In turn, Ames was himself betrayed by a Russian defector in the early 1990s. He was now serving a life sentence at a maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania. But during its internal investigation of Ames’s crimes, the CIA discovered that almost two hundred employees had access to the real names of its Russian spies. The agency had taken internal security more seriously ever since.
In the CIA’s view, Edward Snowden’s massive NSA leaks had vindicated that caution. Whether Snowden was a whistle-blower or a traitor — and arguments could be made on both sides — he had been a mid-level contractor at a minor NSA office in Hawaii at the time he stole the data. He should never have had access to so many crucial documents and programs.
Yet the agency could not ignore the fact that case officers and analysts needed to be able to trade data, rumors, and tips. The all-contacts log gave them that chance. The log was less sensitive than the Kingdom List, or even a third database where case officers reported serious relationships with foreign nationals. It wasn’t tied to specific operations. Instead, it gave case officers a place to report contacts that had not offered actionable intelligence or clear recruiting opportunities. Officers had some discretion over reporting, but it wasn’t unlimited. As instructors at the Farm told trainees, Taking a cab in Paris is not a significant contact, no matter how chatty the driver. But if the same guy picks you up two days in a row, his name’s probably worth logging. The list was intentionally massive and unfiltered. The agency was trying to create a Top Secret Wikipedia of sorts, a way to draw on the day-to-day contacts of thousands of case officers.
Unlike the Kingdom List — or operational reports, of course — the database was broadly available. Anyone in the clandestine service could see or update it. After some initial resistance, case officers had bought in. The log now included tens of thousands of names. Some offered long, detailed biographies. Others were a single line. It was searchable by dozens of fields, including time of contact, station, reporting officer, and of course contact name.
Given the breadth of the list, Shafer figured he had a decent chance of finding Leffetz. Sure enough, he did. The surprise was not the entry but the photo, a head shot of an attractive if harsh-looking woman with deep brown eyes. The existence of the photo didn’t result from any NSA wizardry. It had been taken at Langley about five years earlier. She’d been here. According to the log, Leffetz/Salome had come to discuss “Transnational Human Resources Strategies to Manage Troubled Case Officers, Based on the Israeli and American Experience.” Like nearly all foreign nationals, she’d received a black-bordered badge, requiring her to have an escort anywhere on campus.
As he read the log, Shafer felt the cold thrill that only detectives and investigative reporters truly understood. The game was on now. She’d been so careful for so long, but the wind had turned, the fog lifted. He’d glimpsed her on a distant hillside. A speck, but clear enough. He didn’t have to wonder anymore. She was out there, and he’d never let her go. Across the river and through the trees, to Grandma’s house or wherever you please… Shafer wanted to howl at the moon, now setting over the parking lot.
Shafer had tried to explain this feeling to people outside the building a few times over the years. But knew he came off sounding creepy. Maybe he was. So be it. Wells played God in the most elemental way: Who shall live and who shall die, who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not, who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast… But snatching the world’s secrets from their graves gave Shafer his own taste of absolute power.
On a more practical level, the entry explained to Shafer how Leffetz had found Mason. Hey, HR — I want to hear about your most screwed-up case officers. No worries, American friends. It’s for a project. Trust me! Shafer couldn’t believe the human resources managers would have given her actual names, but with enough biographical details she could have back-traced Mason easily.
At the same time, the fact that Salome had told such an elaborate cover story suggested to Shafer that no one at the agency had known what she really wanted, at least back then. From the first day that he and Wells had stumbled onto Mason, Shafer had wondered. Politicians had used the CIA to pull the United States into war before. But this plot was so risky that Shafer couldn’t imagine anyone would go near it.
Not before Scott Hebley became DCI, anyway.
Leffetz’s name popped up a few more times after that first entry, but not for anything interesting. She’d never come back to Langley. As far as Shafer could tell, she’d shown up occasionally on the lower rungs of D.C.’s lobbyist/embassy cocktail circuit, where wannabe arms dealers mingled with attachés looking for kickbacks. Wondered if she was Mossad but I’m pretty sure she’s not, a Middle East desk officer wrote after a party at the Turkish embassy three years before. Seems harmless/useless. Another offered: Casino consultant? Entry to Macao?
Officers were not allowed to discuss recruiting potential agents on the all-contacts database because it was so widely read, but the entry hinted that someone had approached Leffetz. Shafer couldn’t access those files, but he was sure that Leffetz would have brushed off the approach. She would have wanted to avoid the scrutiny that came with an official relationship.
Shafer left the log open as he considered his next move. The seventh floor had cut him off from other internal databases. But, probably because of simple bureaucratic oversight, he could still access some files outside Langley. He started with the National Crime Information Center, the FBI-managed database of property and court records that police officers used to investigate crimes and track fugitives. Adina Leffetz’s name didn’t return any hits. Other federal and state files also came back blank. Leffetz had never registered as a lobbyist for a foreign government, never filed an American tax return, never applied for citizenship or a driver’s license. Local property and court records were incomplete, but her name didn’t show up in those either. Immigration records would have told him when she’d entered the United States, but not what she’d done once she’d arrived, and they were off-limits to Shafer anyway.
The NSA might have credit-card or phone records for her. But if she’d been really careful, she could have used a card that belonged to a limited-liability shell company and carried a false name. For local travel, she could have hired a driver and paid cash. For hotel reservations, third-party services like Hotwire. For coms, all the usual tricks, single-use burners and email accounts. In any case, Shafer had no chance at the NSA, and he was less interested in finding Salome at this moment than dredging up her current link to the agency, if one existed.
He turned to open-source records, looking for Leffetz’s name in newspaper archives, Internet gossip columns, photo databases, Facebook and Twitter. He found references to an Adina Leffetz, but not the one he wanted, not unless she moonlighted as a high school gymnast in Orlando. He tried translating her name into Hebrew and struck another blank on the Israeli newspapers.
Then he reverse-searched her badge photo. The NSA had sophisticated photo-recognition software, but Shafer didn’t need it, thanks to the head-on shot. TinEye, a free site, did the trick. On DCsuperparty.com, which advertised itself as “your source for Washington events,” Shafer found a photo of Leffetz from a fund-raiser at the Brookings Institution almost three years before. She frowned at the camera, apparently not thrilled to have her photo taken. She stood next to a man Shafer knew well. The caption: Jess Bunshaft and friend.