The Leviathan Effect (7 page)

“The purpose of this meeting,” Stanton added, “is to mobilize all resources, with an objective of locating Janus within five days. That’s the President’s directive.” He slowly made eye contact with several of those in the room, including Blaine. “This means we make it a twenty-four/seven priority. We pull out all our guns and cancel everything else. Clean the slates.” He made a strange sound in his throat. “I will head the task force and we’re making Thomas Rorbach the point man in charge of operations.”

Blaine looked quickly at Rorbach, who seemed slightly ill at ease being singled out but feigned a smile.

She skimmed through the pages of her briefing book: Background on Janus. Summary of his suspected whereabouts over the past decade. Chronology of the received emails, by date.

It didn’t take long for Blaine to recognize what was missing. They had left out the specific threats. There was no mention of the “natural disaster” warnings, of the actual subject matter in Janus’s emails.

The President’s directive
.

This had been orchestrated to go after a more narrow objective.
Why?

“For the benefit of Secretary Blaine, we will start with a brief overview. Harold?”

The ten desk screens lit up and a grainy black-and-white image appeared in the center of each: a man wearing a dark overcoat, walking along what seemed to be an empty train or subway platform. DeVries, who was seated to the right of the Vice President, began: “Janus is Xiao-Ping Chen,” he said. “He’s forty-one years old. ‘Janus’ was a code name created in Beijing about ten years ago.”

A second photo of Janus came on the screens. Then a third. In the first, he looked boyish and slender. In the next, his face had filled out and he wore rectangular, wire-rim glasses. In the third, his hairline
had receded considerably.
They almost seem like photos of three different men
, Blaine thought.

“He was born in Shandong province in Eastern China,” DeVries continued, speaking in his clear, steady tone. “His father was a diplomat. The family moved to India and Russia during his childhood. The father was apparently something of a taskmaster. And, a heavy drinker. He ended up a suicide when the boy was twelve.”

DeVries pressed a button on his desktop and the screens went dark.

“Chen joined the Chinese military at age seventeen. He studied computer science and eventually earned an elite post. At a young age, he became an accomplished hacker. Computer hacking is, of course, a different game there than it is here. The Chinese government employs about fifty thousand hackers as part of its military operations.”

DeVries glanced at his notes as if he’d momentarily lost his place.

“Chen apparently had some issues with authority within the Chinese military. He moved to Germany in 2004 or 2005 and began to work independently, we believe. He became a private contractor, in effect, but still sold his services to Beijing.”

“Please. Explain what that means,” Robert Thompkins, the director of Central Intelligence, said from the other end of the table, holding up his reading glasses. Thompkins and DeVries had several times crossed swords in recent months over jurisdictional boundaries.

“In other words,” DeVries said, not looking at the CIA director, “he would initiate an operation on his own, but the operation would yield information that was of value to a third party. Say Beijing, or Pyangpong. He would then approach a representative of the third party with this information and broker a deal. Creating a buffer, in effect.”

“To avoid the appearance that the government was directly involved.”

“That’s right. What’s known as the problem of attribution.”

“Chicken or the egg,” said Stanton, incongruously.

DeVries typed several numbers on his desktop keypad. “It’s convenient, of course, for governments or corporations to learn secrets about other governments, or other corporations, while avoiding the appearance of initiating those inquiries.”

The screens glowed and another photo came up: a blurry image of two men walking along a path in a park.

“The intelligence on Janus indicates that he’s not a man of great national loyalty. Or any other sort of loyalty,” DeVries went on. “We have reports that he did some high-level hacking for Moscow. We also believe that he may have played a role in setting up the GhostNet operation. At least as a consultant.” He paused, looking around the table. “GhostNet, as most of you know, infiltrated political, economic and media targets in more than a hundred countries, including the inner workings of the Dalai Lama’s organization. Before we shut it down in 2009.”

Blaine was beginning to remember something else she had heard about Janus: a portion of which had gone public. But she sensed that it was out of bounds at this meeting, so she said nothing.

“Nevertheless, this is the most recent photo we have,” DeVries said. “It was taken in Munich over the summer. Chen, we believe, is on the left. The man he’s talking with is a high-ranking member of the MSS.”

China’s Ministry of State Security. Counterpart to the US’s CIA and FBI.

“Which would indicate that his client is now Chinese intelligence?” the CIA chief said.

The Vice President made a coughing sound. “Possibly, yes. At the least, we think Beijing is probably aware of this man’s activities, if not directly involved. And we believe, based on the most recent intelligence, that Chen is currently in Munich.” The Vice President waited, then added, “Now I’m going to let Dean Stiles have the floor.”

Stiles, a gruff, wide-shouldered man with a shaved head and a long chin, was the new White House cyber czar. He cleared his throat, a deep raspy sound, then began to describe the technical details of the breaches, reading from notes written in longhand on three-by-five cards. Blaine noticed the suppressed yawns and restless shifting around the table as he described the adjustments of stopgaps and encryption safeguards.

It was essentially a cat and mouse game, Stiles explained. You install counter-measures and the other side finds a way around them. Back and forth. Blaine had been told by a cyber crime analyst at the National Security Agency once that only about two hundred people in the world fully understood the hacking game at its highest level,
and she doubted if any of those two hundred were in this room today, with the possible exception of Stiles.

Afterward, a slightly awkward silence filled the chamber as the Vice President paged through papers in his folder, as if searching for something.

“Wasn’t Janus also a US asset at one time?” said Kyle McCormack, the CIA’s head of counter-terrorism, raising the question Blaine had decided not to ask. Stiles frowned and turned his eyes to the Vice President.

“That’s right,” Stanton said. “We discussed that at our initial meeting. He identified a series of computer science centers in China being used by the Chinese military to hack into American networks. This was five, five and a half years ago.”

The CIA counter-terrorism chief nodded, watching him with hooded eyes.

“But the information was deemed unreliable, wasn’t it?” said McCormack.

In fact, there was something else about the episode, Blaine recalled, something damaging or embarrassing, some of which had gone public, but she couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

“Of course, we don’t believe that one person is behind this threat,” Thom Rorbach said, changing the subject. “It’s more likely that Janus has been retained as an independent contractor to hack into our systems and deliver these threats. That may be the extent of his involvement.”

“Do we even know that he’s really involved?” Blaine said. “Couldn’t it be someone simply using the name, as a way to get our attention?”

“Possible,” Rorbach said. “But not likely.” Blaine glanced at him, then looked back at her booklet. He had strange eyes—wet and virtually black, as if there was no center to them, no pupils. “A very specific code has been used in all of his communications. Four variations of eleven numbers and letters. They were the same classified codes Chen used in his dealings with us six years ago. A signature, in effect.”

Blaine nodded. But she was remembering something else. A man who had written a report about Janus years ago. A former intelligence field officer named Charles Mallory.

“At any rate,” the Vice President said, “the feeling is we’re flying into something of a fertilizer storm here. The President’s directive is that we mobilize all of our resources. He would like a preliminary working plan tomorrow morning by ten, involving all pertinent agencies. Data searches. Signals intelligence. Banking transactions. Everything that we can pull together. Thom Rorbach will coordinate.”

Rorbach, Blaine noticed, seemed to still be looking at her. In fact, his head hadn’t turned away from her since she had asked her question.

As Blaine stood, Gabriel Herring touched her arm. “One more meeting,” he said. “After that, you can go home.”

“Good.” She turned toward the doorway without looking back.

“This one,” Herring said, “will be on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

C
HARLES
M
ALLORY DROVE THE
twisting, two-lane road as golden sunlight gleamed through the pines and spruces, back-lighting the darkening pods of cumulous clouds. A quarter mile past the second of the
MOOSE CROSSING
signs, he hooked a left onto an unmarked gravel drive and followed it to its dead end at Thunder Hill Quarry.

He had lived in this remote harbor town for close to two years now, but he had yet to see a moose, let alone encounter one crossing the road. The signs, he suspected, were mostly for the summer tourists.

He parked his truck on the neck above the quarry and breathed the cool air, the shifting, subtle scents of water, tree bark, and pine sap. Then he stripped off his jacket and T-shirt, his shoes and trousers. He walked to the edge of the rocky outcrop, took a breath and dove in, swooshing in a long arc down through the frigid, sixty-three-degree water and coming up to the surface.

He caught his breath in the chill air and backstroked across the quarry, watching the fading light through the webs of pine branches.

By the time Mallory had climbed up to the rock ledge and was sitting at the top, his body temperature had dropped from ninety-seven to ninety-five degrees and he was shivering.

The late sunlight felt good on his skin, until the clouds moved across it. He sat there for several minutes, listening to the birds and the occasional creak of branches in the breeze. The birds were congregated on the wires along the road, he had noticed. A pressure system was moving through. Something was coming, probably a big offshore storm.
Clement would know
.

Several times a week, Mallory came here to swim before sunset.
The icy rush of the water was about the most invigorating feeling he knew these days. Sometimes he thought he did this as a substitute for something else; for what he had given up, perhaps, in deciding to move to this distant outpost.

He lived the life of someone else here, a man whose name and personal history he had invented. A life he’d created out of necessity. Thirty-one months earlier, Mallory had turned over D.M.A. Associates, his private intelligence contracting firm, to Joseph Chaplin, the chief of operations, with the idea that he would be free to disappear into a more normal life. At first, he had traveled, backpacking in South America and Europe, riding one-way buses and trains, living in unfamiliar rooms. But eventually he began to crave a routine again. Two years ago, he and a woman named Anna Vostrak had driven into this harbor town and decided to invent a life here. Mallory leased a store, Anna opened an art gallery. They rented an old fisherman’s cottage on the point and moved in.

For most of their time here, it had been a good life, if a duplicitous one. Two weeks earlier, Anna had left to visit her family in Switzerland. Living a life of invention had begun to wear on her and he suspected that she wouldn’t return, at least not for a while. He didn’t blame her, although he missed her more than he had imagined he would.

Mallory dressed and walked to the pickup, still shivering, and began to drive the winding road back toward the harbor.

Several miles on, he saw an older model pickup parked in a clearing. He pumped his brakes, scanning the eyes and hands of the two men seated in the bed. Then, recognizing them, he waved and accelerated. He still did that—fell back into the observational habits from his years as an intelligence agent. It was no longer necessary when choosing a table in a restaurant to make certain that he could see who was coming in the door, but he did. Or to scan parked cars to make sure no one was sitting in them, but he did. Spy work was devil’s work. To understand the enemy, you needed to think like the enemy; to defeat the enemy, sometimes you needed to become the enemy. Here, though, there was no enemy.

He pulled up in front of the store, parking next to two pickups he recognized as Clement Caldwell’s and Harvey Spellman’s.

The wooden screen door squeaked and Spellman came out
carrying a twelve-pack of Natural Light. The two men exchanged familiar greetings.

Mallory’s store sold a little of everything—milk, beer, soda, toothpaste, chips, bread, used books, local art, bait, ball caps. He called it Harbor Store because that was how people named things here. There was a Harbor Tackle, Harbor Inn, Harbor Books, Harbor Fish Market, and Harbor Real Estate.

He’d run the store himself for most of the first year. Then one day Clem had walked in, asking for a job. Mallory hired him to work the register three nights a week. But Clem had his own ideas and began taking on extra hours whether he was paid for them or not. Before long, he was calling himself the store “manager.” It seemed to give him an identity and Mallory didn’t mind the free time.

Clement was seated behind the counter as he came in, wearing his knit cap and dark, tattered flannel jacket. He only shaved every few days; this wasn’t one of them.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been swimming again.”

Mallory suppressed a smile. The store smelled of old pinewood and microwave popcorn. He stood in front of the space heater, watching the brightening harbor lights.