Overwatch

by Marc Guggenheim

  “What you’re talking about, it sounds like science fiction or some horror movie or something.”

  “I know. It sounds crazy.”

  “Me lying makes a lot more sense,” Miller allows.

  “This is my concern.” Alex watches Miller shrink an inch in his chair, his hope deflating like a popped balloon. “But I believe you’re telling the truth, Alan.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Alex fishes in his pants pocket and takes out a pack of gum. He pops a piece in his mouth and begins to chew. He offers the pack to Miller, who just shakes his head. In between chews, Alex says, “By the time I get a serologist down here, whatever’s in your system will probably have metabolized.” Miller stares blankly, as if Alex just switched to another language. “If you’re telling the truth,” Alex continues, “then you were drugged. Most likely with GHB. Y’know, the date-rape drug?” Miller nods. That he’s heard of. “And we have to get an expert to analyze your blood for any traces before your body metabolizes it.” Miller nods cautiously. Alex removes a Montblanc pen, a gift from Grace, from his suit jacket. He starts to take it apart, chewing his gum as he does. “Fortunately, I’ve handled more than a few DUIs, and one former client of mine gave me a few tips on how to smuggle bodily fluids in writing implements.” Alex shows him the disassembled pen. “Roll up your sleeve.” Though clearly confused, Miller does as instructed. Alex holds up the pieces of the pen. “This is probably gonna get a little messy.”

  SEVEN

  ALEX LEAVES Alan Miller in jail with the twin promises that everything’s going to be all right and that he’ll check in tomorrow. It was arguably malpractice on Alex’s part not to win Miller’s release on bail. Hell, it was malpractice not to request it. Apart from a drunk-and-disorderly charge—a suspended sentence in college, which means it might as well have occurred in the Paleozoic era—Miller’s record is spotless. But Alex suspected that Miller might be safer in jail.

  Alex has twenty-eight minutes to ponder his choices as he completes the drive to Washington, DC, and up to the Hoover Building. With its 1960s federal-bureaucracy architecture and imposing concrete exterior, the building resembles a beige-painted airport terminal. As such, it seems thoroughly out of place among DC’s more stately buildings, with their Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Gothic Revival architectural styles.

  Alex strides across the black marbled lobby, over the FBI seal embedded in the floor. His CIA credentials get him past the gauntlet of security guards and metal detectors and he’s directed up to the third floor.

  Alex has to fill out a sheaf of paperwork and answer more than a few pointed questions before he is able to unburden himself of the Montblanc pen that’s burning a hole in his suit jacket. The pen’s business end is plugged with the wad of the chewing gum. The pen’s middle seam is tinged a bloody brown. After two hours’ worth of paperwork and bureaucratic legerdemain, he finally dangles the pen in front of Pamela Voytek.

  Voytek is one of the veritable army of forensics technicians the FBI houses at the Hoover Building. A Bureau lifer, her career will never grow beyond what can be seen under a microscope or held in a test tube. But she appears quite content with that. Alex can’t decide what makes him more envious: that Voytek seems capable of long-term professional fidelity or that she feels no pressure to climb the ladder of success.

  Voytek stares at Alex with a look that asks if this is some kind of a joke. A CIA lawyer with a pen full of blood that’s stopped up with a wad of chewing gum, and he wants her to run a full chem panel and toxicology screen? Voytek remembers the newbie last year who was given a sample of liquid soap to analyze, only to discover the pearl-colored liquid was, in fact, the very opposite of liquid soap and had been “donated” by the lab’s more immature male forensic scientists. Lord only knew what was really in this pen.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Tell Bill he can blow me.”

  Alex smiles, taking this in stride. “I don’t know who Bill is. And even if it were biologically possible for him to blow you, I think I outrank Bill on this.” He taps the signed ticket that authorizes the lab work he wants done.

  Voytek blanches a little. “And what case does this relate to?”

  Alex shrugs. “It’s classified,” he says. The voice in his head warns that he has doubled-down on his hunch that something pertaining to national security is going on; something that will justify the trail of white lies he’s been leaving in his wake lately.

  Voytek takes the pen and carefully unscrews it. “If I’m getting punked here,” she warns, “I’m gonna make you drink whatever’s really in this pen.” As she pours the pen’s contents out, however, Alex can tell from Voytek’s expression that the fluid is clearly blood, even if it has coagulated a bit during its voyage from Miller’s vein to Voytek’s Hewlett-Packard 6890 gas chromatograph. The machine whirs quietly for a few minutes.

  A monitor set off to the side of Voytek’s tidy workstation comes alive with a conventional-looking bar graph. Alex is surprised at how easy to decode it looks. At least, it would be if he understood the chemical equations on the screen. Fortunately, Voytek is on hand to translate: “Your subject’s testing positive for trace quantities of GHA.” She delivers this news with about as much interest as a librarian announcing closing time, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “GHA is gamma-hydroxyarsenate.” For all Alex knows, gamma-hydroxyarsenate is no more sinister than something Miller’s taking to lower his cholesterol. This is obviously playing across his face because Voytek elaborates, “GHA is a reformulation of GHB, which you might have heard by its mainstream name—”

  “The date-rape drug,” Alex says, but it comes out as almost a croak.

  “That’s right. What’s going on here?”

  “Can I ask you, have you ever heard of any incidents where GHA has been accidentally ingested?”

  “What, you mean, like in the absence of foul play?” Alex nods. “I can’t imagine a chain of circumstances that would lead to that.”

  “What about an organic formulation?”

  “Organic formulation?” Voytek raises her eyebrows.

  “Is GHA found naturally? Y’know, in nature?”

  “No. Like I said, it’s a reformulation of GHB. The reformulation is deliberate. And rare. The DOD’s been monkeying around with it for a few years now—”

  “DOD,” Alex interrupts. “The Department of Defense?”

  Voytek nods. “They’ve been trying to come up with a formulation that has the same effects as GHB.”

  “How do you know what the DOD’s been up to with this?”

  “I worked a homicide case about a year ago. The suspected cause of death was GHA. I studied up.”

  Alex shakes his head as he tries to get the jumble of thoughts to make sense. “Why would the Defense Department try to monkey around with the chemistry of GHB?”

  “They were trying to replicate the side effects of GHB—sluggishness, blackouts, what have you—but in a formulation that would be reliably toxic, as in fatal.”

  The word fatal has Alex reaching for his cell. He quickly Googles the phone number of the Virginia jail where Miller is being held. He navigates the jail’s automated directory and finally reaches an actual human being. “My name is Alex Garnett,” he tells the civil servant on the other end of the line. “I need to talk to my client Alan Miller. He’s currently incarcerated in your facility. I need to speak with him immediately.”

  “Hold on.”

  As Alex waits, he turns back to Voytek. “If someone’s been exposed to GHA, what measures should be taken to treat him?”

  “I’m not a medical doctor,” Voytek is saying when someone comes on the line.

  “Mr. Garnett? I’m a doctor at Rappahannock Regional Jail’s infirmary—”

  Alex cuts him off. “Doctor, my client needs medical attention. He’s been exposed to a toxic and potentially fatal chemical known as GHA.”

  “Mr. Garnett,” the doctor says in a measured voice, “I’m afraid
it’s too late for medical attention. Mr. Miller passed away twenty minutes ago.”

  * * *

  DARKHOVIN, IRAN

  1700 HRS. ZULU

  Jahandar’s predecessor, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was a severe-looking man with sullen eyes topped with dark, caterpillar-like eyebrows, perpetually arched in sinister malevolence. His dour appearance made for great American propaganda; the Ayatollah Khomeini’s visage seemed the very personification of evil. Perhaps that’s why, as far as the American media is concerned, Khomeini was the face of the Iranian government in the 1980s. However, when Jahandar succeeded him at the end of that decade, the Americans shifted their attention to Iran’s president. Looking at Jahandar, it isn’t hard to see why: He has a kind face, a professorial smile, and warm eyes that betray a hint of whimsy.

  That professorial smile is nowhere in evidence now, however. Yes, he’d seen the pictures, but that was nothing compared to being in the same room as the device. He’s in a hidden basement beneath one of several ramshackle houses in Darkhovin. It was dug out over a span of several years, so as not to attract the attention of nosy neighbors. Amazingly, it’s far enough underground that the space is naturally cool, at least compared to the oppressive desert heat.

  Jahandar reaches out to fulfill the promise he made to himself, to test the reality of what he’s seeing with the touch of his own skin. It’s a powerful moment. Jahandar doesn’t understand the object. All he sees is a rough assembly of plastic and metal whose construction he cannot begin to comprehend. But just like someone doesn’t need to be a mechanic to know he’s looking at a car, Jahandar is an expert in knowing the import of what he’s staring at.

  He turns around to face the three men standing behind him. One is his personal SAVAK bodyguard. The other two are, he assumes, the lead engineers of what’s been designated Project 110 for several years now. “Alhamdulillah,” one of the engineers says. “Alhamdulillah,” his counterpart echoes with a concurring nod. Alhamdulillah. All praise is due to Allah.

  Jahandar isn’t entirely sure. He keeps his thoughts to himself, but the engineers misread his stoicism as disapproval. “It will fit in the Fajr-Three,” one of the engineers assures him.

  “And the X–One Fifty-Five and the Shahab-Three,” the other adds.

  “The effective range is three thousand kilometers.” This is offered with a hint of pride and with the expectation that Jahandar, being a man of Allah, is ignorant as to weapons of war. But he isn’t. And he knows that at least two of the three missiles mentioned are not capable of flying farther than twenty-five hundred kilometers.

  He pushes aside that thought. He has much graver concerns on his mind. Iran has joined the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Israel, China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and North Korea as a nuclear power.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING

  12:19 P.M. EDT

  “Do not throw up in my lab,” Voytek commands.

  Although Alex looks like he’s about to vomit, rage is keeping his bodily fluids in check. The anger is directed inward. He rages against himself: Miller is dead. And he might have been alive if only Alex had gotten him out on bail.

  “Seriously, are you all right?” Voytek asks.

  Alex barely hears her. His mind roars along like a freight train. There’s no way three related people die under suspicious circumstances less than twenty-four hours after some divorce lawyer finds out a CIA case officer might have been embezzling money. There is another explanation, and concentrating on what it could be is what’s keeping Alex from collapsing on the sterile laboratory floor right now.

  He opens his mouth to ask Voytek a question, but nothing comes out. She’s looking at him like he’s having some kind of breakdown. Maybe she should call the paramedics? Or security guards? But before she can, Alex manages to get out, “You said…you said the Department of Defense was working this up.”

  She nods. Tentative. “Why the army needs a drug that’ll knock people out and then kill them is beyond me, but…” She punctuates the remark with a shrug.

  “Was it just the DOD working on this as far as you know?”

  “The Bureau used to be ignorant about these kind of things, but believe it or not, the federal government’s found its Rolodex since 9/11.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re actually sharing information now,” she says. “The FBI has seen the most GHB, has the most experience with it, even more than the FDA, so someone over at Fort Eustis reached out to us when people at Defense decided they wanted to start fucking around with the stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “Guess they wanted our expertise.” She shrugs again. “Like I said, we have the most experience.”

  “No,” Alex says, “I mean why would our government get into the business of inventing a fatal date-rape drug?”

  “That’s a damn good question. Know what they told me when I asked it?”

  “What?”

  “‘Don’t ask.’”

  * * *

  The three-hour drive to Fort Eustis gives Alex’s jangled nerves time to settle down. Once they do, he curses himself for being thrown in the first place. He’s an attorney, damn it. A former defense attorney. If he can stand up to gangbangers like Jesus Pena and remain perfectly calm, what has him so goddamned unnerved now?

  It occurs to Alex that he could easily head back up I-95 to Langley. He could march straight into Leah Doyle’s office—hell, Arthur goddamn Bryson’s office, for that matter—and come clean about everything. Publicity is his best protection. But as he thinks about what he would tell Leah and/or Bryson, the words start to sound ridiculous. Three people dead from some grand conspiracy to…what? Conceal almost ninety million embezzled dollars? It makes no sense.

  What Alex lacks, he realizes, is what lawyers term the theory of the case. He has evidence, sure. He has the toxicology report, the accident, and the circumstantial evidence that three unrelated deaths of three related people defies any innocent explanation. What he doesn’t have, however, is a theory to draw it all together into a single narrative. The theory of the case. The Why.

  Lawyers don’t have to prove the Why in order to meet their burden of proof. The How, the Where, and the When are all that the law requires. In theory. In practice, however, it’s different. An attorney wouldn’t be able to convince a jury that water is wet without offering up at least a theory as to why. Without a why, the deaths of Harling, Moreno, and Miller amount to nothing more than a coincidence, a hypothetical flight of fancy. And it’s pretty clear to Alex as he merges onto VA-105 that they weren’t murdered to cover up some relatively unimportant embezzlement scheme.

  It occurs to Alex that this is the first time he’s permitted himself to use the word murdered.

  * * *

  Fort Eustis is a military installation the size of a small city located within the larger city of Newport News, Virginia, on the banks of the James River. It began its days as a military post in 1923, and in 1931 it became a federal prison. Because the majority of its inmates were convicted bootleggers, the repeal of Prohibition led to a sharp drop in the prison’s population. It wasn’t until World War II that it became a full-fledged military facility. Today, it’s one of sixteen U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) bases. One of its charges is to oversee the procurement and development of new weapons systems. Alex wonders whether R & D on a fatally toxic drug fits that particular bill.

  The truth is, it’s hard to tell exactly what kind of work is done at Fort Eustis, as it doesn’t resemble any kind of military installation Alex has ever seen. Rather, it looks like a not-so-small town, complete with a hospital (McDonald Army Health Care Center), a museum (U.S. Army Transportation Museum), a fast-food restaurant (Burger King), and a racetrack. The place is so large, so expansive, it takes Alex the better part of an hour to figure out where to go once his CIA identification gets him on the base.

  Fort Eustis’s administration building is an unremarkable one-story
structure. The inside is all polished linoleum and government-issue furniture. A latte has more color to it. Nowhere is this truer than in the office of the base’s post commander, Peter Walczac. Alex has been told that Walczac is the officer responsible for the base’s interactions with outside federal agencies like the FBI.

  Walczac, judging from the way his fatigues billow out around his midsection, looks like he’s been behind a desk for most of his military career. He wears a hangdog expression that serves as a constant warning to visitors that whatever they want to talk to him about better be damn important. And as far as he’s concerned, gamma-hydroxyarsenate doesn’t qualify. “Honest to God, I’ve got no earthly idea what the hell the stuff is,” he asserts.

  “According to the FBI, this is something you guys were working on,” Alex says.

  “According to who in the FBI?”

  “A lab tech named Pamela Voytek. According to her, someone at Fort Eustis requested information on GHA from her.”

  “If we did, I don’t know anything about it. If anyone would, it would be the keeper of secrets.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Walczac grins and sits down at his computer. His fingers go to work for a few seconds. “We requested absolutely no chemical data from the FBI. Not with respect to GHA. Not in this past year. Not ever. Quite frankly,” he adds, “I don’t know what we’d do with that kind of information even if we had it.”

  “The FBI is under the impression you’re developing a version of a GHA here.” Alex sweeps his hand dramatically, as if to suggest the entire base is involved.

  Walczac shakes his head. If he seemed put out before, he appears genuinely annoyed now. “We’re a training and support installation, Mr. Garnett.” He sighs. “We don’t have any kind of R and D facilities on-site.”