Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

The brush did not paint as broadly when it came to people. Communism was evil, but not all Communists were evil. Some were idealists, caught up in the dream. Others were simply trapped in the cogs and wheels of a great and terrible machine, unable to slip away without being crushed. There were tens of millions of good Chinese people who identified as Communists but would have happily gone another way if not for fear of being run over by a tank.

Whatever Hendricks’s moral views on the Communist regime of the People’s Republic of China, they were a formidable enemy, capable enough to penetrate the CIA with an as-yet-unknown agent in place. She did not intend to underestimate their resolve or their abilities at espionage.

For the protection of all involved, ELISE would be run out of a nondescript office off the mazelike underground mall in Crystal City, Virginia, rented under the name of a fictitious advertising corporation set up by and paid for with funds from the good folks at FBI Counterintelligence Division, where David Wallace served as section chief of counterespionage.

The space, an open bullpen, was large enough for a long conference table Admiral Li was already calling the Big Deck. Fifteen desks, including Hendricks’s, surrounded the table. Two computer servers occupied one of the two closets at the far end of the room, next to a small supply closet. The room had been transformed in a matter of hours by technical surveillance and countermeasures experts, also from FBI, into one big SCIF. This Secure Compartmented Information Facility guarded against what the NSA called TEMPEST—the leakage of electronic signals and sound that could be picked up by an adversary. A typical suburban home spilled enough TEMPEST information from its routers, mobile phones, smart devices, vehicles, and even pacemakers to piece together a large intelligence file.

The room had no windows. False walls and a second ceiling, six inches lower than the existing one, formed a room within the room, impregnated with metal foil to act as a Faraday cage. Everyone who entered, including the IT specialist, was deeply vetted and read all the way in to ELISE. In the unlikely event that they received a visit from, say, an FBI or CIA assistant director or White House staffer, a rotating red beacon would begin to flash annoyingly in the center of the ceiling, reminding everyone that there was an outsider in their midst. They should cover their work product and keep any details of the mole hunt to themselves.

All computer and most telephone lines going in and out of ELISE space were encrypted and firewalled. The handset of each regular landline phone was affixed with a large red sticker that warned it was not a secure communication device. Cell phones—even Hendricks’s and Wallace’s—stayed in cubbies in the outer lobby with a plainclothes officer from CIA police whose job it was to run force protection. Even the cell-phone cubbies were enclosed with Faraday film to keep anyone with a scanner and a Yagi antenna from grabbing a list of the phones parked in front of the location. It didn’t seem like much, but that information formed another piece of the puzzle that Monica Hendricks did not want to give up.

The George Bush Center for Intelligence, AKA Langley, was less than ten miles up the George Washington Parkway. The White House was three miles to the north across any number of bridges. FBI HQ was just six blocks east of that. Crystal City was only two metro stops away from the Pentagon. Arlington National Cemetery was one more on the Blue Line. Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling, the now-not-so-secret second home of the HMX-1 (Marine One) presidential helicopters, as well as the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was directly across the Potomac. You couldn’t hear them in the SCIF, but every few minutes, the walls of the ELISE office space gave a tremulous shake signifying the takeoff of a commercial aircraft from Reagan National Airport on Runways 1 or 33 to the north, a scant two blocks away.

Restaurants and shops in and around Crystal City were accustomed to military and civilian government types staying at one of the many hotels while on TDY to Washington. Some experts reckoned, correctly, in Hendricks’s estimation, that with all the government knowledge floating around, Crystal City was one of the most heavily trolled places in the United States by foreign adversaries. Amazon was buying up office space in several high-rises connected to the Crystal City underground, and now it was even odds whether the people in line at Starbucks or Ted’s Montana Grill worked for Jeff Bezos or Uncle Sam.

“First off,” Hendricks said, once everyone had arrived and the door was secured, “thank you all for participating. I don’t have to tell you what a sensitive matter this is.” She introduced herself, and then went around the table and had each person give a two-minute thumbnail of their background. When it got back around to her, she said, “You see that only six of you presently serve as counterintelligence officers. That is by design. If you do, we want your expertise. If you don’t, we want your different point of view. You’ve each been briefed individually on what we know about SURVEYOR—which is precious little, so there’s no need to go over that again at this point.”

She glanced at Wallace.

“Thanks, Monica,” he said. “I would only say that I’m from the FBI and I’m here to help—”

The two agencies’ rivalry went back to J. Edgar Hoover’s days and this brought a round of good-natured chuckles from the CIA officers in the room. Wallace took it in stride.

“Generally speaking, the Bureau would take the lead in a case of this sort, but the powers that be have decided that’s not the case this go-around. And I honestly understand why. SURVEYOR will undoubtedly be someone many of you know personally. Maybe you’ve had coffee with him, sat across from her at lunch or dinner. Your children may play together. Your spouses could be close friends. This will feel personal, because it is. SURVEYOR works among you. That is why you are the people to catch him or her. I know very few people at Langley. I am here to provide you someone with arrest authority on U.S. soil, extra bodies when we need them, and an extra point of view from someone in a gun culture. How many of you have fired a sidearm in the past year?”

Half of the hands went up.

“As I thought, and that’s normal. Guns might not be a big part of your job when gathering intelligence, so you may not necessarily think about arrest procedures and tactics when you’re not overseas. Our hunt for SURVEYOR has been a secret up to now, but in a few minutes, we will take it on the road. We will conduct interviews, sit surveillance, and dig through copious files. I have the U.S. attorney for Northern Virginia on speed dial, so subpoenas shouldn’t be a problem. Secrecy might. The vast majority of all interviews and polygraphs will be conducted at hotel rooms off-site, away from Langley or ELISE offices. In the next few hours, SURVEYOR will know we are looking for him or her. I won’t get too far into the weeds with site and personal security, but I would remind each of you from the outset that, as Chief Hendricks has pointed out, we are dealing with a dangerous foe, who would have no trouble killing anyone here to protect themselves or their asset. SURVEYOR is a tremendous coup for them and they will likely protect him or her at all cost …” Wallace glanced down at his notepad, tapped it a couple times with the tips of his fingers, and then smiled. “You know us FBI guys, we can’t bring ourselves to shut up when we’re given the floor, but that’s all for now.”

“Okay.” Hendricks stood and clapped her hands lightly together. “As my oldest boy would say, ‘That was the drumroll, Mom, what you really got?’ Ladies and gentlemen, the clock is ticking. It is not an overstatement to say that lives are at stake. To that end, we must think outside the box. I’d like each of you to take ten minutes and come up with a list of the people at the Agency who bug you. Don’t think too hard. Just go with your gut. Maybe you think this person is disgusting enough to betray their country, or they just strike you as odd. You don’t even have to have any evidence.”