The Director: A Novel

by Ignatius, David

  O’Keefe welcomed Weber, but just as they were about to sit down the phone rang. It was the president, and O’Keefe scurried off to the Oval Office while Weber waited in the narrow hall next to the stairs that led down to the Situation Room. The national security adviser returned perhaps three minutes later, looking flushed as he bustled back into his chamber. He was a fussy man, and he was obviously in a bad mood.

  “What was that about?” asked Weber, taking a seat across from O’Keefe at a small wooden conference table.

  “The markets,” muttered O’Keefe, rolling his eyes. “The president keeps getting calls from overseas. He is . . . worried. There’s a witching hour this week, all the central bank notes roll over; much whining from our British friends, as usual.” He didn’t elaborate, and Weber didn’t ask.

  O’Keefe was waiting impatiently for the visitor to state his business, so Weber plunged ahead.

  “I’m sorry to bother you.” Weber could see that his host was stressed.

  “That’s my job, to be bothered, so that the president isn’t. What is it?”

  “Cyril Hoffman told me to come see you. He probably explained what it’s about. I have a young man working for me named James Morris. I gather he used to work at the White House, and that people here think highly of him. Hoffman said I shouldn’t do anything without talking to you, so here I am.”

  O’Keefe looked away, toward the window and the front lawn of the White House. This was his palace and his prison. He turned back to Weber.

  “Clever boy, Morris. He’s a bit dark sometimes, moody. Handle with care.”

  “He just offered me his resignation. He made a mistake on a very important case. I’m wondering whether it’s best for the agency if I let him go.”

  O’Keefe’s face was like a white balloon, with a thin moustache above the lip that looked like it might have been drawn with a pencil. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with the end of his tie while he pondered the move that would be most useful to him and the president. Weber was bringing him a problem that he didn’t need, at the end of a busy day.

  “Well, my friend, it didn’t take you long to get in trouble, did it?” His voice sounded grouchy, like someone who hadn’t had enough sleep.

  “I’m sorry, Tim. I promised you a new beginning out there, but it’s a moving target.”

  “And now you want my permission to fire someone important, two weeks into the job.”

  “I want to do the right thing. The agency feels like a company in Chapter Eleven. Someone has to say no.”

  “You prize your independence, from everything I hear. You don’t take orders from anyone. That’s your style, right?”

  “I guess so,” answered Weber. He was trying to remain genial.

  “But the reality, my friend, is that you are not independent. You work for the president; which, as a practical matter, means that you work for me.”

  Weber raised his hand.

  “Sorry, Tim, I didn’t come here to pick a fight. I wanted your counsel. I know I work for the president. I follow his orders, so long as they’re legal and proper. If I decide I can’t follow an order, I quit and you find someone else. Simple.”

  “I must say, you have an annoying habit of threatening to resign, for someone who just got his job. Hoffman tells me you did it a week ago. Please don’t do it again.”

  Weber held silent. This was not a playground argument. He was in the White House. He served at the president’s pleasure. He waited for O’Keefe to continue.

  “What you need to understand,” said the national security adviser, “is that there is a political side to everything. If Morris resigned from the CIA, it would become public, inevitably. And then people would ask why he resigned. And then some people might realize that an agent he had traveled to meet had ended up dead, and the president hadn’t done anything about it. And then all of this would be my problem.”

  “I wouldn’t announce it,” responded Weber. “I think Morris is under cover, so the newspapers couldn’t report his name, legally. He runs the Information Operations Center, which is a part of the agency that we don’t talk about. So maybe it would stay secret. But what difference does that make? If we need to replace him, we should do it.”

  O’Keefe raised a finger.

  “Please! Of course it would become public. What century do you think this is? The Senate and House Intelligence Committees would hear about it before the day was out, and they’d call you and me both, asking why they weren’t consulted. And then they’d want to know what Morris was doing in—where was he?”

  O’Keefe was getting flushed again. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Hamburg,” answered Weber.

  “Yes, the committees would ask what he was doing in Hamburg. Who got killed there, and was he really trying to defect, for god’s sake? And for that matter, what was Morris doing in general? What were these Information Operations of his that the White House had not thought necessary to disclose? Sorry, Senator, sorry, Congresswoman. I guess we should have briefed you about those, now that it’s all blown up. Oops.”

  O’Keefe continued, wagging his finger now, trying to stay cool but not succeeding.

  “And then there would be a staff investigation, and then a closed hearing, and then a newspaper leak, and then a public statement, and then, well, fuck, just shoot the pooch. And it wouldn’t be your problem, Weber, oh, no, you just took the job. Your friends in the press would spin you as the hero, no doubt. No, it would be my problem.”

  Weber tried to interject. He wasn’t forcing Morris out. He was just seeking advice. But O’Keefe was intent on delivering his message.

  “And then it would be the president’s problem. Some jackass would shout out a question during a photo opportunity with the visiting president of, I don’t know, Ecuador, and the president would have to deal with it. It would be another sign of the White House’s inability to address disarray and illegality at the CIA, while you, no doubt, would maneuver your way out of it, leaking to your friends that this was about accountability and good management, while we took the shit. Is that a good idea? you ask me. No, thank you.”

  O’Keefe’s face, the torrent released, returned to that placid tapioca.

  “I’m not trying to maneuver out of anything,” said Weber in a low voice. “That’s not my style.”

  “What a relief,” answered O’Keefe.

  There was silence as the two men glowered at each other.

  “Shit does not flow uphill, Graham.”

  “It does at the CIA,” said Weber.

  “That’s your problem. And one more thing: We’re not entirely defenseless here. If we got wind that you were spinning a version of a Morris firing that made you look good, at our expense, we would have to respond.”

  “And how would you respond?” Weber enunciated each word.

  “We would tell the truth. We would remind people that this happened during your short watch as director, and that you were asking a subordinate to take the fall.”

  “Stop threatening me, Tim. I don’t want to fire Morris. I want advice.”

  “Okay, here’s my advice. This isn’t about Morris. He may be as weird and geeky as they come, but he’s not the issue. Think about appearances. Don’t make trouble for the president. Manage the CIA, but don’t drop a bomb on it.”

  Weber nodded. He got it. He didn’t want to be the shortest-serving CIA director in history.

  “Okay, Morris stays. The fact is, I need him. If what he’s told me is true, our problems are just beginning.”

  “No. Your problems may be. Not my problems. Not the president’s. Are we clear on that?” Even his thin moustache seemed to bristle.

  “We’re clear,” said Weber. “I’ll do the right thing.”

  “I’m sure you will. And if you should by mistake do the wrong thing, well, you have been warned.”

  Weber’s personal life intruded in a way that that was oddly comforting late that afternoon when he returned from t
he White House. He received a call from the headmaster of the prep school that his sons were attending in New Hampshire. That had been his ex-wife’s idea; she thought it would be better if they had “their own place” after she remarried, even if it was an austere institution that celebrated athletics and admission to Ivy League schools above lesser matters. Weber went along; he’d had the boys most of each summer since the divorce, though he suspected that it would be different this year, and every year he remained at the CIA.

  The headmaster apologized for disrupting the “director,” as he called him throughout the conversation. It didn’t seem appropriate to leave a message with Marie, he said. He explained that Weber’s older son, David, was “acting out.” When queried, the headmaster advised that the boy had been reported smoking weed at an off-campus party, and had been drunk to boot. It was his son’s senior year; final college recommendation letters were being prepared. This was serious, in other words.

  Weber said he would be in New Hampshire that evening; travel was a bit uncertain, he said; he didn’t know whether his security men would let him take the last commercial shuttle to Boston, but one way or another he would get there that night.

  David was waiting. He was taller than his dad, nearly six feet two inches, and fit from football. When he saw his father walking toward him, the boy burst into tears.

  They spent the night at a motel in Concord. The boy was eating himself alive with the stress and loneliness of adolescence. The headmaster seemed to have done his best to convince him that there would be national security consequences for his having smoked pot. Weber laughed and told his son stories about his own mistakes when he was growing up. Weber said he couldn’t care less where his son went to college, which made the boy cry again.

  “It’s hard being a kid, isn’t it?” Weber said as they parted the next morning. His son nodded. “Try not to make mistakes, but I’ll love you anyway.” The boy extended his hand to say goodbye, but Weber hugged him and didn’t let go.

  12

  WASHINGTON

  James Morris kept an apartment in Dupont Circle, in a building that had resisted the gentrification that had turned much of the neighborhood into a hipper extension of Georgetown. He had the top floor of a row house, with a little roof garden from which he could see parts of the Washington skyline between the chimneys and façades of neighboring buildings. He liked to visit his roof when he was feeling wired, as a way of calming himself. One of the complications of working for the CIA was that you had to be careful about taking drugs or seeing a psychiatrist if you were feeling out of sorts. But Morris had always managed to keep himself together enough to avoid attracting notice. That was part of how he lived. Every intelligence officer had a secret life; Morris’s was just a little more secret than most.

  Morris had learned to master the polygraph along the way, as well as his emotions. These “lie detector” sessions were meant to frighten people, but they were easy enough to finesse. Morris had smoothly handled his last polygraph six months before: Ramona Kyle had been his best friend since college. He had mentioned her in his first interview with the agency, and several times since. His visits with her didn’t register stress. There were other questions that would be harder now, but his next polygraph probably wouldn’t come until the following year, and by then he expected that he would be gone from the agency.

  When Morris returned from Germany, he remained closeted in his apartment for a day. He felt secure inside. The windows were barred and the door was triple-locked. He had motion detectors and thermal monitors to make sure that he wasn’t disturbed. And he had his computers. He could use these to roam and maneuver, without having to worry that his keystrokes would be monitored and analyzed by a hidden “threat analysis” system of the sort that ran on agency machines. Pownzor wanted his own life. He didn’t want to be powned, especially by his workplace.

  Morris was having trouble sleeping those first nights back, so he would bring a blanket up to the roof along with a mug of Chinese herbal tea, and let his mind race until it began to exhaust itself. He would stare at the stars, or sometimes imagine them through the clouds, until his eyelids became heavy. What kept Morris awake so late was the burden of his mission. Governments wanted to control the free space of the Internet; hackers wanted to keep it free. It was Morris’s destiny to be the man—no, the circuit—in the middle. He knew why people hated the agency as an instrument of repression: They were his people. That was why he could be on both sides, and neither.

  The plans and patterns would flash through his mind like bright lights, laser beams of thought, and he would follow the tracers until his eyes were heavy and the light gun in his head stopped firing. In the early morning, two or three, or sometimes not until dawn, he would pick himself up off the mat atop his roof, shivering in his wrap of blankets, and take himself downstairs to his bed.

  The second day Morris was back in Washington, he contacted Arthur Peabody, the man Ramona Kyle had recommended. The contact numbers had arrived by mail, in an unmarked envelope. Ten minutes’ research revealed that Peabody had retired a decade before as the agency’s chief historian. Morris called and introduced himself as an agency employee who wanted to know more about CIA history, and Peabody immediately said, “Oh, yes,” as if he had been expecting the call. He invited Morris to come visit that afternoon around cocktail time.

  Peabody was a widower who lived alone in a genteel suburb known as Spring Valley, in the far northwest corner of the city. This was a neighborhood that had been built for the gentry back in the 1940s and ’50s when Washington was still a segregated town. The homes were mostly brick, with big lawns, front and back, and servants’ rooms inside to keep a cook or housemaid. From the street, it might have been Richmond or Atlanta, big old houses, screened porches, pools and fountains out back. The houses didn’t glisten like the modern ones out in Potomac or McLean. The brick pathways up to the front door were often cracked with age, and the cracks were filled with old green moss. It was the sort of place where wellborn CIA officers had moved when they were young men, and a few of them, such as Arthur Peabody, were still hanging on.

  Morris climbed the red walkway and rang the doorbell. It was old, like everything about the house. The bell stuck in the “on” position, bringing an annoying, repetitive ding-dong that only ended when Arthur Peabody opened the door. He stuck his long, thin arm around the corner and fiddled with the button until it stopped.

  “This damned thing,” grumbled Peabody. “No wonder nobody comes to visit.”

  Peabody was a relic of the WASP ascendency, a gaunt body, slightly stooped; a long aquiline nose; a high austere forehead, and a face specked with age spots and small scars from surgeries to remove cancerous spots from too much sun on the boat in Maine.

  Morris followed the old man through the doorway. The entry hall was dark and musty. To the right was a forbidding study, lined with dark wood shelves that couldn’t contain all the volumes. They were stacked two deep on the lower shelves, some books horizontal or upside down. A few of the shelves had just given way, so that books were heaped on top of each other. To the left was an old parlor, whose wallpaper was meant to be gay but was yellowing and peeling with age. Peabody led the way back through a dark dining room to an area that seemed the only place in the house that got any light. This was a breakfast room, facing the back lawn, where an old-fashioned sprinkler was cascading a jet of water.

  “Sit down, James,” said Peabody. “Can I get you a beverage?”

  “Tea, please,” said the guest. He looked restrained and studious this afternoon, like a young man visiting his grandfather. The only signs of stress were the deep circles under the eyes, and the inflamed look of the eyes themselves, on red alert.

  Peabody padded off to get the tea. He was wearing a worn tweed jacket purchased long ago at J. Press in New Haven, tan chino slacks, baggy at the knees, and lace-up oxfords, one of which was untied. Tortoiseshell reading glasses were low on his nose,

  Morris examined th
e morning newspaper still on the breakfast table, and a copy of the American Historical Review on a sideboard. The journal was open to an article: “Sudden Nationhood: Microdynamics of Intercommunal Relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina after World War II.” Morris perused it for a few moments and then tossed it aside.

  Peabody returned a minute later bearing a silver platter with a teapot and two cups, along with a plate of Walkers English shortbread cookies. The young man helped himself to a cup of tea and one of the sweet biscuits.

  “I’m just back from Germany,” said Morris. His eyes were fixed on the middle distance, somewhere between the window and the trees beyond. “I’ll be heading back overseas soon.”

  “That’s nice,” said Peabody. “I’m sure I shouldn’t ask what you were doing.”

  “Let’s say I’m opening the curtain on a new play.”

  Peabody lifted his brows, as if to say: Aha! Morris’s comment had reminded him of something apposite.

  “Open the curtain! I must warn you, Mr. Morris, that this conveys a metaphorical illusion of control.”

  Morris propped his glasses on the bridge of his nose and leaned toward the old man.

  “How so, Mr. Peabody? I’m not tracking.”

  “The play ‘unfolds inevitably once the curtain is raised.’ I quote Count Metternich in a passage cited by, forgive me, my former doctoral supervisor, Dr. Henry A., you know the rest. Metternich’s point was that the play is already scripted. Therefore, and I quote, ‘The essence of the problem . . . lies in whether the curtain is to be raised at all.’ That’s the thing: You didn’t have to raise the curtain, James, but you did, and now everything unfolds as scripted.”

  “Scripted by whom?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Peabody. “I’m an Episcopalian.”

  This was nonsense talk, but Morris wanted an answer. His eyes, ringed as they were with fatigue, were alive.