The God's Eye View

CHAPTER 26

After he was gone, she fell into bed and surprised herself by passing out almost instantly. But she woke in a panic a short while later, the comfort and distraction of Marvin’s visit gone, the reality of what she was facing fully upon her again.

But she’d told the director she’d seen nothing, hadn’t she? And she’d tested him, but she hadn’t pressed. She’d been subtle. She’d been clever. She’d figured out he wanted her to see nothing, and she’d told him what he wanted to hear.

Yeah? How sure are you that he didn’t know you were testing him? That he doesn’t suspect the guy with the cigarette you showed him was a distraction? That your question about bringing in more manpower for a manual review of the footage was a feint? Given what he’s already done, given the stakes he’s playing for, how much can you count on his assuming you didn’t see anything, you don’t suspect, you don’t fucking know?

She focused on breathing again, trying to slow her staccato heartbeat.

Stop it. This is crazy. The director isn’t going to kill you. There are no conspiracies. The Parallax View was a movie. This is real life.

She imagined Stiles, and Perkins, and Hamilton, all telling themselves the same thing. Downplaying the threat, embracing denial, believing the world was what they wanted it to be, refusing to see it for what it really was.

And then dying. Because they didn’t know what the director knew. Couldn’t see what he saw. And so couldn’t anticipate the fate he decided for them.

No. She wasn’t going to let that happen to her. She wasn’t going to let it happen to Dash. How was sticking her head in the sand supposed to protect him?

But what could she do? Go to the inspector general? Congress? The media?

The first two, she knew, would be worse than useless. Everyone understood what happened to whistleblowers who tried to work through the system. All you had to do was ask Bill Binney, or Thomas Drake, or Chelsea Manning, or Diane Roark, or Coleen Rowley, or Jeffrey Sterling, or Thomas Tamm, or Russell Tice, or Kirk Wiebe. And look what they’d done to John Kiriakou — for exposing torture, for God’s sake. Not to mention Snowden, whose concerns had been suppressed until he took them public. And Jesselyn Radack, the whistleblower lawyer who represented probably half of them.

Which left the media, maybe, but the thought of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act terrified her. How could she afford to fight something like that? Even if she didn’t wind up in prison for life, they’d ruin her. And who would take care of Dash while she was being held incommunicado as some kind of enemy combatant? How would he cope with something like that?

And besides, even if she were prepared to go to the media, what did she have? She could document a meeting between Hamilton and Perkins, but so what? The rest could be dismissed as coincidence. She could reveal the existence of the camera networks and the facial recognition and biometrics system, but if none of the programs Snowden had leaked had been egregious enough to protect him, hers would be no better. And if she showed her footage of the suspicious man she had discovered in connection with that morning’s attack, it would probably bolster support for her camera initiative, not undercut it. Beyond which, she would be crucified for revealing sources and methods related to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the terrorism in question being extremely fresh in people’s minds. They’d bay for her blood.

God. She had nothing. And no one to take it to, either. The bombing was an inside job, the attack in response was a lie, and she was the only one who knew it. And if the director knew she knew…

She thought of the letter Hamilton had mailed from Istanbul. She’d been so freaked out at her own temerity in not telling the director about it that she’d half decided to just pretend it didn’t exist, that she’d never seen the footage of Hamilton mailing it.

But she had seen it. And presumably it was sitting in that mail drop in Rockville right now. What was in it? Something that would give her some answers, some ammunition, some leverage?

Whatever was in that envelope, it scared the director so much he had killed to keep it secret. Which meant it was something explosive. Really explosive. Something connected with Hamilton. Whatever it was, if it were revealed, the director would no longer have any reason to come after her. His secret would be out.

But what if he knows it was you? You might just go from one motive — ensuring silence — to another — revenge.

Well, that was a chance worth taking. She had once seen a cartoon — a hawk swooping down on a mouse. The mouse was completely outmatched, obviously helpless, doomed. So it did the only thing it could: it extended its arm and gave the hawk the finger. A final expression of dignity and defiance.

Maybe she was that mouse. Up against something she could never hope to defeat. But she wouldn’t just lay down. She would fight.

And besides, if she handled things right, how would the director, how would anyone, know it had been her? She couldn’t use email, she knew — NSA monitored the accounts of every journalist it considered a threat, which meant every journalist worth contacting. But Hamilton’s organization, the Intercept, used SecureDrop, an encrypted system NSA hadn’t yet found a way to crack. She could upload details directly using Tails and Tor, an operating system and a browser NSA had so far found similarly impenetrable. No emails, no phone calls, no secret meetings, nothing. Whatever was in that envelope, Hamilton had sent it. Yes, presumably whatever Hamilton had learned from Perkins in their face-to-face meetings was intended to inform his reporting, and that benefit was now gone. But the information alone could still protect her. She would just be… forwarding it. Anonymously.

But what if, whatever it was, Hamilton had encrypted it?

One thing at a time, supersleuth.

Right. Okay. She was going to get that letter. Decrypt whatever Hamilton had sent, somehow, if she needed to. And get it to the Intercept anonymously after that.

Or at least try. She couldn’t control those other things. But she wasn’t going to live in denial. Or die in it.

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was two in the morning, but she was way too wired to sleep. And besides, she had a lot of planning to do. She was about to become an insider threat, up against the world’s best-funded and most paranoid intelligence organization. An organization that had destroyed the life of every whistleblower who had ever challenged it.

Except for Snowden.

Yes, Snowden. She’d long suspected plenty of people inside the organization admired what he’d done, and the courage he’d shown in doing it, though of course no one would ever acknowledge something like that out loud. And what was that expression of his, the one that made the brass crazy? Courage is contagious. She’d always thought it was a bit silly, but sitting alone in her bed in the wee hours of the morning, facing what was ahead of her, she realized it was true.

And thank God, too. Because at that moment, her own courage didn’t feel like nearly enough.