The Book of Spies

24

Washington, D.C.
SENATOR LEGGATE put on her bathrobe, lit a cigarette, and waved smoke from her eyes. Washington was a town where favors were exchanged like poker chips. To survive, one learned to be helpful while being careful with whom one played. If you wanted to be a serious contender in the nation's fast, treacherous political waters, you had to be an Olympian at the game.
While she had a sense of ominousness about Thom Randklev's naked laying out of her options if she refused to help, she also felt a sense of exhilaration. He had agreed to her high number easily. That told her he had access to even more cash. What frightened her was whether she could handle him--or herself--if she ever had to refuse.
But that was the future. Maybe years from now. With luck, never. She marched into her office, turned on her desk lamp, spun open her Rolodex, and dialed.
"A good early morning to you, Ed. This is Donna Leggate."
"Good Lord, Donna, do you know what time it is?" Ed Casey was a top gun in Langley's Support to Mission team, which built and operated CIA facilities, created and maintained secure communications, managed the CIA phone company, and hired, trained, and assigned officers to every directorate. His department also handled payroll, which meant he had access to the records of everyone the CIA employed--as long as they were on the books.
"I've been up for hours reading classified reports," she told him, fabricating a lie he would believe. "Sorry to bother you, but I'd like your help with something before I go into the office. One of the reports mentions an officer named Gloria Feit, in the Clandestine Service, but there's nothing about to whom she reports. I'd like to know that as well as what she and her boss do."
"You'll need to go through the D/CIA's office."
"If I'm asking questions about this, others on the subcommittee will be, too. Going through the D/CIA opens up the possibility of a leak, and then the press dogs will drool for everything they can claw up. The reason I'm calling is because I know you and I are on the same page about protecting Langley whenever possible."
"There's a chain of command. I don't buck it."
"As I was dialing," she continued thoughtfully, "I was remembering when you told me you needed a college nest egg for your kids. How old are they now?"
There was a change in Ed's voice. Perhaps a hint of guilt. "I appreciate your paving the way so I could buy shares in the Parsifal Group."
She rammed the point home: "Has it been a good investment for them?"
"Yes," he admitted.
"I'm delighted. I think all of us like to help each other whenever we can. What I'm asking I can get anyway. The only difference is I want it now, while it's fresh in my mind."
"What's the report about?"
"It's M-classified. Sorry." "M" indicated an extraordinarily sensitive covert operation. Among the highest the United States bestowed, single-letter security clearances meant the information was so secret it could be referred to only by initials, and there was no way Ed would be privy to it. "You can e-mail your office for the information about Gloria Feit."
"Hold on," he grumbled.
Senator Leggate smiled to herself. She had watched her husband cajole and threaten to get what he wanted, and now she was the one in the power seat.
Johannesburg, South Africa
THOM RANDKLEV stood before the floor-to-ceiling window in his office, hands clasped comfortably behind, and stared out at the rocks and shales of the Witwatersrand--"White Water's Ridge" in Afrikaans. As clouds drifted past and the sun blazed through, pockets of quartz glittered, attracting his gaze. For a moment he felt a fierce sense of pride.
The Witwatersrand was the source of 40 percent of the gold ever mined on the planet, and it had provided his family's first small fortune. Then his lazy father had lost everything in drink, divorces, and wild spending. But now Thom had all of it back and more, including homes in San Moritz, Paris, and New York City, which was where he had met Senator Leggate and begun cultivating her. As he had assured the director, she was the one who could handle the first step in resolving the problem of why the CIA wanted to exhume "Charles Sherback."
As his mind roamed over his accomplishments, he turned to stare at the books stretching across two long walls of his office. He had been disturbed by the director's information, but at the same time he had complete confidence the situation--whatever it was--could be resolved.
What mattered was the Library of Gold had remained secret for centuries because of careful attention to detail, and that secrecy was the hallmark of those who had inherited the library. In today's world, the biggest wars were fought inside boardrooms behind closed doors, and the book club knew exactly how to train, fight, and win every skirmish. And that was what this was--a mere skirmish. As he ruminated about that, he remembered what Plato had written: "Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself." How true, he decided as he poured himself a drink.
When the phone rang, he snapped it up.
As he had hoped, it was Donna Leggate. "Gloria Feit is chief of staff for Catherine Doyle. Doyle has some special assignment, but there's no record of what it is. Since I know something about these matters, I believe Doyle has a team--and it's deep black. And that means there may be no official record of employees or missions. Ed wouldn't tell me more. Frankly, I doubt he knows more, because it's above his security grade. Doyle appears to me to be a NOC." Nonofficial cover officers, NOCs, were those highly talented and daring officers who operated without the official cover of their CIA identification. If arrested in a foreign country, they could be tried and executed as spies.
"Thank you, Donna. I appreciate it. I'll put my people to work filtering in the money to your reelection campaign. We want good friends like you to stay in office."
As soon as he got rid of her, he phoned the director and relayed the information.
Stockholm, Sweden
IT WAS noon in Stockholm, and Carl Lindstrom was sitting in the leather recliner chair in his office, reading financial reports, when the director called. Once he understood what the director wanted, Carl went to his desk, checked his e-mail, and found the note forwarded to him that contained the information the Washington break-in artist had uncovered from Ed Casey's secure e-mail to Langley.
Now he had a record not only of the routing, the message, and the address to which it was sent, but also the clandestine codes used.
With that, he phoned his chief of computer security, Jan Mardis. A former black-hat hacker herself, Jan was in charge of uncovering and stopping attacks on their worldwide network. She also kept her staff's expertise honed with regularly simulated assaults on their systems, designed hacking tools, and drafted network-infiltration tactics.
Upon occasion, she did special jobs for him. Through him, the Library of Gold's director had used her several times over the past few months.
"I have a challenge for you, Jan," Lindstrom told her. "And when you accomplish it, you can count on a generous bonus. I need you to crack into the CIA's computer system. There's a particular team I want you to find. It's run by Catherine Doyle. One office employee is Gloria Feit. The unit is probably black, which means they're going to appear to be unlisted, but we both know there's a record somewhere. I've sent you an e-mail with the information you'll need."
"Interesting." Jan Mardis's voice was usually bored, but not now. "Okay, I've read your e-mail. Barring complications, this should be fun, a dip in Lake Malaren on a hot summer day, as it were. I'll route my signals through multiple countries--China and Russia, for sure. That'll stop the digital cops cold. I'll get back to you."
Carl Lindstrom stood and stretched. Cyber crime was the fastest growing criminal enterprise of the twenty-first century, and his software corporation, Lindstrom Strategies, was one of the fastest rising in the world. It had been attacked time and again. But because of Jan Mardis, no one had ever breached the firewalls. He had complete confidence in her not only because of her skill, but also because of human factors: He had saved her from a jail term by pulling strings in the judicial system, which included his promise to hire her. The occasional side job he secretly gave her allowed her to exercise her love of taking on some of the most highly secure organizations on the planet. And he paid her excessively well. As Machiavelli wrote, to succeed, it was critical to understand what motivated an individual--and use it.
As he waited to hear back from her, he walked to his bookcase, which was filled with leather-bound and embossed volumes. He pulled out a collection by August Strindberg, one of his favorite modern authors. He opened the book, and his gaze fell upon a passage: "A writer is only a reporter for what he has lived."
He thought about that, then he applied it to himself. His entire life's work, rising from the slums of Stockholm to create and head Lindstrom Strategies, was a reflection of what he had learned about the need to go to any length to armor against the indignities of poverty. With pride, he decided his corporation was his book, the book he had written.
An hour later, he was reading financial reports in his recliner again when the phone rang. He reached for it.
"It's me, boss," Jan Mardis said. "I've got a bonus for you. I've got access to Catherine Doyle's office computer. Is there anything you want me to look for?"
He sat up straight, and his pulse sped with excitement. "Send me a copy of all Doyle's e-mails for the last twenty-four hours. Then get the hell out of there."