The Power Couple

by Alex Berenson

  The Marriott corridor was as bland as ever. He knocked on the door to 716. Nothing. He touched keycard to reader.

  “Eve?” He pushed open the door.

  No Eve. A man stood by the desk in the corner. Lights on. Curtains drawn. The smell of cigarette smoke, and Brian’s first thought, he couldn’t help himself, Don’t you know they fine you for that?

  “Come in,” the man said. Tall, bald, brown eyes, heavy features. He looked Greek, maybe. He spoke like a man used to being obeyed.

  The classic horror movie moment. Don’t go in there.

  Brian walked in.

  “Put your phone on the desk.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So you don’t do anything stupid like trying to tape. Come on, do it.”

  Brian did, beside a laptop.

  The man clicked the laptop’s cursor. And a video began to play.

  There she was. Begging Brian to stop.

  Please don’t, you’re hurting me—

  You love it, you know you do—

  Mister, stop, you’re hurting me—

  Punching and kicking.

  The man paused the video. “Big stud.”

  “It’s not real.” Brian’s voice was surprisingly steady. Who are you? Why do you have this? Though he could already guess. “Watch it all, you’ll see, we were playing.”

  “Three minutes long, it’s all like this.” He ran the video again.

  Eve’s screams crawled inside Brian. Sure enough the video ended with her still shouting Please stop, it hurts. The tape was so convincing that for a moment Brian wondered if he had actually raped her.

  But everything about her and what had happened made sense now. All the loose ends that hadn’t fit, that he’d chosen to ignore. He should have known. The NSA gave new hires special training about what were still sometimes called honeytraps. The agency knew very well many of its coders spent more time in front of screens than with the opposite sex. Brian didn’t fall in that category.

  Then again, he had his own issues with women, didn’t he?

  The man closed the screen. Extended his hand. Brian took it by reflex. “Feodor Irlov.”

  Brian saw no reason to pretend he didn’t know what was happening. “With the SVR?” The Russian CIA.

  “Very good. Some people confuse us with the FSB, but technically that’s the FBI. I understand you know people there too.” Irlov laughed, heh-heh, smarmy. “You are of great interest, Mr. Unsworth.”

  “It doesn’t even make sense that she would have taped it.”

  “She was worried. The way you pressed drinks on her at the restaurant. She’s very naïve.”

  “She said she was Finnish!”

  Irlov shrugged, I don’t see your point. “She will testify, you know. A young Russian woman who comes to the United States to work.”

  Suddenly Brian didn’t know why he was arguing. Screw ’em all, the NSA, the FBI, the Tailored Access pukes, every last one of them. Including Becks. Especially Becks. Irlov thought he was blackmailing? Please. Brian’s whole life was blackmail. His whole life had led him here, marrying Rebecca, lucking his way into a job where he felt like a loser every day.

  Whatever offer Irlov made, Brian knew he was going to take it. At least the SVR thought he was worth setting up.

  You want me to spy for you? When do I start?

  “This tape isn’t just a matter of your marriage or your job—”

  “I get it. So what now.”

  Irlov looked confused. Brian recognized the feeling from long ago, those rare nights when after a single drink the girl had simply said, Come on, let’s go. The game was supposed to be harder.

  And Irlov was right. He ought to fight back. He was about to sell out his homeland.

  But hell. The war was only virtual, right? Software. Video games, pretty much. Lines on a screen. They wouldn’t ask him for the names of any agents. He didn’t know any.

  Irlov shook his head, This is too easy. “That’s it? You don’t insist on your rights?”

  “What rights?”

  Irlov gave him a slow, careful appraisal. “Easiest recruitment in history?” His nostrils flared. “Are you sure you’re not Russian?”

  I’m not anything, Brian thought. But he just stared at Irlov. Odd, now that he’d agreed, he felt every bit the man’s equal.

  “Good,” Irlov said. “Then it goes away.”

  “In return?”

  “You can imagine.”

  Brian could. The details of Tailored Access programs, and not just against Russia. The tricks the NSA used to protect its own computers. Maybe they’d even ask him to smuggle programs off the NSA campus.

  He wondered how they’d found him, then knew—

  “The Peppermint, right? Not too far from Fort Meade, somebody there watching for guys like me? Runs our plates against a reader you put near the agency. But you have to get a different girl, who cares what a stripper says.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I have to tell you, she’s very good, Eve, whatever her name is. Do I get to see her again?” The most foolish thing he’d said. But he still wanted her.

  “If you are very good, maybe.”

  “So no.”

  Irlov wrinkled his nose, Don’t be stupid. “Of course no. It would only make problems. I must tell you. We know about your financial—concerns.”

  Brian didn’t ask how. “Yes those.”

  “We can help.”

  “How’s that? I inherit a million dollars from my deadbeat dad. My wife won’t fall for that. Even NSA counterintel won’t fall for that.”

  “Of course.” Irlov pulled up a fresh screen on the laptop, filled with lines of code. “Don’t you write apps like every other coder, the next Angry Birds?”

  “Sometimes.” Though not in years.

  “Now, success.” Irlov clicked a couple of keys and a sample app booted up, virtual cards fanning across a virtual blackjack table. “It’s called Twenty-One. For gambling. Casino locations, payouts, what machines are running hot, all the games. For play money.”

  “I did that?”

  “You did. Now you sell it.”

  “The money’s clean?”

  “What do you think, we wire from the Kremlin?” Irlov shook his head. “It comes through a consulting company run by a nice American. No vodka anywhere. Plus, why would anyone care? NSA doesn’t care if you code on the side, nothing to do with the agency. You sold it, congratulations. Hard work pays off. Legal money. You even pay tax on it.”

  “The American dream.”

  “So how much?”

  Irlov was eager to seal the deal. No surprise. The NSA had plenty of secrets, and Brian had access to the best. He considered. A million? A million was a nice round number.

  He looked at the laptop that held his past and future. No going back. He might as well get paid.

  “Two million dollars.”

  “Greedy.” Irlov laughed.

  “After taxes it’s barely a million. Yes or no.”

  “For two million you tell us about your wife too.”

  Talk about getting even with Becks. Best part was that she’d love this money. “Done and done.”

  “Two million, then,” Irlov said. “Half in six months, the rest next year.”

  “Six months?”

  “Your wife has to see you working hard, yes? Writing the app, going to a conference—”

  “She doesn’t care.”

  “She’s not stupid, she pays attention.”

  I didn’t say she was stupid, I said she didn’t care.

  “NSA pays attention too. I give you the money now, it just goes to legal fees after they arrest you.” Irlov closed the laptop. “Are you sure you don’t want a few minutes to think about it—”

  “I’ve been thinking about it my whole life.”

  * * *

  Irlov encouraged him to show Rebecca bits of the app before he sold it so the deal wouldn’t come as a surprise. But the first time he menti
oned it, she sighed like he’d said he was going to invent an electric-powered jetpack. Somewhere along the way she had decided he was a loser, and even the Tailored Access job hadn’t changed her mind. He didn’t say anything else until he told her he was going to Vegas for a couple of days.

  “You know the app? The casino thing?”

  “Sure.”

  He waited for her to ask more, if she could look at it. She didn’t. She pecked his cheek, turned out the light. She fell asleep almost instantly. Becks had always been a good sleeper. Absolute self-assurance was the best pillow.

  He lay in the dark, listening to her breathe. Did he hate her?

  He didn’t, he decided. But he hated what she’d done to him.

  * * *

  He’d thought the Russians would take it slow with the debriefs. He was wrong. In their second meeting after the Marriott, Irlov asked him about the NSA effort to break into the Russian military Internet. One of TAO’s crown jewels, a compartmentalized project called OAKLEAF. Brian hadn’t seen much. Irlov wasn’t pleased.

  “Brian. We are honest with each other. In Bethesda, you say how much you want, I agree.”

  “You haven’t paid me anything yet.”

  “You think, Feodor, he doesn’t want to burn me, he won’t ask anything hard. It’s true, I want to protect you. But first I have to know you didn’t go running to your bosses, the Russians trapped me—”

  “Not my style.”

  Irlov nodded. “Yes, I agree. I don’t think you have the patience to triple. Too many lies to keep straight. I’m your mistress, what’s the point if you have to lie to the mistress? Enough lying to your wife, the mistress is for the truth.”

  Brian had never quite thought of it that way, but okay, sure.

  “So, I tell you the truth,” Irlov said. “I want to protect you, but I need to know you aren’t playing with us.”

  “I’m not read in for OAKLEAF—”

  “Okay, you tell me what you’re working on.”

  “Right now we’re trying to crack this bank in this Chinese city called Xiamen—we think there’s a military satellite program for Iran the Chinese are funding through there—plus, there’s a laser company there we’re looking into—”

  “Satellites and lasers. An offensive program? For Iran?”

  “I don’t see the output, you know that. Only the questions we’re asking, the tools we’re using.”

  Irlov nodded. “All right. And try finding out what you’re doing about Google now that Snowden messed everything up for you, told everyone how much access you have there. Start with that.”

  “Two million dollars.”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Brian still liked to cook after all these years. Rebecca was getting home in time to eat with the kids more often these days. Sometimes he wondered if she was planning a divorce, she wanted to be sure a judge wouldn’t think of her as an absentee parent.

  He decided dinner would be the place to tell everyone.

  “I sold my app.”

  “What app?” Tony said.

  “Your dad was writing something about Las Vegas,” Rebecca said.

  “Casinos, the casino industry. Guess how much they paid.”

  “I thought you were just watching porn all that time,” Kira said.

  “Hot young teens.”

  “Seriously, Dad, that is not funny,” Tony said.

  “How much?” Rebecca asked.

  Eyes on the prize, that’s my girl.

  “Fifty thousand?” Kira said.

  Brian lifted his thumbs.

  “One hundred? Two hundred?”

  “Two—”

  “Two hundred thousand, Dad?” Tony said. “Not bad.”

  “Two million.”

  “Two million dollars?” Rebecca said. “For an app? Oh my God.”

  “Been downloaded twenty-one thousand times already.” True. Nice trick from the Russians.

  Rebecca came to him, hugged him, looked at him in a way she hadn’t since—he couldn’t even guess. Philly or maybe even Charlottesville. Her eyes proud and wanting, not the tired curdled lust of the last few years, I want what you can do for me, but the real thing, I want you.

  She kissed him.

  He almost laughed. All he’d needed to reclaim his manhood was two million dollars.

  * * *

  She didn’t question the windfall. Why would she? Brian thought. She was Rebecca Unsworth, and good things happened to her. Over the next year, they paid off the bills, bought a house, put money away for the kids to go to college.

  * * *

  Stealing the NSA’s secrets wasn’t easy. After the Snowden fiasco, the agency had tightened its audit trails. Nobody walked out with USBs anymore. Brian had to do more sitting back and listening. He was good at it. Nobody thought he was a threat. He even caught up on OAKLEAF. Which was progressing in fits and starts. The Russians hadn’t made breaking into their military Internet easy.

  He saw Irlov and another Russian, Nikolai, the smartest programmer he’d ever met, every six weeks or so. Once in a while Nikolai helped him solve some minor technical problem so he’d look good at Tailored Access.

  Actually, he kinda liked Irlov. Mostly they met in random parking lots and hotel rooms, but a couple of times the Russian had arranged for cooler stuff, like a Turkish bath in Philly. Old-school spy stuff, like Brian was a real secret agent. Irlov usually slipped him a few hundred bucks at the end of every meeting. Nothing huge, just enough to remind him that they were partners.

  * * *

  For the next couple of years everything was copacetic.

  Until Brian, not for the first time, found himself hard done by. The two million was almost gone, and yeah, their life had improved. But he wanted more.

  “Don’t you think it’s time for another app?”

  “Even NSA might notice if you sell two apps no one uses.”

  “Money makes the world go round.”

  “Don’t be greedy, Brian.”

  “Just ask the folks in Moscow, huh?”

  A pause. “You’re sure you want me to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Their next meeting was a month later, a strip-mall Chinese restaurant in those same Maryland exurbs where his wife had refused to live. The Taste of Beijing, molded plastic booths and pictures of the food behind the counter. The place empty at 2 p.m. Rebecca wouldn’t have been caught dead in here. Funny part, the food was good. Brian had learned over the years, Rebecca’s snobbery blinded her to certain simple pleasures.

  “Anything on GALAPAGOS?” A Tailored Access project to infiltrate the wireless systems of the private yachts owned by Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes.

  “Lots.” Brian snacked on his sesame chicken. “Did you ask?”

  He saw Irlov didn’t even know what he meant. Then comprehension dawned. “About the money? Of course. There’s no budget.”

  Irlov was obviously lying, annoying Brian more than if he’d just said no.

  They went back to eating. Brian wasn’t even sure why his back was up. Two million was real money. And Irlov might take care of him again eventually. If he played along.

  But he didn’t want to play along. No more begging for respect. Not with his wife. Not with this Russian.

  “GALAPAGOS,” Irlov said.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Brian. The people I work for will not take this lightly.”

  Brian shrugged.

  “Just work with me. Please. Give me some time.”

  Brian felt like he’d made his point, had Irlov moving the right way. Plus he wanted to think through, was he really going to push the Russians?

  “GALAPAGOS, yes, we’ve made progress—”

  * * *

  Two nights later he was lying with Rebecca, postcoital, spooning.

  “You may not see much of me for a while,” she said. “We think there’s a new mole. High-level.”

  “Russian?”


  “Why else would I care?”

  “At CIA? That would be fun.”

  “It would. We’re not sure yet. Maybe downtown…” The White House. “Could even be your shop. Whoever it is has great access.”

  Could even be your shop. Brian hoped she didn’t notice the sudden uptick in his heartbeat.

  * * *

  A month later the OAKLEAF team had an emergency call. It lasted four hours, ended with grim faces. Within a day the outlines of the disaster leaked to the rest of TAO. A billion dollars gone. Total reboot.

  Like they knew we were coming.

  He called Irlov, demanded an off-schedule meeting. Twenty-four hours later they were at a rest stop on 95 in Maryland. Cracked asphalt and pigeons and screaming kids. The ugliness suited Brian’s mood.

  “You’re gonna burn me.”

  “What?”

  “You just blew up a billion-dollar project. You could have been subtle about it, strung them along—” And then Brian realized. “But no, you wanted to stick it to them. You figure sooner or later it leaks, the New York Times runs the story, black eye for the NSA.”

  “I don’t make those decisions.”

  “Gonna use me like a whore, you need to pay me like one. Where’s my money?”

  “I told you—”

  “Yeah, you did. Don’t be greedy. Or what? You’ll out me? Please.” After their last meeting Brian had read up on the history of American agents for the Russians. They often went dark for months or years. The Russians never gave them up. Why would they? Handing Brian over would just mean they could never use him again.

  “Two million dollars. And not in some Swiss account. Money you could use.”

  “And look at what I gave you. It was a fair deal. It’s over. Time for a new contract.”

  They were sitting in the back seat of Irlov’s Honda Pilot. Not exactly a Lambo, but then Brian supposed he wasn’t exactly James Bond. He reached for the door handle—

  “No more treats until you do right.”

  “I tell you as a friend. Don’t do this. The bill, it will be yours.”

  “Kill me. Who’s gonna chirp about OAKLEAF then?”