Overwatch

by Marc Guggenheim

  Alex opens his mouth to ask the obvious questions—the first one being What the fuck?—but no words come out. Maybe the receptionist got the name wrong. On the other end of the line, she drones on about a heart attack, very sudden, everyone at the firm is still in shock, et cetera.

  Alex is still trying to absorb this when a car shoots past his, close enough to nearly clip his driver’s-side mirror. He looks up to see that the speeding bullet, already racing two car lengths ahead of him, is a red 1965 Ford Mustang, the same automotive vintage, make, and model favored by Jim Harling.

  The Mustang slaloms—threading between traffic with practiced skill—until the driver finds himself trapped behind a long-bed truck carrying a load of steel poles, each at least ten feet long. The Mustang shimmies—the driver is angling for a route around the truck—and then the truck’s brakes seize. The long-bed’s taillights are suddenly lambent with crimson. Doubled-up tires skid. Black streaks of rubber trail, drawing parallel lines along the asphalt. A rooster tail of smoke accompanies a horrific whine that sounds like a wild animal dying.

  The long-bed lurches to a stop, its inventory of steel pipes jangling with the momentum of the Mustang colliding with the rear of the truck. Metal meets metal with a violent crunch as the Mustang’s front, so carefully restored, accordions up against the truck’s back end. The collision dislodges the truck’s cargo, sending piping spilling onto the highway. Oncoming traffic swerves to avoid the onslaught, causing a secondary series of collisions, some of which send the vehicles pinwheeling off the asphalt and into the shoulder and the woods beyond.

  Alex wrestles with his steering wheel, jerking it right and left, working the gas, swerving to avoid the oncoming cars. Up ahead, the Mustang continues its inexorable forward momentum. Two cars part, providing a view of one of the long-bed’s longer pipes lancing the Mustang’s windshield, which seems to explode, raining pebbles of glass down on the road. The ensuing cacophony of tortured steel sounds like the end of the world.

  Suddenly, Alex is at ground zero, wayward automobiles and metal piping flying toward him like a meteor shower. Some miracle of navigation allows him to wend his way through the deadly metallic obstacle course. When he finally manages to beach the Lexus on the island of green that divides Route 123’s opposing lanes of traffic, he can feel the death grip his hands have on the steering wheel. His heart jackhammers in his chest, providing the convincing evidence that he’s somehow still alive.

  “Breathe,” he commands.

  He looks over his dashboard to see an almost postapocalyptic landscape. At the farthest point is the Mustang, still joined in a union of steel and glass with the flatbed. Behind it is a trail of vehicular devastation, drawing a line down the highway as clear as if the Mustang had been a meteorite whose landing cut a swath through the earth. Automotive metal and plastic litter the highway. The brightly colored pieces suggest that some very wild party has just been thrown. Broken and twisted cars rest at odd angles in groups of two and three. Some movement as their owners begin to venture out, still shaking off the shock of what’s happened.

  Alex emerges from his car and takes it all in. A few of the cars are so twisted they resemble modern art more than automobiles. The cars that arrived latest to the accident lie scattered across the road, forming a barrier that prevents him from getting hit by oncoming traffic. Nevertheless, Alex finds walking in the middle of a highway unsettling. His brisk pace morphs into a sprint as he races toward the broken Mustang, hoping against reason that Harling isn’t the driver.

  But when he arrives at the car, he can’t tell if it’s him. Can’t even come close. There’s a long metal pipe where his face used to be. A marriage of steel, blood, and gristle rises from the man’s slumped, lifeless shoulders. It’s not grief but rather the sight of the man’s left ear, dangling from a bloody sinew, that causes Alex to double over and vomit.

  It won’t be until the Virginia medical examiner issues the official autopsy that Alex will know for sure what he now suspects: Central Intelligence Agency field officer James Dennis Harling, who survived six years as a nonofficial-cover case officer in such places as Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan, was killed in the middle of his morning commute on Route 123.

  * * *

  DARKHOVIN, IRAN

  1330 HRS. ZULU

  Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Jahandar’s movements are closely tracked. Not only by the watchful eye of the VEVAK, but also by the various foreign intelligence agencies whose operatives have infected Iran’s borders. The list of penetrating agencies is long—much longer than the VEVAK would care to admit, even to itself—but clearly, America’s CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and this new Overwatch top the list. Of greater concern are the American-made KH-11 U.S. NRO surveillance satellites flying in geosynchronous perpetuity over Iran, making Jahandar’s movements subject to constant monitoring. At least, that’s what the VEVAK fears. Accordingly, the VEVAK’s security and protection procedures account for the fact there is nowhere the ayatollah can travel without Iran’s enemies learning about it. Meaning he doesn’t go anywhere in Iran that might threaten to draw the wrong kind of foreign attention. But like many assumptions made for the purposes of security, this one is wrong. Jahandar isn’t under round-the-clock surveillance, by satellite or otherwise, by the CIA or by the Mossad, but the VEVAK has long since decided it’s better to overestimate their country’s enemies than underestimate them, particularly where the Great Satan is concerned.

  Still, when Jahandar heard about the project’s completion, he insisted on seeing the final product for himself. Photos were presented, of course. They looked quite vivid on the iPad. But he needed to see it with his own eyes. He wanted to touch it with his own hand and, if so moved, say a prayer over it. It’s not every day your country builds something that will change the world. Under such circumstances, photographs simply will not suffice.

  The process of secretly moving Jahandar from his residence in the Beit Rahbari Presidential Palace in Tehran to Darkhovin in the Khuzistan Province took two months to devise, practice, and execute. Despite his status as supreme leader, and in part because of the security restrictions placed on him, Jahandar rarely leaves the confines of Tehran’s borders and almost never goes as far as Khuzistan. Should the Americans or, Allah forbid, the Israelis learn that the ayatollah visited this place, a simple town as far from Tehran as one can get without crossing into Iraq, they would certainly grow curious as to why, and the answer would threaten everything Iran’s government has been working toward, if not the country’s very existence. Given those stakes, there was nothing the VEVAK could leave to chance.

  An eight-year-old Iranian postal service van was selected for the trip. The Iran postal service might be one of the world’s least reliable ways to send a message, but an IPS van is a near-perfect way to secretly transport someone from Tehran to Darkhovin, because no one will look twice at it. The only downside—for Jahandar, at least—is that the van is several orders of magnitude less comfortable than the Lincoln Town Car in which he is typically chauffeured. Still, the thirteen-hour pilgrimage over what can barely be considered roads in temperatures that prompt the van’s aging engine to overheat three times will be more than worth it.

  The waiting is the hardest part. Jahandar’s VEVAK handlers refuse to offer specifics on exactly how long it will take them to assure themselves it is safe for him to visit the site. Their maternal caution is starting to grate on him, but Jahandar is nothing if not patient. After all, he has dedicated his life—his very existence—to following the teachings of the Koran, and the Koran counsels, “Be patient. For your patience is with the help of Allah.” Jahandar knows that this principle, known as sabr, is as true as every other dictate of the Koran. And even now, he feels Allah soothing him, whispering into his soul. His wait will not be long…

  * * *

  ROUTE 123

  8:58 A.M. EDT

  Alex doesn’t know how long he spends staring at what he’s sure is Harling’s body. It must be a few mi
nutes because three Virginia sheriff cars and an ambulance have arrived and he can’t remember hearing their approaching sirens. Everything sounds different, as if he’s underwater. He reasons he’s in shock. And that’s when it hits him that Harling’s death wasn’t the first gut punch he took this morning. What was it? Just before the accident, what happened? He was being told…the receptionist was telling him that Evelyn Moreno was dead. Heart attack.

  Then he sees the long-bed’s driver. The man sports a lumberjack’s flannel shirt and a well-worn Orioles cap. He’s talking to two sheriff’s deputies. He looks shaken from the accident but otherwise unharmed. Alex can’t tell if the man’s apparent shock is an act for the police’s benefit. It’s hard for him to imagine how it would feel to be the cause of a ten-car pileup and yet survive without so much as a scratch.

  Alex moves to his car with renewed purpose. Adrenaline restores mental clarity like a fan blowing away smoke. He unlocks the passenger-side door and reaches into his glove compartment to find his public defenders’ badge. He keeps it there so he can grab it when he needs it, usually to get out of speeding tickets.

  The badge is enough to get him past the deputy guarding the accident site as paramedics use the Jaws of Life to get to Harling’s near-decapitated body. One of the sheriff’s deputies talking to the driver spots Alex approaching and moves to cut him off, leaving the driver a tantalizing few yards away with the other officer. Alex raises his badge with a forced casualness he hopes comes off as legitimacy. “I’m with the public defenders’ office.”

  “DC office, looks like,” the officer says. Alex hoped he wouldn’t notice. “This is Virginia.”

  “What are you, the Bar Association?” Alex asks. He points to the driver. “I want a word with that man.”

  The second deputy approaches Alex, getting a bit closer than necessary. “Our badges are bigger than yours, Counselor. So your word’s gonna have to wait till arraignment.” He returns to the long-bed’s driver.

  “Arraignment?” Alex shoots his gaze over to the man. “If the driver is getting arraigned, it’s because he’s under arrest. And if they’re arresting him, it’s because he committed a crime.”

  Following Alex’s eyes, the first deputy points at the driver. “Yeah, arraignment. The guy’s liquored up like a frat boy at his first kegger.”

  Alex’s mind kicks into an adrenaline-fueled overdrive. Sure, it might just be a coincidence that the drunk-driving accident that ended Jim Harling’s life happened to occur right on the heels of Evelyn Moreno’s fatal misfortune. But that would challenge the definition of the word coincidence. The only way he can resolve the conundrum is to have a pointed conversation with the flatbed’s driver. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen here or now. The second deputy lowers the driver into the backseat of their cruiser.

  Alex turns back to the first officer with urgency and whips out his smartphone. “Where is he getting arraigned?”

  * * *

  VIRGINIA SUPERIOR COURT

  11:00 A.M. EDT

  On his way to the courthouse, Alex calls in to the Agency, asks for Leah’s assistant, and explains that he was just in a car accident. “I’m fine,” he assures her. He fails to mention Harling. Leah will find out about him soon enough. “But the paramedics told me I should visit an ER and get myself checked out anyway. I could have a concussion and not know it,” he adds for good measure. “Can you tell Leah I might be here for a while?”

  “Of course, Mr. Garnett.”

  “Please. It’s Alex.” Confident his whereabouts for the day have been accounted for, Alex races into the courthouse and locates the courtroom where the flatbed driver will be arraigned. All courtrooms in the country are the same. Some are state courts, others federal. Some smell like a fresh coat of paint, while others have linoleum tiles that date back to the Carter administration. Some are reserved and stately while others endure an architecture more befitting a modern art museum. All are unlike those depicted on television. But they all possess the same electricity generated by the wheeling and dealing, hustle and bustle, the give-and-take of the American legal system in action. It is amid this energy that Alex feels most at home.

  The clerk is just starting to call the long-bed driver’s case when Alex enters. “Docket ending two-seven-oh-seven,” she says. “Commonwealth versus Alan Miller, vehicular homicide.” She continues reading the charges as Alex eyes the defense table. Sitting there is the man in the now-familiar Orioles ball cap and flannel shirt and his defense attorney, who, judging by his comb-over and off-the-rack suit, probably advertises in the Yellow Pages.

  Alex steals a quick glimpse at the prosecution table to his right. The attorney sitting there is maybe a year out of law school. Judging from the height of his file stack, Alex figures he’s juggling about twice the caseload he should be. Both are very good signs.

  “Alex Garnett of Garnett and Lockhart for the defendant, Your Honor.” Better to ally himself with his father’s firm for this proceeding than drag the CIA into it. “We can waive the remainder of the reading. Mr. Miller pleads not guilty.”

  Yellow Pages is suddenly awake and shooting to his feet, seemingly unable to tell whether he should be angry or embarrassed. Has he shown up in court for the wrong client? “Your Honor…” he croaks.

  Alex swivels around to cut off Yellow Pages’ objection. But as his eyes find the defense table and settle on his would-be client, he freezes. The defendant, the man in the flannel shirt and Orioles cap on whose behalf Alex just entered an appearance, isn’t the same man Alex saw at the scene of the accident.

  His mouth goes dry. His mind races through the list of possible explanations. He’s not in the wrong courtroom. How many flannel-draped Orioles fans can be arraigned for DUI in a single day? Coincidence and misunderstanding now ruled out, Alex finds himself left with conspiracy. One of the flanneled men was responsible for Harling’s death. To be sure, it takes two to conspire, but it’s obvious from the man at the defense table’s disconcerted expression that he isn’t one of the conspirators. Therefore, the police’s taking the actual culprit into custody was less an arrest than a sophisticated getaway. But in order for this to be true, the sheriff’s office had to have been involved. Or, at least, two of its deputies. And how did they switch one man for the other anyway?

  “Your Honor, there apparently has been some kind of mistake,” Yellow Pages says. “But I’m not the one who made it.” He speaks with the conviction of a lawyer who is in danger of losing a client. “The court appointed me to represent Mr. Miller. I have the paperwork right here.” He holds up a sheaf of documents and waves it around.

  Alex knows that the only way he’ll start finding answers is by getting the driver alone in a room. He also knows with equal certitude that that’s not going to happen unless he’s the man’s attorney. “Every defendant has a right to counsel of his own choosing, Your Honor,” Alex reminds the court. “The fact that Mr. …”

  “Morewitz,” Yellow Pages obliges.

  “That Mr. Morewitz happened to have been retained by the defendant first is irrelevant.”

  The judge looks to the driver, inviting him to speak. The driver’s eyes dart between Alex, who stands confident and sharp in his neat Armani suit, and his for-the-moment attorney, with his comb-over and inability to say his own name with authority. He points to Alex. “I’ll take him.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Alex paces the length of one of the rooms in the courthouse set aside for private attorney/client conferences. The driver sits at the room’s lone table and anxiously taps his fingers against the cheap pressed wood. Alex has confirmed two things. First, the driver’s name is Alan Miller. Second, Alan Miller is the owner of record of the long-bed truck that killed Harling. Miller stares at Alex with glazed eyes as if he expects to wake up at any moment from a trying nightmare.

  “It’s like I told you,” Miller says. “I passed out.”

  “And you don’t remember anything.”

>   Miller shakes his head, starting to get exasperated. “I got up this morning, I shaved, I showered, I had some coffee, and I got in my rig.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I really don’t remember.” Miller stares at his hands, palms spread out in front of him, as if they hold the answer to his missing morning.

  “What’s the first thing you remember?”

  “Some police officer taking a mug-shot photo of me. I was pretty out of it…”

  “Did you feel inebriated? Drugged?”

  “I was definitely off, I can tell you that much.”

  Alex sits down so he and Miller are eye to eye. “You can tell me more. Everything you tell me is protected by attorney-client privilege. Absolutely everything.”

  Miller knows what Alex is getting at. “I don’t have a problem with alcohol, Mr. Garnett. Sometimes a beer after work. If it’s been a tough day, maybe I’ll do a shot of Jack. But I’ve always”—he knocks the table with his knuckles for emphasis—“always known when to stop. Always.” He taps the table again.

  “The police think you were drunk.”

  “Mr. Garnett, my right hand to God, the strongest thing I had this morning was Folgers.”

  Alex leans back and considers. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Miller. Attorneys, particularly ones with criminal-law experience, are more reliable than polygraphs.” Miller stares back, confused. “Lie-detector tests,” Alex clarifies.

  “Yeah? So what’s your detector saying?”

  “That you’re telling the truth. But in this case, it’s as problematic as any lie.”

  “I’m not following you.” Miller shrugs.

  “It very much appears that you weren’t behind the wheel when the accident occurred. Which means the driver who was arrested at the scene was dressed to look like you, and you were drugged at some point this morning then swapped for him prior to his arriving at Central Booking. I don’t see how that happens without the sheriff’s office—one deputy, at least—being in on it.”