The Director: A Novel (41 page)

“I think . . .” began Hoffman, without finishing the sentence. His attention was absorbed by the boat. He tacked again so that they were heading upstream, and then he steered farther off the wind, easing the main and jib sheets so that the sails were extended. The little craft gained speed as it sailed on a broad reach toward Hains Point.

Weber was impatient. He didn’t give a damn about sailboats. He was running an intelligence agency that had been penetrated, by whom or for what purpose he didn’t understand, and meanwhile he was trapped in a confined space barely large enough for two big men, while his host discussed sexual practices using obscure Latin words.

“You said you had two things to tell me about Morris. What’s the other?”

“Ah, yes,” said Hoffman, coming back into focus. “It seems that Morris is uncommonly friendly with the Chinese.”

“Are we talking sex again?” asked Weber, though on this subject he actually knew more than he was letting on.

“No, we are talking business. Morris has a surprising range of Chinese contacts in the information technology area. I believe some of them trace back to his youth. He spent two years in China after graduating from Stanford. Were you aware of that?”

“Yes, actually. I know Morris did some programming for Hubang Networks back then, among others. He has been running an off-the-books research center in Cambridge with a Chinese partner, too. People tell me that it gets its money from a black account in the DNI’s office. Fancy that!”

“Clever you.” Hoffman took his hand off the tiller and clapped his hands. “But don’t you find this Chinese connection worrying?”

“Everything about Morris worries me.”

“NSA thinks he is in regular contact with some of the corporate fronts the PLA uses for its cyberwar operations. Not just Hubang, but Golden Sunrise Technology in Shanghai, and Sinatron Systems in Guangzhou. Very bad actors, those two, the NSA says. They want me to blow the whistle on him. Cut him off. And they have some disturbing information about Russian contacts, as well, that I won’t bore you with now.”

“But you’re not sure it’s time to pounce yet,” said Weber. “You want to watch and wait, and see what else Morris is up to. Am I right?”

“That is our modus operandi in counterespionage cases, as you will discover. We are not policemen but intelligence officers, so we would always prefer to let things play out longer and see where they lead. But with Morris, I am beginning to wonder. Perhaps it is time, as the FBI likes to say, to ‘pull the trigger.’”

“Take him down, Cyril. Be my guest, if you can find him. It’s going to be one hell of a scandal when it comes out: a CIA officer with links to the Russians and Chinese. And what’s more, he was working on secret, undisclosed programs for the director of National Intelligence. I may get my wish and bring the house down, after all.”

“There are other ways to pull the trigger, Graham. We can let the unfortunate Morris autodestruct, as it were. He can play out whatever fantasy he’s working on, and destroy himself in the process.”

“You’re the master,” said Weber, pulling back the strands of hair that were blowing in the wind. “But here’s what’s puzzling me. I’m asking myself: Why does Mr. Hoffman have a hard-on for Morris all of a sudden? Two weeks ago when I asked for advice you had the mumbles.”

“‘Hard-on’ is not a term in my professional vocabulary,” said Hoffman primly. “Nor is ‘mumbles.’ But I am inclining toward the view that we should take action against Morris soon. This is a man capable of doing serious damage.”

Weber eyed Hoffman. The two of them were confined in such a tiny area, it was as if they were on top of each other. The sloop rocked in the big wake of a passing powerboat. Weber leaned back against the bulkhead for balance.

“You don’t have to convince me that Morris is trouble,” said Weber. “But the funny thing is, he’s not the only person who has close ties with the Chinese and the Russians.”

Weber let his words sit in the air for the moment. Hoffman fiddled with the jib sheet.

“Whatever do you mean?” asked Hoffman.

“Well, take yourself: As director of National Intelligence, you’re the top dog. But people tell me you met six months ago with the chief technology officer of Hubang Networks. And I’m told you even have some investments with Chinese technology companies that are held for you by a trustee in Islamabad. A former general named Mohammed Malik. Do I have that right? And I learned something interesting today about the Jankowski case. Did you know that he didn’t keep all the money he skimmed? No, apparently he had a partner in the intelligence community who shared the loot. They did it through a common contact in the SVR.”

“Well, aren’t you a sly fellow,” said Hoffman. His eyes narrowed till they were small slits on that big round face. “You’ve been spying on your Uncle Cyril. That’s unfriendly, where I come from. Not what you’d expect from a shipmate.”

“Due diligence,” said Weber.

Hoffman studied the younger man. There was a new coldness in his manner, as if a switch had flipped. He had regarded Weber with mistrust before, but now it was something closer to open hostility.

“If you bother to check,” said Hoffman, “you’ll find that all my investments have been disclosed to the White House counsel’s office.”

“I have checked,” said Weber. “There’s no record of the Pakistani trust or its Chinese holdings. And the DNI secretariat hasn’t logged any of your meetings with the man from Hubang, or with the chief technology officer of Yabo Systems. As for the Russians, I gather the information has all been given to the grand jury. The prosecutors just aren’t sure what to do with it yet.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Not at all, skipper. I just wanted you to know that I’ve been doing my homework.”

Hoffman stared ahead at the approach of Hains Point, still a hundred yards distant, and looked up at the darkening sky.

“Prepare to jibe,” he said curtly. “That means lower your head, or the boom will take a divot out of it.”

Weber dropped as low as he could in the small boat. Hoffman called, “Jibe ho!” and pulled the tiller toward him. The wind caught the mainsail and it whipped sharply across the beam, just missing Weber.

“I think it’s time to return home, don’t you?” said Hoffman mildly. “It’s getting late.”

“I was just starting to enjoy myself. But whatever you say.”

Hoffman steered the boat on a close reach back toward home. The wind was dying as the light fell, and they were making slower progress downstream than they had before, even with the gentle push of the tide and the river current.

“You surprise me, Graham,” said Hoffman.

“Why is that? Because I don’t roll over and let people pat my tummy?”

“That’s part of it, yes. It turns out you are a resourceful fellow. But I was thinking more of the fact that you appear to have no clear idea of what you are dealing with. You have insinuations, but not a plan.”

“Don’t be so sure, Cyril. But speak. Enlighten me.”

“I think I’ve said enough already. Too much, probably, but never mind. Time’s up. The creditors have called their notes. Bankruptcy looms. Isn’t that what your business friends would say, eh, Graham?”

Hoffman took a cell phone from the inside pocket of his blue jacket, just under the stitching that read
Cyril
, and placed a call to his aides at the marina.

“We need a tow,” he said into the phone. “Send the launch.”

He put the phone away. Within thirty seconds they could see a twin-engine powerboat moving out of the harbor and toward them at high speed. Several minutes later, the Coast Guard launch was alongside, and a uniformed sailor was attaching the towrope to the bow cleat of
(Redacted)
.

Hoffman sat impassively in the stern. The bow of the sailboat lifted as the towrope took hold, and then the powerboat surged forward, pulling its cargo in its wake. The sailboat’s stern was so low that the water churned just behind Hoffman’s ample bottom, spraying his cranberry-red trousers.

Weber studied him, measuring the man: Hoffman had been prepared to sacrifice James Morris with an indifference bordering on ruthlessness, but what was he trying to protect in the process? The DNI chief had alleged that Morris was a tool of Chinese intelligence, and perhaps the Russians too, but the very directness of his ploy made that allegation suspect. Hoffman obviously knew more about Morris than he was willing to share.

And what of Hoffman’s own links abroad? The intelligence director had bristled at Weber’s mention of his dealings with the Chinese and Russians, but that touched only a corner of Hoffman’s global network. Weber was gathering the elements of a complex story, but Hoffman was right: He didn’t sufficiently understand what he was dealing with. Yet, watching Hoffman’s angry, sullen actions, Weber had reason to hope that he would soon know more. Everyone made mistakes eventually, even Cyril Hoffman.

Hoffman was silent. He had said his piece, and heard more than he had expected in return, and now his boating foray was over. Hoffman looked at his watch. The silence continued until the little boat reached the landing.

In Hamburg that day, K. J. Sandoval, still toiling as a consular officer on the Alsterufer, received an anonymous letter addressed to her work name Valerie Tennant. Inside was a picture that had been taken from a screen grab of a posting in a password-protected chat room. The page displayed a caption with the German words
Ein Held
. A hero. Below the words was a picture of a man Sandoval immediately recognized.

It was the thin, elusive but unmistakable face of James Morris. Sandoval knew who had sent the photograph. It was from Stefan Grulig, the German hacker who hated the idea of people shitting in his Internet church. His message was that comrades in the hacker underground, for whatever reason, regarded Morris as a champion of their cause. Grulig didn’t have to sign his name to the message; he was the only person who knew the Tennant identity.

Sandoval scanned the photo and sent the encrypted file to the pseudonym account of Graham Weber at Headquarters.

When Weber saw the photograph, it confirmed his deepest worry about Morris. The spark that he had seen so many months ago in Las Vegas—the passion that had made the young man such a creative intelligence officer—had burned through his loyalty oath.

Weber called Beasley and asked him to work with the London station to utilize the surveillance network deployed by British police to find James Morris, urgently, now, and to have him arrested if he could be located. The British were said to have four million hidden cameras in place. That surveillance network could do almost anything, except see through disguises.

Weber made one more request of Beasley. He asked him to immediately promote Kitten Sandoval one grade, to GS-14, and to begin looking for an opening as station chief for which she would be the first candidate, director’s orders.

35

SAINT-BRIEUC, FRANCE

Cyril Hoffman had never
found a truly “neutral” meeting place during the Cold War, for all that people talked about Vienna or Istanbul or Berlin or Hong Kong. Those were simply divided cities that straddled the fault line. The closest he had come to a free zone during his decades as an intelligence officer was France. It was the French need to conceal secrets that made the country a discreet rendezvous point. Their business elite was interwoven with a kind of corruption that people expected in Lebanon, perhaps, but not at the center of Europe. To enter this forbidden France, it was necessary to have a French host who was part of the “
réseaux
,” the networks of power and corruption. And Hoffman had discovered this space early in his career.

Hoffman required a meeting place because he needed to do a deal: He had concluded that he had no choice but to seek a devil’s bargain with the Russian intelligence officers who had attached themselves to James Morris. He had pulled more information from Admiral Schumer at NSA and his counterpart at the FBI, and it was evident what the Russians were doing with Morris: They were riding the new ideological wave of anti-secrecy. It was absurd, given that Russia was a police state internally, but no more so than the Russian ability to raise the idealistic banner of global anti-capitalism in the 1930s. The Chinese might have a hand in Morris’s machinations, but they were irrelevant to Hoffman, except for their future propaganda value. No, it was the Russian card that Hoffman needed to play, in a safe location.

Hoffman contacted his friend Camille de Monceau, who had for many years run a covert-action wing of the French DGSE from its tidy, modern headquarters on the Boulevard Mortier in the northeast of Paris. He did so indirectly, using as an intermediary a French journalist they both had known for many years. A sanitized telephone contact was quickly arranged, and Hoffman made his request. He told the French officer that he needed his help in organizing an urgent meeting, in France, with Mikhail Serdukov, the deputy director of the Russian external intelligence service, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, known simply as the SVR.

“He will ask what it concerns,
cher ami
,” said de Monceau.

“Tell him it’s about James Morris, and that it will be mutually beneficial. That should be enough. I would like to meet him in twenty-four hours, at a safe house in Brittany. If he agrees, we can meet in Paris and I’ll take him there.”

“Who runs the safe house?” asked the Frenchman.

“I do, personally. It doesn’t belong to any service, just to
ton oncle
, Cyril. You’ll never find it, so don’t try.”

Word came back immediately from Moscow that the Russian, who in addition to his other jobs ran counterintelligence against the West, would be pleased to meet his old friend Mr. Hoffman.

That left Hoffman very little time to prepare, and one essential task. He had his secretary call Dr. Ariel Weiss at her office at the Information Operations Center. It was a blind call, at Hoffman’s request, from a nongovernment number.

“This is your mentor and protector,” said Hoffman. “I said I might need to ask for your assistance. Well, now I do.”

It took Weiss a moment to realize who was calling. When she understood it was Hoffman, she wanted to hang up, but knew that would be unwise.