The God's Eye View (27 page)

“You’re saying . . . the government is focusing on, what, people who use encryption?”

“Yes, but that’s only a tiny part of it. The focus is on every form of electronic and other behavior that could be considered an attempt to preserve privacy.”

“What are we talking about specifically?”

“I don’t want to get into it. I’ll just say it started as an antiterror initiative, like every other example of government overreach these days. Terrorists need a way of communicating clandestinely, right? So someone had the insight that your organization could map every way terrorists might go about those clandestine communications. The behaviors involved. And then search for those behaviors wherever they occurred, applying something called Bayesian networks.”

“Of course,” she said, realizing. “It makes perfect sense.”

“You know about it?”

“Bayesian inferences are a kind of probability theory. I’m a computer scientist.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a background myself. Well, the problem—”

“—the problem is that terrorists aren’t the only ones who try to safeguard their privacy.”

“Bingo. Although as far as I’m concerned, whether the broader applications of God’s Eye were a bug or a feature is absolutely an open question. Because one of the ways they use Bayesian inferences to filter data is by a matrix. What do you read? What sites do you visit? Who do you follow on Twitter? And I’ll give you a hint: following the ACLU, or Jacob Appelbaum, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the Freedom of the Press Foundation, or
WikiLeaks
, or donating to organizations like those, might be the kind of thing they like to know about. They don’t like dissent. Whether from the powerless, or the powerful. Dissent is one of those things that’s best nipped in the bud.”

“So you’re saying God’s Eye—”

“God’s Eye only looks at what people are trying to hide. It only listens when people are trying to whisper. Now think about what you would uncover with something like that, what it could be used for, and you’re starting to get the idea.”

“There would be . . . you’d know everything.”

“Everything worth knowing, if your goal were to control a population. You NSA types must really groove on irony. Because hell yes, as long as you don’t try to protect your privacy, you can still have privacy! Well, at least in theory. I mean, NSA still has access to everything about you. You’ll still be one of the hundreds of millions of volumes in their limitless collection. They just won’t take you down from the shelf to read you. At least until they want something. Or if you misbehave. Then you’re fucked.”

They were quiet for a moment. Her mind was racing with possibilities. The truth was, the concept was ingenious. She wondered who had thought of it. And how they would implement. She knew NSA already focused heavily on collecting encrypted communications, in the hope that at a minimum some decryption breakthrough would allow the communications to be read at a later date. And that they were exceptionally interested in lawyer-client privileged communications, as well. What else would they focus on? Social network accounts with only a pair or at most a handful of users. Email accounts with similarly restricted use. People who cleared their browsers regularly. People who purged emails from their online trash. Hell, you could even get more specific than that. You could focus on
which
messages got deleted. After all, those would be the interesting ones. The secrets you would uncover . . . it would be everything. Affairs. Closeted homosexuality. Financial improprieties. Perversions. The most personal aspects of people’s lives. The most shameful secrets.

Look at the way the FBI had nailed General Petraeus when he was director of Central Intelligence, by focusing on the email account he was using with his lover. The two of them had been storing sexual messages as drafts, not sending them. That would be a giant red flag right there. And only one user on the account, logging in from different locations. Another dead giveaway. What if the account hadn’t been uncovered in the course of an FBI investigation? What if instead it had been discovered by the director? In all likelihood, Petraeus would still be DCI. A lot of people had thought he was on the fast track to run for
president
, for God’s sake. And the director would have owned him.

She suddenly wondered how many other people the director owned. Powerful people. Politicians. Regulators. Judges. Journalists. And how many organizations he had penetrated, subverted. It was almost too big to fathom.

She realized there was another thing they would focus on: prepaid phones. Bought for cash. Who pays cash for a prepaid phone? Poor people, but they don’t matter to you and you quickly screen them out. Everyone else . . . would be someone trying to hide something. Something you’ve now uncovered.

“Could that be how they caught me?” she said. “I bought a prepaid phone for cash. Is that the kind of thing God’s Eye looks for?”

“It’s exactly the kind of thing.”

It made a horrible kind of sense. She’d thought she was being so clever and careful. But it seemed clever and careful was exactly what drew the attention of God’s Eye.

“I think you should change hotels,” she said. “I’m taking every precaution, but obviously there are things they can do neither of us even knows about.”

Weird to call NSA “they,” and to refer to herself and this journalist as “us.” But that was how it felt at the moment.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been wanting to move, but . . . I’ve been afraid to. They”—his voice cracked, but he went on—“they did some bad shit to me. Hey, how did you find me, anyway? You didn’t really answer before.”

“The man who saw you by Lake Tuz a few days ago. He—”

“Wait a minute. What man?”

She paused for a moment. What
had
Marvin been doing there? She’d asked, but he’d refused to say. But he’d looked so racked by guilt. And things were going so fast and it all felt so out of control, she’d barely paused to consider. Had he been sent to kill Hamilton, and then, for some reason, changed his mind? Was that what Manus was? Some kind of NSA assassin?

“I’m . . . not exactly sure who he is,” she said. “But he told me he saw you at Lake Tuz.”

“Big guy? Glasses? A beard?”

“He’s big, yes, but no glasses or beard.”

“It was a disguise, then. Is he deaf?”

Alarm bells went off in her mind and she was suddenly unsure how much to say. But if Hamilton knew something about Marvin, she wanted to hear it.

“Yes.”

“You
know
him?”

“He’s helping me.”

“
Helping
you? Oh, fuck, are you serious? You’re being played, lady. Assuming you’re not the one playing me.”

“What do you—”

“He’s the guy who fucking abducted me! He’s a sociopath, can’t you see that? I begged him, seriously begged him, and he looked at me like I was, I don’t know, a fly or something. And turned me over to . . . to . . .”

“To who?”

“I don’t know. Three sick Turkish assholes straight out of
Deliverance
. What was the point of that? Why would he do that?”

“I think the Turks were a cutout. I think they were supposed to get you to some third party, a jihadist group, something like that.”

“Yeah, well, I guess they were having too much fun to stick with the plan. But your friend got the party going, do you understand? You cannot trust that guy. Is he with you now?”

“No.” She hadn’t wanted to lie, but technically it was true—Marvin was in the other room. Besides, it was more important to calm Hamilton down.

“Jesus, I can’t believe I’m talking to you. Oh, my God.”

“It’s okay. He’s not here. It’s just me. But . . . what happened by Lake Tuz?”

“Your friend happened. He killed those Turks—I mean, fucking butchered them, I think with this axe he carries, you should have seen their bodies—and then he just left me.”

“Why didn’t he kill you, too?”

“How the hell should I know? Maybe he thought it was funnier to just let me die of thirst next to that goddamned salt lake. The point is, if you think he’s on your side, you’re even stupider than I am.”

She wondered whether he could be right about Marvin. Three men? With an
ax
e
? It sounded completely insane. On the other hand,
had
those been shots outside her apartment? Had Marvin killed someone there? But the details weren’t what mattered. What mattered was . . . who was he, really? And how could she know?

“I don’t think that,” she said. “I’m being careful. I promise.”

“Oh, man,” Hamilton said. “Oh, man.”

She needed to get him to refocus. “How long before Leed can publish?”

There was a pause, then, “A while. But that doesn’t matter. Once the drive is decrypted, she’ll upload copies to a dozen mirror sites. I should have done exactly that from Turkey, but Perkins was afraid something could be intercepted and he would be exposed.”

“I don’t know that he was entirely wrong about that.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think things could have gone a lot worse than they have.”

“Fair point.”

“Anyway. Once the contents of that thumb drive are uploaded to mirror sites, the game is over. The cover-up will be useless. It’ll just be a question of spin. And I can’t wait to see these assholes try to spin their way out of what I got from Perkins.”

“Okay. I’ll contact your editor. But twelve hours . . . can you make it sooner? I don’t know how long I can stay ahead of the people coming after me.”

“If you think you can make it happen faster, great. I’ll call her in six hours. But if you haven’t closed the loop with her by then, the call is wasted. And every time I get on the phone, it’s exposure none of us wants. We need to make it count.”

She thought about it. Six hours should be okay. As long as . . .

“Do your people monitor SecureDrop? Or is something going to sit in there unattended?”

“Right now? They’re probably monitoring it in real time.”

“Okay, then. Call her in six hours. I’ll make it happen.”

“God, I hope you are who you say you are.”

“Well, you’ll know soon enough. Hang in there, Ryan. I’ll see you soon somehow, okay?”

“Yeah, let’s hope.”

She ended the call, signed out from the service, purged the browser, and closed the laptop. A partial success, she supposed. But it was hard to feel good about it. Their plan felt improvised and half-assed. And even if it worked, she wasn’t sure Hamilton was right when he said the game would be over. She was about to make some very powerful people into very powerful angry people. Maybe this was all just business to them, and maybe they would all just stand down if the business were done. But Delgado wasn’t like that, she knew. He wasn’t about logic, or cost-benefit, or anything else that could be subject to reason and negotiation. Business for him was an excuse. An excuse for what he was going to do anyway.

But she didn’t think she had another play. If this didn’t work, she was out of options.

Marvin appeared in the door and signed,
How did it go?

He must have been watching from the room. But the way she was sitting on the tub, he would have been able to see her only in profile. He couldn’t have been reading her lips. And even if he had, she hadn’t said anything he didn’t already know.

Okay, I guess.

How is he?

She was a little surprised by the concern. Was it an act? Was he fishing, trying to learn whether Hamilton had told her about the deaf man who had abducted him?

Traumatized, I’d say. And scared.

He nodded and looked away. It was horrifying to know why he’d been so reluctant to tell her how he knew about Hamilton. Again, that feeling of violation, of an almost physical disgust, washed over her. Who was this man she had been so intimate with, so unguarded? Who had built her own son’s bed, who had been inside her body and occupied her mind?

But she couldn’t dwell on any of that here, while he was looking at her, watching her. She couldn’t trust him, but she needed him.

For now.

She briefed him on the conversation, leaving out Hamilton’s warnings.

He was still for a long moment after she was done. Then he signed,
So the plan is to get his editor the thumb drive?

Yes.

Where is it?

She didn’t like that he asked.
Somewhere safe.

There are a lot of people looking for you now.

Yeah. I got that.

And if you hid it anywhere that’s a known nexus, they could try to anticipate you there. You’d show up, you wouldn’t see them, you’d retrieve the drive, and they’d take you then. Probably take you right back to Delgado.

If he was trying to scare her, it was working.

Then what?

Let me retrieve it. I know what surveillance looks like. And how to get around it.

She didn’t like the way he was inserting himself into this.

No
, she signed.
They’re looking for you, too, remember? If you show up at a nexus for me, they’ll spot you just as easily.

They’ll have a harder time taking that thumb drive from me than they would from you.

No, she didn’t like the way he was inserting himself one bit. What if . . . what if this whole thing were an elaborate game of good cop / bad cop, the way she’d momentarily thought in the van? Marvin “rescues” her from Delgado, getting her to trust him enough to tell him where she’d hidden the thumb drive. He takes the drive, they grab Hamilton . . .

It didn’t make sense. Why would Marvin have let Hamilton go? Was there some sort of tracking device, a way of picking up the journalist again once he’d served his function? But Delgado had been holding her, so what would be the point of letting her go? Delgado could have just tortured the thumb drive’s location out of her; she knew he’d been right about that. So if this whole thing was a ruse, what kind of ruse? She couldn’t see it.