The Leviathan Effect

by James Lilliefors

“I do. I don’t think I should stay at my apartment. So I’m going to disappear for a few days. Try to figure things out.”

  “Can I find you a place to stay?”

  “No. I don’t want to get you involved.”

  Church watched him. “Have you told police about the list?”

  Jon nodded, knowing that it was probably too complicated, too dispersed in space and time, for police to get their hands around it, at least for a while. What he really wanted was to talk with his brother Charles, a former CIA case officer and private intelligence contractor. Dr. Westlake had even suggested that he contact Charlie. But Jon had left a series of messages for him over several days and received no reply. It was possible, he knew, that the messages hadn’t been received. His brother had disappeared, too, in his own way, on his own terms, years earlier.

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Not Melanie Cross?”

  Jon shook his head, felt his face flush, and smiled. “No.”

  “Good.”

  Jon’s on-again, off-again relationship with Melanie Cross was off again, following a brief, ill-fated recent attempt to live together. Melanie was also a reporter, a smart, disturbingly attractive woman with an unhealthy competitive streak.

  “I’m seriously thinking about getting a dog,” Jon added.

  Church allowed a rare smile. He looked at the names again. “So where will you go?”

  “I’m going to play it by ear until I hear from my brother. I’ll contact you by email. Try to send a first installment of the story in a few days.”

  “Based on …?”

  “Police sources. Research. Some notes Dr. Westlake gave me that I haven’t figured out yet.”

  Church studied him. “Want to talk about it before you go?”

  Jon looked out at the street and felt anxious, thinking about Keri Westlake’s warning. There’s a story here, and it must be told soon. The sun was going down among the buildings of Foggy Bottom. The outside seemed unwelcoming all of a sudden; the inside a cage, safe.

  But Jon knew he needed to get on the road. Simplify. His brother’s mantra.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Church frowned. Jon knew that if he stayed and talked, his editor would try to convince him to come up with a different plan. Instead, Jon stood.

  “Be careful,” Church said.

  “I will.”

  Outside, Jon blended in with the flow of pedestrian traffic. Students, faculty, state department employees. He thought ahead to his next steps. He’d retrieve his car from the Grosvenor station, drive onto the Beltway, head south into the night, hook up with I-95, turn in late at a highway motel.

  At G Street, a car stopped incongruously in the crosswalk, blocking his way.

  “Jon Mallory!”

  A woman’s voice, behind him. He turned.

  The rear door opened.

  A man on the sidewalk flashed a handgun and pushed against him.

  Minutes later, Jon was sitting in the back seat of the car, watching the city through tinted windows.

  SIX

  6:41 P.M., McLean, Virginia

  THROUGH A BULLET- AND blast-proof conference room window on the fifth floor of the X-shaped building that houses the National Counterterrorism Center, Thomas Rorbach watched the motorcade as it flanked off the Capital Beltway, high beams on, police lights flashing. Two Cadillac Sevilles and four armored Chevy Suburbans snaked onto the Dulles Access Road and through the hydraulic steel gates at 1500 Liberty Crossing. Then Rorbach, who had worked here for the past six and a half months, turned and walked down the antiseptic white hallway to the elevators.

  Set behind tall, sloping berms and chain fences fronted by signs reading US GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING, the Liberty Crossing site did not carry the cultural cachet of Langley, longtime headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the Liberty Crossing complex was now the nerve center for American intelligence, housing the National Counterterrorism Center and the ODNI, or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Harold DeVries oversaw.

  Liberty Crossing embodied the government’s efforts to centralize and streamline its sprawling intelligence services after the 9/11 attacks. Here, dozens of analysts from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and various other agencies worked together sharing information and tracking potential threats twenty-four hours a day.

  Rorbach, a stocky, pock-faced man in his late forties with wispy blond hair and unusual dark eyes, was deputy defense director for military intelligence, a recently created hybrid position. A former Special Forces soldier, Rorbach had served in two previous administrations—on the staff of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for international security and as National Security Council liaison for counter-insurgency. He had spent years, too, as a military contractor in the private sector. Twenty-seven hours earlier, he had been asked to become operations director of what was now informally called the “Janus Task Force.”

  HAROLD DEVRIES WALKED a pace ahead of Catherine Blaine down the second-floor corridor, their shoes echoing on the shiny tiles. DeVries was a lean, agile man who looked younger than his fifty-two years. He stopped before an electro-magnetic-locked SCIF, where he punched in a code on the keypad and then pushed open the door.

  This SCIF was larger and more high-tech than the one at Andrews. Mounted on the encased metal walls were four fifty-six-inch plasma screens. Smaller desk monitors were at each of the twelve settings around the oblong cherry-wood table. The blue briefing booklets in front of the nine people in the room were identical except for the name stamped on the bottom right corner of each.

  Blaine took her designated seat in the middle, nodding to several of the familiar faces. The gathering was a who’s who of top-level intelligence officials, including the director of the CIA, the head of the National Security Agency, the White House cyber czar and several deputy intelligence directors. Sitting opposite her, at the center of the table, was Vice President Bill Stanton.

  Moments after she sat, Stanton flashed his toothpaste smile and glanced at the notepad beside his desk monitor. “Ladies. Gentlemen. Welcome,” he said. “We’re here for an emergency meeting of the Janus Task Force. And before we get started,” he added, nodding across the table, “we’d like to welcome Secretary Blaine into the room for this evening’s meeting.”

  Blaine smiled politely at the Vice President. He was a big, cordial man with thinning white hair, an easy smile and an informality that she liked. No one ever called him William Stanton. Mr. Vice President seemed too formal. He was Bill, a folksy Washington veteran, prone to using colorful, idiomatic language and occasional malapropisms, which sometimes caused people to underestimate him.

  “As you now know, folks, we’ve had another breach attributed to our friend Janus,” he said, and held up his blue briefing book. “We’ve also received some new intelligence over the past eight hours suggesting that an unspecified attack within our borders may be in the advanced planning stages. An attack related to, uh, these breaches. Harry will give us more specific details on that.”

  Blaine opened her briefing book and scanned the details. There was an element of theater to having this meeting here, she knew. To show that Liberty Crossing was now where the nation’s seventeen intelligence agencies came together and solved problems.

  “The purpose of this meeting,” Stanton added, “is to mobilize all resources, with an objective of locating Janus within five days. That’s the President’s directive.” He slowly made eye contact with several of those in the room, including Blaine. “This means we make it a twenty-four/seven priority. We pull out all our guns and cancel everything else. Clean the slates.” He made a strange sound in his throat. “I will head the task force and we’re making Thomas Rorbach the point man in charge of operations.”

  Blaine looked quickly at Rorbach, who seemed slightly ill at ease being singled out but feigned a smile.

  She skimmed through the pages of her briefing book: Background on J
anus. Summary of his suspected whereabouts over the past decade. Chronology of the received emails, by date.

  It didn’t take long for Blaine to recognize what was missing. They had left out the specific threats. There was no mention of the “natural disaster” warnings, of the actual subject matter in Janus’s emails.

  The President’s directive.

  This had been orchestrated to go after a more narrow objective. Why?

  “For the benefit of Secretary Blaine, we will start with a brief overview. Harold?”

  The ten desk screens lit up and a grainy black-and-white image appeared in the center of each: a man wearing a dark overcoat, walking along what seemed to be an empty train or subway platform. DeVries, who was seated to the right of the Vice President, began: “Janus is Xiao-Ping Chen,” he said. “He’s forty-one years old. ‘Janus’ was a code name created in Beijing about ten years ago.”

  A second photo of Janus came on the screens. Then a third. In the first, he looked boyish and slender. In the next, his face had filled out and he wore rectangular, wire-rim glasses. In the third, his hairline had receded considerably. They almost seem like photos of three different men, Blaine thought.

  “He was born in Shandong province in Eastern China,” DeVries continued, speaking in his clear, steady tone. “His father was a diplomat. The family moved to India and Russia during his childhood. The father was apparently something of a taskmaster. And, a heavy drinker. He ended up a suicide when the boy was twelve.”

  DeVries pressed a button on his desktop and the screens went dark.

  “Chen joined the Chinese military at age seventeen. He studied computer science and eventually earned an elite post. At a young age, he became an accomplished hacker. Computer hacking is, of course, a different game there than it is here. The Chinese government employs about fifty thousand hackers as part of its military operations.”

  DeVries glanced at his notes as if he’d momentarily lost his place.

  “Chen apparently had some issues with authority within the Chinese military. He moved to Germany in 2004 or 2005 and began to work independently, we believe. He became a private contractor, in effect, but still sold his services to Beijing.”

  “Please. Explain what that means,” Robert Thompkins, the director of Central Intelligence, said from the other end of the table, holding up his reading glasses. Thompkins and DeVries had several times crossed swords in recent months over jurisdictional boundaries.

  “In other words,” DeVries said, not looking at the CIA director, “he would initiate an operation on his own, but the operation would yield information that was of value to a third party. Say Beijing, or Pyangpong. He would then approach a representative of the third party with this information and broker a deal. Creating a buffer, in effect.”

  “To avoid the appearance that the government was directly involved.”

  “That’s right. What’s known as the problem of attribution.”

  “Chicken or the egg,” said Stanton, incongruously.

  DeVries typed several numbers on his desktop keypad. “It’s convenient, of course, for governments or corporations to learn secrets about other governments, or other corporations, while avoiding the appearance of initiating those inquiries.”

  The screens glowed and another photo came up: a blurry image of two men walking along a path in a park.

  “The intelligence on Janus indicates that he’s not a man of great national loyalty. Or any other sort of loyalty,” DeVries went on. “We have reports that he did some high-level hacking for Moscow. We also believe that he may have played a role in setting up the GhostNet operation. At least as a consultant.” He paused, looking around the table. “GhostNet, as most of you know, infiltrated political, economic and media targets in more than a hundred countries, including the inner workings of the Dalai Lama’s organization. Before we shut it down in 2009.”

  Blaine was beginning to remember something else she had heard about Janus: a portion of which had gone public. But she sensed that it was out of bounds at this meeting, so she said nothing.

  “Nevertheless, this is the most recent photo we have,” DeVries said. “It was taken in Munich over the summer. Chen, we believe, is on the left. The man he’s talking with is a high-ranking member of the MSS.”

  China’s Ministry of State Security. Counterpart to the US’s CIA and FBI.

  “Which would indicate that his client is now Chinese intelligence?” the CIA chief said.

  The Vice President made a coughing sound. “Possibly, yes. At the least, we think Beijing is probably aware of this man’s activities, if not directly involved. And we believe, based on the most recent intelligence, that Chen is currently in Munich.” The Vice President waited, then added, “Now I’m going to let Dean Stiles have the floor.”

  Stiles, a gruff, wide-shouldered man with a shaved head and a long chin, was the new White House cyber czar. He cleared his throat, a deep raspy sound, then began to describe the technical details of the breaches, reading from notes written in longhand on three-by-five cards. Blaine noticed the suppressed yawns and restless shifting around the table as he described the adjustments of stopgaps and encryption safeguards.

  It was essentially a cat and mouse game, Stiles explained. You install counter-measures and the other side finds a way around them. Back and forth. Blaine had been told by a cyber crime analyst at the National Security Agency once that only about two hundred people in the world fully understood the hacking game at its highest level, and she doubted if any of those two hundred were in this room today, with the possible exception of Stiles.

  Afterward, a slightly awkward silence filled the chamber as the Vice President paged through papers in his folder, as if searching for something.

  “Wasn’t Janus also a US asset at one time?” said Kyle McCormack, the CIA’s head of counter-terrorism, raising the question Blaine had decided not to ask. Stiles frowned and turned his eyes to the Vice President.

  “That’s right,” Stanton said. “We discussed that at our initial meeting. He identified a series of computer science centers in China being used by the Chinese military to hack into American networks. This was five, five and a half years ago.”

  The CIA counter-terrorism chief nodded, watching him with hooded eyes.

  “But the information was deemed unreliable, wasn’t it?” said McCormack.

  In fact, there was something else about the episode, Blaine recalled, something damaging or embarrassing, some of which had gone public, but she couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

  “Of course, we don’t believe that one person is behind this threat,” Thom Rorbach said, changing the subject. “It’s more likely that Janus has been retained as an independent contractor to hack into our systems and deliver these threats. That may be the extent of his involvement.”

  “Do we even know that he’s really involved?” Blaine said. “Couldn’t it be someone simply using the name, as a way to get our attention?”

  “Possible,” Rorbach said. “But not likely.” Blaine glanced at him, then looked back at her booklet. He had strange eyes—wet and virtually black, as if there was no center to them, no pupils. “A very specific code has been used in all of his communications. Four variations of eleven numbers and letters. They were the same classified codes Chen used in his dealings with us six years ago. A signature, in effect.”

  Blaine nodded. But she was remembering something else. A man who had written a report about Janus years ago. A former intelligence field officer named Charles Mallory.

  “At any rate,” the Vice President said, “the feeling is we’re flying into something of a fertilizer storm here. The President’s directive is that we mobilize all of our resources. He would like a preliminary working plan tomorrow morning by ten, involving all pertinent agencies. Data searches. Signals intelligence. Banking transactions. Everything that we can pull together. Thom Rorbach will coordinate.”

  Rorbach, Blaine noticed, seemed to still be looking at her. In
fact, his head hadn’t turned away from her since she had asked her question.

  As Blaine stood, Gabriel Herring touched her arm. “One more meeting,” he said. “After that, you can go home.”

  “Good.” She turned toward the doorway without looking back.

  “This one,” Herring said, “will be on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  SEVEN

  CHARLES MALLORY DROVE THE twisting, two-lane road as golden sunlight gleamed through the pines and spruces, back-lighting the darkening pods of cumulous clouds. A quarter mile past the second of the MOOSE CROSSING signs, he hooked a left onto an unmarked gravel drive and followed it to its dead end at Thunder Hill Quarry.

  He had lived in this remote harbor town for close to two years now, but he had yet to see a moose, let alone encounter one crossing the road. The signs, he suspected, were mostly for the summer tourists.

  He parked his truck on the neck above the quarry and breathed the cool air, the shifting, subtle scents of water, tree bark, and pine sap. Then he stripped off his jacket and T-shirt, his shoes and trousers. He walked to the edge of the rocky outcrop, took a breath and dove in, swooshing in a long arc down through the frigid, sixty-three-degree water and coming up to the surface.

  He caught his breath in the chill air and backstroked across the quarry, watching the fading light through the webs of pine branches.

  By the time Mallory had climbed up to the rock ledge and was sitting at the top, his body temperature had dropped from ninety-seven to ninety-five degrees and he was shivering.

  The late sunlight felt good on his skin, until the clouds moved across it. He sat there for several minutes, listening to the birds and the occasional creak of branches in the breeze. The birds were congregated on the wires along the road, he had noticed. A pressure system was moving through. Something was coming, probably a big offshore storm. Clement would know.

  Several times a week, Mallory came here to swim before sunset. The icy rush of the water was about the most invigorating feeling he knew these days. Sometimes he thought he did this as a substitute for something else; for what he had given up, perhaps, in deciding to move to this distant outpost.