The God's Eye View (26 page)

He nodded, impressed.
That makes sense
.

If I could access something called XKeyscore, there’s a chance I could locate him. The kind of hotel you’re describing . . . it couldn’t be more than, what, a dozen, two dozen? I just need the one that checked in someone with an American name for cash within, say, six hours after you last saw him. But they probably revoked my account privileges.

Why?

Are you joking? I’m supposed to be dead by now, remember? Abducted and raped.

The comment stung, but Manus tried to ignore it in favor of what was relevant. He reminded himself she was just an analyst. That she wasn’t used to thinking operationally.

But that’s the point
, he signed.
If your death was supposed to look like a random thing, they wouldn’t want to do anything out of the ordinary at work like directing some sysadmin to revoke your privileges.

She looked at him, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
That’s true.
She paused as though considering, then added,
All right, I need a laptop.

They’ll trace the access back to the hotel.

Not if I use Tor.

But your search parameters will be logged. If they’re monitoring your work searches and you find Hamilton, you’ll lead them straight to him.

I’ll warn him. Anyway, I’m going to have to take that chance. If he’ll just tell me the passphrase, I can decrypt the drive and expose what’s on it. There won’t be anything for the director to cover up anymore.

Hamilton won’t trust you.

She smacked her palms down on the edge of the tub.
Well, do you have any better ideas?

As it happened, he did.
Give the drive to the director. Promise to never say anything.

No! I know you think you know him, and can trust him. But you don’t and you can’t. He’s not a good person, Marvin. He’s sick and power-mad and terrified of being found out. He would never, ever trust me to keep my mouth shut. He’d say he would, and then he’d have me removed the first chance he
could.

Manus felt something cold come over him.
I’d tell him if that happened, I would kill him.

For a moment, she looked frightened. Then her expression softened and she touched his knee.
Then he would kill you, too. You must know that.

Manus didn’t answer. He could feel his mind trying to believe what it wanted, trying to push away logic and evidence. He felt so alone. It was like that first night in the juvenile facility. Everything he thought he knew and could count on, ripped away. No one he could rely on. Everyone an enemy, everyone trying to hurt him.

I need to get on the Internet
, she signed.

Manus didn’t like her plan. It was risky for Hamilton, and more important, it felt risky for them. But she’d been adamant about not trusting the director. And despite his reluctance to agree, he knew she might be right.

The guy who checked me in had a laptop,
he signed.
He might let me borrow it. Or more like rent it. How long would you need it?

If I’m lucky, ten minutes. But no more than a few hours.

Manus hesitated, then signed,
Double-lock the door behind me. I’ll knock when I come back. One knock, on the window. If someone knocks on the door or more than once, it’s not me.

She nodded. They got up and walked to the door. Manus checked through the window and went out.

The old guy he’d negotiated with earlier was still there, the air still perfumed by bourbon. The guy was looking at his laptop, and closed it when Manus came in.

“Everything all right with the room?”

Manus nodded. “My wife didn’t bring her laptop. Could we bor
row yours? Just a little while, a few hours at most. I’d pay you, of course.”

“Well, shoot, you don’t have to pay me, but . . . how much?”

Manus noted that the bottle of Four Roses was a couple of inches lower than it had been earlier. He shrugged. “Another fifty?”

The man raised his eyebrows, and Manus realized he’d offered too much. “A work thing,” he said quickly. “If she doesn’t take care of it right away, we might as well kiss our little vacation good-bye. We can access the Internet from the room, right?”

“Sure, free Wi-Fi in every room. A few hours, you say?”

Manus nodded.

“Say, you’re not fixing to make off with my laptop, are you? I mean, it’s nothing new, but it’s worth more than fifty bucks.”

“How about a security deposit?”

The man rubbed his chin. “Ah, forget about the deposit. Give me an even hundred and it’s yours for the night.”

Manus pulled two fifties from his pocket and placed them on the counter. The man looked like he might salivate.

“All right, we got ourselves a deal. Give me just a minute, I need to take care of a few things.”

The man opened the laptop and worked the trackpad. Manus assumed he was deleting records of visits to porn sites. Which was actually good. It suggested they kept no central records of anyone’s browsing history.

He took the laptop back to the room and knocked once on the glass. Evie let him in and they went back to the bathroom. It took her only a minute to download the Tor browser. A minute more, and she signed excitedly,
You were right. They didn’t revoke my privileges. I’m in.

She hunched forward and worked the keyboard. Manus couldn’t see what she was doing, but he had an idea. Accessing NSA’s full take on worldwide hotel reservation systems. Screening out every hotel that was located outside a 150-mile radius from Lake Tuz. Screening out every transaction that occurred more than eight hours after Manus had seen Hamilton. Screening out every credit card transaction. Screening out everyone who had checked in with a passport. And leaving only . . .

I think I’ve got him,
she signed.
The Sunaa Hotel, central Ankara. Registered as Bill Moore. No other hits.

Manus nodded, trying to share her excitement. But what he felt instead was dread. He had never been afraid of a fight. But he preferred to avoid fights he thought were unwinnable. Or worse, unsurvivable. They’d been lucky to get this far. He was afraid she was going to push things until their luck ran out.

He stood.
You see if you can reach him
, he signed.
I’m going to keep watch.

CHAPTER
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
41

I
n less than five minutes, Evie had signed up for a secure VoIP account, using one of Manus’s prepaid cards to pay for the access. She called the Sunaa and asked to be connected to Bill Moore. There was a pause, then an intermittent buzz as the call was put through. She waited, her heart pounding, trying not to hope. Would he be there? Would he answer? Did she even have the right person? She might have made a mistake. It could have been a coincidence—

“Hello?” A male voice, American accented, the tone uncertain, almost tremulous. It had to be him. It had to be.

“Ryan,” she said, “I’m a friend. Please, don’t hang up.”

There was a pause. He said, “I . . . who is this?”

There was a little latency on the line, but nothing too terrible. This was going to work. It was going to be okay.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, suddenly fighting tears. “I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. I was just doing my job. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The fear in his voice had worsened.
Get it together, girl
, she thought
. Don’t freak him out. Help him. Help him help you.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m just scared. I’ve learned some things I wasn’t supposed to, about your meetings in Turkey, about the thumb drives you mailed. I have one of them. Earlier tonight I was abducted and barely got away. And now my little boy and I are on the run. I don’t know anyone else who can help us.”

There was another pause. Then: “What do you mean, you have one of the thumb drives?”

“You sent two. One by FedEx, I’m guessing to your news organization. The other by ordinary mail, to a mail drop in Rockville. The first one would have been intercepted. But I have the other.”

“Who are you?”

She blew out a deep breath, feeling like what came next had a fifty-fifty chance of blowing up the whole thing. But if it didn’t, if they could get past this point, maybe her plan could work.

“I’m an NSA analyst,” she said. “But I’m not your enemy, I swear. They’re trying to kill me, too.”

“NSA? Oh, my God. You can’t be fucking serious.”

“Look, what can I offer as bona fides?”

“How do you know about any of this? How did you know—”

“—where to find you?”

He didn’t answer. She imagined his terror at confirming his identity. But he must have realized they were already past that.

“That’s a long story,” she said. “The gist of it is, no one else is looking because everyone else thinks you’re dead. In a drone strike.”

Another pause. “They really think that? It’s not just some official bullshit?”

“You know about it?”

“There’s a TV in the room.”

He was reluctant, of course he was, but he was talking. Probably because he was scared and desperate, but why didn’t matter. What mattered was that she keep him going.

“No,” she said, “it’s not some official bullshit. At least as far as I know. They launched that strike because they thought you were there. They want you dead.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The director of NSA. He knows about your meeting with Perkins.”

“Where’s Perkins now? Can you get a message to him?”

She realized Perkins’s accident hadn’t made the international news. Of course not. His status was covert, and besides, it was just a car accident.

“Perkins is dead. A car accident in Ankara, the same day he met you in Istanbul. Except, not an accident. I’m pretty sure that was the director, too.”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck.”

“Listen. Whatever’s on that thumb drive, it’s so explosive the director of the National Security Agency has practically lost his mind over it. He kidnapped you, he killed Perkins, now he’s trying to kill me. And that bombing in DC? A false flag. An excuse to bomb the jihadist camp where the director believed you were being held.”

“How—”

“It doesn’t matter how. I don’t know what to do other than publish whatever’s on the drive, right? Take away the director’s ability to cover it up with murder? His reason for wanting you and me dead? Doesn’t that make sense?”

“Of course, it makes perfect sense. But how?”

“I told you, I have the second thumb drive. But you encrypted it. Give me your passphrase and I’ll decrypt it. And from there, I don’t know, you’re the journalist . . . I’ll get it to your editor, or something.”

“Stop right there. The fact that I’m still on the phone with you means that okay, I must at least halfway believe what you’re telling me. But there is no way in the world I’m giving you the passphrase. For all I know, you’re just some NSA operative trying to get into the thumb drive so you can ascertain how bad the damage is. And there’s a CIA team outside my door, waiting to grab me the moment you’ve confirmed the passphrase is accurate.”

She fought the urge to scream. All she needed was for this idiot to tell her the damned passphrase, and she could save all of them.

Think, Evie. He’s scared. You have to be the calm one. So think. Think.

“Ryan, think about it. If there were a team, they could grab you right now. Why would I want the passphrase if I didn’t have the thumb drive? And if I do have the thumb drive, that team could make you tell them the passphrase. If you tried to lie, they’d know because what you gave them wouldn’t decrypt the drive. They’d torture you until you told them the truth.”

“Forgive me, but you sound just a little too knowledgeable about how these things work for me to feel comfortable.”

“Yeah?” she said, feeling her calm slipping. “You know where my knowledge comes from? From being hit over the head earlier this evening and held by some NSA contractor who enjoys his work just a little too much. I hid the thumb drive, and he explained how they were going to find it. By crushing my fingers and burning my lips off and torturing my little boy right in front of me until whatever I told him checked out with his people. So yeah, I’m kind of an expert now on what the CIA would be doing if they were really right outside your door!”

She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, furious with herself for losing control. But God, that fucking Delgado, the terror she felt . . . it was all right there, just behind everything she was trying to focus on, bubbling like some horrible cauldron constantly on the verge of boiling over.

She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just been . . . an unbelievable day.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

She managed a weak laugh. “So what do we do, Ryan?”

There was a pause. Then he said, “If you can get the thumb drive to Betsy Leed, I’ll give the passphrase to her.”

“Betsy Leed?”

“My editor at the
Intercept
. I trust her. But I don’t have any Internet access and I’ve been afraid to call her. She’s monitored. We’re all monitored. I’ve been afraid to call anyone. I know they’re looking for me. I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”

She felt her spirits sag. “Ryan . . . I can’t. That drive is all the leverage I have.”

“Yeah, well, the passphrase is all the leverage I have. You ask me to trust you, but you won’t trust me?”

“What about . . . before you left, you didn’t tell anyone else at your organization the passphrase? Just in case. Leed? Anyone?”

“I’m the only one who knows it.”

Maybe he was telling her the truth. Maybe not. No way to know, and in the end it didn’t matter.

She closed her eyes again and tried to see another way. She couldn’t.

“All right,” she said after a moment. “How do I contact Leed?”

“Do you know about SecureDrop?”

“Of course. NSA hates it.”

“That’s good to hear. That’s how you contact her. Buy a new computer. For cash. Download the Tails operating system. It comes with the Tor browser. You know what they are?”

He was sounding more confident than he had at the beginning of the call. She supposed that was good. It suggested he was beginning to trust her, at least a little.

“Of course. NSA spends half its time trying to subvert them.”

“I’ll bet they do. Well, that’s the way you do it. You get a message to Leed and arrange a meeting. You’re both going to have to be extremely careful about being followed. No cell phones, no personal vehicles, nothing. And watch out for foot surveillance. It’s easy to forget about the old-fashioned stuff when you have to be so obsessive about electronic bread crumbs. Speaking of which, how the hell did you find out about Perkins and me? He was beyond paranoid, and I’m no security slouch myself. You wouldn’t believe the protocols we use at the
Intercept
.”

She hesitated for a moment, the old reflex against sharing anything with outsiders, especially anything about a top-secret program, still strong. Then she thought,
Fuck it.

“I run an initiative that pulls footage from Internet-linked camera networks all over the world and runs it through a biometric match program, including facial recognition. There’s a list of top-secret-cleared personnel, on the one hand, and of known subversives, on the other.”

“You include journalists among those subversives?”

“I don’t know everyone who’s on it. But there are reporters, yes.”

“Well, that’s something, anyway. Beats any other award I can imagine.”

She gave him a weak laugh. “Yes, I suppose it does. Well, my system threw up a red flag when it spotted you and Perkins together in Istanbul. After that, we started looking more closely. And my system is also why I know the director was behind the DC bombing. The man who abducted me and threatened to do all those horrible things to me and my son? I saw him plant the bomb.”

“Then you’re in as much trouble as I am.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“NSA is monitoring camera networks in Turkey? I mean, DC I might have imagined. But this thing is global?”

“I thought I knew how global it was. But apparently Perkins got a hold of something even bigger.”

“Yeah, he did. You want to know what your director calls it?”

“Tell me.”

“God’s Eye. You guys sure have a knack for creepy names. Carnivore, Total Information Awareness, Boundless Informant . . .”

“What is it?”

“That I’m not telling you. Get that thumb drive to Leed and I’ll give her the passphrase. You’ll be able to read all about it in the
Intercept
for the next year at least. I’m telling you, it’s bigger than Snowden.”

For a moment, she wondered if he was exaggerating to reinforce her commitment to get his editor the thumb drive. Then she remembered what the director had done to try to contain this God’s Eye, and she decided Hamilton was probably just being accurate.

“Listen,” she said. “Not to be morbid, but if anything were to happen to you . . .”

“Or to you.”

“Yes, or to me. The point is, maybe it would be safer for you to get the passphrase to your editor right away. So she’ll already have it when I get her the thumb drive.”

“All that would do is put her in danger. Besides, I don’t have any secure means of getting it to her. I’m not going to say it over an open line where you people could just vacuum it up. Not until she confirms she has the drive.”

She thought of Marvin, how he had switched drives with Delgado. “But if I weren’t who I
claim to be, what would stop me from just handing over any old thumb drive, then intercepting your transmission of the passphrase?”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what the hell to do. At this point I’m just trying to stay alive.”

All the stress and fear was back in his voice. She needed to get him to dial it down.

“I’m sorry for pushing,” she said. “But we just . . . I want to make sure we have a plan that’ll work, okay?”

He sighed. “You need to meet Leed. If she trusts you, I’ll trust you. Contact her with SecureDrop and tell her I’m going to find a way to call her cell phone in twelve hours. I want to hear her voice. I want to hear her tell me she’s got the thumb drive. And that she trusts you. When I hear that, I’ll give her the passphrase.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll contact her. But is she going to believe me?”

There was a pause. He said, “Tell her . . . tell her I said the first time I met her, her six-year-old daughter, Brett, hid behind her leg. We laughed about it. No one else was there. No one else would know.”

“Okay. Good. But look, tell me something about this program. I told you about my camera networks. Is what I do part of God’s Eye?”

“It’s all part of it.”

She waited, but he didn’t go on.

“Give me some context,” she said. “Isn’t that why you and Perkins took a chance on a face-to-face meeting to begin with? So you could make better sense of whatever documents he was providing?”

“I told you, I’m not going to—”

“Why? I was abducted tonight, I have people trying to kill me, I would really, really like to know what the hell it’s all about. All right? What fucking harm could come from telling me? We’re probably both dead anyway!”

The moment it was out, she kicked herself for saying it. It was going to amp him up again. But there was no way to take it back.

There was a long pause. Then he chuckled and said, “That’s a hell of a way of persuading me. But . . . okay. In case I don’t make it out of here. At least someone will know some of it. And maybe you can help the
Intercept
make sense of it, if . . . if I’m not there to.”

She didn’t respond. She was too afraid he might change his mind.

“All right,” he said. “What does the government want to listen to?”

She considered. “Well, everything.”

“No. Not quite. It wants to be
able
to listen to everything. But what does it want to focus on?”

“I’m not following you.”

“Let me put it another way. Does the government care what people write on postcards?”

“No. It’s right out in the open.”

“Exactly. People who send postcards aren’t trying to hide anything. It’s t
he people who use envelopes, and especially the ones who use security envelopes, and put extra tape along the flap to make sure no one can steam it open, that the government is concerned about. Now extrapolate.”