The Director: A Novel

by Ignatius, David

  On the monitor, Hoffman’s face was growing more agitated. He coughed, stood up, walked away from the camera and then returned with a tissue, which he used to wipe his brow.

  “That trip to France was approved by the White House,” interjected Hoffman on the video monitor.

  “No, it wasn’t,” said O’Keefe.

  Savin looked to O’Keefe, who nodded. She continued.

  “The committee received corroborating testimony this morning from a witness who said she spoke personally with DNI Hoffman about his planned trip to meet with the Russian official concerning James Morris. This witness met with me this morning for an hour and reviewed details of the DNI’s activities, including classified documents that she gave him for delivery to the Russian official, at DNI Hoffman’s insistence.”

  “Impossible,” said Hoffman on the monitor. “Ariel Weiss would never do that. She intends to submit evidence charging Graham Weber, not me.”

  “I think you are mistaken,” said Savin. “Dr. Weiss is down the hall, meeting with my lawyers. I can send you a copy of her affidavit as soon as it’s finished.”

  “Perfidious,” said Hoffman quietly.

  “We have confirmed that the documents Dr. Weiss prepared were marked for transmittal to you. Office of Security personnel at the Information Operations Center have reviewed the paperwork that Dr. Weiss provided them before your unauthorized trip to France.”

  “Weiss is a liar. She’s in love with Weber. He tried to seduce her.”

  “That’s out of line, Director Hoffman.”

  “Shut up, Ruth,” said Hoffman. He moved to turn off the camera.

  O’Keefe’s firm voice intervened.

  “Sit down, Cyril. The FBI is outside your office now. Be quiet and listen.”

  O’Keefe turned to Savin. She continued once more.

  “I should caution you, Director Hoffman, that Dr. Weiss has told us the audio and video surveillance material was created under duress. She says you were monitoring her visit to Mr. Weber’s apartment, and that you threatened to fire her if she didn’t perform the actions recorded on tape. That incident is part of the criminal investigation that my attorneys have begun.”

  “Are you all mad?” said Hoffman. “I have files that implicate every one of you.”

  Savin looked at O’Keefe, who nodded once again for her to speak.

  “I warn you, Director Hoffman, that such threats will only raise further questions about your misuse of office. I should also remind you that these VTC exchanges are being recorded.”

  Hoffman looked at them all, dumbfounded.

  “They’ve won,” he said.

  “Who has?” asked O’Keefe.

  “The ‘enemy,’ for lack of a more precise term. The people who want to give away the nation’s secrets and bring down the house. The naïve innocents. Morris, Weber, all of you.”

  “We’re not enemies of the United States, Cyril. You are mistaken.”

  “I am serving my country. Politicians are transitory but the nation’s interests are permanent. We cannot escape the responsibility of leadership, dear friends. If you think that’s possible, then you are the mistaken ones, grievously so. You are summer soldiers.”

  “Cyril, I would suggest that you retain a lawyer,” said O’Keefe.

  Hoffman rose once again. The monitor showed his large form moving toward the camera.

  “Don’t turn off the camera,” said O’Keefe. “That’s an order.”

  “I don’t care,” said Hoffman.

  The monitor crinkled with static and then went dark. But the audio microphone was still working and the speakers carried a voice that spoke, oddly, with a combination of menace and good cheer.

  “I’ll be back,” said Hoffman. “Of that you can be assured.”

  O’Keefe looked at the two others at the table and nodded, really in deference, to another person, unseen.

  “Can we please conclude this meeting, so we can all get back to real work?” said O’Keefe.

  “Don’t bet against the billionaire. Didn’t I say that?” said Beasley, with a croupier’s smile.

  “At the request of the president,” O’Keefe continued, “I am seeking a motion to dissolve this committee, effective immediately. Its mandate for deception and special activities will be reviewed by the National Security Council, but its authority is suspended pending completion of that review. Do I hear a motion?”

  Savin responded.

  “I move that we dissolve the Special Activities Review Committee, and transfer to other, existing committees, such legitimate business as the committee may have.”

  “Do I hear a second?” asked O’Keefe.

  “Second,” said Beasley.

  “All in favor?” asked O’Keefe.

  “Aye,” said Beasley, Savin and O’Keefe together.

  “The motion is adopted, and the committee is hereby dissolved.”

  “Now, where is Mr. Weber?” asked O’Keefe.

  “Outside,” said Savin. “He’s waiting in the deputy director’s office.”

  “Bring him in,” said the national security adviser.

  Weber walked into the room, looking as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “You need a vacation, brother,” said Beasley.

  “Sit down,” said O’Keefe.

  Weber took the empty chair next to the national security adviser.

  “The president has asked me to tell you that he has chosen to ignore DNI Hoffman’s order that you be fired. The White House received a letter this morning from Dr. Ariel Weiss, saying that the evidence against you presented by the director of National Intelligence was fabricated.”

  Weber closed his eyes, just for a moment, and then opened them again. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “It means that you are CIA director.” O’Keefe extended his hand. “You remain the proprietor of the ghost hotel.”

  Graham Weber didn’t want to be in the office the rest of that day. He didn’t want to be anywhere, really. He thought of calling Ariel Weiss at the general counsel’s office, where she was still closeted with the lawyers, to ask her why she had done it, or to apologize, or to thank her. He wasn’t sure which, and he doubted she would answer, at least not until some time had passed. As he thought back over the events at his apartment that night, he realized she had assured him in her oblique way that Hoffman’s extortion gambit would fail because she would disavow it. “It won’t work,” she had said. She might have been living a triple life, but she had a single and admirable purpose.

  James Morris broadcast a video message from Caracas. He was accompanied by Ramona Kyle, the founder of Too Many Secrets, the civil liberties group that had renamed itself “Open World.” Off camera were members of an international emergency assistance team that had been formed to help defend Morris and argue his case in the media. In that group, unseen by the reporters, was a handsome man with a slight East European accent who called himself Roger, and a starchy Yankee liberal, dressed in an old gray flannel suit and a striped rep tie, named Arthur Peabody. Peabody later gave interviews to selected reporters, on deep background, in which he disclosed that he was a former CIA officer and revealed new details about the conspiratorial activities of the agency to maintain what he called “the post-imperial order of 1945.”

  Morris spoke passionately. He was doing the work he had dreamed of, and he was a charismatic spokesman, if not an entirely convincing one. He admitted he was responsible for the attack on the Bank for International Settlements, just as the newspaper stories said. Indeed, he fairly boasted about what he had done, explaining that under cover of the cyber-attack he had transferred money from the accounts of wealthy nations to those of needy ones.

  “I do not apologize for my actions. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t torture anyone. I didn’t listen to people’s telephone calls or steal their secrets. They claim that I broke the laws of the United States but I didn’t break any of the laws of humanity. I left the criminal Central Intelligence Agency as
an act of conscience. I revealed its secrets to give liberty to others. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. I’m proud of what I did.”

  Many newspaper stories, including those in the United States, described James Morris in the lead paragraphs as a “Cyber Robin Hood.” A German website briefly posted an item after the press conference alleging that a Swiss hacker named Rudolf Biel had been killed by the Russian intelligence service in Hamburg to protect the secret of Morris’s identity, but this information quickly disappeared and was nowhere else mentioned.

  A month after he was reinstated as CIA director, Graham Weber went to the White House to see the president. He told the chief executive that, after thinking about it carefully, he wanted to submit his resignation. The CIA had been given a new start, he said, just as the president had wanted when he appointed Weber. But now it needed a professional.

  Weber said that he wanted to suggest a candidate as his successor. He had run the name by Timothy O’Keefe, the national security adviser, who agreed that it was a good idea. He urged the president to nominate Dr. Ariel Weiss, who would be the first woman ever to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be a signal, said Weber, that the agency had really broken the bonds of the past and was moving into the future.

  The president didn’t say yes on the spot, but O’Keefe had already told Weber that he liked the idea. It would be politically popular, and it had the additional benefit of being the right thing to do.

  What was left for Graham Weber was empty space, to be filled, and the satisfaction that he had helped set free the haunted, necessary institution of the Central Intelligence Agency, so that it might become part of the American fabric, rather than a threadbare relic that had been crafted on the loom of another nation.

  Perhaps the country would grow to love, or at least respect, an intelligence service that was its own creation rather than someone else’s. Weber wanted to think about the best way he could help make that happen as a private citizen. But that could wait. Right now he wanted to take a walk along the river and watch the water cascade along the muddy banks, and let his mind go gray and quiet as the winter sky.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book began with the author’s suspicion that in our digital world, the traditional themes of the spy novel—deception, penetration, surveillance—are increasingly about the manipulation of computer code through computer hacking and cyberwar. The author’s problem was that he was a nontechnician. So began a long apprenticeship with people who were willing to share information and ideas.

  First and foremost, I thank Matthew Devost, president and CEO of the consulting firm FusionX. I was introduced to Matt by Henry Crumpton, a celebrated former CIA officer whose consulting firm, the Crumpton Group, works closely with Matt’s company. Matt was my guide and dinner companion at DEF CON XX in Las Vegas in July 2012. He continued to talk with me through the writing of this novel and was kind enough to read and comment on a draft of the book. I am immensely grateful to him. Will Hurd, CIA veteran and now business colleague of Crumpton, was also very helpful.

  Other cyber experts were generous in sharing insights, starting with Sherri Davidoff, the founder of LMG Security, who spoke with me at DEF CON about her MIT adventures and whose book Network Forensics, coauthored with Jonathan Ham, is a must for people who want to understand this subject. I am also grateful to Jason Healey of the Atlantic Council; Christopher Kirchhoff at the Pentagon; Brian Krebs, a former Washington Post colleague and author of the popular blog Krebs on Security; Ed Skoudis, the founder of Counter Hack; Jon Iadonisi, founder of the White Canvas Group; Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer of Mandiant; and Alan Paller of the SANS Institute. Journalistic colleagues were also helpful, especially Robert O’Harrow, author of the Post series “Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace,” and Ellen Nakashima. Authors always say in thanking technical advisers that these experts are in no way responsible for errors, omissions or other lapses. That’s especially true in this case. My tutors will only wish I had been a more sophisticated pupil.

  I had generous help in Germany, a center for hacking and the idea of Internet freedom. The Atlantik-Brücke and its director, Eveline Metzen, brought me as a fellow to Hamburg, where I shared an unforgettable dinner with Max Warburg at his home on the banks of the Elbe. Later, as a visiting Allianz fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, I gave its director Gary Smith the task of finding me young Germans who knew about hacking. He introduced me to Karsten Nohl and Linus Neumann of the Security Research Labs in Berlin, and a roster of other German hackers and cyber-experts who will probably be happier if they go unnamed.

  My fascination with the origins of the CIA and its relationship with British intelligence dates back to 1987, when I published a long article in the Washington Post about Britain’s covert action inside America before and during World War II. That was when I first encountered Thomas Troy, a former CIA historian and the authoritative writer on this subject. I hope he won’t mind that my characters quote directly from several of his books. I quote from my own copy of the secret history of British Security Coordination, which I obtained during my reporting in 1987. For texture on the Bank for International Settlements, I turned to several books, especially Liaquat Ahamed’s extraordinary Lords of Finance, Benn Steil’s The Battle of Bretton Woods and Eleanor Lansing Dulles’s 1932 volume, cited in the novel, upon which I stumbled.

  Four more tips of the hat: Cyril Hoffman’s tale of the fictional French agent “Juliette” and her house in Saint-Brieuc evokes the true tale of the incomparable French spy Jeannie de Clarens, whose story I narrated in the Washington Post in December 1998. My references to magic were conjured with help from John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA, amateur magician and a wise and generous man. I owe special thanks to John Maguire, a former CIA officer who balances deep affection for the agency with bracing criticism. And what modern author could navigate the world today without the electronic tools Wikipedia and Google Earth, which were constant desktop companions and sources of information?

  Though this book draws upon research, I should stress that it is entirely a work of fiction. The people, companies, institutions and events are imaginary. Where a real organization like the Bank for International Settlements or a real person is cited, it is in a fictional context only. Those who know the real background of this subject will appreciate how truly this is a work of fiction, not fact.

  Three readers saved me along the way from pursing mistaken paths: My friend Lincoln Caplan, whose writings on the law have graced The New Yorker, the New York Times and many other publications, gave a careful, bracing read of an intermediate draft. I have dedicated this book to Linc and to Jamie Gorelick, former deputy attorney general and Washington lawyer extraordinaire, who have been among my closest friends for more than forty years. My wife, Eve, blessed with a doctorate in computer science and a career as a defense engineer, superbly critiqued later drafts. And finally and especially, I thank my friend Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, blogger, poet, novelist and literary critic. I have turned to Garrett for help in structuring each of my previous novels and he served in that role again, in a way that helped me see a path for my characters.

  Finally, I thank Starling Lawrence, the best word editor in the business. He read each draft and offered honest, penetrating and often devastatingly funny comments in the margins. My colleagues at Norton have always been helpful, especially Bill Rusin, Jeannie Luciano, Rachel Salzman, Ryan Harrington, and my deft copy editor, Dave Cole. This is the ninth book in which I have thanked my peerless literary agent, Raphael Sagalyn. I am also grateful to supporters in Hollywood, including my longtime friend Bob Bookman and my gifted agents at Creative Artists, Bruce Vinokour and Matthew Snyder.

  This book is ultimately about American intelligence in the age of WikiLeaks, and whether it can adapt to a more open digital world and still do the hard work of espionage. We’ll all be living with that question for years to
come. However this future evolves, the country will need a strong and freethinking press, and so, finally, I thank my friend Don Graham for being a surpassingly great owner of the Washington Post, and Jeff Bezos for taking the torch from Don and keeping it bright.

  ALSO BY DAVID IGNATIUS

  Agents of Innocence

  Siro

  The Bank of Fear

  A Firing Offense

  The Sun King

  Body of Lies

  The Increment

  Bloodmoney

  For Lincoln Caplan and Jamie Gorelick

  Copyright © 2014 by David Ignatius

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Ignatius, David, 1950–

  The Director : a novel / David Ignatius. — First Edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-393-07814-5 (hardcover)

  1. United States. Central Intelligence Agency—Fiction.

  2. Computer hackers—Fiction. 3. Computer crimes—Fiction.

  4. Computer networks—Security measures—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3559.G54D57 2014