The Director: A Novel (51 page)

Morris spoke passionately. He was doing the work he had dreamed of, and he was a charismatic spokesman, if not an entirely convincing one. He admitted he was responsible for the attack on the Bank for International Settlements, just as the newspaper stories said. Indeed, he fairly boasted about what he had done, explaining that under cover of the cyber-attack he had transferred money from the accounts of wealthy nations to those of needy ones.

“I do not apologize for my actions. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t torture anyone. I didn’t listen to people’s telephone calls or steal their secrets. They claim that I broke the laws of the United States but I didn’t break any of the laws of humanity. I left the criminal Central Intelligence Agency as an act of conscience. I revealed its secrets to give liberty to others. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. I’m proud of what I did.”

Many newspaper stories, including those in the United States, described James Morris in the lead paragraphs as a “Cyber Robin Hood.” A German website briefly posted an item after the press conference alleging that a Swiss hacker named Rudolf Biel had been killed by the Russian intelligence service in Hamburg to protect the secret of Morris’s identity, but this information quickly disappeared and was nowhere else mentioned.

A month after he was reinstated as CIA director, Graham Weber went to the White House to see the president. He told the chief executive that, after thinking about it carefully, he wanted to submit his resignation. The CIA had been given a new start, he said, just as the president had wanted when he appointed Weber. But now it needed a professional.

Weber said that he wanted to suggest a candidate as his successor. He had run the name by Timothy O’Keefe, the national security adviser, who agreed that it was a good idea. He urged the president to nominate Dr. Ariel Weiss, who would be the first woman ever to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be a signal, said Weber, that the agency had really broken the bonds of the past and was moving into the future.

The president didn’t say yes on the spot, but O’Keefe had already told Weber that he liked the idea. It would be politically popular, and it had the additional benefit of being the right thing to do.

What was left for Graham Weber was empty space, to be filled, and the satisfaction that he had helped set free the haunted, necessary institution of the Central Intelligence Agency, so that it might become part of the American fabric, rather than a threadbare relic that had been crafted on the loom of another nation.

Perhaps the country would grow to love, or at least respect, an intelligence service that was its own creation rather than someone else’s. Weber wanted to think about the best way he could help make that happen as a private citizen. But that could wait. Right now he wanted to take a walk along the river and watch the water cascade along the muddy banks, and let his mind go gray and quiet as the winter sky.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book began with
the author’s suspicion that in our digital world, the traditional themes of the spy novel—deception, penetration, surveillance—are increasingly about the manipulation of computer code through computer hacking and cyberwar. The author’s problem was that he was a nontechnician. So began a long apprenticeship with people who were willing to share information and ideas.

First and foremost, I thank Matthew Devost, president and CEO of the consulting firm FusionX. I was introduced to Matt by Henry Crumpton, a celebrated former CIA officer whose consulting firm, the Crumpton Group, works closely with Matt’s company. Matt was my guide and dinner companion at DEF CON XX in Las Vegas in July 2012. He continued to talk with me through the writing of this novel and was kind enough to read and comment on a draft of the book. I am immensely grateful to him. Will Hurd, CIA veteran and now business colleague of Crumpton, was also very helpful.

Other cyber experts were generous in sharing insights, starting with Sherri Davidoff, the founder of LMG Security, who spoke with me at DEF CON about her MIT adventures and whose book
Network Forensics
, coauthored with Jonathan Ham, is a must for people who want to understand this subject. I am also grateful to Jason Healey of the Atlantic Council; Christopher Kirchhoff at the Pentagon; Brian Krebs, a former
Washington Post
colleague and author of the popular blog
Krebs on Security
; Ed Skoudis, the founder of Counter Hack; Jon Iadonisi, founder of the White Canvas Group; Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer of Mandiant; and Alan Paller of the SANS Institute. Journalistic colleagues were also helpful, especially Robert O’Harrow, author of the
Post
series “Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace,” and Ellen Nakashima. Authors always say in thanking technical advisers that these experts are in no way responsible for errors, omissions or other lapses. That’s especially true in this case. My tutors will only wish I had been a more sophisticated pupil.

I had generous help in Germany, a center for hacking and the idea of Internet freedom. The Atlantik-Brücke and its director, Eveline Metzen, brought me as a fellow to Hamburg, where I shared an unforgettable dinner with Max Warburg at his home on the banks of the Elbe. Later, as a visiting Allianz fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, I gave its director Gary Smith the task of finding me young Germans who knew about hacking. He introduced me to Karsten Nohl and Linus Neumann of the Security Research Labs in Berlin, and a roster of other German hackers and cyber-experts who will probably be happier if they go unnamed.

My fascination with the origins of the CIA and its relationship with British intelligence dates back to 1987, when I published a long article in the
Washington Post
about Britain’s covert action inside America before and during World War II. That was when I first encountered Thomas Troy, a former CIA historian and the authoritative writer on this subject. I hope he won’t mind that my characters quote directly from several of his books. I quote from my own copy of the secret history of British Security Coordination, which I obtained during my reporting in 1987. For texture on the Bank for International Settlements, I turned to several books, especially Liaquat Ahamed’s extraordinary
Lords of Finance
, Benn Steil’s
The Battle of Bretton Woods
and Eleanor Lansing Dulles’s 1932 volume, cited in the novel, upon which I stumbled.

Four more tips of the hat: Cyril Hoffman’s tale of the fictional French agent “Juliette” and her house in Saint-Brieuc evokes the true tale of the incomparable French spy Jeannie de Clarens, whose story I narrated in the
Washington Post
in December 1998. My references to magic were conjured with help from John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA, amateur magician and a wise and generous man. I owe special thanks to John Maguire, a former CIA officer who balances deep affection for the agency with bracing criticism. And what modern author could navigate the world today without the electronic tools Wikipedia and Google Earth, which were constant desktop companions and sources of information?

Though this book draws upon research, I should stress that it is entirely a work of fiction. The people, companies, institutions and events are imaginary. Where a real organization like the Bank for International Settlements or a real person is cited, it is in a fictional context only. Those who know the real background of this subject will appreciate how truly this is a work of fiction, not fact.

Three readers saved me along the way from pursing mistaken paths: My friend Lincoln Caplan, whose writings on the law have graced
The New Yorker
, the
New York Times
and many other publications, gave a careful, bracing read of an intermediate draft. I have dedicated this book to Linc and to Jamie Gorelick, former deputy attorney general and Washington lawyer extraordinaire, who have been among my closest friends for more than forty years. My wife, Eve, blessed with a doctorate in computer science and a career as a defense engineer, superbly critiqued later drafts. And finally and especially, I thank my friend Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, blogger, poet, novelist and literary critic. I have turned to Garrett for help in structuring each of my previous novels and he served in that role again, in a way that helped me see a path for my characters.

Finally, I thank Starling Lawrence, the best word editor in the business. He read each draft and offered honest, penetrating and often devastatingly funny comments in the margins. My colleagues at Norton have always been helpful, especially Bill Rusin, Jeannie Luciano, Rachel Salzman, Ryan Harrington, and my deft copy editor, Dave Cole. This is the ninth book in which I have thanked my peerless literary agent, Raphael Sagalyn. I am also grateful to supporters in Hollywood, including my longtime friend Bob Bookman and my gifted agents at Creative Artists, Bruce Vinokour and Matthew Snyder.

This book is ultimately about American intelligence in the age of WikiLeaks, and whether it can adapt to a more open digital world and still do the hard work of espionage. We’ll all be living with that question for years to come. However this future evolves, the country will need a strong and freethinking press, and so, finally, I thank my friend Don Graham for being a surpassingly great owner of the
Washington Post
, and Jeff Bezos for taking the torch from Don and keeping it bright.

ALSO BY DAVID IGNATIUS

Agents of Innocence

Siro

The Bank of Fear

A Firing Offense

The Sun King

Body of Lies

The Increment

Bloodmoney

For Lincoln Caplan and Jamie Gorelick

Copyright © 2014 by David Ignatius

All rights reserved

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Ignatius, David, 1950–

The Director : a novel / David Ignatius. — First Edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-393-07814-5 (hardcover)

1. United States. Central Intelligence Agency—Fiction.
2. Computer hackers—Fiction. 3. Computer crimes—Fiction.
4. Computer networks—Security measures—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3559.G54D57 2014

813'.54—dc23

2014005434

ISBN 978-0-393-24417-5 (e-book)

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