The Director: A Novel (49 page)

O’Keefe smiled again. He was almost serene in his repetition of this account of events. Weber looked at him for a long moment. He’d seen people like O’Keefe since he began dealing with government: They were the gamers and political fixers; they had their thumbs on the scale; they were always weighing the interest of the public against what was to them infinitely more precious, which was the political survival of themselves and their bosses. That was why he had always wanted to remain a businessman, until a few months ago.

Weber shook his head. He rapped the table in front of him for good measure.

“I won’t do it,” he said. “I won’t play.”

O’Keefe tilted his big round head.

“You know, Graham, I don’t like to be challenged, especially in my own office, and especially by someone who owes his job to me. So think twice before you jump off this particular cliff.”

Weber looked down at the mahogany table, and then back at O’Keefe. Yes, he was sure.

“Sorry, Tim, but I cannot back up a story that I know is false. I don’t care what the so-called evidence seems to show. I won’t do it. I’ll go to the intelligence committees. I’ll go to the Justice Department. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this big lie from succeeding.”

“You’re a fool,” snapped O’Keefe. “And an arrogant one, which is worse: Do you think I am powerless? I have you by the balls, sir. I just haven’t started squeezing.”

Weber shook his head.

“Stop threatening me, Tim. I know I’m right. I’m ready for whatever bullshit campaign you’re going to run against me.”

“I wonder,” said O’Keefe.

He stood and opened the door.

“Out, please,” he said, with a dismissive motion of his hand. “Try to simmer down. And I suggest that you pay a call on Cyril Hoffman, your superior officer. I believe he would like a word.”

Weber nodded. He removed from his pocket a letter he had typed out that morning on his computer, while waiting for the meeting in the White House. He handed it to O’Keefe.

“What is this?” asked the national security adviser.

“It’s an invitation. I am calling a meeting of the Special Activities Review Committee. Some sensitive information has come to light the committee should know about. It’s tomorrow afternoon. Don’t be late. This is one meeting you won’t want to miss.”

Weber gave the national security adviser a little wink, and for the first time that morning he thought he saw a trace of anxiety on O’Keefe’s round face.

Weber got into his car on Executive Road, the private alley between the White House and the Old Executive Office Building. Oscar asked where he wanted to go, and Weber had to think a minute. He needed to see all the cards. He dialed the private number of his boss, Hoffman, in his office off International Drive near Tysons Corner.

“Ah, Mr. Director, I thought you might be calling,” said Hoffman.

“Apparently I need to come see you,” said Weber. “I just left O’Keefe’s office.”

“Not apparently, but really. And as soon as possible, please. I just got off the phone with the national security adviser. He is not a happy man. You should take time to consider what he told you.”

“I’ll be at your office in thirty minutes. That’s all the time I need to think.”

“Drive slowly,” said Hoffman. “Admire the scenery. You are not an impulsive man. You are a business executive. That is what you know. In other areas, you are accident-prone. Think about what you are doing.”

Weber arrived in twenty-five minutes. The morning rush-hour traffic had already thinned on the Parkway and Route 123. He was cleared through security and pointed toward the DNI’s office building, which was tucked away in a modest speck of green amid the concrete of intersecting highways. Hoffman’s personal aide was downstairs to greet Weber and take him up to see the boss.

Hoffman stood with his arms open as Weber entered the office, as if he were preparing to welcome the return of a long-lost son. There was a look of merriment and also menace in his eye.

“Welcome, my boy. I hope you have been thinking hard and have recovered your wits. History is reaching out to you, Graham, and you must grab the bright ring. If you don’t, well, you will miss your chance in time. It won’t come back. You will fall into the abyss.”

Weber stood, compact and immovable, just inside the portal of Hoffman’s office.

“Why did you let Morris do it?” Weber said. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Hoffman. He walked over to Weber, put a hand on his elbow and steered him to a seat at his round conference table. Hoffman took the facing seat.

“You may decide to commit suicide, but you should at least have coffee first,” Hoffman said. “Perhaps the caffeine will stimulate your thinking in a way that heretofore has not been evident.”

He called for his steward, who brought in a large sterling silver tray, emblazoned with the seal of an Asian intelligence service that had made the gift to Hoffman as a token of eternal esteem. On the tray were two small white ceramic cups. The steward went to the shiny façade of the director’s espresso machine and made two coffees, one for Hoffman and one for his guest. The steward laid down the cups and then offered a tray of what Hoffman called
viennoiseries
. When Weber refused, Hoffman smiled and took two for himself.

“You don’t read history, do you?” asked Hoffman. “I mean, really read it.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” answered Weber. He wanted to keep the conversation on message. “I read what I need to do my job.”

“How simple and utilitarian, but inadequate,” said Hoffman, “particularly when it comes to American history.”

“I read the Constitution. I swore to uphold and defend it. That’s enough.”

“No, it isn’t, actually. That’s what I’m getting at. The Constitution is a document, written on paper, but its meaning was shaped by great men and their decisions. In particular, in my humble opinion, our history was shaped by the decision that our first president, George Washington, made, about what kind of a republic this would be: Would it be Alexander Hamilton’s America, or Thomas Jefferson’s? A republic of predictable order or unpredictable liberty? That was the first question.”

“Very interesting, no doubt, but I want to talk about James Morris. I am going to tell the CIA workforce about him and his friends and enablers tomorrow in the bubble, and I will tell the grand jury the day after.”

Hoffman was frowning and shaking his head.

“You are so eager to commit hari-kari. I am trying to prevent you, but it is not easy. You asked me to explain, why did I let Mr. Morris do it? I am trying to do so, if you will just
shut up
and drink your coffee and listen to what I have to say.”

“All right,” said Weber. “It’s your nickel.”

Hoffman nodded with gracious disdain.

“George Washington decided that America would be the nation envisioned by Alexander Hamilton, with a central bank, a funded debt, an orderly bureaucracy and a deep and unshakable alliance with its parent nation, its fatherland, you might say, which we know today as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Washington could have opted for the alternative vision of a French-style democratic republic, with its burlesque of liberty, but he did not.”

“Okay, got that,” said Weber. “Now, can we move on?”

“No, not yet. I am now getting to the part of this story that is directly responsive to your question. I believe in loyalty to one’s parents. Do you, Graham?”

“Of course. I revere my parents.”

“Well now, this question of parental loyalty has presented itself in a very particular way for your employer, the Central Intelligence Agency. We were not created ex nihilo, you know. We have a parent. And the name of that parent is the British Secret Intelligence Service.”

Weber laughed.

“The James Bond thing hasn’t worked for me since Sean Connery. Sorry.”

“That is unworthy of you, but never mind: I’m going to give you a tutorial. It will make a lot of other things clearer to you.”

“Say what you like. It’s not going to work. I’m going to take you and your friends down, no matter what you tell me.”

“Be quiet and listen. I am going to tell you a great secret. In 1945, when the war ended, the British compiled a private history of the covert action program begun in 1940 that had led to the creation of the OSS and, by extension, the CIA.”

“That’s ludicrous. Why would the British run a covert action program against us? We were their closest ally.”

Hoffman raised a finger, and then proceeded.

“The immediate aim of this covert action program was to draw the United States into the war to save Britain, but its larger purpose was to create a secret instrument that could protect the Hamiltonian version of America—and, in partnership with British intelligence, let us be frank, rule the postwar world.”

“That’s crap.”

“I have a copy of the secret history in my desk. It is an account of ‘British Security Co-Ordination,’ or ‘BSC,’ which is the name the British gave to their clandestine effort to maintain American steadfastness, despite the isolationist weasels. Would you like me to read you a relevant passage?”

Hoffman put on his reading glasses and peered over the top of them in a way that made his eyebrows and forehead look like those of a large, balding owl.

“No,” said Weber.

Hoffman ignored him. He leafed through the volume to page forty-six and began reading:

“This particular chapter is called ‘Campaign Against Axis Propaganda in the United States.’ It illustrates how well the British understood us, then and now. I quote:

In planning its campaign, it was necessary for BSC to remember (as the Germans remembered) the simple truth that the United States, a Sovereign Entity of comparatively recent birth, is inhabited by people of many conflicting races, interests and creeds. These people, though fully conscious of their wealth and power in the aggregate, are still unsure of themselves individually, still basically on the defensive and still striving, as yet unavailingly but very defiantly, after national unity and indeed after some logical grounds for considering themselves a nation in the racial sense . . . But protest as they will, they remain essentially a concourse of immigrants and are unable, in the main, to cut the atavistic bonds which bind them to the lands of their origin.

“What nonsense,” said Weber.

“I think not,” said Hoffman. “I think the anonymous authors of this secret history have expressed the nub of the problem, which is that we Americans do not know who we are, and we need
help
; especially in administering the remains of the global empire that fell to us in 1945.”

“You can’t mean to say you take all this seriously. It’s preposterous.”

Hoffman removed his glasses and sat up straight in his chair.

“I do indeed, sir. I am heir to the Anglo-American promise. You are heir to it. The rest of the world simply doesn’t understand. We must do what is right, whether others comprehend it or not. That is what I embraced when I joined this service. All the Hoffmans have understood it: Frank, Sam, Ed, Jack, every one of them knew when they joined the CIA that they must protect the secret power that is the only guarantee of order on this planet.”

Weber shook his head.

“You’re insane! If you really believe all this nonsense, why did you allow an anarchist hacker who despised Britain to attack the BIS?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Hoffman gently.

“No. It’s the opposite of obvious.”

“Morris was the perfect foil. I was only too happy to allow him to destroy himself and discredit his silly movement. People can see them for what they are: wreckers and manipulators; liars of the worst sort. It will be years before we see another of these hacker princes like James Morris. And as for the special relationship he so despised, well, it’s more special than ever, thanks to poor Morris and his unwitting assistance.”

“You’re out of control. What you have done is illegal.”

Hoffman seemed not to have heard him, for he began to speak again with greater intensity.

“And there were
other
benefits, obviously, from letting Morris conduct his absurd attack. It strengthened American control over international finance. It let us rewrite the BIS charter. It reanimated our liaison with SIS. And best of all, it provided an opportunity to replace the unfortunate choice the president made for CIA director, which is you.”

Weber shook his head. But there was a calm look on his face. He knew with clarity now what he was confronting.

“You’re a traitor,” said Weber.

“Hah! You sound like Peter Pingray, your unloved deputy. When we had to ‘relocate’ you for a week, for your own protection, he came to see me in great agitation. He also called me a traitor and, worse, a scoundrel. He said he had tried to warn you about me, too. Put a message in your desk drawer, sent another warning note in with some paperwork. But he said you were too thick to understand, thank goodness.”

“Peter Pingray left those messages?” said Weber, with a tone of wonder, and then, to himself: “Of course he did. He had access to all the paper. He was trying to help me.”

“Misguided loyalty. Pingray is gone, by the way, fired for cause, no pension and facing civil litigation unless he behaves himself.”

“You are dangerous, Cyril, but it’s over.”

Hoffman looked weary suddenly, and unhappy.

“You make me very sorry, Graham. Truly. I hoped you would open your mind and listen—really
listen
—to what the past tells you about your duty. But you are thick! That was always the critique of you: A smart business executive, charismatic manager, wanting to help his country, but inexperienced; a man who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And now it has undone you.”

“Not me. You’re the one who’s going down. I am calling a meeting of the Special Activities Review Committee to tell them the truth. Then I am going to Congress, to explain what you and Morris and all your crazy associates did. And then I am going to the Justice Department. I am going to explain this case for what it is: Espionage on behalf of a foreign power. Treason.”

“No, you won’t,” said Hoffman.