Chapters:

Chapter 1

Wisdom is nothing more than the willingness to repeatedly review the basics of human knowledge.

The wisdom of the CIA lies in constantly reviewing the knowledge of our enemies.

In the past, phones got tapped and letters were secretly opened with steam. Spies in trench coats walked through the cities of the West, and if they could overcome the Iron Curtain, also through the cities of the East. Field agents would empty dead drops. Microfiches were exchanged. Blueprints of military installations changed hands in dimly lit bars. Classified files were smuggled across the border in the inner lining of cars. Everything was a little dingy, and the smell of fear hung in the air.

Things are a bit different these days. People meet on the Internet and exchange encrypted files. We hack email accounts, search for financial transactions, ransack archives in the Cloud – who came up with the ingenious idea to simply rename a set of servers as 'cloud'?

What I've learned from the philosophers: I know that I do not know.

But I know everything about Charles Donahue.

He lives on the second floor of a nineteenth-century building in a cobbled street lined with chestnut trees. On the ground floor, a tiny convenience store sells Turkish pastry, beer and toilet paper. It also stocks all Berlin daily newspapers. Every morning at eight, you can find garbage men sitting around rickety plastic tables on the sidewalk, drinking coffee from white porcelain cups. I took a picture because I feel I need to document everything I do not understand. Later, I will have a look at the photos and think about the mysterious life of Europeans. The garbage men are sitting in the cool spring air, dressed in bright orange from head to toe. If this color is reserved for the garbage disposal, then what do prisoners wear?

I asked my colleague Andrew before he got out of the car to break into Donahue's apartment. He laughed.

"If you go to jail here, you keep wearing your private clothes", he claimed. I don't believe him.

But back to Donahue, whose computer is being examined by Andrew, while Trent is going through drawers and cupboards, flipping mattresses and looking for cavities in the walls and the floor. What we are doing in Donahue's apartment is a combination of old and new. Old: Penetrate the apartment and sift through everything in the hope of finding a data storage medium with interesting content. Post a colleague (me) outside, in case someone shows up in the next ten minutes. Install bugs in bedrooms and living room. New: clone the contents of his desktop computer. Install software that will send us everything Donahue does with his PC. The computer is not connected to any network, so we prepare it to ensure that it sends signals regardless.

Donahue will not notice any difference when he comes home.

These journalists consider themselves smart, telling everyone that their computer has an air gap. A fancy new word for a device that is not connected to the Internet. However, the technique we use to overcome the air gap is four years old. Developed by bespectacled young scientists, used by stone cold field agents.

The Turkish baker downstairs has a competitor: an Albanian grocery store. Here, buns are two cents cheaper. His café is located on the other side of the street, diagonally across from Donahue's apartment. The elderly Albanian has placed two lonely brown plastic tables on the sidewalk. I sit at one of those and drink black tea. In this neighborhood, the streets are so wide that people can park on both sides of the street.

People here have all types of cars. Since my arrival two days ago, I have noticed countless station wagons, not the Seventies version, but the slick European kind. They call them 'Kombi'. One of those is now pulling up to the curb, the driver trying to squeeze the car into a parking space right in front of me. I would just sit back and continue to keep an eye on Donahue's house, but the car is sky blue. It's a Volvo.

I almost spill my tea.

Donahue takes off his seat belt and starts looking for something on the passenger seat.

I'd like to yell at him.

What are you doing here? You should be driving past Leipzig right now! They expect you in Frankfurt!

But screaming is not an option. Instead, I press the beeper in my left jacket pocket. Our team leader Will is now warned, and within half a minute he will leave the building with the others.

Donahue apparently found what he wanted, and now he gets out of the car. He gently closes the driver's door as if he were afraid of hurting his car. It won't take him more than a minute to cross the street, get into the building and insert his key into the lock of his apartment.

My gaze wanders to the house, where my colleagues are still inside. They must be finishing up. I see no movement behind the windows, and nobody is coming out of the building.

Time flies past me like a bullet. There is nothing to think about.

I get up and clear my throat. Donahue puts the car keys in his pocket and turns away from me, starting to cross the street.

A few brisk steps, and I'm on the street. He looks at me as I catch up with him.

"Morning", I say in faux cheerfulness. We stop briefly to let a moped pass by, the tires rumpling on the cobblestones.

"Hi", says Donahue.

"Can I talk to you for a minute? You look tired, and I swear I'm not here to waste more than ten minutes of your time."

He shakes his head. We are facing each other on the sidewalk, ten feet from his front door. There is no way I can warn the others in time.

Donahue has dark circles under his eyes.

He says: "I need breakfast, you know. I was on the road for several hours and I'm real tired."

I nod. "I'll buy you breakfast. Right here. Tell me what you need and I'll get it."

I look at the empty table next to the garbage men and sincerely hope that Donahue is not thinking of scrambled eggs and French toast.

He sighs and fiddles around with his laptop bag.

Finally he says: "Okay. Ten minutes. I'd like a coffee and a spinach borek."

He sits down at a table, and I enter the bakery. My heart is pounding, and my hands are wet. But that is completely irrelevant. The baker asks if he should warm up the borek. It’s some kind of puff pastry filled with feta and spinach. Another decision I have to make. I opt for warm and take the coffee to the table to keep my guest happy.

"Thank you", says Donahue.

I wish I could say to him: You should be really grateful. Not everyone gets free breakfast from the CIA.

In the evening we sit in the United lounge, and I enjoy the admiration of my colleagues.

"You told him you were his biggest fan?" Will whispers. "Glad you came up with that one."

"That was the easiest way to go", I answer coolly. I do not think I have to whisper. The other passengers couldn't care less about us.

"I know so much about him. And besides, I also needed a plausible reason for why I'm sitting in front of his house at eight in the morning."

Andrew is fidgeting in his seat. "Yeah okay, but did he tell you anything interesting? The kinda thing he doesn't say in his speeches?"

"Nope. I'd love to know what he's up to at the moment. After his big FBI story there wasn't really anything new."

Will nods. "And that thing was like, two years ago. I'm not sure why we're sneaking up on him now. The timing is weird."

He's right. Donahue earned fame and glory for his revelations about a nasty scheme within the FBI which culminated in a completely illegal wiretap against a Senator. But it's been a while. I have no idea why we've started spying on him now. This is expensive, and it doesn't only cost money. It costs time and binds some human resources. The data we got today will have to be evaluated. In addition, there is all the new data flowing into our systems as of today: whatever he does on his two computers, his phones and his movements around the apartment. Someone has to read everything he types, listen to all his conversations, and write them down. All things considered, this is a huge effort for a single target.

Andrew gets up and makes his way to the bar. I have not touched my whiskey yet. It's too early to drink. My stomach emits a loud growl.

"Actually, I thought it was kinda nice to meet one of our victims in person", I muse as Andrew comes back.

He brings only juice and soda. It is not common practice in our team to board a plane drunk. Once we're up in the air, we can still indulge in whatever we want.

"Did he tell you anything private at least?" Trent is pouring himself a glass of water. "That's the kind of thing that makes people vulnerable to attacks."

I shake my head.

"Not really", says Will. "The vulnerability thing. Not anymore. Twenty years ago you could blackmail gay people for being gay. Or people who cheat on their wives. But these days, nobody gives a shit. Which is very, very unfortunate."

I look around. There is not much going on. We checked in early because we had nothing else to do after we pretty much exceeded our mission. The aim was to prepare Donahue's equipment for our purposes and to bug his apartment. No one expected that he would come back today. Suddenly, his car and his two mobile phones were in our reach. After a brief phone call with Stuttgart we waited until Donahue was asleep. We sat in the rental car we had parked behind the next intersection. On Will's laptop we listened to the sleep-deprived journalist snoring.

"Did you beep me?" Will asked me while watching Donahue toss and turn in his sleep.

"Yeah, what happened to that?"

"We had a problem with the transfer of the acoustic signals, you know? When we were doing the air-gapped PC. So we switched off pretty much all other devices, even my beeper. Even the fridge. And then I forgot to switch the beeper back on."

I was impressed by the honesty that my boss displayed. He obviously did not mind admitting a failure.

"Did you think of turning the fridge back on?" I asked.

"Yup."

Once we were sure that Donahue was sound asleep, Will and Trent went back to the apartment and worked on the phones. After three minutes, they were back with us in front of the house. Now we had to discreetly do the Volvo. Every one of us was keen on the car, so we pulled straws, and Andrew won. He climbed in and went to work. Trent and I went back to the Albanian. Will took a slow walk around in the neighborhood, pretending to be a tourist.

I enjoyed the spring sun shining through the bare branches of the chestnut trees. Tiny sparrows hopped around in front of my feet, pecking at the breadcrumbs that Trent was throwing their way. No one in the street took an interest in Andrew's fumbling under the steering wheel.

There are about a dozen different ways to hack a car from the outside. But the most elegant solution is to push our software into the same port that a car mechanic would use for diagnostics. In a very short time we can infect the entire system with our very special software.

From now on, we own this car.

The only question is why.

On the way to Tegel airport nobody addressed this topic. We were all still pumped up. Exhilaration normally ensues after doing a good job. This time, our leader Will was in a particularly good mood. After all, Donahue's sudden return to Berlin was an unexpected complication, and we made the best out of that situation.

"You did great", he told me not once, but twice, as if I were a first-grader who needed encouragement.

But at some point we will have to talk about the fact that we have hacked a car for the first time in our career. It can now be controlled from a remote access point. We can show Donahue what a full brake application from a speed of a hundred miles an hour feels like. We can switch off all interior and exterior lights in the middle of the night. Turn the engine off. Accelerate from zero to hundred. Deactivate all brake functions.

To what intent?

The Business Class has a steward and a stewardess. The latter brings me a green tea and looks deep into my eyes.

You like me? I grin and she winks at me. She will probably slip me her digits so that we can get together in her hotel room in DC.

They all want me. But I will not delight the pretty flight attendant tonight. I have zero intentions of catching any diseases. I am not going to risk infecting a loved one with some STD I got from a slut in some airport hotel. I close my eyes and think of the object of my desire who is probably sitting behind a large desk in dark oak and staring at a computer. Blue eyes, a warm voice and a beautiful mouth. An irresistible mouth.

"Everything okay?" Will nudges me with his elbow. He's allowed to do that. "You were sighing."

With my supervisor pulling me out of my daydreams, I am now coming back down to earth. I might as well make good use of the time I have and write my report.

I take my laptop and start typing. Will looks at my screen, and I let him.

I'm trying to remember the exact course of our conversation. The beginning was difficult. While Donahue enjoyed his borek, I tried to justify the fact that I was stalking him. He scrutinized me with suspicious brown eyes. One of the garbage men was interested in our conversation. Donahue finished his coffee in one minute, but declined my offer to get him a new one. After I had spun together some innocuous nonsense, I asked him why he lived in Germany.

He shrugged. "I moved here because of my then-girlfriend. We're not together anymore, but I still like it here. Most people here understand English. Someday I'll want to come back home. But at the moment I can't say I'm homesick."

It was the answer I was expecting from him. It was totally incomprehensible to me how an American could happily live in Europe. But I guess love of country is not everybody's thing.

"There's a lot of people who insult you as a traitor", I said.

Donahue laughed bitterly. "They don't have a 700-page FBI dossier in their name."

A large crow walked up and down in front of us. Eventually it seemed to realize that there was nothing to expect from us, and it flew away.

"You know what worries me more than anything about this whole surveillance paranoia?" I asked. "The incompetence of those who supposedly have our best interests in mind. Just recently, a woman found herself on a no-fly list just because she had a funny name. If you pronounce it completely wrong, it sounds like Al Qaeda. The woman's got a husband and three children, and they're Swiss. They wanted to go on vacation in the States. They spent 2000 Euros for flight tickets, and they had to cancel everything."

Donahue nodded and swallowed the rest of his breakfast down.

Although he was tired, he felt like talking. "I got to see about half of my file. The rest was blackened. You wouldn't believe what kind of nonsense they filled it with. Now if you think about how much time and resources it takes to write up all this garbage..."

I knew exactly what he was getting at, and made a show of agreeing with him.

"The time and energy they need to snoop around my activities, that's exactly the time and energy they won't have to go after terrorists and criminals."

"Yup", Donahue said, shifting around on his chair. A new surge of adrenaline rushed through my veins. If he got up and left right now, I'd have the same problem that I had ten minutes earlier. I secretly cursed my team who were oblivious to what I was doing here. They were invading Donahue's privacy as if they had all the time in the world.

"And then there's so many terrorist attacks that the FBI can't prevent", I say. "Because some law enforcement agency wasn't doing their job."

This was a good idea. Donahue had no idea what I was talking about and frowned.

"What I'm trying to say here", I continued, "the attack on the Boston Marathon would never have happened if the cops had caught those criminals two years earlier. They had all the evidence."

Andrew and I had this discussion before, and now I used it to keep the conversation with Donahue going, in the hope that he would stay with me a little longer. My back was soaking wet.

I had to hang on and buy more time. I waved my arms around to emphasize my indignation.

"These two psychopathic losers committed a triple murder on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, and the police couldn't solve the case because they read all the signs at the crime scene completely wrong. If that homicide case had been solved, those two would've ended up in jail. There's a lot of human suffering that could've been avoided."

Donahue nodded. "The picture of the guy in the wheelchair. The bomb had shredded both of his legs... Worst picture I've ever seen. His face was gray. I was surprised when I found out he survived."

He sat back and watched a dog pooping next to a chestnut tree. The owner waited and then took off with the dog without bothering to pick up the dog shit.

"Besides", Donahue said. "I feel that every successful attack on my country is a huge humiliation. I want a strong America, the kind of country that you can't easily attack. Apart from all the suffering that comes from a terrorist act, I find it degrading if some crazy Saudis make our World Trade Center tumble to the ground. I honestly couldn't believe that something like that could ever happen to us."

Wow.

I did not expect this from Donahue, a left-leaning journalist who likes to criticize our security architecture. And who hides in Europe like a coward. We spent a considerable amount of time on our flight to Berlin just bitching about this traitor. And now I was sitting under a tree with him, and I was listening to the kind of things only a patriot would say.

The front door of the apartment building opened. Trent had his hipster glasses on, and Will had pulled down his baseball cap. Andrew was whistling and swinging his arms as if he didn't know what to do with his excess energy.

We should all go for a run later, I thought suddenly. My job here was done. All I had to do was find an elegant way to end this conversation.

But Donahue beat me to it. "Alright. It was nice to meet you, but I need to go home now", he said.

I showed him a grateful smile.

"It was cool to have a little talk with you", I said, standing up.

Donahue held his laptop bag tight. He looked really tired.

"I'm always happy to meet like-minded people", he said, watching a group of gypsies on the other side of the street. The women wore colorful, fluttering skirts. A little boy was hopping around them, tring to get their attention. They were too engrossed in their conversation to notice him.

"Sometimes it's pretty lonely here", Donahue said, and shook my hand like a businessman. He turned away from me. The door creaked as he pushed it open. Then Donahue disappeared into the house, where he would enter his apartment, go to bed and start snoring after almost exactly eleven minutes.

My boss takes another look at my report.

"He feels lonely?" Will laughs. "Oh man, if only he knew! He's anything but lonely right now. We've got our friend covered. Nothing can happen to him. Because we're in full control."

I suspect that Will had a martini too many. He will probably want to chat with me for the rest of the flight. I back up my document and shut down the computer.

Will yawns. "Well well well. What an exciting life we have. I hope he goes somewhere in the Volvo. It would be great if he drove to Moscow to consult with his handler. And then we sink the two of them into the Black Sea."

It's official: my boss is drunk. I spend the rest of the flight trying to keep him happy. By the time we touch down in Dulles, I have a major headache and feel cranky like an exhausted child.

Trent drops me off at home. I take off my shoes in the hallway. A brown suede jacket is hanging on a coat hook. Subtle jazz music is coming from the living room.

The object of my desire is sitting on my couch, reading a book.

My bad mood evaporates along with the headache.

What an exciting life we have.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2