The God's Eye View (2 page)

CHAPTER
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1

E
velyn 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.

She closed the door behind her and stood silently while he scribbled notes in the margins of some papers. After a moment he glanced at her over his reading glasses, his eyebrows arching at . . . what? Was he annoyed at the intrusion? Did he welcome it? As usual, she found him impossible to read. He was a slight man of about sixty, with thinning hair and sallow skin. She’d been working with him for over a year, and had yet to see him display any real emotion beyond a periodic intense narrowing of his pale blue eyes. She’d never even caught him ogling her breasts, which had gone from a C to a D when Dash had been born and then decided to stay put even after she’d gotten back to exercising and lost her pregnancy weight. She didn’t mind the extra size—in fact, as a single mother, she welcomed the attention brought by her new dimensions—but the director’s failure ever to even sneak a glance was a little weird. Was he gay? She knew he was married, with four grown daughters, but that was no guarantee; even in the twenty-first century there were plenty of closeted people in the military, especially among the higher-ups. She’d wondered from time to time what he would do if she ever showed up with an extra button undone and leaned across his desk to point something out . . . would he be unable to resist a look? But she’d never tried. He wasn’t the kind of man you’d want thinking you were messing with him.

He gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk and said, “What is it?” The question was a kind of challenge, a suggestion that if she was taking advantage of the direct access, of course she would have something important to bring to his attention. That she’d
better
have something important.

She sat, her feet pressed firmly against the carpet. Like the waiting area, his office was over-air-conditioned, but she could feel a slight slick of perspiration under her arms and was glad she’d worn deodorant.

“Sir, my system threw up a flag—a match for two faces on the watch list. A reporter with the
Intercept
named Ryan Hamilton. And the SUSLA in Ankara. Daniel Perkins.”

The Special US Liaison Advisor was NSA’s senior representative in Turkey, reporting directly to the director. There were only five others in the world—in Germany, Italy, Thailand, Japan, and Korea. If a SUSLA had gone rogue, it was a major breach, and she watched the director closely, curious about his reaction.

But there was nothing beyond that slight narrowing of the eyes. “What did you observe?”

“Well, as you know, sir, we’re tapped into CCTV networks all over the world. The feeds run through a facial recognition system and a Convolutional Neural Network analyzing other biometrics like height, stride length, and walking speed, and when certain people are observed together, the system sends out an alert. There are a lot of false positives that have to be screened out, but this one is confirmed. I’m pretty sure Hamilton and Perkins met in Istanbul.”

The director’s expression was so impassive it looked momentarily as masklike as Remar’s burned profile.

“You have them face-to-face?”

“No, sir, not face-to-face. But I’m pretty sure I know where they met—a Bosphorus commuter ferry. I was able to go back and track them taking separate routes, though there’s no camera on the ferry itself.”

The director leaned back in his chair, the casualness of the pose, like his initial
What is it?
question, a kind of challenge. “How do you know it’s not a coincidence?”

“Well, sir, I can’t prove it’s not. But the ferry feels like tradecraft to me. And you told me to err on the side of inclusiveness, especially when one of the principals is NSA.”

If her statement came across like an admonition, he did nothing to show it. “When did this possible meeting occur?”

“Two hours ago.”

“And they’re still in Istanbul?”

“Presumably. I’m guessing . . .” She paused, thinking better of it.

“Yes?”

“Well, I know that as SUSLA Turkey, Perkins is your direct report. I’m guessing . . . you didn’t know he’s in Istanbul.”

The director raised his eyebrows. “Why do you guess that?”

“Because of the way you just asked if they were still there, sir. If Perkins were traveling on official business, I’d guess you would know.”

The director looked at her silently, and she wondered whether she had said too much. But she wanted him to know she could do more than just hack networks and create monitoring systems. She wanted him to know she had good instincts, too, and that she deserved more responsibility.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I’d recommend checking customs records to determine when Hamilton arrived, and I’d look at their mobile phones, too. If the phones were turned off, or left behind somewhere else, it sure would look as though they’re trying not to be tracked. XKeyscore could tell us a lot, too. I would have looked into it myself, sir, but I’m not authorized.”

It was a subtle hint that she could do her job better, more efficiently, if she had more tools.

But he ignored it. “That’s good thinking. Send me the raw data. I want to know exactly where and at what time they were picked up by the cameras.”

“Yes, sir.”

He removed the reading glasses and placed them on his desk, then looked at her closely. “Tell me, Evie, you designed the camera system, didn’t you?”

She blinked, surprised he had used her name. Surprised he remem
bered it.

“Uh, yes, sir. Well, I mean, we already knew that these days most CCTV cameras are wired into networks, meaning remotely exploitable by us.”

“Yes, but you were the one who led the team that got us into the networks and tied them together. You were the one who automated the system, exploiting new networks as they went online, like that one Harvard secretly installed in its classrooms ostensibly as part of a study on attendance at lectures. You were the one who proposed using the access not just for directed tasking, but for passive surveillance, too, by tying it all together with the facial recognition technology and the Convolutional Neural Network.”

“That’s correct, sir.”

He nodded. “If this Perkins thing does turn out to be a breach, it’s exactly the kind of problem we would have overlooked if it hadn’t been for you. Very good work.”

She recognized she was being dismissed. If she was going to bring up what had been bothering her, it was now or never.

Just do it
, she thought.
Or it’s never going to stop bugging you.

“Sir, can I . . . there’s one other thing I wanted to ask about, if that’s all right.”

He raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

“Sir, remember last month, the CIA sysadmin I discovered was in contact with Marcy Wheeler, the journalist at
Emptywhee
l
?”

“Scott Stiles, of course.”

“Yes, Stiles. Well, as usual, all I can do is confirm by access to the network that a meeting took place. I’m not supposed to otherwise task anything. So . . . I never know what the follow-up reveals.”

She waited, hoping again that maybe he would take the hint, agree that she could do her job better without the blinders. But he said nothing. Just that unnervingly neutral expression and the penetrating stare. She almost decided to drop it. But she’d come this far. The hell with it.

“So, well, just a few days after I flagged the Stiles/Wheeler connection, I came across a news item in the
Post
. Stiles had been found hanged in his McLean apartment.”

“Yes, I’m aware of it. Very sad.”

“Yes, sir, it was. And I was just . . .”

She couldn’t finish the sentence. What the hell was she doing?

The director offered her the trace of a smile. “Are you asking, was that a coincidence?”

“Uh, well, yes, sir, I guess that is what I’m asking. It just seemed—”

“You want to know whether we had anything to do with Stiles’s death.”

She swallowed. She couldn’t deny that, yes, that was precisely what she wanted to know. But she couldn’t say it out loud, either. Even just having suggested it seemed suddenly crazy. The idea itself, and mentioning it besides.

A silent moment spun out. Then the director chuckled. “The answer is no.”

She looked at him, but his gaze was inscrutable. After another awk
ward, silent moment, she nodded and stood. “Thank you, sir. I . . . I
feel silly that I asked.”

He shook his head. “I’m glad you asked. It’s exactly the kind of question, the kind of connection, each of us should be trying to make. It just happens that in this case, the connection was a coincidence.”

“So . . . Stiles wasn’t involved with anything . . . untoward with Marcy Wheeler?”

There was a pause. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, sir, but you said Stiles’s death was sad.”

There was the slightest furrowing of his brows. “As it was. Whatever he may or may not have intended in his contacts with irresponsible bloggers, he served his country for many years. By my lights, that makes his unfortunate, unnecessary, and untimely death very sad indeed, as I said.”

She nodded and stood, recognizing she had hit a dead end and wishing she hadn’t gone down the street that led to it. When she got to the door, he said, “Evie.”

She turned and looked at him.

He nodded as though in appreciation, or appraisal. “Very good work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She headed back to her office, mentally kicking herself. She’d felt she had to ask, but why? What point had she been trying to prove, and to whom? If she’d been watching a movie, she’d be angry at the heroine for having thoughtlessly tipped her hand. She’d learned nothing, and in doing so had probably caused the director to question . . . she didn’t know what. Her loyalty, or something.