Gray Day

by Eric O'neill

  With that bombshell dropped, Chuck left the building.

  Kate set the book on my desk and patted my shoulder. “You should read this, Eric.”

  “Why?”

  “Looks like you’re joining Opus Dei.”

  CHAPTER 20

  BREAK THE ROUTINE

  February 1, 2001—Thursday

  The digital clock on my desk flashed 12:00 in angry red characters. This was odd because I couldn’t remember putting it there. Words on my computer screen melted and ran before my eyes, elusive little bastards that required supreme concentration to wrangle back into place. Someone had forgotten to turn the air on in 9930. My shirt stuck to my back and when I wiped my hand across my forehead, it came away wet.

  “I told you not to screw this up, kiddo.” Kate sat across the office near the Internet computer, her face buried in my copy of The Way. “Now you’re in for it.”

  Hanssen’s office door slammed open. The boss stormed through, his face twisted into the snarl he’d worn in the parking garage when I challenged him. “Were you in my office?”

  My phone rang. Juliana on the caller ID.

  “I have to get this,” I said. “It’s important.”

  Hanssen drew a handgun from the holster on his hip. I recognized the Smith & Wesson Model 60 snub-nosed revolver that he sometimes wore at his ankle. The .357 Magnum rounds could punch through a car door and keep traveling.

  “It’s too late for that,” Hanssen said.

  The gunshot crashed through the small room.

  I sat up in bed, sheets tangled around my legs. A frantic scan showed that I was in my bedroom, and I was the only one there. The morning chill struck my sweat-soaked nightshirt like a whip. I ignored the cold and hunted for my ringing phone.

  “Hello?”

  Juliana’s voice answered. “It’s me. I left early.”

  “Okay.” My mind wouldn’t turn on. The violent dream still demanded my attention. My psychology degree reminded me that dreams simulate threats in order to enhance the cognitive mechanisms we need to avoid threats in reality. If so, my reality needed an exorcism.

  “I’m on my way to class. I’m mad at you, but I didn’t want you to be late for work. You always forget to set an alarm.”

  I turned the rusty crank that started my brain and decrypted her words. Mad. Late. Alarm. “Oh, crap!”

  “Seriously, Eric!” Juliana said in the sort of tone reserved for uncooperative children. “Are you just waking up?”

  The meticulous office search had dragged on. By the time I got home, the witching hour had come and gone. I drafted a novella to Kate about Hanssen’s field trip to church and then agonized my way through the elements of mens rea and actus reus in criminal law. By the time I had joined Juliana in our bed, the winter sky had lightened.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “You’d better run,” she replied.

  * * *

  The dream lingered like the smell of old moth balls on a winter coat pulled from storage. It hounded me on my frantic Metro ride and raised concerned glances from security when I burst through the turnstyle at headquarters. Hanssen had a lot of rules. First among them was punctuality.

  I paused at the door to the SCIF, one hand on the latch, my forehead pressed against the cool metal. I gathered the tattered remains of my strength into a tight ball of resolve and dragged the mask back onto my face.

  “So sorry, boss!” I injected cheer into my voice and stepped across the threshold into 9930. I dropped my coat and bag, woke up my computer, and scanned my FBI NET messages. One look at the memo waiting for me crushed any thought I had of surviving the day. I wanted to curse out loud. Instead, my leaden fingers hit Print.

  “Our car wouldn’t start.” I glanced up from my desktop. “I had to help Juliana jump the…”

  Hanssen’s face stole away my false cheer. I knew without a doubt that my dream portended more than just my fear of failure. Any moment now the gun would appear.

  His voice cracked the silence between us. “Follow me.”

  I paused to retrieve the single sheet of paper from the printer beside my desk and followed Hanssen into his office. The memo was still warm. It hung from my fingers like a living thing.

  Hanssen stopped me and pointed to the TV stand next to the door. I looked from the television, still displaying a CCTV view of Pennsylvania Avenue, to the wooden stand, to Hanssen, perplexed.

  “See anything?”

  “No, boss.”

  He dragged me down to the floor until I was kneeling beside him. A hand that could have palmed a basketball pressed the back of my head until our faces met across from one leg of the stand. “See anything now?”

  “I see your blue carpet,” I said.

  “Moron,” Hanssen spat. “Idiot.”

  We throw those words around, but “moron,” “imbecile,” and “idiot” used to have clinical meanings within psychology. A moron is a person with an IQ between 51 and 70—at least 30 points below average. An imbecile scores between 26 and 50, and an idiot lower than that. Hanssen always started with “moron” and bottomed out by calling me an idiot. He knew his taxonomy of insults.

  I summoned the remaining scraps of my youthful bravado, shrugged off Hanssen’s hand, and scowled. He traced a minuscule impression in the carpet next to the leg, maybe a few centimeters square. “This leg has been moved.”

  We clambered to our feet, livid and eyeing each other like two boxers entering the ring.

  “So?”

  “Were you in here?”

  “I might have bumped it,” I said.

  It gave me small comfort to know that, for once, I hadn’t made the mistake that boiled Hanssen’s blood. But I’d have to take the fall for the search team. I found myself missing my SSG days, when I knew I could always disappear. There was no disappearing in 9930.

  “I’ll be more careful,” I said, eyes downcast, penitent.

  “I see everything,” Hanssen said, his breath hot on the top of my head. “Do you understand?”

  I looked at the sheet of paper in my hands and knew the office climate would shortly progress from miserable to thermonuclear. Less than a month in, and Hanssen was already following me into my dreams. The investigation was all I thought about; Juliana had become the ghost. The lies weighed down my body and my mind, exhausting both. At home, that emotional baggage found its release—which is why undercover work has some of the highest divorce rates in the FBI, and in law enforcement as a whole. It locks you away from your loved ones. It turns your whole world gray.

  Hanssen grabbed the paper out of my hands, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it toward his wastebasket. It bounced off the metal rim and landed on the floor. The Information Assurance director had canceled Hanssen’s meeting with the CIA due to a scheduling conflict—or at least that’s what I’d told Hanssen.

  The truth is, I’d lied. There was no scheduling conflict. The FBI director had had a come-to-Jesus moment about sending the most damaging spy in US history over to the CIA to discuss cybersecurity. Our sister agency would hardly take kindly to our allowing the newest target of the investigation into its nerve center. And, of course, the FBI and the CIA already weren’t on the best terms regarding the pursuit of Gray Suit, given how many years our agents had spent tracking the wrong man in the wrong agency.

  Much of the reason Hanssen’s spy career lasted as long as it did is that, with the occasional exception, he was meticulous and cautious. Hanssen had access to an abundance of information about the Russians, but he also understood that sharing too much of that information could at some point implicate him. He realized that once the leaks clearly pointed back to the FBI, the FBI’s hunters would begin to look inward. And every FBI employee, from the greenest academy graduate to the savviest veteran, knows that once the FBI starts looking in earnest, the arrest is on
ly a matter of time.

  To keep himself out of the FBI’s crosshairs, Hanssen often shared intelligence about operations that were controlled by the CIA, so that the leaks would point to a mole within that agency. In other words, Hanssen orchestrated a cover story within a spy story. He fed his KGB handlers information about CIA technical penetrations of Soviet and Russian operations, the identities of KGB spies who were secretly working for the CIA, and, most important, specific details about the FBI’s investigation of State Department official Felix Bloch. So when the leaks came to light, the FBI turned its attention to the agency known to harbor rotten apples—most recently Aldrich Ames and James Nicholson—and settled on a new target: the man who had led the CIA’s investigation of Felix Bloch, CIA officer Brian Kelley.

  In the spring of 1999, Hanssen learned that an FBI/CIA joint task force pursued a target code-named “Gray Deceiver.” Within a day of discovering the case, Hanssen peeled away the FBI’s security and discovered the target’s true name. Hanssen had never heard of Kelley, but the situation suited him. We say that there are no coincidences in espionage; everything is suspect. Well, Brian Kelley lived right around the corner from Hanssen. When the FBI began investigating Kelley, they zeroed in on his jogging route, which wound through nearby streets and parks, including a small park where Hanssen would leave secrets for Russian intelligence officers under a wooden bridge.

  Kelley’s bad luck provided cover for Hanssen and destroyed Kelley’s life. Kelley passed a polygraph test, turned his back on an FBI false-flag operation—an FBI agent posing as a Russian intelligence officer—and denied every accusation that he was a Russian spy. But the CIA still suspended him for over a year while he fought to clear his name. Meanwhile, Hanssen laughed from his house around the corner.

  The FBI’s focus on Kelley resurrected Ramon Garcia. Hanssen missed the excitement and satisfaction that only espionage could inject into his otherwise placid family life. Ramon hadn’t loaded a moonlit drop or pressed a thumbtack signal in a telephone pole for six years, but he hadn’t let his spy skills wither, and he’d been collecting and storing critical investigation documents mined from ACS since he went dormant in 1991.

  Hanssen set a goal to collect $100,000 from the SVR, enough to stay under the radar and stabilize his flagging finances until he could retire in April 2001 with a full pension. Hanssen could then mothball Ramon after a final, legendary exchange of secrets. A swanky consulting job or maybe even an executive position at an information security company awaited him. And Brian Kelley would take the blame.

  * * *

  Hanssen stood up from his desk. Without glancing down, he slipped a hand into his blue shoulder bag and slipped out his Palm IIIx. He jabbed a finger toward me with one hand and jammed the Palm into his back pocket with the other.

  “Our whole afternoon is wasted.” Hanssen threw up his hands.

  Shit happens. Best to sit quietly and wait out the storm.

  Hanssen paused his tirade and glanced around the office, hands on hips. “I’m leaving for the day.”

  This raised my eyebrows. “Really? Where are you going?”

  “Last I checked, you report to me.” Hanssen grabbed his coat. “Out of my office.”

  The SCIF door closed behind Hanssen. I listened for the beep that meant it had locked and slumped down into my chair. Half a memo on procedures to enhance the ACS’s interface lay forgotten on my screen. I was more interested in how Hanssen had acted when I’d just pulled a very plush rug out from under him. Last-minute changes in schedule set my boss into the same rage as a challenge to his authority. He didn’t appreciate being disappointed or caught off guard.

  My pager chirped. Kate. I glanced around the empty office; the memo could wait.

  I met her in her car, parked a few blocks away from headquarters. “We need something,” Kate said as she scanned my observation notes from the day before. The analysts believed that Hanssen’s next drop was imminent. We couldn’t risk pushing him over the line from suspicion to paranoia, but we needed the evidence that would connect him to Ramon and “B.”

  “Palm Pilot,” I said. “He keeps it in his left back pocket. Always that pocket. When he sits down he puts it in his briefcase beside his desk. When he stands back up, the first thing he does is reach for it. It’s a reflex…a—”

  “Routine,” Kate said.

  We all have routines. Some of us hang our car keys on a hook when we come inside—always the same hook, so the keys are always available when you need to leave. Wallets go on the same counter or dresser. Routines like these protect us from embarrassment, even danger. Criminals have routines too. Ghosts are trained to watch for them, especially when tracking Russian targets. Does he slow down at that telephone pole each time he drives past? Does she use the same mailbox every third Thursday of the month? If so, maybe that’s a clue.

  Hanssen had a subtle routine to protect his Palm IIIx personal digital assistant. He kept it in his left back pocket. Always. When he sat down, he reached back and drew the Palm out of his pocket and slid it into his blue briefcase. The same practiced motion happened in reverse when he stood. I knew the PDA was encrypted. I wanted to know the secrets locked within.

  I explained to Kate that Hanssen took it everywhere he went—even to the bathroom. It never left his side. Kate folded my notes and put them away.

  “We need to get him away from it,” she said. “We need to break the routine.”

  CHAPTER 21

  OUT ON A LIMB

  February 5, 2001—Monday

  Sometimes shadows are braver than people. Mine stretched across the rectangle of light that carved a block across the floor into Hanssen’s empty office. The running joke I kept with myself likened the boss to a vampire. His tall and lanky frame, shrewd eyes, long fingers that might have coaxed music from a piano if he hadn’t turned to a computer keyboard instead, the dim, single-bulb lamp that barely illuminated his office—all gave credence to the nickname Dr. Death. But maybe he had other reasons for the way he acted.

  The FBI had ostracized and ignored Hanssen. Fellow agents described him somewhere between genius and creep, and few sought his company for lunch or hallway chatter. Hanssen had wanted to chase spies through dark city streets and make contacts under the bright lights of casino gambling tables. The FBI had dashed his James Bond dreams by closeting him with analysts and techies. The irony is, his skill with computer systems and information security was exactly what the bureau needed to stop the tsunami of cyberattacks on the horizon.

  Today, the best cyber companies and major corporations have hired all the hackers of yore. These men and women, in jeans and hoodies, with beards and with hair dyed pink, sit at executive tables beside company officers in bespoke suits. Their voices are heard and celebrated, where stodgy executives once scoffed before dismissing them. The FBI’s inflexible culture and infamous resistance to change missed the bandwagon. FBI agents who couldn’t lead or manage fell to the ranks of the forgotten, no matter what other skills they possessed. Those who could climb the thorny agency ladder stepped on Hanssen’s face on the way up.

  None of this excuses Hanssen’s espionage. He was still a green agent the time he first sold out to the GRU; he had barely scratched the surface of FBI’s hierarchy. The bureau may have played a part in driving Hanssen toward espionage, but Hanssen’s decision to betray his country rests squarely on his shoulders. Hanssen could have helped save the intelligence community. Instead, he helped destroy it.

  Now I had to destroy him.

  Juliana and I had negotiated a truce that I knew wouldn’t last. We’d joined my parents for dinner the night before. The ritual had become a biweekly event. My parents would order from our favorite local restaurant, Hong Kong, and open a bottle of wine. If all the wine disappeared over the course of the evening, Juliana and I would spend the night and drive back into the city in the morning.

  We usua
lly looked forward to our visits to suburbia. My youngest brother, Danny, still in high school, occupied my old room. During weekend breaks, my brother Sean might sneak home from the Naval Academy for a home-cooked meal. On the rarest of occasions, David, the oldest of my three younger brothers, would cross the country from Hollywood. A hallmark of the O’Neill clan is our fondness to come together. Juliana fit right in. Usually.

  Earlier that evening we’d almost had to turn the car around just a few blocks from my parents’ house. I had just slapped on my blinker and merged onto the off ramp toward Connecticut Avenue. The white spires of the Mormon Temple thrust above the dark tree line like spears of light reaching toward the stars. On every other drive Juliana oohed and aahed at the building Washingtonians fondly called the Castle. Not this time. Our heated argument collapsed the world to our Jeep’s front seat.

  “Why do you have to study Russian anyway?” I asked. The Capital Beltway disappeared behind us. “Russia is our enemy. We should let the language rot.”

  Juliana’s sigh sounded more like a growl. “I like the language.” She slammed her shoulders back into her seat and crossed her arms. “I grew up speaking Russian, for God’s sake.”

  “You grew up under Russia’s thumb, more like.” I jerked the car into the number-one lane and ignored an angry car horn. “You’re brainwashed.”

  “The only one who is brainwashed is you.” Juliana’s voice plunged to a calm that should have rung warning bells throughout my head. “You’ve changed since I came here to live. Since you transferred, or TDY’d or whatever it’s called in FBI-speak.” She jammed a thumb at her chest. “I’m the same person.”

  Anger distorts the right and the true. Juliana is a gifted musician and student, with an incredible ear for languages. I’d stolen her away from her quiet little village and dumped her in an Eastern Market dungeon. Now I was attacking her for one of the traits I admired most.