The beauty of the security system was that the analyst had no idea who was being tasked. She would never connect Anders’s query today with the unpleasant news about Perkins tomorrow.
A call to a geolocation analyst confirmed that on each occasion Perkins had been using an Internet café, his mobile phone had remained in his apartment. He thought doing so would disguise his movements, and therefore his activity. And he would have been right — except for the camera network. He didn’t know about that.
For a moment, Anders was irritated at all the trouble he had to go through just to confirm a single person’s location. It would be so much easier, and better, if everyone were fitted with a microchip. He’d read an article somewhere about how a dog had slipped away from its home in Pennsylvania, and how it had been discovered months later in Oregon — all because a shelter technician had read the microchip her owners had implanted in her. There might be some resistance to the notion of doing something like this to people, of course, but he imagined if it were billed as insurance against kidnapping… and if a high-profile kidnapping could be arranged to be foiled — a child saved from the worst depravity, its parents from bottomless horror and grief, solely because the child’s loving parents had possessed the foresight to implant a chip while the child was an infant — it wouldn’t be long before all parents would feel criminally negligent for failing to implant their children. He wondered if a law could be passed, the way there had been for car seats and bicycle helmets. But no, it probably wouldn’t even be necessary. The fear of a kidnapping coupled with a Why, why did we not have the microchip done? would be more than sufficient.
He shook off the daydream, knowing he had to work with the tools available to him today. Tomorrow was another matter.
Istanbul, he wondered. Why Istanbul for the meeting? Close enough to Ankara for Perkins to be able to slip away and travel by train or by car. No cell phone, no credit cards, no electronic breadcrumbs. Ankara would have been more convenient, but if Hamilton were on any kind of watch list — and he was — his presence in Ankara might have drawn suspicion onto Perkins once the Intercept published whatever Perkins was handing over.
All of which meant there might still be a chance to contain the damage. If this was the first meeting… if nothing had been transferred electronically yet, or, even if it had, if no one else had the encryption keys… if they were planning on spending at least a little time together so Perkins could bring Hamilton up to speed…
He had to be careful, though. Gallagher was suspicious. Not so suspicious she was afraid to share the suspicions with him, he was glad to see. But suspicious enough. On top of which, she was smart, and observant. Another suicide — or worse, two suicides — of problems Gallagher herself had flagged would likely worsen her concern. He needed something even more deniable.
But no matter how deniable, Gallagher would have to be watched. In his experience, suspicion was like flu. Many people caught it, but only a relatively few succumbed. Given time and proper treatment, most got better. But the illness still had to be monitored. You couldn’t let a fever reach a point where it threatened the health of the body.
Most of all, you couldn’t take a chance on contagion.
He thought about Hamilton. For a moment, he felt… not bad, exactly. But sorrowful. Some of his colleagues looked at the world through a cartoon prism in which their domestic enemies hated America and loved the terrorists and other such comforting absurdities. Anders understood human nature to be generally more subtle than that, and assumed Hamilton loved his country in his distorted way, no matter how much his activities were likely to harm it. Well, there was a sort of solemn pride in knowing the reporter’s death wouldn’t be in vain. That the manner of his dying would actually serve to unite Americans, to bring them together in strength and common purpose. Hamilton would never know, and even if he could, would never understand, but in an odd way, Anders respected him. If the man had to die — and he did — wouldn’t he want his organs to be harvested, for example, that he might give the gift of life to others? Of course he would. As would any decent person. And there was some solace in the knowledge that Anders was honoring Hamilton by making his death the occasion for an equivalent bestowal. That he was mitigating Hamilton’s loss, not magnifying its tragedy.
He called in Remar, who sat ramrod-straight facing the director’s desk during the briefing — the posture he tended to adopt, Anders knew, when he was resisting difficult conclusions. And indeed, predictably, Remar remonstrated about what clearly needed to be done. But also predictably, in the end, he reluctantly agreed there was no other way. Only after they had agreed on a plan did Remar ask, “Why do you think he did it?”
Anders leaned back in his desk chair, relieved the difficult part of the conversation was done. “Who knows? He had a strained relationship with his family, which I know he attributed to the demands of the job and how it took him away from them. Maybe this was his way of showing them he was one of the good guys. Or maybe it was some misplaced sense of conscience, growing like a tumor as he got older and more aware of his own mortality. I knew some of this might have presented a vulnerability. I should have taken it more seriously.”
“You can’t know everything.”
“Our job is to know everything.”
Remar’s expression remained frozen. Sometimes it was hard to know whether the impassivity was the result of his injuries, or whether he was trying to hide his thoughts.
After a moment he said, “This couldn’t have been… there’s no way Perkins could have known anything about God’s Eye, right?”
Anders shook his head at the absurdity of the thought. But he felt a tightness in his gut that was like a flashback to the night Remar had awakened him with the news about Snowden.
“It’s impossible that Perkins could have known anything,” he said after a moment. “You and I are the only ones who have full access. The only ones who even know it exists, at least on a big-picture level. But… let’s conduct an audit. Personally conduct it, obviously.”
Remar nodded. “Of course. But… would you agree that now would be a good time to call it something else?”
“You’ve never come up with anything better.”
“I know, but—”
“God’s Eye fits. It’s perfectly descriptive.”
“What I’m saying is, The Patriot Act and The Freedom Act… those were effective names. They made surveillance sound good. Carnivore, Total Information Awareness… those programs came under fire because the names sounded scary.”
“The Eye of Providence is already ubiquitous. It’s on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, and the back of every one-dollar bill. It’s familiar. Comforting. But none of this is even relevant. Because God’s Eye is not going to get out.”
“Of course not, but—”
“What we’re talking about now is just a precaution. No more than looking under the bed to make sure the bogeyman isn’t hiding there. Confirming what we already know.”