The Director: A Novel Read online

  “Christ, how did you get all that? It’s not on any budget I’ve seen.”

  “It was part of the same authority that gave us the IOC platforms overseas. Right before Director Jankowski left. It was a package. Everyone signed off on it.”

  “Except me.”

  The director leaned back and ran his fingers through his blond hair and then patted it in place. He wanted to trust the young computer wizard, but this was his first week on the job.

  “I wish we had more time.”

  Morris’s tone was calmer now, more reassuring.

  “I can do it, Mr. Director. It’s on me, if something goes wrong. My resignation will be on your desk.”

  Weber laughed at the false bravado.

  “Oh, come on, Morris. Don’t overdo it. I’ll tell Sandra Bock to prepare the paperwork. Just don’t screw it up.”

  Morris offered a thin smile. “Thanks, Mr. Director.” He flipped a half salute. “How soon should I get started?”

  “Fly to Germany tomorrow. Meet the base chief. Her name is Sandoval. Help her out.”

  Morris adjusted his glasses. The stubble on his face looked darker, as the afternoon light deepened.

  “Who’s running the case, me or her?”

  “You are. Find him, if you can. And work up your plan for getting him out and debriefing him.”

  “And you’re okay that Mr. Beasley will be unhappy with this. The Hamburg base chief reports to him.”

  “That’s my problem. I’m the director. Be back here at five for a staff meeting. Beasley will be here, along with the other ‘clowns.’ I’ll tell everyone this is the way I want to run it. You can explain your plan.”

  Morris looked at the director curiously. He was a controlled, restrained man, but there was a flicker in one eye, almost a tremor.

  “This will rock the boat, Mr. Director. People won’t be pleased.”

  “Good. I get paid to take risks. You’re my first one at the agency. So like I said, don’t screw up.”

  Morris smiled. The momentary tremor had vanished. He gave the director a thumbs-up, and then shook his hand.

  “You need to own this, Pownzor,” said the director. “I mean it.”

  Morris nodded gravely. Then the shy smile returned as he walked out the door.

  7

  WASHINGTON

  Marie knocked on Graham Weber’s door again a little before four and said they were ready for him downstairs in the bubble. He had scheduled the first of a series of “town hall meetings” with the CIA workforce. He’d held similar sessions for years at his company, open and relaxed, and it had always been part of his management style. The deputy director, Peter Pingray, had offered to introduce him onstage, as a way to help Weber get settled, but Weber had declined. Pingray was an emblem of a past that Weber wanted to eradicate. Sandra Bock, his chief of staff, escorted him to the private elevator and rode down with him to the terrace just to the left of the main lobby. As they descended, Weber thought about the confluence of events that day: the note in his drawer; the visitor in Hamburg. He had modeled what he wanted to do at the CIA, but he couldn’t control what his economist friends liked to call the “exogenous” variables.

  “What are you going to say?” asked Bock.

  “Nothing they’ll like very much,” Weber answered with a wink. “But at least I’ll scare them a little.”

  Weber heard a smattering of applause when he stepped into the lobby; it got louder at first, and then quieter, and then stopped altogether. People really didn’t know what to expect. They were curious, nervous, pissed off, but mostly they wanted to get a glimpse of the man.

  The new director walked across the marble floor, past where the Donovan statue used to be. The crowd parted to allow him to exit the front door. People were standing on the statue of Nathan Hale, just to the left outside, to get a better view. Weber continued past the statue to the door of the round-domed auditorium. He hadn’t fully realized how needy the place was until he saw all those wary, expectant looks.

  It was hot inside the bubble, with so many people. Weber was already tieless, but he took off his jacket when he got to the podium and laid it over a chair. He had the easy, boyish smile he adopted in public. A soft face had always been a useful mask for him.

  Weber looked around the room. They were so young, the people in the audience. What was he going to tell them? Not the same old shibboleths about intelligence that they’d been hearing for decades. He wasn’t one of the old boys; they weren’t his lies to tell and he had no reason not to be honest.

  Weber put up his hands for people to stop clapping, but they didn’t, so he just started speaking. “Stop, please, and sit down, or I’ll think you’re all just trying to suck up and will lose respect for everyone in this room.”

  He meant it as a joke, sort of. It got people to take their seats. Nobody in the CIA wanted to look like an ass-kisser, though the place was as filled with them as any bureaucracy, maybe more so.

  “I asked to meet with you at the end of my first week as director, before I forgot why I took the job. This is the real version of what I think, before it gets rubbed down. So take notes, if you like. Tell your retiree friends to call the Washington Post. And I know who you leakers are, by the way, especially you, Jim.”

  He pointed to Jim Duncan, the Africa Division chief in the Clandestine Service, who was a notorious gossip, according to his chief of staff, Bock. That drew laughter from people who knew Duncan, and even those who didn’t, it was so unexpected to call him out that way. Agency employees were terrible gossips, especially when they didn’t like a new director. They would eviscerate their bosses, leak by leak, and they had already started on Weber.

  “Let me begin by stating frankly what everyone in this room knows. There is something seriously wrong at the CIA. Our former director is under criminal investigation. Many agency employees have testified before the grand jury. Even our lawyers are hiring lawyers. Morale is awful. I’m told that operations in some parts of the world have essentially stopped. The only thing that’s keeping us alive, people tell me, is our Information Operations, but that’s not much help to the rest of the building.

  “And the president has asked me to fix it. I want to start by telling you what I told the president. I’m not sure I can.”

  There were a few groans in the audience. People looked puzzled. They were accustomed to upbeat rhetoric from new directors, wrapped with a lame joke or two, but not to getting hit with a two-by-four.

  “You all know that I got the job by saying no to the intelligence community. That’s a strange credential, I realize, and a lot of you probably are suspicious about it. But the president decided he liked what I said, and when I told him that I thought the CIA was stuck in the past, he liked that, too. So as uncomfortable as many of you may be with an outsider as director, I have to say: Get over it, please. I got the job, and I have orders from the president to make changes. If you think you can work with me, great. If not, there are a lot of wonderful places to work outside the CIA and you may want to look around.”

  That brought a general murmuring. These were government workers. The very idea they might lose their jobs was heresy. Weber raised his hand for silence.

  “A lot of you will say it’s not your fault. And yes, it’s true that the agency gets mistreated in Washington. The only thing liberals and conservatives agree on these days is that they don’t like the CIA. But that’s part of the agency’s job, isn’t it, to take shots from politicians? If people just had nice things to say, they could say them to the State Department or the Pentagon. Am I right? I think so.”

  Where was he going with this? From the nervous silence, it was obvious that people didn’t know.

  “No, the CIA’s problem isn’t the undeserved blame. It’s the deserved blame. From what I have seen and heard, too much of the work product is mediocre. Too little real intelligence work gets done, because people are so busy trying to protect the past and avoid getting hit by the congressional invest
igation. It’s like working at a company that’s losing money. It’s no fun. Under previous management, it appears that people were so contemptuous of the organization they were actually ripping it off. That’s how bad it’s gotten. People have been looting their own workplace.”

  A few people began to applaud, not sure what else to do, and then they stopped. He waited and let the silence build until it was embarrassing and people were fidgeting in their seats, which was exactly what he wanted.

  “The president told me that we have a morale problem, and that I should fix it. But with all due respect to anyone in the audience from the White House, that is inaccurate. The CIA has a performance problem. The bad morale is a symptom. The disease is something else. And from what people tell me, it has been going on for a long time.

  “Now the question is, why does the CIA have a performance problem? Why is it that so many of the things the agency does turn out badly? Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria. How can you do better for policy makers—but forget about them, for the moment—do better for yourselves?”

  “Kill more bad guys,” said a voice in the back.

  “Oh, very good,” answered Weber, without missing a beat. “Let’s turn the agency into a force of paramilitary killers, full-time. Give up on spying and just shoot people, twenty-four/seven. Sorry, friends, but that’s part of the problem. This is an intelligence agency, not Murder, Incorporated. We’re supposed to gather the secret information that can protect the country; we’re not operating a shooting gallery.”

  “What’s your answer, Mr. Director?” asked Pingray in the front row. “How do you propose to get the agency back on track? That’s what everyone would like to hear.”

  Pingray was a tidy man; short, bald, round-faced. He asked the question sincerely, with the voice of someone who knew how many obstacles Weber would encounter, even if the new director didn’t. But Weber didn’t really hear him. He jumped on the question.

  “The answer is the same as in any failing organization. Find out what’s wrong. Then promote the good people who can fix it and fire the bad ones who can’t. What’s the point of taking the job, otherwise? Not just me as director, but all of you: Why work for this unpopular, low-pay organization—except to do great work, and be respected for it?

  “At the risk of sounding immodest, let me tell you all something: I know how to fix organizations that are broken. I’ve been doing it all my life. But it’s like a twelve-step process. You have to want to get better. You have to admit to yourself that if you don’t change, you’re going to end up dead. For the CIA, the past is an addiction. You’re going to have to quit.

  “So that’s the end of my little pep talk. But you’ll be hearing more from me, I promise. And please, no applause or I’ll know you didn’t hear anything I just said. Now, any questions?”

  The air had been sucked out of the room. Nobody spoke, or even moved for a moment.

  “Nobody?” He looked around the auditorium. “When you kick an old dog, at least you get a few growls. Come on, people.”

  There were a few hands. Employees asked predictable questions about pay freezes and furloughs and benefits changes, all of which Weber said could be better answered by HR. Someone asked him his views on “targeted killing,” which was a euphemism for drones. He said it was too early for him to know what he thought; ask in another month. One person praised him for speaking so frankly, to tepid applause. Nobody was ready to call him on the heart of what he’d said about performance, because most of them knew it was true. They were working for a failing enterprise; he said he was going to turn it around. They had to hope he pulled it off, even the ones who resented him.

  As Weber made his way out of the bubble, there was stone-cold silence like the quiet after a funeral, and then a low hum when he was out the door and everyone was murmuring, asking whether he meant it, if this was for real, if the agency was actually going to have a director who would kick ass in a way that no current employee could remember.

  Weber walked back across the marble floor of the lobby. The CIA had been built in the brutalist modern style of the 1960s that eschewed ornamentation. There were no murals or paintings; only the stars in the wall to mark the agency officers who had died on duty, and the empty space where the Donovan statue had stood.

  As Weber walked past the security gate where employees badged in each morning, his eyes focused on a sign beside the guard desk. It listed all the incongruous things that were forbidden inside the building: EXPLOSIVES AND INCENDIARY DEVICES, ANIMALS OTHER THAN GUIDE DOGS, SOLICITING AND DISTRIBUTING HANDBILLS, DISTURBANCES, GAMBLING. He’d seen this warning sign every day that week as he moved about the building. He turned to the bulky, assuring form of Bock, who was walking next to him.

  “That sign is ridiculous,” said Weber.

  “Say what, sir?”

  “‘Gambling’ and ‘creating disturbances’? I thought that was what intelligence officers did for a living. And ‘distributing handbills’? Is that really a problem here? When was the last time someone gave you a handbill, Sandra? It makes us look asinine, to have a moronic sign like that where visitors can see it.”

  “You’re in a pissy mood, sir.” It was the first time Bock had been even modestly disrespectful.

  Weber laughed.

  “Maybe, but I’m right about that sign. It’s silly. Get rid of it.”

  And the sign was gone the next day.

  8

  WASHINGTON

  The senior staff gathered in the conference room across from the director’s office as five o’clock approached. People were trying not to talk about the director’s speech, but the mood was stiff and awkward, and they swiveled in their chairs or poured themselves glasses of water. The room was antiseptic and impersonal as only a government meeting room can be: a big table with a glass top; overstuffed leather chairs; television monitors for the now-inevitable video-teleconferencing hookups. Weber was a few minutes late, and people were looking at their watches when Sandra Bock arrived and said the director wanted everyone to gather instead across the hall.

  The director’s office wasn’t big enough for the group, really. People had to sit three on a sofa and perch on the arms of chairs. But Weber liked it better this way, crowded and informal. He pulled up one of the chairs next to his big oak desk and parked himself in the arc of the circle. He still looked too young for the job: lean, fit, still some of his West Coast tan and that blond-haired baby face, peculiar for a middle-aged man.

  He panned the group: At the center was Beasley, the chief of the Clandestine Service, resplendent in one of his tailor-made English suits and a Turnbull & Asser shirt with blue stripes and a pure white collar that set off his handsome brown face. Beasley looked at the new director and shook his head.

  “Hell of a speech in the bubble just now, Mr. Director. Pow! Knocked me out. It made me want to commit suicide, actually, but that’s my problem, right?”

  “Right,” said Weber.

  Next to Beasley was Ruth Savin, the general counsel. She was a handsome woman, with jet-black hair and dark Mediterranean features that made her stand out among the Mormons, Catholics and fading WASPs who still, somehow, seemed to think of the agency as their place. She had come to the agency ten years before after a stint as staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and had shaped the legal framework of every piece of secret business since her arrival.

  The heads of other directorates filled up the seats: Loomis Braden, the top analyst, who was deputy director for intelligence and known to all as “the DDI”; Marcia Klein, who ran Support; Tom Avery, who headed Science and Technology. These were the people who once upon a time would have been known as barons, but now were more like caretakers.

  Standing just outside the inner circle was the tall, ascetic figure of James Morris, the head of Information Operations. His casual dress, T-shirt and linen jacket signaled that he was different in age, temperament and so many other qualities. He had one hand behind his back; hidden from view, he was tur
ning a quarter over his fingers, the way a magician will sometimes do.

  As Weber was about to start the meeting, the door opened and in walked a large man, dressed in a three-piece pin-striped suit with a gold watch chain across the vest. He was carrying in his hand a brown fedora, which he had worn outdoors. On his arm was an umbrella. He was round-faced, hair trimmed to a short buzz; he had a habit, even entering a room unannounced, of looking over the tops of his glasses, so that his eyebrows seemed perpetually raised in a quizzical look.

  “Hello, Cyril,” said Weber. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Howdy do,” said Cyril Hoffman genially, with a flourish of his hat. People made way for him on the large sofa. Hoffman fluffed his ample coat jacket out behind him as he sat down, like a concert pianist in tails taking his seat at the piano.

  At the last minute, Weber had decided to invite Hoffman, the director of National Intelligence. It was partly an instinct for self-protection that he wanted Hoffman with him inside the tent as he faced his first real problem. But he also respected Hoffman’s judgment. The DNI had been around the intelligence community for his entire adult life. He was the closest thing the country had to a permanent undersecretary for intelligence. There were very few secrets that he didn’t know, and few messes that he hadn’t helped clean up.

  Weber cleared his throat. He was nervous, for just an instant.

  “We have a problem,” he began “It just arrived today. Some of you have seen the cable traffic, but for those who haven’t, let me explain what happened. Today in Hamburg, Germany, a young man walked into our consulate and asked to see me personally, the new director. He told the base chief that we have a security breach. He’s a ‘hacker,’ or claims to be, so he didn’t put it that way. He said we have been hacked. He said the names of our personnel have been compromised in Germany and Switzerland, and he had a list to prove it. He wouldn’t stay in one of our safe houses, as the base chief proposed, because he said our information wasn’t secure.”