The Director: A Novel (12 page)

Hoffman’s secretary and chief of staff were hovering at the door.

“A well-timed visit,” said Hoffman. “Everyone, leave now, please, chop-chop.” He shooed away his two aides, who retreated backward as if leaving a royal personage. Hoffman winked at his visitor.

“The exercise of power is operatic, don’t you think? There are so many supernumeraries and props. It’s just so . . . overdone. Would you like an espresso? I make it myself. I have my own machine.”

Hoffman pointed to a large appliance along the wall, the sort of espresso machine you might find in a café in Paris. It had large handles and spouts and stainless steel fixtures.

“The security people insisted on taking it apart before they let me bring it up to the office. They thought it might be dangerous. How could that be? You put in beans and water, and out comes coffee. Quite good coffee, too, I would say. Would you like a cup?”

“No, thanks,” said Weber. “Maybe some water.”

“Water, of course. Important to hydrate. Still or sparkling?” He spoke in a patter, as if he were talking to himself.

“Still,” said Weber, taking a seat on one of the maroon leather couches.

“Yes, still, certainly. What was I thinking?”

Hoffman poured from a bottle of Italian mineral water; on the label were testimonials from various Roman medical specialists. He handed the glass to Weber with a proprietary nod of the head.

“So what brings you barreling over here, barely two weeks into the job, to see your Uncle Cyril? It can’t be that you’ve encountered a problem. You are the future of intelligence. The president told me so himself, just a few days ago.”

There was a note of sarcasm in Hoffman’s voice. He was a generous man, but he liked dealing with people on his own terms, and Weber didn’t owe him anything.

“I need advice,” said Weber.

Hoffman leaned forward, so that his belly, neatly wrapped in the brown pin-striped vest, seemed to be resting on the edge of the coffee table.

“I am all ears,” he said.

“Hamburg went south. You probably heard.”

“Indeed. I’m sorry for that young Swiss fellow. Should have taken our advice and stayed in a safe house.”

“I’m wondering whether to fire James Morris. He offered me his resignation today. I told him I wanted to check with a few people.”

Hoffman struck his palm against his forehead.

“Good god, man. This isn’t Japan. People don’t have to fall on their swords when something goes wrong. It wasn’t Morris’s fault, was it?”

“Not really. As you said, the walk-in should have stayed where we could protect him. But it happened on Morris’s watch. He’s supposed to know these hacker groups, supposed to be inside them, he claims. So it’s partly on him. I’ve been saying since I got here that the agency needs more accountability. Well, here’s my chance to show it.”

“A word to the wise—three words, actually: Don’t do it.”

“I thought you’d say that. But isn’t that the problem with the government? Nobody ever gets fired when something goes wrong. The agency has no gag reflex. It will swallow anything. I want to change that.”

“Starting with Morris?”

“Maybe.”

Hoffman looked over the top of his glasses, eyebrows bristling.

“Don’t do it,” he repeated. “Young Mr. Morris may be an odd duck. But he is also well connected.”

“How so?”

“The White House likes him. Timothy O’Keefe, the national security adviser, most especially. He thinks Morris is the new generation. He gives a great briefing, as you might expect. I’m told that when he holds forth in the Situation Room about cyber matters, you could hear a pin drop.”

“Morris briefs the president?”

“Sometimes. He’s quite the eager beaver: apple polisher, crowd-pleaser, all that.”

“He seems shy.”

“He’s a mysterious chap, this Morris. A Protean character. They tell me he’s a reader, and a brooder, always roaming in the archives looking for this and that. He has some peculiar notions. A tad conspiratorial, or so they say.”

“So
who
says?”

“My spies. They’re everywhere.”

Hoffman chuckled at this notion that he maintained his own private network of information, though Weber was sure it was true.

“One more suggestion,” continued Hoffman. “Go see O’Keefe before you do anything. Make sure he’s on board. Morris has been running some sensitive operations. They’re not all on Ruth Savin’s official books. Ask Beasley about them. You will be, what should I say? Amused. He’s quite a creative fellow, young Morris, no matter how many threads he occasionally drops.”

Weber was pleased, inwardly, to hear this testimonial to Morris’s ingenuity and political clout. It affirmed his initial instinct in giving him responsibility, even if things hadn’t worked out as planned.

“I’ll see O’Keefe,” said Weber. “And I have one more request. What should I do to protect our communications systems from whatever is coming at us? I don’t want to panic people at the agency, but we need an independent scrub. Since you oversee the NSA, I thought maybe they could help us.”

“Do you want the correct answer or the real answer?”

“The real answer, obviously.”

“The correct answer is yes, of course, we can call in the NSA and sweep up everything in sight. Panic the children and small animals. The real answer is no. Be careful. Do this discreetly until you know what it is.”

Weber nodded. This was all new to him, but he understood immediately that Hoffman was right.

“How should I proceed?”

“Do what I advised last week. Sweep this and that. Concentrate on the known leaks from Germany and Switzerland. Don’t sit on the bayonet. I will lend you a technical team from my staff, on condition that they report back to me, each step of the way, what they’re finding. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like good advice, actually. I appreciate the help.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” said Hoffman merrily. “Want a last bit of counsel?”

“Of course. I need all I can get.”

“The thing that you have to remember about this job is that you are not just a manager, but also a magician. And as any professional magician will tell you, every magic trick has three parts: what people see; what they remember; and what they tell others about what they saw. You want the audience to swear the body disappeared, or the rabbit jumped out of the hat. But they will say so only because, at the critical moment, you made them look somewhere else.”

“I’ll think about that, Cyril. I’ll remember it, even better. But to me, you sound like a good manager.”

“Ah, excellent,” said Hoffman, smiling. “That means you did not see the trick.”

Weber bade the DNI goodbye, grateful for his advice, but not at all sure whether he was dealing with an ally or an adversary. When Weber left the office, Hoffman turned up the cello music again.

11

WASHINGTON

Graham Weber had visited
the White House over the years as a business leader. He had even been to a state dinner once for the president of China, when the entire house had been decorated in a phantasm of American hospitality, but he had never felt comfortable in the place. This time, he felt he had no choice. He was an employee. He had Marie call the office of Timothy O’Keefe to make an appointment as Cyril Hoffman had advised. The national security adviser suggested that he stop by the next afternoon, around six p.m., when the other business of the day was done. O’Keefe seemed to be expecting Weber’s call, but that wasn’t a surprise. Hoffman would have given him a preview.

O’Keefe was waiting in the national security adviser’s office at the north end of the West Wing. The walls smelled of fresh paint, a creamy off-white; O’Keefe had the painters in every few months, just after the security team. He had the proper décor for a senior national security official: a chunk of the Berlin Wall; a page from Osama bin Laden’s personal diary; a Frederic Remington sculpture of a cowboy atop a bucking horse; and finally, several nautical paintings of American warships under sail.

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.