The moment he obtained a position in government-a low-level slot at State-Gates sought out people at other agencies, and on the Hill. He made these people his friends, and he did it by finding what they aspired to and helping them get there. In a few years he had his loyal set, and he was soon able to persuade those who could afford it to join him at Cleo’s. They developed a rhythm-play a few sets of squash, shower up, get together in the lounge for dinner, smoke a cigar, maybe a pipe, sip an after-dinner drink. Probe issues of foreign policy-define foreign policy. Make some quiet vows to run it.
When an acquaintance and casual member of his power network received a political appointment as director of central intelligence, Gates spent a cool four hundred dollars on a steak dinner with the man and gleaned a deputy directorship in CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Because of his influence he was given two Central American countries, and just like that-fewer than five years in-Gates was running operatives from the shadowy corners of a men’s club, just as he’d envisioned it.
He took pains to ensure that the job security, and, where appropriate, physical well-being of the people reporting to him were directly tied to his own supremacy within the Agency. All significant information originating from his unit reached the top of the food chain only through his office; he controlled every management decision down to the secretary and intern level with a maniacal, vengeful supervision. Slash, burn, and rule: make the eagles feel rewarded yet never allow them to take more than forty percent of the credit for any particular accomplishment, while you punted the turkeys, or, as was necessary in government, buried them with a transfer or lateral promotion. Final maxim: exert total control over the release of all information so as always to apply the appropriate spin.
He’d risen to second in command in six years.
Given his seniority level, Gates was required to take a car service everywhere; the black Lincoln assigned to him this morning came equipped with both driver and bodyguard. The driver got the door for him as Gates exited the building through the executive tunnel. He settled into the leather seat in back.
The driver climbed behind the wheel and turned to face him.
“The Hill this morning, correct, sir?”
Gates nodded and opened a folder. Unlabeled, it contained a two-page surveillance summary written entirely in code. He was accustomed to the encryption, and knew the file to be an eight-day summary of the activities of Julie Laramie as gathered by a man named Sperling Rhone. Rhone possessed the clearance to snoop just about anywhere; outside of these essentials, the security man understood he was on his own, that there existed no record of any relationship between himself and Gates, and that Gates would deny any assertiontothecontrary.Rhonefollowed,bugged,monitored,andoccasionally intimidated any Agency employee-or non-Agency person-Gates chose to keep an eye on. The reports he generated from these activities were hand delivered, and backup records were not kept.
The report indicated that Laramie’s daily routine consisted of a morning visit to a local Starbucks; a three-mile run; until recently, a fairly typical workday that included on-campus meals and commissary coffee breaks; after, she’d go directly home, sip from a glass of Chardonnay, and inevitably fall asleep in the same oversize L.A. Lakers T-shirt on her couch with some twenty-four-hour cable news channel blaring on the television. She had deviated from this routine four times-twice, she skipped the morning run; once, she met a female friend for dinner near her home; and on another night she’d driven to an Annapolis coffee house that sold Internet time by the hour.
Gates would have to instruct Rhone to watch for another visit to the cyber café, and if she went there again, Gates would have his security man employ some reverse-keystroke software. Most of the time, suspected moles conducting such activity turned out to be nothing more than serial Internet daters or porn-surfing junkies. Gates didn’t peg Laramie for a mole, but he didn’t see her as a cyber-sex junkie either.
Reading Rhone’s report in the back of the Lincoln, Gates chuckled at Laramie’s utterly predictable behavior. It was always the same, at least among the good ones. Duly informed that Big Brother was watching, they responded by insisting on proving their point: I’m on the radar now; if I crack the case and deliver the goods, I’m redeemed. Those with an expansive ego took it one step further. They got ticked off, and usually worked to show him they were smarter than he was. Such employees generated deeply thorough follow-up intel and analysis, which Gates quickly took the credit for finding.
The bad ones sulked, coming to work late or calling in with too many sick days, self-justifying a demotion or transfer. Transfers worked best, since this enhanced the profile of his pervasive authority: the sulking employees delivered the message to their newly assigned departments that they’d fucked with Gates and lost.
Following her Korea score, Laramie had examined months of SATINT, working her way around the Middle and Far East in a kind of outwardly expanding semicircle. At first she’d stayed late intermittently to accomplish this, but in the last few days had worked long hours more consistently, the girl clearly less concerned about arousing suspicion. She’d kept on, searching through an ever-wider swath of images in the general portion of the world to which she was assigned, but following her initial pair of discoveries, had found nothing further.
Rhone noted for Gates a limited number of outside calls Laramie had taken in the office. None of them seemed relevant to the private investigation she had decided to conduct, except one: a conversation with a professor of political science from Northwestern University. Gates read the transcript and could see from the first part of the conversation the man knew about her predicament. This was illegal, but not alarming or uncommon; lower-level DI staffers weren’t held to the rules as stringently as their DO counterparts. The remainder of Laramie’s conversation with the professor was vaguely worded; this too was common-people knew they were being monitored and worked at maintaining a degree of privacy.
Considering what Julie Laramie had found, her “rogue faction” theory-as explained to Gates by Rosen and Rader-was not unreasonable. But this, Gates knew, was not the time to fire up the troops. The president was engaged in initiatives Laramie could never have known about, including a protracted negotiation with the premier of the People’s Republic of China on a U.S.-China free-trade initiative. Find the right moment to deliver Laramie’s intel to the president, and Gates knew the discovery could serve as significant leverage to the president in his negotiation and allow Gates to reap some kudos in the process. If it worked out that way-if he extracted enough mileage from her discovery-he’d recognize her work, Gates thinking he’d even push her right past that nitwit Rader.
Now, however, was not the right moment to bring the goods to the table.
“Shall I get your door, sir?”
Gates looked up. They’d reached Capitol Hill.
“Park it for a minute.”
He closed the Laramie file and opened a second folder, labeled S.I.C. MONTHLY. He spent five minutes rereading the documents within, enough to reassure himself that he already knew exactly what to say. Then he shoved both files into his valise and opened the door himself.