The Switch

37

The chicken lobby was in town. He could tell because there were two people in yellow plush chicken suits sitting in the small waiting room of Senator Susan Robbins’s office. They both — a man and a woman in their early twenties — had their red-beaked chicken heads in their laps. They were sheepish-looking chickens. They were waiting to meet with the senator to discuss tax breaks for commercial egg production in the new farm bill. The commercial poultry producers were constantly at war with small chicken farmers. But Will had too much on his mind to think about the plight of the small chicken farmer.

After a quick stop in his office to check his e-mail and landline voice mail, he popped his head into the boss’s office. Twenty second graders were sitting in a circle being charmed by the senator. He gave a quick wave and made to duck away, but she announced to the children, “This is Mr. Abbott, my chief of staff. He’s the real boss in this office.”

They all turned to look. Will said, “Hi,” and widened his eyes, and they all said “hi” back in their adorable squeaky little-kid voices.

He smiled and left as quickly as he could.

He’d gotten a voice message from a staff member on the Senate intelligence committee named Gary Sapolsky. Gary was the boss’s “designee,” which meant he was a professional staff member assigned to work directly with the senator. Sapolsky used to be CIA. For some reason Sapolsky wanted to talk to him.

The offices of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were located on the second floor of the Hart building, one floor down from Senator Robbins’s office. From the outside there wasn’t much to see: a door and, next to it, what looked like a bank teller window, behind which sat a police officer.

This was a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, called a SCIF, partly because no one could remember what the letters stood for. It was a secure facility, a generic-looking office that was physically hardened, encased in two layers of sheet metal, a box within a box. Breaking in would require a blowtorch.

You couldn’t bring in your cell phone or BlackBerry. When you were inside the SCIF you were out of touch with the rest of the world. Some senators enjoyed that. Will did too. He had a security clearance, mostly because the boss had asked him to get one so he could read through the intelligence documents along with her. Which was flattering. Most chiefs of staff didn’t get security clearances.

He left his phone in the tray and pulled open the heavy door.

As soon as he entered, he saw Gary Sapolsky coming toward him as if he had something on his mind.

That wasn’t good. Will felt a spasm of unease.

Gary was around ten years older than Will, a weedy, frail-looking man in his late forties with a face that always looked scrubbed raw and a sparse head of gray hair. He had once been a CIA officer on the fast track to senior management. But then his wife had twins, and he had to take care of his aging parents, and the CIA wanted to send him overseas, and he couldn’t do it. So he took an intelligence-related job on the staff of the Senate intelligence committee.

The work was interesting but hardly glamorous. He’d been given the choice between being a good intelligence officer and being a good father. And he chose being a dad. Which was no doubt something his daughters would know nothing about and therefore not appreciate him for.

By Capitol Hill standards, Will was no kid — he was thirty-seven, when most staffers seemed to be ten years younger. But Gary, in his late forties, was, relatively speaking, a grizzled old man.

“There you are,” Gary said. “I went by looking for you yesterday, a couple of times.”

“Sorry, I was out of town for the day.”

“Okay, um. Do you have a few minutes? Maybe we could grab some coffee off campus?”

“Sure,” Will said, and that paranoia came surging back, prickling the hair on the back of his neck. Off campus. That meant he had something serious to talk about. Something he wouldn’t put in an e-mail or discuss over the phone. “Right now?”

“If you can.”

“Regular place?”

The two walked out of the Hart office building together, talking about politics and legislation and then lapsing, inevitably, into gossip, which was what most people on the Hill talked anyway. Will could barely concentrate, though. What the hell did Gary want to talk about in a private setting?

Dear God, it couldn’t be.

“So what’s on your mind?” Will asked.

“Not until we’re at the place.

They went to the Corner Bakery on North Capitol Street, a few blocks away. When Will had bought his coffee and sweet roll and Gary had gotten a cup of decaf, they settled on a table by the window, far away from everyone else. Who were surely Capitol Hill types also having talks they didn’t want to have in the office.

“All right,” Gary said. “Bad news.”

“Okay.” His stomach tightened.

“There’s some kind of security investigation going on. Everyone’s on high alert.”

“What are you talking about?”

He shrugged and let out a breath slowly. “Have they talked to you? They’re talking to everyone.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Office of Senate Security.”

Will nodded. The OSS was an obscure Senate office that granted security clearances and was in charge of the security of the SSCI offices. They probably did other things too; Will didn’t know.

Gary went on. “Along with the NSA.”

“NSA?”

“Everyone’s being pretty closemouthed, but there was apparently a leak of NSA documents. This reporter from The Boston Globe called a couple of retired NSA types and asked about some program, and the place went into code red.”

“What documents?”

He shrugged again.

“Why are they interviewing intel committee people?”

“Must have to do with stuff we have. So they’re interviewing everyone.”

“Huh.” All of a sudden he felt cold.

If it got out what he’d done, it would harm the boss irreparably. She’d be the senator who stole classified information and put it on a laptop and lost it. She would be accused of mishandling classified information — what if the Russians got it? or the Chinese? — but worse, she’d be ridiculed. Her career would be over. Meanwhile, Will Abbott would be charged with a felony for illegally facilitating the transfer of classified documents, for copying the documents, and he’d go to prison. Maybe for a long time. Not only ruining his own life, but ruining his family too.

For one brief moment Will felt overcome with panic. What if Gary had seen what he’d done? Did Gary know? Was it possible?

But just as quickly he came to his senses. Gary hadn’t been anywhere near the computer that Will had used within the SCIF. He hadn’t seen. If he somehow knew — if there was some computer record of Will’s theft — Gary would have said something.

All he had done was copy documents onto a flash drive and then put them on Susan Robbins’s laptop. It had taken two minutes, and no one had paid any attention to what he was doing.

He knew it was against the rules, but Susan had wanted a copy to peruse on her computer when she flew to LA, and Will would do anything for her. She was more energetic than anyone else he’d ever met. She was also smarter — she just seemed to process everything faster — than anyone else he knew. And she was a serious person. She truly cared about her job. It was the biggest thing in her life, to the detriment of her personal life. She was a genuine patriot, believed in America, and had a sense of mission.

If she wanted to read through documents on the flight to LA, she had the right to do that.

He had broken a rule, yes, though it hadn’t been a big deal at the time.

Now he realized it was only the biggest mistake he had ever made.

He suddenly had a thought. “Gary, you ever hear from Arthur Collins?”

“Artie? Once in a while.”

Arthur Collins was a sort of private investigator who lived and worked in Virginia. He used to be a “technical operations officer” within the CIA’s clandestine service. That meant he used to do black-bag jobs for the CIA. He’d travel around the world undercover, break into people’s offices and homes, and steal computer backups or disks, copy files, plant taps or software.

A few years ago, Arthur had done some investigation for the committee. Will had met him a few times, thought he had something of an attitude, but was nonetheless impressed by him. The word on Arthur was that he was “underutilized” by the committee — he could do more than background checks.

“He still working as a...”

“Private spy, he calls it. An investigator. Yeah, he does, why?”

Will paused. “I can’t really say.”

“Got it.” Gary would assume it was for Susan, something confidential, and he knew not to ask. “I’ll get you his e-mail.”

When Will got back to his office his phone’s message light was blinking. He listened to his voice messages, taking notes on the computer.

One of the messages was from the Office of Senate Security. They wanted to speak with him.