The Director: A Novel (22 page)

“It’s not enough to hate them,” she said. “You have to stop them.”

“I cannot. You cannot. They are destroying cyberspace, but it’s worse than that. People talk as if ‘cyber’ were a separate electronic space, but information is the air we breathe. How can they buy and sell the air, these bastards? They are destroying life and freedom. I cannot bear it.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. There were no tears, only the sniffling and a nervous cough.

“Who are the Friends of Cerberus?”

“They are liars. Cerberus has no friends.”

“Okay, then, what is Cerberus?”

“Cerberus is the dog that guards the gates of hell. Everyone knows that.”

“No, really, do you know anything about it? Please.”

He smiled, almost sweetly.

“Well, I helped to build it, I should know. Cerberus is the Cerberus Computing Club, here in Berlin, in every German city and town, all over Europe, even in America. It is the home of people who love the Internet, and hate boundaries, and love freedom—and will take action, yes, truly, take action to prevent people from harming our blessed chaos. The Internet took power away from governments and companies, you see, and now these bosses want it back.”

“Can I meet Cerberus?”

He laughed, merrily now.

“No. And yes. Who do you think you are talking to?”

“To Cerberus?”

“A part of it. But Cerberus is everywhere. I told you before. How can you meet the air? You breathe it. It’s free.”

“I need to ask again. It’s important. Who are the Friends of Cerberus?”

“They are false friends. It can only be a trick. I have heard the name, but never from someone I trusted. Most of what you hear about Cerberus from the outside is false. Your information is probably a lie, too, I think. But honestly, I don’t know.”

The sky over Berlin was darkening as the weather changed. A shadow fell across the conference room in the gleaming building on Pariser Platz. The change of light seemed to alter Grulig’s mood. He looked at his watch. The nervous look returned to his face. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he felt claustrophobic in the room. She was losing him.

She fixed him in the eye again. She took his hand, but he pulled it away.

“Who killed Rudolf Biel?” she asked. “I need to know. Was it this Exchange Mafia? Or someone else?”

He stood up, shaking his head.

“You, lady, are so crazy and stupid. Didn’t you understand anything I said? It is all the same. There isn’t a team called Exchange that is fighting a team called, I don’t know, USA, or China, or Russian Mafia. When you pull it apart, it’s all one team. How can I say who killed him? Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter. It’s what I told you: There are no black hats and white hats. There are only golden hats, the ones with the money.”

“So they can read America’s messages, the secret ones from the agencies? I need to know.”

“Some messages, maybe. But I am telling you, it is Laocoön: You cannot tell apart the body of the serpent and the arms of the man. The agencies are hungry for exploits, to do their own dirty work. They get inside every system there is, and we never know why. One day they are in Iran, another day in Switzerland, a third day in China. Is there a goal, or is there only this dirty game? I do not know. But it is dangerous.”

Grulig moved toward the door. Sandoval reached out and held his arm, but he pulled away.

“Stay,” she said. “Let me help you.”

He shook his head, the matted hair falling across his eyes.

“No.” He walked toward the door. “Do not come with me. Do not follow me. Do not ever contact me again. You got this Swiss boy killed, this Biel. That’s what I think. And you will get me killed, too, so goodbye. I never met you. I never talked to you. I will never see you again.”

“Please wait. I need help.” She almost shouted the words.

“You need to think about what I said, lady. That is all the help from me there is. No more, after that. If you try to come after me, it will be a mistake. I do not make threats. I don’t believe in threats, or war, or violence, or flags. But I promise you that if you try to contact me again, or reveal my identity to anyone, I will know. And you will pay a very big price.”

With that, he was gone, out the door. Sandoval thought of following him, thought even of making a crash call to Berlin Station in the U.S. Embassy, two hundred yards away on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate. But she had given her word to Grulig that she would protect his anonymity. And there was something else: She had been instructed not to talk to anyone else in the agency except the man at the top.

19

WASHINGTON

The consul general in
Hamburg was a middle-aged man, never married, and he didn’t like talking about personal matters when he could avoid it. Kitten Sandoval told him the next morning, when she was back from Berlin, that she had a personal medical issue, “women’s plumbing,” and needed to fly home to see her Washington doctor. He didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t contact Berlin Station or EUR Division back at Langley, not wanting to be caught later in a lie.

Sandoval caught an early connector flight from Tegel to Munich and flew home to Dulles on Lufthansa. She bought the economy ticket in her true name, and booked herself a room at the Crystal City Marriott. Before she left, she sent an encrypted message to the director’s pseudonym account, saying that she would be in Washington that night. She asked him to suggest a location for a secure meeting.

Sandoval watched movies all the way home. She half paid attention as her mind wandered over the events of the past few days. She was in what her father liked to call “
las profundidades del océano.
” The deep ocean. The gravity of what she had done made her nervous, but it was also what she had wanted for years: a chance to make a difference, with everyone watching, to be the heroine of the play.

Sandoval had progressed in her career by taking little risks, measured ones. She had come to the CIA by way of Arizona State University, in the usual sort of quiet referral: She had been nearing completion of her master’s in global legal studies, hoping to work for the FBI or the DEA, when her dean summoned her one day and said the CIA recruiter was coming to town. He said Sandoval had the right skills: She was bright, conscientious, spoke fluent Spanish as a second-generation immigrant. Her Mexican-born father was a naturalized citizen and Marine Corps veteran who took her to the firing range each weekend. She knew her way around guns, and she had an easy way with people.

The CIA had a lily-white reputation, but Sandoval knew that if they were sending recruiters to ASU, they wanted to give at least the appearance of change. Sandoval went off to the interview, and the first surprise was that the CIA recruiter was a Hispanic woman herself, who had served abroad and seemed to embody the slogan on her promotional brochure about how the National Clandestine Service was “the Ultimate International Career.”

In the days after the interview, Sandoval could imagine herself being that woman, having that career and being a soldier like her father, but different. With the encouragement of her dean, she applied to the agency and eventually became a career trainee, on her way to the Clandestine Service. She did a first tour in Managua, where she hadn’t liked her boss, and after that an awkward stint with L.A. Division in Washington. She switched to EUR, first in Madrid and then, after six months of German language training, to Hamburg. She had never stepped outside the boundaries in all that time, or felt she needed to.

The events that had begun with the Swiss walk-in, Rudolf Biel, were different. Sandoval had started coloring outside the lines: It was free-form, and although she had recently found a seeming ally in Weber, she knew he wouldn’t be able to protect her if things went wrong. He was new and inexperienced; she knew more about the CIA than he did.

A message was waiting on Sandoval’s phone when the plane landed at Dulles. The director proposed a meeting at seven-thirty the next morning, and gave the address of Stormhaven Casualty, an insurance office in the flat suburb of Fairlington in Alexandria. Sandoval checked into the Marriott and lay awake in bed for several hours, her mind a white buzz. She took an Ambien and slept a few hours, then awoke a little after four a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. After she had showered, she put on too much makeup, but that was better than too much fatigue.

Sandoval took a taxi to the address in Alexandria the next morning. She arrived at seven-fifteen, but it took twenty minutes for them to clear her downstairs, so she arrived in the secure second-floor reception area late and embarrassed.

Weber had his feet up on the coffee table of the windowless room they had prepared for the conversation. He popped up from the couch and shook her hand. Sandoval had never met him before. He looked like one of the fraternity boys at ASU, too young for the job.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Mr. Director,” she said.

“¿
Qué húbole, güey?
” said Weber.

“Do you speak Spanish?” she asked enthusiastically.

He shook his head.

“The chief of my security detail told me how to say, ‘What’s up, dude?’ Want some coffee?”

She nodded yes, and an aide brought in a huge platter of muffins, donuts, pastries, cookies and fruit, along with a giant coffee urn. The word had gotten around that the director liked snacks. It was enough to feed the EUR Division. Sandoval took some fruit and a cookie.

“Thanks for coming,” said Weber. “You’re sticking your neck out.”

“Yes, sir, I am.” She looked away.

“Well, it feels good, doesn’t it?”

“I hope so, Mr. Director. I’m a little nervous.” She took a drink from the water glass before her.

“Is your name really ‘Kitten’?” asked Weber. “That’s different.”

“I’ve taken a lot of grief about it, but that’s what my parents named me.” Her hand was shaking and she spilled a little of her coffee.

“Sorry. I am so nervous.”

“Take it slow,” said Weber. “I have all morning, and this isn’t a promotion board.”

She adjusted her skirt, took a bite of a grape and then put the plate aside.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” said Weber. “Tell me about the walk-in, this kid Biel. You’re the only one who met him. What was he like?”

“He was frightened, Mr. Director. When he came in off the street, he mentioned two things, specifically, that he wanted to warn you about, face-to-face. He made a point about that.”

“Why me? What did he think I could do for him? I had only been director for a week. I was barely on the job yet.”

“Maybe that’s why he wanted you. He said people were preparing something. I guess he thought you were outside a system he thought had been penetrated.”

“But there was nothing in your first cable about a penetration of the agency.”

“I was being careful. But when I think back, that’s what he was telling me. He knew people had hacked our communications systems. They were inside. That’s why he wouldn’t stay in one of our safe houses. He thought the information would leak. That’s why he wanted to talk to you directly. You weren’t contaminated. He’d read about you. He knew you were the new guy.”

“What do you think he would have told me, if we’d ever gotten to a meeting?”

“His secrets, I guess. Who the penetration was; how the communications systems had been compromised; what they were planning; why the rush. Whatever he knew, he wanted to tell you. That was his protection: You would take care of the people who were threatening him.”

“But I didn’t. I picked a ‘specialist’ to handle it. Another hacker. I thought that was the right thing to do.”

Weber took a long drink of his coffee.

“Poor Biel.” His voice was a bitter sigh. “I let him down.”

Sandoval was startled. She hadn’t expected her boss to have taken it personally.

“It was my fault, Mr. Director. Not yours. I should never have let him leave the compound. And then, when Mr. Morris came, I felt a little . . . I don’t know . . . intimidated. At first he thought he could find Biel. Then Mr. Morris kept disappearing.”

“Where did Morris go?”

“He never said. I thought he had special sources, private operations he couldn’t tell me about. He made me feel . . . dumb. Then he got, like, depressed.”

She was getting upset again, short of breath.

“Eat some more fruit,” said Weber. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

She took some more grapes, and ate a half dozen, while Weber called for a Diet Coke, bringing forth another huge platter, with cold drinks and finger sandwiches.

“Jesus, no wonder we’re having budget problems,” said Weber, looking at the array of food. “So tell me why you came today, all of a sudden. Why the crash meeting?”

Sandoval took a deep breath.

“Okay, so to prove his bona fides to me the Swiss boy mentioned the two names I told you about: the Exchange and Friends of Cerberus. I wanted to know more about them, but Morris waved me off, said it wasn’t my case. So I didn’t do anything until you called me and asked me to help.”

“Right. So what did you do?”

“I went to a German friend, Walter Kreiser, who used to run the BND. I asked him to find me someone in the underground. I hope that’s okay.”

“That was smart. Did Kreiser come up with anything?”

“Yes, indirectly. Through a cutout, he introduced me to a young German hacker, very smart, who traveled in these same circles. His name is Stefan Grulig.”

“Did this Grulig know about these hackers, whatever, the Exchange and Friends of Cerberus?”

Sandoval gave him a look somewhere between yes and no.

“That’s the strange thing. He said the Exchange and Friends of Cerberus weren’t real organizations, they were just names people gave to the underground. He claimed they weren’t really criminal groups attacking governments. They were all part of a market, and governments were their customers. He made it sound like they were all in it together. And I thought maybe that’s what Biel was trying to tell us. ‘We’re inside you because we
are
you.’ I know that must sound crazy.”

Weber shook his head.

“It doesn’t sound crazy. What else did he say?”