Overwatch
Page 3
“Truth be told, nobody’s more surprised than me. I mean, with you being Simon Garnett’s kid…y’know, the whole silver-spoon, to-the-manor-born thing…” she continues. “Well, I guess you couldn’t fault me for having low expectations.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex manages.
“I guess this new gig’s more suited to your pedigree, huh?” she asks, reminding Alex that his new job—his next job—is also on the list of things he’d rather avoid talking about. “The Office of General Counsel. Dad really pulled the right strings this time.”
Alex stiffens. “My father hasn’t said one word to me since I left Garnett and Lockhart to come work for you.” Then he adds, without really having to, “I got the OGC job on my own steam.”
“Right,” Paula says. “I didn’t mean to hit a nerve. I hope the new gig suits you, Alex. That’s the truth.”
“I hope so too, Paula. But if it doesn’t, you can bet I’ll be back, résumé in hand.” He offers a polite smile and heads out of the office without waiting for Paula to respond.
* * *
NEW HAMPSHIRE AVENUE NW
WASHINGTON, DC
7:00 P.M. EST
Alex unlocks the door to his condominium and ambles into the Clive Christian décor. Setting down the banker’s box, he’s greeted by the sound of running water from the bedroom shower and chatter from the TV.
“—Supreme leader of Iran, Ali Jahandar,” the talking head on TV is saying. To the extent Alex has heard of Jahandar, it’s been under circumstances such as this: cable-news reports or cocktail-party chatter taken in with only one ear. In this, Alex is not unlike the vast majority of Americans who know very little of Jahandar or the position he holds as supreme leader of Iran. Most Americans think of Iran’s government as being like America’s, where the position of president is the pinnacle of authority. But in Iran, the president is outranked politically, religiously, and militarily by the supreme leader.
The graphic on the TV shifts from a file photograph of Jahandar to the black-and-yellow oval seal of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The anchor shuffles some papers and moves on to the next story of the evening: “Five Special Forces soldiers died yesterday in a training exercise…”
Something on the floor captures Alex’s attention. A red ribbon. Long. Starting in the living room, where Alex is watching television, and disappearing underneath the closed bedroom door. Behind it, the sound of a running shower continues unabated.
Alex smiles. He employed a very similar trick during their weekend away in the Hamptons. It was Grace on Alex’s side of the ribbon then, with the other end tied to a small box containing an engagement ring. And now here Grace is, ripping off his idea—well, co-opting it, at least—a mere six months later. Alex smiles. What happened to originality?
He opens the bedroom door to find that the ribbon terminates not at an engagement ring or a rose-petal-festooned bed but at his Armani tuxedo. And on top of that, a jewelry box similar to, though larger than, the one that contained Grace’s engagement ring. “You can’t propose to me, honey,” Alex calls out over the shower. “I’ve already proposed to you, remember? Besides, it’s not supposed to work that way.”
Once again, the only reply is the shower, so he opens the box resting on the tuxedo. Inside: a gorgeous metal watch. It has heft to it. Substantial. A man’s watch. A man of means’ watch. A Krug Baümen, if Alex is reading that correctly. Smiling, Alex removes it for closer inspection. His fingers detect a roughness breaking up the otherwise smooth metallic back, and he flips the watch over to reveal an inscription:
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR LAST DAY
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR FIRST
I’M IN THE SHOWER
LOVE, GRACE
Noting the watch’s claim to water resistance to a depth of thirty meters, Alex strips off his old watch and replaces it with the new Krug Baümen. As he does, he spots a card of some kind sticking out from under the satin lapel of his tux. He snatches it up, feeling the thick stock and letterpress embossing of an invitation.
G & L
Please Join Us to Celebrate the 70th Birthday of Simon Garnett, Esq.
MAKOTO RESTAURANT
4822 MACARTHUR BOULEVARD NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20007
NOVEMBER 6 AT 8:00 P.M.
Please RSVP to lockhartasst@garnettlockhart.com
Alex tears the invitation neatly in two. He eyes the bathroom door, with the shower running behind it, and his fiancée, the love of his life, standing naked in the warm water. As he undoes his tie, heading for the bathroom and all that it promises, he tries to force thoughts of his father, his father’s party, and Grace’s obvious expectations that they’ll attend from his mind. Alex has never fully understood Grace’s fetish—his term—for trying to reconcile Alex and his father. There’s nothing, he’s explained more times than he cares to think about, to reconcile. The relationship has simply atrophied.
Alex shakes his head. Simon Garnett will have no place in what the next forty-five minutes will bring…
TWO
VIRGINIA, I-66
8:45 A.M. EST
THE POTOMAC River passes under Alex’s Lexus ES 350 as it shoots over the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge that joins Washington, DC, with Virginia. He drives, pumped for his first day at a new job, with his MP3 player blasting. Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” A good first-day-of-work-in-a-new-job song if ever there was one.
The northbound section of the George Washington Memorial Parkway is, somehow, always free of traffic, so within ten minutes he’s turning onto Route 123, where signs begin to appear: GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE. UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY. After passing these, he stops at a traffic light before making a right turn into the main entrance of the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet another sign warns, NO CAMERAS OR VIDEO EQUIPMENT PERMITTED ON PREMISES. The exception to this rule is the video camera and accompanying monitor that greet Alex at the gate.
“Alex Garnett,” he tells the security guard he sees on the video monitor. “I’m starting today in the Office of General Counsel.”
“Social Security number?” the guard asks. Alex provides it. There’s a short pause before the guard instructs, “Pull up to the right of the building and show your ID.”
The gate blocking Alex’s Lexus swings up and he drives forward to the small security building. This gate is manned by an actual guard who exits the security building and approaches Alex’s open window. Alex provides his driver’s license as instructed. “Wait here,” the guard says.
As Alex waits, he looks around, taking notice of the several security guards walking the grounds. Each is armed with an M4 carbine assault rifle. They carry the weapons almost casually, as if the guns weren’t capable of firing up to 950 deadly rounds per minute. Redwoods blanket the area in an attempt to obscure a towering fence, well above ten feet high, and conceal dozens of CCTV security cameras. In his two years as a public defender, Alex has spent more than his fair share of time in secure facilities like jails, prisons, and courthouses, not to mention a federal building or two. None of those places, however, made Alex feel the way he does now. It’s an almost electric sensation, a feeling so deep it can be described only as primal: This is the safest, most secure place on Earth. No one can touch you here. If anyone tries, we’ll see. We see everything.
The guard returns with Alex’s license and a red VISITOR badge. “Wear this at all times. Drive ahead and park in any available lot. You’re gonna enter through the New Headquarters Building. Look for a white water tower. It’s close to the NHB entrance.”
Alex nods his thanks and gives a polite wave. As he drives onto the grounds, he passes a nondescript marker indicating the nonsecurity entrance. The real entrance. It sits to his left, a few feet from the outbound lane, near a walkway leading to a small courtyard framed by two wooden benches that bookend a three-foot-tall wall of carved Dakota mahogany granite. Inscribed in the granite is a simple message:
>
In Remembrance of Ultimate Dedication to Mission
Shown by Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency
Whose Lives Have Been Taken or Forever Changed by Events at Home and Abroad
DEDICATO PAR AEVUM
May 2002
As Alex drives, he begins to understand why the guard told him to park in “any available lot”: There aren’t any. Half of the Agency’s workforce live way out in western Virginia and are in by six to beat the morning traffic. Consequently, he finds parking only in the outer-perimeter purple lot.
It’s a ten-minute walk to the New Headquarters Building. The headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency sit on 258 acres that call to mind a college campus, not the nerve center of the world’s most clandestine organization. As Alex makes his way across the grounds, he passes a section of the Berlin Wall, which has been repurposed as a kind of monument. He notes with some interest that the western side of the wall is covered in graffiti while the eastern—Communist—side is whitewashed and unremarkable.
His path takes him past the Old Headquarters Building. He walks only a few feet away from the structure’s cornerstone. The term cornerstone, however, is misleading. Cornerbox might be more accurate, given that it’s actually hollow. But an even more correct designation would be time capsule. Inside the box are numerous key documents and memoranda related to the establishment of the CIA, including all of the executive orders concerning the management of CIA operations before the commencement of the OHB’s construction in 1959. This collection includes Executive Order 9621, titled “Termination of the Office of Strategic Services and Disposition of Its Functions.” It’s a document few Americans have ever heard of, but it lays the foundation for the corruption of American government as securely as the cornerstone lays the foundation for the OHB.
* * *
Alex walks into the New Headquarters Building and is surprised not to find the CIA seal inlaid on the lobby floor. Nor can he find the Memorial Wall, with its 107 commemorative stars set in marble. He’d been looking forward to seeing both—the most well-known images of the CIA’s interiors. But Hollywood takes its inspiration from the décor of the Old Headquarters Building. Alex walks up to the closest guard station and introduces himself to the green-jacketed man on duty. “Hi. I’m Alex Garnett. I’m supposed to be starting today in the OGC’s office.”
“It’s just OGC,” says the man, whose name is Ciampa, according to his Agency ID. “The O stands for Office. So you just said the ‘Office of General Counsel’s office.’ It’s like saying ‘HIV virus,’ y’know?”
“Or ‘CIA agency’?”
“Exactly,” Ciampa says, as he finds Alex’s name on his computer. “Yup. You’re supposed to go to three B twenty-two NHB. That’s vault twenty-two in the B corridor on the third floor of this building. You’re reporting to Leah Doyle. You know her?”
“She was in one of my screening interviews.”
“Great. Because you’ve got a red badge, I’ve got to have someone escort you.” Ciampa turns and waves over one of the other men in green jackets standing nearby. “He’ll take you where you need to go. At some point today, you’re gonna have to head over to the Badge Office to get your permanent badge. The Badge Office is right off the Old Headquarters Building entrance.”
“Thanks.”
“You have a good one, Mr. Garnett.”
Alex’s chaperone leads him deeper into the building. They pass a sixty-something man who looks like he just stepped off Air Force One.
“Garnett. Alex Garnett?” the ruddy-faced man asks. “I thought I read something about you starting today.” Alex’s blank expression conveys he has no idea who the man is. “General Counsel Arthur Bryson.”
General Counsel. Alex blanches a little. Bryson is the man whose office he’s working for now. Alex swallows, then accepts Bryson’s offered hand and shakes it firmly. “Alex Garnett,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to be working for you, sir.”
“We’re happy to have you. Particularly with your experience. We don’t get many refugees from the public defenders’ office around here.”
“Well, I appreciate the opportunity.”
“It’s the least I could do for Simon Garnett’s boy.” Bryson’s warm grin grows to a legitimate smile. You didn’t think you got this job on your own steam, did you? “Give your father my best, Alex,” Bryson says and continues down the hall.
* * *
Accounts and opinions differ on the question of when Leah Doyle first showed up on the CIA’s recruitment radar. She graduated summa cum laude from Stanford Law and promptly went to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The high point of Leah’s clerkship was her authorship of Ginsburg’s majority opinion in Olmstead v. L.C., a landmark case in which the Court ruled that mental illness is a form of disability and, therefore, is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Initially, people believed it was Leah’s work on Olmstead that drew the CIA’s attention to her, but in the ten years Leah’s worked at the CIA, she’s watched that story grow into the belief that the CIA had targeted Leah for recruitment the moment she scored a perfect 180 on her Law School Admission Test as an undergrad at Harvard University.
Like much of CIA lore, neither story is true (although Leah did, in fact, go to Harvard and did, in fact, score a 180 on her LSAT). In reality, Leah became intrigued by the OGC when she saw Arthur Bryson argue the CIA’s case in El-Masri v. Tenet, a suit brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who had the misfortune to share the exact same name as a member of al-Qaeda’s Hamburg cell, a coincidence that resulted in his being abducted and transported to the Salt Pit, a covert CIA prison in Afghanistan. Bryson was able to get the case dismissed by relying on the rarely cited precedent of state-secret privilege, and he still managed to preserve the plaintiff’s dignity. Leah was so impressed by the legal and ethical balancing act—victory with grace was how she’d thought of it at the time—that she became determined to work for the man who had pulled it off. It just so happened that he worked for the CIA.
The fact that the legend of Leah’s recruitment into the CIA has grown in the telling doesn’t surprise Leah in the slightest. The CIA has always cultivated its own mythology like a garden. When Allen Dulles, the Agency’s fifth director of Central Intelligence, an attorney and the first civilian to hold the post of DCIA, was asked by reporters what was in the OHB’s cornerstone, Dulles replied with a wink, “It’s a secret.” Leah has followed Dulles’s lead, responding to any questions about the origins of her hiring with a curt yet always provocative “No comment” or a more enticing “I can’t talk about it.” (She’d always despised the worn “I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you” cliché.)
Alex Garnett doesn’t seem curious about Leah’s history with the Agency, and that suits her just fine. She’s content to merely give him his introductory tour of the General Counsel’s offices.
“The Office of General Counsel—we tend to shorthand it as the OGC—has a group of attorneys inside each of the Agency’s area divisions and centers of the NCS. That’s National Clandestine Service.”
“You guys like your acronyms.”
Leah ignores him. “We assign attorneys to departments like the Near East Division or the Counterterrorism Center. Those attorneys work only on issues specific to their divisions or centers. But it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be putting you in one.”
“Why’s that?”
“You don’t have any operational background,” Leah answers. “Instead, you’ll be working within the OGC proper. There are four divisions: Ops and Intel, Ad Law and Ethics, Logistics and Procurement, and, of course, Litigation. You’ll start off in Ops and Intel and rotate through divisions, one per quarter. That’ll give you a chance to see each division and give each division a chance to evaluate you. Then we’ll sit down with General Counsel Bryson and figure out the best fit.”
“Is this typical? The whole rotation thing?”
“Are you asking because you think
you’re being singled out for special treatment?” Leah says, her voice edged with accusation. Alex doesn’t take the bait. “If so, you have either a persecution complex or an arrogant sense of entitlement.”
“I honestly don’t see any reason I couldn’t have both.” This joke earns a slight smile. “I’m guessing my relationship with my father came up in the background check you guys did on me.”
“Once or twice,” Leah says, but what she really means is very often.
“I asked out of curiosity,” he assures her. “I mean, it can’t be easy, rotating that many lawyers through every department.” He gestures to the large office area. It’s arranged like a newspaper’s bullpen, a sea of desks partitioned by sleek metal and glass dividers. Black placards with white lettering hang from the ceiling, indicating the four divisions Leah laid out: OPERATIONS AND INTELLIGENCE, ADMINISTRATION LAW AND ETHICS, LOGISTICS AND PROCUREMENT, and LITIGATION.
“We have about a hundred attorneys. And that’s just in the main office. Each one undergoes a thorough interview process, background check, and psychological evaluation. That’s a lot of effort to expend to not place someone in the right department at the end of the day. The job of the OGC is to provide the rest of the Agency with all manner of legal advice and support. This ranges from counterintelligence to counternarcotics, from civil litigation to criminal litigation, and from foreign intelligence to intellectual property.” Alex knows all this from his application process, but he lets her continue. “So, for example, if one of our case officers uses advanced interrogation techniques in the questioning of, say, a suspected member of al-Qaeda, he or she does so under guidelines devised and overseen by the OGC.
“This morning’s particular problem,” she continues, “concerns a lawsuit filed by the Vietnam Veterans of America. Have you read about it?”