUGH, two hundred fifty pounds sterling, payable to an estate agent in Cambridge, Keith Aubrey, for property that’s listed as ‘Grantchester.’ I assume that’s in England, with those place names and that digraph, but you never know. That one says in parenthesis, ‘Li.’ Got that?”

“Yes, that checks out.”

Burke read through three payment orders that were for regular IOC operations. With these, Weiss already knew all the details: One was to pay agents inside a Russian computer security firm, another was to pay contractors in Atlanta who were working on offensive cyber-tools, a third was a onetime recruitment bonus for a systems administrator in Cairo who had been pitched by an IOC officer seconded to the Near East Division.

Weiss listened attentively to each one, even though the information was useless to her purpose. Eventually, Burke hit on several more of Morris’s mystery accounts.

“We’ve got LCPLUM, must be Chinese if it’s ‘LC,’ six million dollars to a numbered account in Macao. That one also has ‘Li’ in parenthesis. Got that?”

“Yes. What else?”

“Two more on the list you gave me. I have BELOVELY, that’s Poland if memory serves, for one-point-five million euros, payable to an account in the Caymans, okay? That one says ‘EJ,” too. And I have MJCRISP, which I think is Israel, though we don’t see that one much, and it’s for two hundred fifty thousand dollars, payable to an account in London, fancy that, and it has ‘Li’ again, in parens. Is that everything you need?”

“Yes, that’s the lot. You’re a superstar, Rosie.”

“It’s true, I am. I have to hustle or I’ll miss my ride. Like I said, you need to check this with Hazel Philby. But don’t let on you know they’re DNI interagency operations.”

“Got it. I’ll check with Morris as soon as he’s back. He’s the only one who’ll know. Maybe you could give me that bank account number in the Caymans.”

“Sure, dearie, but then I seriously have to go. The Caymans routing number is 2108746, repeat that, 2108746. The account number is 57173646, repeating 57173646. Have we got all that?”

“Yes. Sorry to be such a pain. It’s just that things pile up when the boss is away, and Morris is always away.”

“Ciao, ciao.”

Weiss hung up the phone and took a deep breath. She was a better liar than she might appear. She studied the notes she had taken while Burke was talking. She had five data points; that should be enough to deduce something about Morris’s hidden operation that would satisfy the director’s curiosity.

She stared at the cryptonyms and the amounts. It was easy enough to make some guesses. FJBULLET must be a Germany-based agent, and a very expensive one. His information was good enough that Morris was willing to pay top dollar. SMTOUGH sounded like a safe house operation in Britain, though the rent was so large it sounded more like an office than a flat. LCPLUM was for someone in China, probably an agent or a small network, and someone who couldn’t come out to the West and needed the money in Macao. BELOVELY was an asset operating in Poland, or at least getting his mail there, who was hiding his money in the Caribbean. And MJCRISP was apparently an Israeli living in England and wanting access to the money, as if it were an overt salary.

The intriguing items were the letters in parentheses, “EJ” and “Li.” They had to be the work names of Morris’s case officers. Li could be anybody; it seemed like every other Chinese had that surname. But Weiss knew from her earlier digging that one of Weber’s key assets was a former military officer named Edward Junot.

She sent a flash cable to the London station and asked them to check “Li” and the name of the estate agent, Keith Aubrey, and the Grantchester address. They came back in less than an hour with an ID for Dr. Emmanuel Li and an address for his research institute. Weiss cabled back and asked the station to rumble the location. They sent someone to knock on the door that night. The Grantchester office was empty, and the mail was piled up behind the slot.

Weiss decided she had enough to go back to Weber. She could show that Morris was running operations in Europe and Asia that were outside the CIA’s control. If he had authority to recruit and pay these agents, Weiss had never seen anything on the books. The authority must reside in another compartment, controlled by the director of National Intelligence.

Weiss put a new SIM card into her Nokia and texted Weber’s phone:

Late that afternoon, Marie delivered the last tray of that day’s classified paperwork for the director. These were several cables from stations overseas, two intelligence reports requiring approval before dissemination downtown and a draft National Intelligence Estimate on the situation in Syria. She brought the collection of documents into the office and laid it on the director’s desk.

Weber was on the phone. He was talking to Ruth Savin about an inspector general’s report that had to be delivered soon to the congressional intelligence committees. There were permissions for permissions these days, and reviews of reviews.

When Weber finished with Savin, he turned to the tray of classified material. He read the cables quickly, and penciled notes in the margins that he would share later with Sandra Bock. He leafed through the intelligence reports and signed his initials on the cover page. The Syria NIE he reviewed more carefully, especially the executive summary at the beginning. Peter Pingray, the retiring deputy director whose last day was Friday, had already signed off on it. It was a revision of an earlier draft that Loomis Braden had rejected because it didn’t note the agency’s warnings about Al-Qaeda’s presence in northeast Syria. A footnote had been added.

Weber was about to replace the draft NIE in the basket when a plain white envelope tumbled out. It seemed to have been caught in the back pages of the lengthy intelligence assessment.

Weber took the white envelope in his hands. It had no mark of origin or return address. On the front was printed his name, Graham Weber, in black type. Weber opened the envelope and removed a single sheet of paper inside. He had the unsettling feeling that he was repeating an identical moment in time. He opened the folded paper and read the words:

Weber was unsettled. He put the sheet back in the envelope and put it on his desk. The boyish face was pale. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He buzzed Marie and asked her to come in from the anteroom. She thought at first that he was just calling for her to remove the classified paperwork, and began to reach for the tray, but he stopped her.

Weber held up the white envelope with his name typed on it.

“This fell out of the draft NIE. It’s addressed to me. Do you have any idea how it got there?”

Marie examined the envelope. The director didn’t ask her to open it, so she left the flap closed. Then she examined the intelligence estimate, ruffled the pages and shook it to see if anything else was caught inside, and then quickly examined the other documents that had been in the tray. She could see that the director was upset.

“I don’t know where this could have come from, Mr. Director. I sorted the papers before I put them in your tray. If this fell out of the NIE, it must have been there when it arrived at my desk. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

Weber patted his forehead with a tissue. He didn’t care if his secretary saw him sweating. She was one of the few people in this building he had grown to trust.

“Where do the NIEs come from, Marie, before they come to this office? Who originates them?”

“Well, they’re prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which collects views from all the agencies. They come through the deputy, Mr. Pingray, to you. He doesn’t read much these days. Ms. Bock can explain it better than me.”

“No, you’re doing fine, Marie. Where does the National Intelligence Council paperwork come from?”

“It’s part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, sir, over at Liberty Crossing.”

“So they work for Mr. Hoffman, the people who put these things together? And the paperwork would start with Mr. Hoffman’s organization, is that right?”

“Yes, Mr. Director. I can take this envelope and walk it back. We can ask for forensics on it, too. See if there are any prints or DNA. Would that help? I can call the Office of Security now.”

Weber thought a moment.

“Maybe later, Marie. I’ll hold on to it for now. It’s probably nothing: Just a practical joke. There are a lot of cutups around here, right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, taking the tray.

Weber stared out the window. He had wanted to manage a creative, dynamic organization like a business, and what he had encountered instead was a Rubik’s Cube of interlocking conspiracy. Was he looking in the wrong place? The disturbing fact was: He didn’t know. He had to think carefully about each of the strands of thread that had passed through his hands in these few short weeks, and decide whether he could see a pattern.

Early that afternoon, before her planned rendezvous with Graham Weber, Ariel Weiss went shopping at the Whole Foods Market on Leesburg Pike in Tysons Corner. She had run out of skim milk, Greek yogurt, breakfast cereal and fruit, which were the things she most liked to eat. She had been taking her time, browsing in the crowded aisles of the market, when she glimpsed someone she recognized. His name was Dan Aronson. They had dated for nearly a year when she first joined the agency. Back then, he had worked for the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, but eighteen months ago he had moved over to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to supervise compartmented technology projects.

Weiss didn’t want to see him. Ex-boyfriends were dead wires for her. She had initially been drawn to Aronson partly for the same reason she liked the CIA. She enjoyed the cult of secrets, and he was an initiate. But the claustrophobia of the clandestine world had gradually choked their relationship. They knew too much, in too small a space: They couldn’t talk about it, and they couldn’t not talk about it. Eventually Weiss had a secret that she really couldn’t tell Aronson, which was that she was seeing someone else. He found out soon enough. When people have been intimate, they can smell betrayal. Weiss turned her cart away from the yogurt case and Dan Aronson and headed the other way.

Aronson caught up with her in the next aisle. He pretended that it was a random encounter. He proposed that they have an espresso in the Whole Foods coffee bar. Weiss protested that she had to finish her shopping and get home; she had a date later that evening. But Aronson wouldn’t be put off. They rolled their carts past the fruit and the cut flowers, and into the little café.

Aronson tried to make small talk when they sat down, telling her how well she looked and asking after mutual friends, but Weiss cut him off. It was too much of a coincidence, running into him this way after nearly two years, and she had learned not to believe in coincidences.

“What’s this about, Dan? You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“So… I heard people talking about you in the office this afternoon,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

“You mean someone told you to come find me and have a talk.”

“Yes, basically. People told me you were poking around some files that are off-limits, and that you might get in trouble. You can’t do that anymore, Ariel. Even if you have Top Secret Codeword clearance, if you start making ‘anomalous requests’ these days, the alarm bells start ringing.”

So that was it: After talking to Weiss that afternoon, Rosamund Burke had immediately called her friend Hazel Philby in the DNI’s office to report the conversation, and Aronson had been summoned to chase down his ex-flame. So much for loyalty among the old-girls’ network.

“Did you follow me here?” asked Weiss.

“Not exactly. Someone else did. I was nearby, at Liberty Crossing, so they told me to come find you.”

Weiss shook her head. “Wow, that’s creepy.”

“Sorry. This wasn’t the way I wanted us to meet again.”

“Screw that,” said Weiss. “What’s the message you’re supposed to deliver?”

“It’s not a message. It’s an invitation. You should come see Director Hoffman, as soon as possible. It’s a personal request from him.”

“I’ll have to clear it with my boss, Mr. Weber.”

“Don’t do that,” said Aronson. “That’s part of the DNI’s request. He wants to keep this private. He said that, otherwise, he’ll have to tell Security about your unauthorized request to the comptroller. That’s a serious violation.”

Weiss gave him a contemptuous look.

“What a little shit you’ve become. I’m disappointed.”

Aronson ignored her remark. He had the opaque look of an intelligence officer whose every thought was compartmented and censored.

“What should I tell Mr. Hoffman?” he asked.

Weiss thought a moment. It was her own boss, Graham Weber, who had asked her to chase down the information about Morris. But she wasn’t about to pick a fight with Cyril Hoffman. That was career suicide.

“Tell Mr. Hoffman that I’ll call his office tomorrow and request an appointment.”

Weiss walked away from Aronson, leaving him in his seat and her shopping cart in the café. She felt sick, and didn’t want to eat the food she had picked out, or stand in line with the scores of secret-keepers who shopped here at Tysons, or remain in this place one instant longer.

27

WASHINGTON

Ariel Weiss arrived early that night for her ten p.m. meeting with Graham Weber. She stood at the exit of the concrete underpass that ran beneath North Glebe Road in Arlington. She had returned home from Whole Foods several hours before to change clothes and steady her nerves. She put on a black dress at first, and then changed into skinny jeans. She finished a bottle of wine that was left over from the previous weekend’s date with a case officer from the Near East Division she had unwisely invited home.

The wine had relaxed her, just enough. She knew how to lie. She had gotten caught doing something that she wasn’t supposed to do, and now she was being squeezed. She was keeping secrets within secrets, but that was her life. She responded as she always did, by willing herself into the appearance of calm, putting on her makeup and making herself attractive and unreadable. People have different kinds of addictions. For Weiss, it was the pleasure of a double life. She didn’t feel anxious as she waited for Weber to arrive. Ambiguity was a comfort zone.

She looked at her watch. It was nine forty-five. She had the occupational habit of always arriving early for appointments. She nestled among the parked cars, looking for any movement. The art of concealment was one of her few professional weaknesses: She was too attractive. A recruiter had actually warned her that this might be a problem for her as a case officer. If she approached a male “developmental” at a cocktail party, the prospective agent would imagine she was hitting on him. She had found a part of the Clandestine Service where she could be truly invisible — sitting behind the screen, ugly as sin as far as anyone knew, important because of the code she wrote and the operations she managed.

Weber was approaching. She heard the distinctive click of leather heels, and the thin notes of someone whistling “On the Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady. She looked for the director’s security guards, but didn’t see them or the armored Cadillac. He passed by where she was hidden and then stopped; he made the sound that used to be called a “wolf whistle.” She eased herself between the cars and approached him from behind. He hadn’t changed from work. His face was worn.

“Going my way?” she said in a low voice. She was wearing black boots against the night chill and a long black cashmere sweater over her jeans.

“You move like an elephant,” answered Weber. “I heard you coming from halfway across the lot.”

“Bullshit,” she whispered. “Where are we, anyway?”

“I play golf at the club across the road.” He mimicked a golf swing as he led her out of the parking lot into the darkness of the adjoining alley.

“Are you any good?”

“Yes. I’m good at everything except running the CIA. Let’s take a walk before my minders come find me.”

Weber turned left onto Rock Spring. He seemed to relax when they were a few paces into the suburban street: Tall evergreens and stone walls shielded the properties. His mind echoed with the injunction he had read a few hours before: You are looking in the wrong place. But what was the right place? He slowed his pace and turned to Weiss.

“What have you got on Morris? I need to sort this out before the White House decides to de-appoint me.”

“I’ve found his network, but not him. I don’t know where he is. I need more time.”

“What have you got?”

“I can document that Morris is running his own string of agents outside the agency. They’re in Europe, England and China, from what I’ve seen. He seems to have a second operations center that he runs out of Denver, to do things overseas that are too sensitive for the regular IOC.”

“Who pays for it, if it’s not on our books?”

“The director of National Intelligence.”

“Can you prove that?”

“No. But I know it. It’s probably run with NSA money.”

Weber closed his eyes a moment. He saw Cyril Hoffman’s connection with Morris, but he didn’t understand it.

“Why would Hoffman do that? Why take the trouble?”

“Isn’t that obvious, Mr. Director?”

“Not to me.”

“Morris is doing things that wouldn’t be approved by normal channels. So it’s run through the DNI.”

“This isn’t about Morris, is it?” said Weber, half to himself. “We’re ‘looking in the wrong place.’ Maybe Morris is under someone else’s control. Maybe the Pownzor got powned, and we just don’t realize it. What about that?”

Ariel Weiss looked at him skeptically.

“Another country is using him? Is that what you mean?”

“Maybe.” Weber nodded. “Or perhaps there’s someone else who’s the real mole, who’s guiding Morris. What foreign service would know enough to run something like that?”

Weiss took a long moment to scroll through her mental map.

“It’s a short list. The handlers would need technical mastery of cyber. It could be the Russians; Morris probably has Russian contacts in his German network. It could be the Israelis; one of his new recruits was an Israeli. It could be China; he just ordered a payment of ten million dollars to Macao, and he has a guy named Li who’s helping him. And he spends a lot of time in Britain, so put that on the list, too.”

“Israel, Russia, China, Britain. That’s the champions’ league in terms of cyber, right? So, in theory, Morris could be playing with any of them.”

“Affirmative,” she said.

The two had reached the corner of Old Dominion Drive, a busy street with cars passing regularly. Weber led her to a smaller access road about five feet below the highway. He took her hand as he pulled her across the street. She let it drop quickly when they reached the far corner.

“Who’s this man Li?” he asked.

“He’s a Chinese émigré who works in a lab outside Cambridge that Morris set up on his black budget. It’s empty now. I asked London station to check. They’ve scattered. London pulled traces on the Chinese man today. His full name is Dr. Emmanuel Li. He’s listed as the director of the Fudan — East Anglia Research Centre. I also found footprints of a guy named Junot, who’s on Pownzor’s black payroll. He’s the guy we BOLO’d.”

“Jeez, lady, you got a lot!”

Weiss raised a finger, not quite pointing it at Weber, but cautioning him.

“I had to stick my neck out to get all this. I hope it’s not going to get cut off.”

“Do you want to tell me how you got it?”

Weiss pondered the request.

“Probably not,” she said. “At least, not yet.”

“You’re keeping things from me.”

“Yup. It’s for your own protection. And mine.”

“I’m going to need to know soon. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Why haven’t we found Junot?”

“Because Pownzor is smart. He uses cutouts for cutouts. I think Junot is getting paid through Poland, routed to the Caymans. Morris is using him to recruit people in Germany. He just signed off on an eight-million-dollar payoff to an agent in Germany, payable through Liechtenstein. I ran the traces, and I think the German agent is actually Russian.”

“Is Hoffman protecting Junot, too?”

Weiss shrugged.

“How should I know? That’s way above my pay grade.”

“This is weird,” said Weber.

“Everything is weird, but what in particular?”

“Here’s a description of our mystery man: He’s in a very sensitive position at the CIA, and is also in contact with Israelis, Russians, Chinese and Brits. He has old friends at the White House. And he is funded covertly by the director of National Intelligence. Who is this man?”

“James Morris.”

“Correct. And the question is: Who is he really working for?”

“Maybe it’s just for himself,” she said.

“Or maybe he has an ally.”

Weber’s radio crackled from inside his pocket.

“Damn it,” he said. “My security detail is looking for me. They’ll turn on the searchlights thirty seconds from now. You head back the way you came and I’ll walk back to my club.”

Weiss was looking up at Weber. There was a flicker in her eye, of uncertainty. Was she playing a double game now, or a triple game? It was hard to tell the difference.

“Are you going to talk to Cyril Hoffman?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I need to think about it. Let’s keep this to ourselves for now.”

She looked at him calmly. Her eyes were warm and sympathetic.

“Of course, Mr. Director.”

“Does the DNI’s office know we’re asking questions about Morris?”

“Not from me. But they’re going to find out.”

Weber shook his head. The rumble of his armored Escalade was audible a few dozen yards away.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, shaking his head.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

His radio was buzzing again.

“Of course I’m okay. I just need people I can trust. I hope that includes you.”

She nodded. The SUV was approaching. He turned toward the car. She reached for his elbow, to say a last word.

“Be careful, sir. You’re the CIA director. This isn’t a company, it’s the government. You speak for ten thousand people. You can’t make mistakes.”

He looked at his watch as the SUV door clicked open a dozen yards away.

“I have to get home,” he said. “My boys are visiting D.C. But I get it: You’re right that I can’t make mistakes. I won’t.”

On her lips were the words, I hope not. But she watched him in silence as he strode toward the big black car.

Weiss wondered as she walked away whether she was cheating on Weber, just as she had done with Morris. It couldn’t be helped. She had learned over her years of intra-agency dating that the reasons people were drawn into CIA careers also made them unsuitable partners, almost by definition: They were good liars; they knew how to conceal their feelings; they knew how to do bad things and get up the next morning and do them again.

Weiss was one of them. Weber wasn’t. She wanted him to succeed, but she wasn’t ready to bet her career on it.

Weber’s sons were waiting for him at the Watergate when he got home. The security detail had let them in, and the housekeeper had made them some food. They were watching football on Weber’s immense television in the living room. When he opened the door, they jumped up almost like cadets coming to attention.

“Who’s winning?” asked Weber.

“Washington,” said Josh, his younger son, who at sixteen was nearly as tall as his brother David.

“I don’t believe it,” said Weber. “Washington always loses.”

Weber picked up the remote control and clicked off the set.

“Sorry, boys, but we need to talk,” he said.

They both nodded, now serious and silent.

They had come to visit because David had decided he wanted to leave school and join the military. His younger brother had convinced him to visit their father before he did anything stupid. It was fall of David’s senior year. People don’t leave then unless they’re about to get kicked out or it’s a suicide dive.

“So you want to drop out,” said Weber. “Why?”

“I’m wasting my time, Dad. The pot thing last month was an example. I’m afraid I won’t get into a good college.”

Weber waved his hand and clucked his tongue.

“I don’t care about that,” he said.

“I want to join the Marines,” said David.

Weber didn’t answer for a few seconds.

“That’s a good thing to do,” he said eventually. “But not if you’re running away from something. Are you?”

David looked at the floor.

“Yeah, I guess. I just don’t think I’m doing much in school. I’m wasting your money. I want to be doing something real.”

“I get that,” said Weber. “But think about it. If you want to withdraw this semester, I’ll call the headmaster and work it out. I’m sure he’ll say okay. Go get a job. Work construction. Join a ski patrol for the winter. I don’t care. But don’t join the Marines unless you’re sure that’s what you want to do. The military is no joke. It’s stupid to get killed because you couldn’t decide what else to do. If you still want to be a Marine in six months, I’m for it.”

“You are?” David was surprised. He had expected parental anger or disappointment, but not support.

Weber turned to his younger son, who had been watching apprehensively.

“What do you think, Josh?”

“Uh, I guess I agree with you. I’m worried about David in the Marines. I’m worried about you at the CIA. This is all scary. Are you okay, Daddy? You look kind of tired.”

“I’m fine. Exhausted, but fine. This job is like Homeland, for real. I can’t tell you about it. But, well, do you ever feel as if everyone around you is lying?”

“Yeah, all the time,” said David.

“Me, too,” echoed the younger boy, rolling his eyes.

Weber laughed.

“So what do you do about it, boys, when everybody’s lying?”

Josh looked at David, who answered for both of them.

“I tell them to fuck off. Not out loud, but in my head.”

“I’ll try that,” said Weber. He walked to the kitchen and got a beer from the refrigerator.

“What are we going to do this summer, Daddy?” called out Josh.

“That’s a long way off. Don’t you want to be with your mom?”

“Uh, no,” said Josh. David shook his head. “We want to do something cool with you. We never see you anymore.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” said Weber.

“What does that mean?” asked David.

Weber looked at his oldest son and smiled. “Don’t join the Marines yet. Think about it for six months. Promise?”

David nodded. “Promise,” he said.

“Then the sky’s the limit. Tell me where you want to go on vacation and we’re there.”

“Come on, Dad,” said Josh. “You always say that.”

“This time I mean it,” said Weber. He took a swig from his beer and put his arms around his sons.