The Director: A Novel (37 page)

“So make the machines sweat. Scare the crap out of them.”

“I’ll try. But you make me nervous with your sound machine. I don’t want to get fired. I want to get promoted.”

“Your request is logged.” Weber was trying to make a joke of it.

“That’s not good enough. I’m risking everything. I need a promise.”

“The only person who can fire you is me, and I trust you.”

Weiss studied him. She understood him so little. Perhaps it was the businessman side of him, that he had so few edges or corners. His life was smooth. It didn’t have tracks.

“How do I know that I can trust you?” she asked. “Some people warn me that I shouldn’t. They think I’m making a mistake. They think you’ll never last here.”

“Do you believe them?”

Weiss thought about her conversation with Hoffman, the warning from her ex-boyfriend Aronson, the gossip among friends, the occasional shots across her bow from rivals within the building. These dangers were in the air, but the man across from her was real.

“I don’t know. I want to believe that you can deliver. This place will be a mess if you fail.”

“Then make a bet on me,” he said. “You’ll come out a winner.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Graham,” she said.

“I don’t.”

“Let me ask you something, since we’re being honest. Do you have a private life?”

“Not really. Not since I took this job.”

“Well, here’s some unsolicited advice. Be careful. There are a lot of people in this building who don’t like you. When the secretaries see me walking into your office, they roll their eyes. And outside, it’s even worse. The DNI hates you. It’s an open secret around town. You need to be careful. You’re not from this neighborhood. If I’m the only friend you have, that’s not enough.”

Weber nodded. She stood and walked toward the door. He was going to call her back, but he knew that every word she had said was true. He did need to be careful. But he was going to run this all the way down to the end—find out who the traitor was and catch him in the act.

When Ariel Weiss left his office, Weber told Jack Fong, the head of his security detail, that he was going for a walk. He went to his desk and removed his Nokia trash phone and several one-time SIM cards; from another drawer, he took the encrypted BlackBerry that had his personal contacts. He took the elevator downstairs, accompanied as always. His security chief pressed the button for the garage level, thinking that they were taking the vehicle, but Weber punched “Lobby.”

As he walked through the marble court, a few employees nodded but only one came up to shake his hand. The electric atmosphere of his first days had gone. People understood that the agency was in some kind of difficulty, even though they didn’t know what it was. The rumors were flying that Weber might be leaving after a month on the job.

When he was outside, in the slight chill of early November, Weber stopped a moment and told the chief of his detail that just this once he thought he could manage by himself. He was only going a few hundred yards. When the chief protested, Weber told him it was an order. He descended the steps and walked across the VIP parking lot to the main road that circled the Headquarters complex. He headed right and walked just past the drive that led to his private garage.

Weber stopped and sat down on a bench. He took out his Nokia and made three calls, each to a senior national security official he had met through the Intelligence Advisory Board and an earlier tour on the Defense Policy Board. One now held a senior position in the National Security Agency; the second worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; the third was in the National Security Branch of the FBI. Each had access to the most secret counterintelligence information in the government.

Weber hoped that he had established a personal relationship with each one that was strong enough to carry the weight he was about to impose. But he wouldn’t know for sure until his private network was in action.

Weber began by asking each one if they would promise not to reveal what he was about to tell them, regardless of other commitments they might have. Each agreed, reluctantly. Weber then explained that he was beginning a very secret counterintelligence investigation and would need help. He would be examining three senior intelligence officials. He explained the specifics of what he would be looking for: names, actions, reference points. He asked each of the three to report anything relevant to him personally, after leaving a coded message in Stratford Park off Old Dominion Drive in Arlington.

“I need to see who runs where, after I squeeze them,” he told each of his accomplices. “If they contact foreigners, I want to know.”

Before each new call, he changed the SIM card in the phone. When he was done, he walked back to find his security chief pacing by the front door.

31

WASHINGTON

Graham Weber began his
stress tests the next day, after meeting his senior staff to review classified testimony he planned to give the next week to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He asked Ruth Savin to stay behind after the session. The other aides filed out of the big office, and Marie closed the door after them, leaving Weber alone with the agency’s top lawyer. She was a handsome woman, all her features fused into a hard, dark jewel: the lustrous jet-black hair that maintained its perpetual youthful color; the intelligent face that kept its smile even when she was demolishing a bureaucratic opponent; the lithe body of a former dancer. Savin was tough, about big things and little things: She had personally demanded that Weber’s predecessor, the unlamented Ted Jankowski, provide yoga classes for women who didn’t want to sweat in the agency gym with the men and their barbells. And she got what she wanted.

“Is everything okay?” asked Savin when they were alone.

Weber shook his head.

“Everything’s a mess,” he said. “But you’re going to help me fix it, whether you want to or not.”

Weber motioned for her to sit down on the couch, and pushed his chair closer so that the setting would seem more intimate. He didn’t know much about the CIA’s lawyers, except that the operations officers resented them. The operators had started buying legal insurance in the 1990s, as colleagues began facing criminal prosecution for doing what they had been assured was legal and necessary. They complained that the lawyers had you coming and going: One set told you what you could do; then another set took you to court for following the guidance that was retrospectively deemed to have been incorrect. Their inevitable answer when officers complained about changes in the rules was: Get a lawyer.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” she asked.

“Honestly, no. In business, I always looked at the general counsel’s office as a necessary evil. But right now I need you. So I guess I have to trust you.”

Savin shrugged. “Better to be needed than loved. That’s what my mother said when I told her I would never get married. But then I got married. So I know it’s better to be both, needed and loved.”

Weber nodded in appreciation of her sardonic self-assessment. She was a likable woman under the hard exterior.

“I have a delicate problem,” he said. “I need a smart lawyer’s advice.”

“But you couldn’t get that, so you asked me. Okay, what’s the problem?”

He paused and took a deep breath, knowing the offense he was about to deliver, and then pressed ahead with his ploy:

“We have some new reporting that Mossad has a high-level source within the U.S. government, maybe within the agency.”

Savin nodded. Her face betrayed no emotion.

“How can I help?” she asked.

“I think I’ll need to polygraph senior staff within the agency, without telling them what I’m after. Is that legal?”

“Sure, you’re the director. You can do whatever you want with the Office of Security. But shouldn’t you ask the Bureau to do this if it’s an espionage case?”

“I don’t trust them. They may be penetrated, too. That would just tip off the Israelis to shut down their operation.”

Savin fixed him with a level look. She had a professional placidity, but she was a hard nut of a woman.

“Are you sure about this? Who’s your source?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s a personal contact, usually reliable.”

“Foreign national?”

“Meaning what?”

“Does he have an ax to grind? Does he have ‘Jew spies’ on the brain?”

“I can’t really tell you much, except that I don’t think he’s crazy. It’s a serious charge. My instinct is that I need to check it out. Maybe I should ignore it. That would sure be easier, politically. You’re my lawyer. What do you think?”

She squinted at him. Was he trying to trap her?

“Pursue it, Mr. Director. But be careful. I think maybe you’re being diddled.”

“What smells wrong to you, Ruth?”

“I think this is an old rumor coming back at you. For years after the Pollard case, people at the Bureau thought there was another high-level Israeli penetration at the NSC, or maybe the CIA. There was an electronic intercept that seemed to show the Israelis had information that could only have come from the highest level. The suspicion was that it was a Jewish-American with top-secret codeword clearances. They even had a name for this supposed Mossad mole: He was ‘Source Mega.’ Very dramatic.”

“But it was bullshit?”

“Who knows? So far as anyone could tell, it was crap. The Bureau chased it for years. They went after AIPAC, Jewish national security staffers, the congressional committees, people at the agency. They came up dry. But they never proved there wasn’t an Israeli mole, either, so the story lives on.”

She studied him once more, then continued in a lower, slower voice.

“They even went after me. I was staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee before I came to the agency. My boss was in trouble with the Senate Ethics Committee; he was about to get censured. The Bureau claimed I tried to call in some favors with the Israelis to help him out.”

Weber nodded. “I heard rumors about that.”

“Everybody did. That’s the first thing anybody knows about me around here: That I was a suspected Israeli spy. And they turned up some pretty damning material, everybody thought.”

Now it was Weber’s turn to be wary. Why was she telling him all this? Was it to make clear that she was innocent, or to deflect him with a show of openness? He didn’t know.

“What did they have?” asked Weber.

“Special intelligence, meaning wiretaps. They had a longtime Mossad agent under surveillance. They picked up a call between him and me. In the call, I supposedly asked him if he knew anyone who could help out the senator. I reminded him that the senator was a longtime friend of Israel. He said he would see what he could do. They had it all on tape. The Bureau tried to squeeze me with it, hoping they could find Mega.”

“But the wiretap was phony?”

“No. It was all true. I said all those things. And even worse, the Mossad man made some calls, and the senator’s ethics problem eventually went away. So they thought they had a real case. They took it to a grand jury.”

“But you weren’t indicted?”

She looked at him fiercely and pounded the table with her small fist.

“Hell, no. I’m not an Israeli spy. I’m a loyal, patriotic American. I have two sons who served in the U.S. Army in Iraq. I made a mistake in calling that man and asking for his help. I didn’t know that he worked for Mossad, but that’s no excuse. The point is, I never gave classified information to anyone. Period. How do you think I got this job as the agency’s general counsel? How do you think I passed polygraph exams for ten years here? Do you think the Jewish conspiracy fixed that, too?”

Weber studied her. He had made her sweat.

“I didn’t accuse you of anything, Ruth.”

“Sorry, I was over the line. You may be a know-it-all from Seattle. But you’re not an anti-Semite.”

Weber laughed, despite the tension of the moment.

“What happened to Mega?” he asked.

“How do I know? Maybe he never existed. Maybe he’s still out there. I have no idea. But I am telling you all this—at some personal risk, I would note, and without benefit of counsel—because I don’t want you to chase an old rumor if that’s all it is. You have enough problems already. Don’t add to them if you don’t have to.”

“Is that a threat, Ruth?”

“No, it’s just friendly advice, Graham. From someone who is truly your friend. I hated Jankowski and what he did. I blame myself for not blowing the whistle on him sooner. I want you to succeed. But I want you to be careful.”

Weber nodded. She was the kind of ally he needed.

“Someone is fucking with us, Ruth.”

“Meaning what?”

“Someone is reading our mail. It’s the most dangerous thing that could happen to the agency. There are only a few services that could even think about getting inside our defenses.”

“And the Israelis have the capability.” She didn’t say it as a question, but as a statement of fact.

Weber nodded. “That’s why I have to make sure there’s no Mossad penetration inside the agency: Because we’ve got company, from somewhere.”

Savin looked at him, unsmiling and, for a long moment, unblinking.

“I’ll help you in every way I can, Mr. Director.”

She shook his hand.

“Thank you,” said Weber. “I want you to do one more thing for me: Don’t talk to anyone about this, not a soul. I’ll think carefully about what you’ve told me. But for now, I don’t want anyone else to know. I don’t want to muddy the water. No talk, no movement, no alert. If Congress asks why they weren’t informed earlier, that’s my problem, understood? Can you promise me that?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, again fixing him with that lawyer’s gaze that was intimate and removed at the same time.

When Savin had left, Weber closed the door and sat down in the big red leather armchair. He shut his eyes and made his own mental notations. Ruth Savin was believable: She had said many things that would cast suspicion on a guilty person but an innocent wouldn’t fear. He believed her when she professed her loyalty to the United States, but sometimes life was more complicated than that.