The Director: A Novel (30 page)

And on it rolled, for seven decades: Until James Morris was instructed to shatter this symbol of Anglo-American tutelage.

Morris used the BIS routing codes and account numbers he had received from Roger to tailor his attack. These codes and passwords made it easier to program the Robin Hood part of his scheme, moving funds from account to account. He had his team develop a string of backups, in case the BIS plan wasn’t enough. This second tier included commercial banks in London and Manchester whose software supported the Bank of England’s reserve management; the London stock exchange; a hedge fund in London and a private-equity fund in Edinburgh. But these were fallbacks.

To prepare his attack, Morris and his researchers had gathered a basket of exploits that could penetrate all the major systems used by financial institutions: They targeted the “Corebank” and “Alltel” software of Fidelity Information Systems; Oracle’s “Banking Platform” and “Flexcube” software; the Swiss-based Temenos “T24” system; the Indian-owned Infosys “Finacle” suite; the London-based Misys “Bank-Fusion Universal” system; and the German “SAP for Banking.” These software platforms shared a common unintended feature: They all were targets for a determined assault.

Morris admonished the members of his network to pay special attention to backup systems: Where were they? How could they be accessed? How was the mirrored data from the main institution transferred to the backup center? How frequently was it backed up? Morris had prepared for this as well, studying the leading software vendors that provided data protection and backup services for the financial industry.

Morris had cunningly dissected the world of global finance. His target in Basel touched, at one or two degrees of separation, nearly every institution around the world. A shock wave transmitted through these institutions would create not just a disruption, but something more. The financial system was like a snowflake: so intricate in its fractal patterns, but so fragile.

Morris was shopping for milk and cereal and fruit juice at the Tesco near his apartment when he noticed someone was following him. It wasn’t fancy clandestine surveillance, with teams of people in relay and layers of coverage, but just one person. He was compact and well dressed, with the muscular build of a soldier. He was wearing a blue peacoat and sucking on a piece of hard candy.

It was only when Morris caught his intense eyes that he realized it was the same man who had approached him in the pub before he had quit Grantchester, the man Ramona Kyle had introduced as Roger. He had given Morris an index card with the time and place for a meeting in London, but Morris had let it pass two days before. Now, somehow, Roger had found his new command post.

The man followed Morris through the checkout at the market and then down the street to a café, where Morris had planned to get an almond-flavored latte before he went back to work in his lodgings over Queens Road. When Morris sat down, the man took the table next to him. When he got up to move, the man simply walked over to Morris’s table and took the closest chair.

Morris’s face was impassive, but he was frightened. This was the first sign of surveillance he’d seen; the first indication that anyone knew where he was since he left Cambridge. He played dumb.

“Do I know you?” asked Morris, peering through his spectacles at the young man in the peacoat.

“I’m Roger,” said the young man, extending his hand. “You missed our meeting.”

The cowl of a foreign accent shrouded his voice. It could be Russian, Polish, Romanian; somewhere east of the Danube. He didn’t make any attempt to cover it this time.

“I don’t do meetings,” said Morris. He grabbed his package and rose from the table and began moving away. But Roger was quicker. He pushed one of the light café chairs so that it was blocking Morris’s preferred exit path, and with the other hand pulled Morris’s bag of groceries away from him and slung it over his shoulder.

“I’ll walk with you,” said Roger. “Don’t worry, I’m alone.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone. Go away or I will call the police.”

Roger smiled. “Really? I don’t think you will call the police. No games, please. I will talk, and you listen, okay?”

Morris shook his head. He headed the opposite direction from his flat, down toward the quayside along the river.

“You have a chance to be a great man, Mr. Morris, do you know that?” Keeping up, pace for pace.

“Fuck off,” said Morris.

“Not so loud,” said Roger. “And I mean it. You can be the man who changes history: The one who stands up for liberty, who says no to the police state. People will tell stories about you and sing songs. Maybe you will not be appreciated back home in America, but in the world you will be a hero. Yes. But you need help.”

“From you? Forget it. And anyway, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an American graduate student.”

“Okay, fine. Whatever you say. But think of Brother Snowden. He was all alone, just like you. He did not have a pot to piss in. Everyone abandoned him. But then he had friends. Yes, Russian friends. I am not embarrassed to say it. We are the home of the hacker, the true home. We are the friend of WikiLeaks and Anonymous. We are the new generation. It is like the 1930s. The gods are dead. There is a new world coming. We are the helpers, the facilitators.”

Morris stopped. The sun was glinting off the canal in the distance. They were alone, out of earshot of anyone on the streets.

“Who are you?” Morris demanded. “And don’t give me that ‘Roger’ shit. Where did you get that information about the BIS?”

“Specialists provided it. People who share your cause.”

“You
don’t
share my cause. You’re a Russian intelligence officer. What else could you be? What I don’t understand is why my friend Ramona wanted to introduce us.”

“Your friend Ramona is wise. She is a realist. She knows that you are part of a great movement, but it needs help. You are taking on a superpower. You need friends.”

“Not Russian friends! Are you kidding me? Russia is a police state.”

“Look, James, you do not have the luxury to make such fine distinctions. There is a great struggle going on in the world, between the arrogant power of the American and British services and the yearning of the world to escape. It is light and dark. You cannot debate who is pure enough to be your friend. I am sorry. That is selfish. You must win, and we are the only people who are strong enough to help you.”

The Russian talked with a cold passion, like a man who believed that he had history on his side. The NKVD agent handlers who recruited the Cambridge Five in the 1930s must have spoken with the same seductive, dominating voice. The world was at a crossroads; a principled person had to choose sides.

Morris was shaking his head.

“Peddle it somewhere else, my friend.”

But the Russian was undeterred. He was a good officer, or he had the true faith, or maybe a combination.

“I mean it! You should come in from the cold, like Snowden did. The raid you are planning on the BIS is fine, but it is nothing compared to what you could do with us. We can create a League of Internet Freedom. Putin, he will be gone. All those people in Moscow with their whores and diamond rings and Mercedes, they are finished. The trench coat boys from the special services will be gone, too. All gone! This is the time for us, people like you and me. What do you say?”

Morris shook his head. This Russian would destroy him. How was he going to get rid of him? He thought about his weapons. He had only one, really, which was to self-destruct.

“Look, Roger, or whatever your name is, I don’t know who you think I am, or what I’m planning to do. But I will tell you one thing. If I ever see you again, I will abort my mission. I won’t explain, but let me say that from your perspective, that would be very stupid.”

“Strike a blow for freedom,” said Roger.

Morris pushed his glasses back on his nose and stood up straight. He was half a head taller than the Russian.

“Yes,” said Morris. “I may just do that. But alone.”

“I have more information for you. More codes and addresses.”

“I don’t want it. Go away. I mean it.”

Morris walked quickly along the banks of the Avon, his shoes clattering on the cobblestones. He stopped when he reached the gates of a lock and looked back, but he couldn’t glimpse the Russian. They could see him, evidently, but Morris decided that it didn’t matter, so long as they didn’t get in the way.

26

WASHINGTON

Dr. Ariel Weiss put
a hand-lettered notice on her door that read
CONSULT THE DOCUMENTATION
. That was a geek-speak way of saying,
Solve it yourself
, to the young officers of the Information Operations Center who were accustomed to wandering by her desk and asking her advice. In every office, there’s someone to whom people turn when they have problems, and Weiss had become that person since she’d come to work for James Morris, who had the people skills of a mollusk. But Weiss’s life was more complicated now, and she no longer had time to be anyone’s big sister.

Weber had given her the assignment of turning her boss’s operations upside down—to pull at the threads of Morris’s cloak until the fabric gave way. But her search had proven far more difficult than she had expected. Ed Junot’s cover identity had crumpled in Germany, but now he had disappeared again, and Weiss didn’t know where to look for him. She suspected that Morris must have secret help from somewhere else in the government, or somewhere outside, or perhaps both. But his movements were too well hidden.

Weiss had been staring at her twin computer screens for several hours, searching for traces of Morris’s movements, and she needed a rest. She opened her door and stepped out into the indoor cavern that was the operations room of her center.

The floor was laid out like a Silicon Valley start-up or a Google research lab—the sort of places where her colleagues had worked before joining the agency. At the far end of the room was an open refreshment area with free food and drinks; stockpiles of caffeine to keep the code writers humming. These were Weiss’s people more than Morris’s. They were loyal, attentive and needy: a community of hyper-intelligent people who had decided to invest their brainpower on behalf of their country, rather than with big corporations. They wanted a psychic return, if not a financial one.

Weiss was dressed in her usual uniform of black tapered slacks, a close-fitting white cotton shirt and the tailored leather jacket she’d bought the day Morris made her his deputy. She left her office heading for the free food. She wanted something hot and something cold, a coffee and a Diet Coke, and maybe something sweet, and then she would go back to cracking the massively encrypted code that was James Morris.

Alvin Crump, the leader of one of the Iran cyber-teams, saw Weiss leave the office with her head down, lost in thought. His desk was in her path. He rolled out his chair so she would trip over him if she didn’t stop.

“Hey, Dr. Weiss, ’sup?” he asked.

Weiss’s eyes opened wide as if waking from a trance. She came to an abrupt stop in front of Crump’s desk.

“The usual,” she said. “Lots of subroutines, but no compiler. How about you, Crump? Have you located the Supreme Leader’s opium connection yet?”

“Working on it,” said the young man. He ran electronic operations against leadership figures in Tehran, using bits of malware and trapdoors installed so widely that the Iranians must wonder if the computer bugs flowed in with the electricity and water. Weiss’s reference to the opium dealer was a joke, but just barely. Crump’s team had tracked every movement of the top Iranian leaders for so long they might have written the ayatollahs’ personal calendars.

Weiss started off toward the coffee bar, but Crump was still in her way.

“Is everything okay?” asked the software engineer. “You’re scaring us a little, honestly. We’ve never seen you work so hard. Your door is always closed, and the screens are turned so nobody can see what you’re working on. Are we going to war or something?”

Weiss laughed, but she could see the concern on Crump’s face. People from nearby cubicles were listening, too. Weiss made these people think that what they did was cool and sexy. When she was preoccupied, so were they. She turned to Crump and the half dozen others nearby who were craning toward her.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a poop the last few days. I’m crashing on something for Pownzor, and you all know how crazy he can get. But everything’s cool. If there was any trouble, he’d be back here to micromanage it, right?”

“We’re beginning to wonder if Pownzor really exists,” said Crump. “Has he been fired?”

“Of course not!” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Whatever made you think that?”

“Gossip. It’s all over the building.”

Weiss deflected the query with another brush of her hand.

“That’s all bullshit. Would I still be here, if Pownzor was in trouble? Answer: No. So everyone chill, please.”

“If you say so,” said Crump. He looked relieved. So did the others who were near enough to hear the conversation, many of whom were already sending messages to their colleagues on the chat screen. Dr. Weiss said everything was fine, so it must be true. This might be an organization of professional liars, but Weiss was seen by her colleagues as someone who never lied.

She got her coffee and Coke—real, not diet—and took two cookies, one oatmeal and one chocolate chip with macadamia nuts. It was as many calories as she normally ate in a day, but she needed energy in a hurry.

When Weiss returned to her office, she printed out copies of the budget items she had been studying all morning on-screen. Weber had asked her for a picture and she would give him one: She laid out the sheets on her desk like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and began to look for the straight edges that formed a border. She needed to find patterns in the data that could tell a story of what Morris was doing.

It took Weiss many long hours, but eventually she found symmetry in Morris’s movements, once she stripped away the random noise. He always traveled overseas in alias; she could show that because she had access to his real-name credit card accounts. They were never used when he was away. That meant that the overseas trips were undeclared to the local intelligence services, who knew Morris by his true name. Whatever platforms Morris used overseas weren’t part of the IOC’s regular structure. Weiss could show that because she reviewed all the IOC’s official foreign basing and travel expenditures and signed off on them once a quarter for the inspector general.