The Director: A Novel

  “Seriously, I wonder sometimes who writes the script, not in general, but at the agency. I’m told you know the real story. The ‘secret history,’ that’s what a friend said. And I’d like to know the truth. That’s why I’m here.”

  Peabody’s eyes widened. A thin smile crossed his lips. It was as if he had been waiting for someone like Morris to walk into his lair.

  “Ramona said I’d like you, and I do, already.”

  Morris winced a moment at the mention of her name. It was the biggest secret he knew.

  “Roger that. I need to understand the agency; not the ‘what,’ but the ‘why.’”

  “Oh, yes, I can tell you a bit; quite a lot, actually. But it will surprise you, if you’ve never heard it. It will make you question the institution where you are employed.”

  “I’ve been asking questions since the day I walked in the door. I want answers.”

  Peabody chortled. His visitor was so eager.

  “Well, now, let me get some books, so I can confide these mysteries properly.”

  Peabody retreated to his study and returned with several volumes whose pages had been marked with yellow stickers. One fat book, nearly six hundred pages, had the bland title Donovan and the CIA. A slimmer volume was called Wild Bill and Intrepid. They were both written by one Thomas F. Troy.

  “Not exactly bedtime reading,” said Peabody. “But in their way, they are page-turners. Mr. Troy was my colleague at the agency, if you’re wondering. The big book was compiled originally as a secret agency study, but it was declassified some years ago. Troy wrote the second book after he retired. For reasons you will soon understand, the agency has not called attention to them.”

  “What’s controversial? If they’re unclassified histories, why would anyone care?”

  “Because, my young friend, they suggest to the careful reader that the CIA may have been created by another intelligence service, namely the Secret Intelligence Service of Great Britain, aka MI6.”

  Morris sat back in his chair. He hadn’t known what to expect from Peabody, but certainly not this.

  “That’s pretty rad,” he said.

  “Indeed. What I am going to explain is the origin of the species, as it were.”

  Peabody opened the fat book to page 417 and pushed it across the table to Morris.

  “Here,” he said. “Read this.”

  It was a letter, dated April 26, 1941, from William J. Donovan to Frank Knox, secretary of the navy and one of the closest confidants of President Franklin Roosevelt.

  “Read it, aloud, please.”

  Morris studied the first few lines of the letter and then began:

  Dear Frank:

  Following your suggestion I am telling you briefly of the instrumentalities through which the British Government gathers its information in foreign countries.

  I think it should be read with these considerations in mind. Intelligence operations should not be controlled by party exigencies. It is one of the most vital means of national defense. As such it should be headed by someone appointed by the President directly responsible to him and to no one else. It should have a fund solely for the purpose of foreign investigation and the expenditures should be secret and made solely at the discretion of the President . . .

  Peabody took back the book.

  “You understand the implications, I trust. It is more than seven months before Pearl Harbor. FDR’s man has asked Donovan to research how the Brits run their intelligence service, and Donovan is reporting back the British system so the Americans can . . . well, let’s just say it . . . copy it.

  “But that’s not the official version, mind you,” Peabody continued. “The cover story is that Donovan created the CIA in a sort of clandestine version of the immaculate birth. Allen Dulles described the CIA as, and I quote, ‘Bill Donovan’s dream.’”

  “But the official version is a lie,” broke in Morris.

  “Indeed. When there was discussion of making the full details public in the 1980s, the CIA’s inspector general, Lyman Kirkpatrick, argued it would be ‘extremely questionable’ and ‘shocking indeed.’ Here, again, I am indebted to the scholarship of my friend Troy.”

  “You’re saying the Brits wrote the operating system. We would say in geek-speak that they owned the firmware.”

  “In any speak. It was a controlled operation.”

  Peabody turned the pages until he found another yellow marker.

  “I’ll show you another little something. It is a memorandum dated June 27, 1941. The subject is the proper organization of the Office of the Coordinator of Information, which was the predecessor of the Office of Strategic Services.

  Peabody opened the marked passage for Morris to see.

  “Note the author, please. Commander Ian Fleming, the man who wrote the James Bond novels. As you can see, he goes through the whole order of battle: headquarters; chief of staff, country sections; liaison officers. It’s all there, on the SIS model. Our friend Troy found a note from him talking about ‘my memorandum to Bill about how to create an American Secret Service’ and calling it ‘the cornerstone of the future OSS.’

  “And there’s more, my friend. The Brits were quite pleased with themselves, as well you might imagine. Churchill’s office was licking its chops, as if the kingly lion had devoured the innocent and bewildered lamb.”

  Peabody took the smaller volume, Wild Bill and Intrepid, and leafed through the pages until he found the passage he wanted.

  “Here’s what Churchill himself knew, in black and white, according to his personal office. It is a letter dated September 18, 1941, written by Sir Desmond Morton in the PM’s office to Colonel E. I. Stark. Perhaps you would read it to me.”

  “Out loud?”

  Peabody nodded. Morris adjusted his glasses and began reading the words on the page:

  Another most secret fact of which the Prime Minister is aware . . . is that to all intents and purposes U.S. Security is being run for them at the President’s request by the British. A British officer sits in Washington with Edgar Hoover and General Bill Donovan for this purpose and reports to the President. It is of course essential that fact should not be known in view of the furious uproar it would cause if known to the Isolationists.

  “There it is,” said Peabody. “Can it be any clearer? They’re the hidden hand. Of course they own the CIA. They created it! Read the history, Mr. Morris. It’s all there.”

  Morris looked left and right, as if he feared someone were listening. But it was just the two of them. Two agency hands, having a conversation.

  “Why are you telling me this?” asked Morris.

  “Because you need to know, first of all. You need to understand why our agency has been such a menace in American life. I searched for the answer my whole career, but it’s so obvious, once you grasp it. The CIA is a foreign implant. It was created in secret by another government. It is a covert action. That is a puzzle it took me years to solve and I want you to understand. We all do.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” asked Morris quietly.

  “Like-minded individuals. American patriots. People who believe in liberty. You know one of them, our dear Ramona. But there are many more, unseen. And we are all looking to you, sir.”

  “Why me? I’m the computer guy.”

  “Because you can do something about it. You can break free of the monstrous secret history that I have narrated. You have the access, and the power. You can strike a blow that nobody else can. This is your moment, if you have the mettle to grasp it.”

  Morris stood as if to go. But Peabody fixed him with his cunning eyes and shook his head. Morris knew in that instant that it was true, what Ramona Kyle had said. He had to keep going. It was impossible to turn back once he had started down this road. Morris sat back down in his chair across from his host.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  Peabody nodded. The thin smile returned.

  “Have you ever heard of the Bank for International Settlemen
ts?” he asked.

  “I know a little,” answered Morris. “It’s in Switzerland, in Basel, right? It’s sort of a central bank for central banks.”

  “All correct,” said Peabody. “But in a deeper sense, it is one of the cornerstones of the Anglo-American plan for the postwar world. It is a surprising fact, perhaps, that FDR wanted to kill the BIS in 1944, because it had done some rather unpleasant business with the Nazis. But the British wouldn’t hear of it. They insisted. This was to be a symbol of the post-imperial order, the Anglo-American condominium which would control the world of finance, by managing the accounts of every central bank. And so it sits in Basel, a quiet, unobtrusive but unshakable symbol of the permanent order of things.”

  “And what do you want me to do about the BIS?”

  Peabody smiled again, more broadly this time, a grin that stretched nearly ear to ear. He spoke with a vulgarity that was unlikely for his age, but underlined his patrician rebellion.

  “We want you to take it down, my boy. We want you to hack it up the ass until its electronic eyes turn brown.”

  Morris returned to work at the Information Operations Center the next morning. He’d had a fitful sleep, but drove out early to suburban Virginia in his Prius. He buried himself in his vaultlike office at the far end of the operations room, as he always did when he was in Washington. Ariel Weiss stopped by for a brief chat, to go over pending personnel decisions.

  In the afternoon, Morris visited Headquarters, at the director’s request. It would be the first time he had talked in person with Graham Weber since he’d returned from Germany. Morris was dressed a bit more traditionally than usual, in a collared shirt and a blue blazer. With the addition of a tie, he would have looked like an associate professor of computer science going to meet with the dean. Morris was nervous, wondering if the director was going to fire him. That would complicate things.

  Weber greeted Morris in the sitting room of his private dining room, under a portrait of the implacable Richard Helms, whose profile made him look like the last of the Caesars. Tea and cookies, which seemed the essential nourishment of the intelligence service, were promptly delivered.

  “You look tired,” said Weber.

  “I’ve been working too hard,” said Morris. “Too much stress on this German thing. But I’ve got some leave coming. Maybe I’ll take a week. First, I’ve got some work overseas.”

  “You’re no use to anyone if you get exhausted.”

  “Yes, sir.” Morris adjusted his glasses.

  “I’ve been thinking about what happened in Hamburg,” said Weber. “And I’ve been talking to some people around town.”

  Morris tensed.

  “I appreciate that you offered your resignation, but I’m not going to accept it. The death of that boy wasn’t your fault, and I need you for what’s ahead. You’re the only one who really understands these systems. The others pretend to, but they don’t.”

  Morris blinked. He swallowed hard.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Weber put up his hand.

  “Don’t thank me yet. The hard part is just beginning. Have you come up with anything?”

  “I just see ripples in the water, so far. We’re working some new penetrations of the hacker networks. We’re trolling the groups where Biel was active.”

  “You’re doing this under your ‘special authority,’ I take it.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s the joint program I told you about. I have some new . . . ideas. Things I’m experimenting with.”

  “Will they get me in trouble?”

  Morris laughed. His eyes were pinpricks.

  “Heck, no, sir. They’re in a good cause. Down with the old, in with the new. That’s your mantra, isn’t it, Mr. Director?”

  Weber studied the young man. He prized himself on his judgment, on his willingness to take the right risks, to do the unconventional thing when it was necessary. That had led him to James Morris, and now he was doubling down on the bet he had made. As a businessman, he knew he should lay off some of that risk, but it was harder in government.

  “I can count on you, right? I need strong hearts.”

  Morris gazed back at him. His head was motionless, but at the last moment before he spoke, there was the slightest tremor.

  “Yes, sir. I’m good as gold. We’re going to go to the center of this thing and take it down.”

  Weber smiled. Morris’s handshake was firm, too tight a squeeze perhaps, but a show of strength. The director said something genial as he walked Morris to the door. On his way back to his desk, Weber felt oddly not quite as reassured as he had hoped by the conversation. Morris was just fatigued, he told himself. Even computer geniuses had their off days.

  13

  SILVERTON, COLORADO

  From the window of Ramona Kyle’s cabin, she could see the old mining town sewn like a cross-stitch into the valley below. The trees on her hillside were shimmering golden red, the leaves swirling down Highway 110 toward the north end of town. In every direction were the jagged teeth of the San Juan Mountains, guarding the western gate of the Rockies. Kyle’s cabin was up near the tree line, amid the gray rock that reached almost to the October sky. Nobody with any sense lived here. The highway north from Durango had already been closed once by early snow. In a few weeks, this place would be perfect desolation, populated only by recluses and daredevils.

  She was an elfin figure, sitting in a wing chair by the big window, her red hair gathered in a frizzy pony tail, a magazine across her lap. This was her hiding place, an address no one knew, on a county road that even the locals rarely visited. At the San Juan County Courthouse on Greene Street, a few miles below, a deed was registered for the cabin, but it wasn’t in her name or traceable to anything she owned. The same was true with her satellite Internet connection, which was her only requirement here, other than the space and silence. Here she could be no one and nowhere.

  She thought about James Morris. He was someone and everywhere, enfolded in a world she despised. She had launched him, but she suspected that he was as oblivious of his ultimate purpose as a spinning metal bullet of its target. He took his actions without understanding their consequences. He was innocent, in that way, precious and alone. She wanted to protect him.

  A burning log crackled in the fireplace behind her. Kyle rose from her chair and put more wood on the grate, poking at the embers until the flame rose nearly to the damper. Above the fireplace was a Renaissance painting she had bought from a dealer in Florence a year ago, after she had sold her interest in an Italian startup. It was a minor work, from the school of a second-rank painter in Padua, but it appealed to Kyle. It showed the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, the man tied to a tree and pierced with arrows. There was in the martyr’s eyes a look of helpless surrender, almost quizzical, not joy but submission. After she bought the painting, she had researched Sebastian’s improbable life. His Roman friends were butchered gruesomely, one by one: Zoe, hung by her heels over a fire until she choked; Tranquilinus, stoned to death; Castulus, racked and buried alive; Tiburtus, beheaded. Sebastian refused to flee. A quiver of arrows pierced every limb, but even then he didn’t die. He confronted the emperor and spoke out in his agony, taunting Diocletian for his cowardly murder of the Christians, until he was finally beaten into death and silence.

  Kyle returned to her chair. The sun had broken through the lowering afternoon sky, illuminating the whole of the town. The outcroppings of Kendall Peak, which rose from the high valley, were bathed in white sunlight, while the dells and crevices fell into a deep shadow of silver black. It would be snowing again soon over Coal Pass and Mola Pass, perhaps closing the two-lane road into Silverton once more. Kyle felt selfish. A person could live and die here with the dignity of a wild animal. She was letting James Morris do the dirty business; requiring it of him, in truth.

  Kyle had given up on half-measures. She had concluded over the last several years that America could not change course. The forces of oppression had captured the state so comp
letely that they were the state. The people were the subjects of a tyrannical power that couldn’t be reformed or appeased or changed, but only destroyed.

  The clouds were darkening over the San Juan range. The sunlight had vanished as quickly as it had come. She picked up the magazine she had been reading. It was Spectrum, the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. The cover story she had been reading was titled, “Would You Shoot Your Neighbor’s Drone?” That was what the world was coming to. Even the geeks were becoming fascists. Kyle put the magazine aside and closed her eyes.

  There had been a moment when she had allowed herself to hope. It was a few months ago, when the White House had first floated the name of Graham Weber as the president’s choice as the new director of the scandal-plagued Central Intelligence Agency. Weber had a reputation as a skeptic, a man who was connected to the intelligence Leviathan but also critical of it. He had refused to carry out the demand of a National Security Letter that had been delivered to his company by the FBI; Kyle knew the story. Weber claimed that the order was unconstitutional, and he had gotten away with it. James Morris even knew the new director; he had been Weber’s guide at a hackers convention a year before, and Morris had wanted to please him, as he did everyone. Kyle had seen it as an opening—a chink in the armor through which she could insert the explosive powder of change. She was pitiless that way; if James Morris or anyone else thought he had a friend inside the heart of the beast, he was a fool.

  All that afternoon Kyle ruminated, until the sun set and the sky fell to a last rosy pink in the west above Anvil Mountain. Kyle wondered if there was a last chance that she had missed, a way to subvert the structure without so much collateral damage. Was there a way to communicate to Graham Weber, the CIA director, that he had a choice? The message he needed to hear was that he could still be the man who said no; he could join in the subversion and dismantlement of an unjust system. He had only just entered the gates of the castle; he didn’t have to take the side of the defenders. He could be a liberator.