The main auditorium of the George Bush Center for Intelligence is colloquially known as “The Bubble.” It’s a seven-thousand-square-foot independent structure that, from the air, looks like a giant golf ball chipped into the rough. You weren’t supposed to use The Bubble for meetings, but there were no other rooms available in Van’s part of the building. And as the Deputy Director of Clandestine Services, she was pretty sure she could keep the whole thing on the DL.
It is to be a short meeting, anyway. The assortment of analysts, officers, middle managers, and assistants already know why they are here, but as their boss, Townes feels obligated to bring closure to the assignment they put the last five years of their lives into. And, if at all semantically feasible, to try to put a positive spin on it.
She raises the lid on her laptop, executes a key combination, and her screen begins projecting behind her. Her peers like to tease her for still lugging around a ruggedized clamshell, but the shattered Dell she displays on a shelf in her office allegedly got that way by stopping a Kalashnikov round when she was stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, forever serving as all the validation Van would ever need that the surface area of a handset is simply way too small.
“I know we’re getting close to lunchtime,” the deputy director begins, partially as a way to test the acoustics, and partially as a way to get everyone settled. Turns out projecting all of three rows without a mic won’t be a problem. “So I’ll go ahead and get started.”
The newest version of PowerPoint is smart enough to listen to the presenter, determine context, and not just auto-advance slides but, when in “stream-of-consciousness mode,” reorder a presentation to keep pace with even the most desultory of ramblings. Although the CIA is perpetually a minimum of three versions behind on any given piece of software, Townes knows precisely whose palms to grease in IT to get the good stuff.
“It’s no secret that today is the last operational day for the Nuclear Terrorism Nonproliferation Task Force. It’s also no secret that, since the attack on Seoul almost six years ago, no plots have been uncovered, no arrests made, and no fissile material secured. So let’s just get that out of the way.”
Although Van is not telling them anything they don’t already know, it is clear from all the furrowed brows and roving eyeballs that her team is expecting a little less candor and perhaps a tad more compassion from their leader.
“Now, some people have suggested that the Nuclear Terrorism Nonproliferation Task Force is a failure. We’ve all heard the accusations. The recriminations. The rumors. You all know how many reports I’ve had to stay up all night writing. How many meetings I’ve been called into to get skewered in front of the director himself. How many times I’ve had to testify in front of Congress.”
Van pauses while she looks—hard—at an even distribution of uneasy faces.
“But you know what looks a hell of a lot more like failure? Not assembling a task force after the deadliest terrorist attack in history. Not responding to clear and present danger. Not being able to verify, beyond any modicum of doubt, that what happened in Seoul never happens anywhere on this planet ever again. Not doing exactly what every single one of us swore an oath to do.”
She is seeing some nods now.
“The reality is that this is what success looks like, people. This is what it looks like to keep the United States and her allies—hell, even her enemies—safe from weapons of mass destruction. Success isn’t torturing a suspect until you extract a location, racing against a digital countdown timer strapped to the side of a device in the back of a van, and then waiting until the last second to decide which wire to cut.”
A few grins. She can see that they are with her.
“That’s a movie. And not even a very good one. That’s not what heroes are. You know that. You know that better than anyone. Heroes are people who run down every possible lead, no matter how implausible. Track every dollar, every euro, every fraction of every cryptocurrency. Who spend all day, every day, and even nights and weekends, writing queries every bit as elegant as anything composed by Beethoven and running them across thousands of indices. Heroes are people who don’t just hope, or assume, or who are ‘pretty sure.’ They verify. And then they verify again. And then they get someone else to verify that verification. And if they don’t get anywhere, they throw it all out and start all over again because any unexplored path, no matter how seemingly insignificant, could mean thousands of lives.”
Everyone is nodding now—everyone but the man who has just entered from the back with two cups of coffee in a cardboard tray. He props up a wall with his shoulder and waits for Van to continue.
“Heroes don’t just work for six months, or a year, or two years on a problem. They work for as long as it takes. They work for five years, nine months, and three weeks. They work until someone makes them stop, if that’s what it takes to absolutely goddamn guarantee that there isn’t another sociopath out there about to erase Washington, D.C., or New York City, or Paris, or London.”
She pauses to check her slides. Sure enough, there’s the Capitol, One World Trade Center, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben.
“This task force wasn’t assembled in response to Seoul. It was assembled in response to a historic mandate. Probably
