“Just take them out,” Anders said. “All three of them. Is that clear? We’ll blame it on MSS.”
“It’s not going to look like MSS.”
“Why would MSS do something and make it look like their own work?”
There was a pause. Then: “There’s another Guardian reporter with them. A Scotsman, Ewen MacAskill.”
“Then take out all four. Do we know where they’re meeting? Where they’re staying?”
“Not yet.”
Okay, probably that was too much to hope. “Put eyes and ears on them. Mobile phones, Internet access, hotel reservation systems, security cameras, satellite imagery, everything.”
“It’s already in motion.”
That sensation of the ground roiling hit him again, this time with an accompanying wave of dizziness and nausea. He willed it all back and made himself focus. What was he missing? What else did they need? What would be their fallback? If they were forced to tell a story, they would need a narrative. And that would be…
“Put together briefing papers. If we can’t silence Snowden, we’re going to have to undermine his credibility, and we’ll need our friends in the press for that. Make sure the word narcissist is prominent in our talking points. Be subtle. ‘I’m not saying he’s got outright narcissistic personality disorder’… that kind of thing. All of it on background.”
“We already used the narcissist thing with Julian Assange.”
“Yes, and it worked. Use it again.”
“Understood.”
“Also… make sure to emphasize that Snowden ‘violated his oath of secrecy.’ We want that phrase picked up, too.”
There was no “oath of secrecy,” of course. The only oath government employees took was the oath to defend the Constitution. But that was just meaningless nuance. The main thing was, you could always count on the establishment media to adopt whatever nomenclature the government fed it.
“All right,” Remar said. “Who do you want spearheading the press campaign?”
“Ernest is the best in the business. Wake him up.”
“Ernest?”
“The guy who got everyone in the media to describe that Gulf of Mexico undersea oil eruption as a ‘leak.’”
“You mean the guy who came up with ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’?”
“Actually, the Gestapo invented that phrase—Verschärfte Vernehmung, I think it’s called in German. But Ernest was smart to borrow it. You think Snowden is a genius? Wait ’til he gets a load of Ernest. The media will have him armchair-psychoanalyzed as a narcissist and tried and convicted of treason in a day.”
“I’ll make sure he’s on it.”
“I’ll see you at headquarters in a half hour.”
He ended the call, opened the shower door, turned off the sink faucet, and went back into the bedroom. He paused for a moment, gazing at Debbie, still soundly asleep. He couldn’t say he loved her anymore, if he ever did. But there was always something satisfying about knowing he was protecting her. And protecting what was yours… that was a form of love, too, wasn’t it? Maybe the highest form.
He went into the closet and started getting dressed. He knew he probably couldn’t stop the Guardian. And he didn’t even care that much about the extent to which he could inhibit them.
All he really cared about, all that really frightened him now, was God’s Eye. In the end, everything else was negotiable.
CHAPTER
1
Evelyn Gallagher sat in an upholstered chair outside the director’s Fort Meade corner office, knees pressed together, skirt smoothed, fingers intertwined across her lap. As always when she waited in this chair, she wondered whether the pose was too stiff, too self-consciously formal. But it was better than fidgeting. She didn’t want anyone to think the director made her nervous. Well, amend that — she didn’t want anyone to know.
Not that anyone would notice. No one else was waiting in the outer office, and the director’s executive officer, General Remar, hadn’t so much as glanced at her from behind his monitor since ushering her inside. Of course, Remar, with his eye patch and ruined profile, the left side of his scalp salt-and-pepper crew cut and the right an irregular mass of Silly Putty pink, always made her feel nervous, too. It was hard not to stare at the scar tissue, or wonder what horror lay hidden behind the patch. His wounds and his recovery were legendary at NSA, his suffering conferring a kind of sanctification not just on him, but on his battlefield rescuer, the director, as well. They were like a unit, a left and a right hand, and no matter what secrets she might be privy to, in the presence of their bond she always felt like an outsider.
She glanced discreetly at her watch. How long it would be, she never knew — it could be a minute, it could be two hours. The uncertainty might have been demeaning, but on the other hand, how many people had not just an invitation, but outright instructions to come to the director immediately whenever their system threw up a red flag?
So she waited, hearing nothing but the muted clack of Remar’s keyboard and the quiet hum of the HVAC air-conditioning the room. No, she couldn’t deny that she liked that there were no layers between her and the director — liked how special it made her feel, liked how the direct line gave her an aura of power and importance within the organization. On the other hand, the relationship left her isolated. Even within the standard compartmentalized NSA environment, the walls around her work were extreme. So far as she knew, no one other than the director himself was aware of her function, and the director had made it clear in a variety of unmistakable ways that the privilege of direct access wasn’t free, that there would be severe penalties for any osmosis, accidental or otherwise.
Which, right this moment, felt particularly inconvenient. She had something on her mind, and no colleagues she felt comfortable running it by. She wanted to ask the director but was reluctant. Because what would bringing it up with him accomplish? It was so far-fetched it would just get her flagged as untrustworthy, even paranoid. And for what? She had too much to risk. The job was right for her, the work was important, the pay was decent, and the benefits were great. The health insurance especially, without which she wouldn’t have been able to enroll Dash in the special school. Her ex-husband was a deadbeat, and she was afraid to sue him lest he retaliate by enforcing his custody rights; her mother was gone; and her father was in a nearby senior center with advancing Alzheimer’s. So she needed her job, and it was enormously reassuring to know the job seemed to need her. As for her doubts… well, didn’t everyone have doubts they simply learned to keep to themselves?
She’d been sitting for close to twenty minutes, and was just thinking maybe she should have stopped at the restroom before coming and that she definitely should have thrown on a sweater because as usual the outer office was freezing, when Remar paused in his typing, glanced over from his monitor, and said, “You can go in now.”
She always wondered how the director signaled him. Some kind of text message, presumably, the same way Remar had alerted the director she was waiting. That, or they’d become psychic, working together so closely for so long. She stood, hesitated for just a second, and opened the door.
The director was sitting behind his L-shaped wooden desk. The wall to his left was festooned with photographs of various luminaries — presidents, prime ministers, generals, captains of industry — all shoulder to shoulder with the director or shaking his hand. The wall to his right was devoted to bookcases filled with serious-looking tomes on military strategy, business management, and philosophy. In one corner was a coffee table, a couch, and two upholstered chairs — the space for longer and perhaps more casual meetings, though she had never been invited to join the director there.