Overwatch

by Marc Guggenheim

  “I just need to see your badge,” the guard repeats. Alex doesn’t move. He can’t move. But he doesn’t know what to do. The guard, who apparently is not a complete idiot, clearly senses that something is amiss. His right hand is wandering to the SIG Sauer P226 on his holster. “Do we have a problem here?” he asks.

  “What’s going on?” The question doesn’t come from Alex, who for once in his life has no clever argument to Houdini himself out of trouble.

  Alex gets a glimpse of a second green jacket approaching. The guard turns to his peer. “I think this joker just tried coming in here with somebody else’s badge,” he says.

  Alex turns and sees the guard more clearly now, and he has to work mightily not to exhale with relief. It is another guard. But this one, he knows.

  “Alex wouldn’t do that,” Tom Ciampa answers, walking up to his fellow guard. Nothing has gone right for Alex since the moment he managed to avoid being killed in the parking garage of his own building, but right now he’s thankful for all the bad turns he’s experienced in the last twenty-four-plus hours, because he has the sense he’s about to make a large withdrawal from the karma bank. “Alex is legit. I can vouch for him.”

  The skeptical guard looks at Ciampa, then over to Alex, and he apparently decides Alex isn’t worth getting into a pissing match over. “I’ll go call IT. It’s probably a glitch,” he says, clearly not happy about it.

  Once he’s gone, Alex looks to Ciampa. “Thanks. I really don’t know what was up with that guy.”

  Ciampa appears to see through Alex with a single concerned glance. “Everything all right with you, Mr. Garnett?”

  “Just stressed.” This is not an outright lie.

  “You take care of yourself, okay?”

  “I will, Tom. Thank you.” Alex does his best to make it clear he isn’t thanking Ciampa just for the friendly concern.

  * * *

  The Overwatch Operations Center is alive with activity despite it being well past four in the morning. This is because in Iran it’s nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and the Islamic Republic of Iran Regular Forces are on high alert. And this heightened military tempo is being matched 970 miles to the southwest by the Tzva Hahagana LeYisrael—Israel’s defense forces. The entire Middle East is on a war footing right now. William Rykman smiles. Everything is going according to plan. Years of strategizing, of arranging for contingencies and suffering setbacks, of diplomatic theory and sabotage, are coming to fruition.

  At his station, Tyler Donovan jolts as if struck by a wayward electrical current. Rykman takes note of this, as Donovan is the coldest son of a bitch he’s ever known, which is really saying something.

  “Donovan?”

  Donovan leans forward as if the image on his flat-screen computer monitor is going to become clearer or different with proximity. He takes a few seconds to read the screen again before reporting, in a voice more level than his startled expression would indicate, “Sir, the security gateway at the OHB just logged an entry for Leah Doyle.”

  Rykman instantly understands the reason for Donovan’s uncharacteristic lack of calm. Almost as instantly, he knows what’s afoot here, but his theory requires confirmation. “Security cameras,” he orders.

  But Donovan is already working on it. Rykman steps up behind him as the young soldier does whatever young soldiers do with computers these days and waits patiently for the few seconds it takes for Donovan to work his magic. As Donovan manipulates the CIA’s security network, Rykman says, “I thought Virginia PD picked Garnett up.”

  “The sheriff’s department, yes, sir,” Donovan confirms. He stabs a final button, producing a new window on his monitor. It’s a quad-cam feed from the four security cameras monitoring the entrance to the Old Headquarters Building. On two of the video feeds, the face of Alex Garnett is clearly visible.

  Rykman’s lips curl into a thin, impressed smile. The clever bastard is even smarter than Rykman gave him credit for. In hindsight, he realizes he never should have lost sight of the fact that Alex Garnett is Simon Garnett’s son.

  “Locate him. Get Agency security on it. They shouldn’t have let him get within a mile of Langley. Have them find him and take him into custody. Have them drop him in a hole. I don’t care. We just need this little prick shut down for another few hours.”

  “Roger that,” Donovan confirms.

  “And get a location on his buddy too.”

  “Gerald Jankovick.”

  “Whatever the little shit’s name is. Find him and contain him,” Rykman says, biting off each syllable. He feels all the heads in the room turning in his direction, not in compliance but in surprise. They’ve never heard William Rykman agitated before.

  * * *

  “Just stay where you are,” Alex instructs Gerald via his father’s cell phone. “Just hang right there. You’re right: the basement of the CIA is probably the safest place you can be right now.”

  “Are you following the news? It looks like Israel and Iran are about to go toe to toe. They must be going nutso upstairs.”

  It’s not an entirely inaccurate conjecture. As he wends his way through the OHB, Alex can’t help but notice that the entire building looks quite lively for almost four in the morning.

  “Do you have any earthly idea what’s going on?” Gerald asks.

  “I’m piecing it together.”

  “Don’t feel the need to burden me with information,” Gerald notes sarcastically.

  “The Overwatch is a sub-rosa organization, a kind of shadow agency.”

  “That doesn’t sound the least bit insane.” More sarcasm.

  “You wanted specifics.”

  “Okay, assuming for a second you haven’t had a psychotic break—which is by no means a safe assumption on my part—what’s that got to do with the money transfer out of the black budget and the fact that the Middle East’s about to go World War Three?”

  “I figure the money’s part of Overwatch’s endgame. And that endgame involves maneuvering us into a war with Iran. They off Jahandar so someone more militant takes his place, and the first thing he does is start rattling his saber in Israel’s direction.”

  “And if Iran moves on Israel, we have to kick some ass in response,” Gerald says. “What I don’t get is how we could be ready to do anything against Iran tonight. Our military’s thinner than a fashion model.”

  Alex’s voice grows cold. “The Overwatch has been moving troops into the region for weeks now, if not months.”

  “Bullshit. They can’t move fucking troops around.”

  “All I know is I saw a troop deployment out of Fort Eustis to Iran. I’ll bet every dollar in my pocket that it wasn’t the only troop deployment that’s been made to Iran or to somewhere near Iran recently. I don’t know how they’ve done it exactly, but I think Overwatch has been putting all the pieces on the board in a very specific way, with everything leading up to tonight.”

  “That’s some fucked-up shit.”

  “You have a talent for understatement, Gerald,” Alex observes as he steps into the elevator and hits the button that will take him to the seventh floor. “I’m headed into an elevator now. I’m gonna lose you.”

  “Where are you going?” Gerald asks, but the rising elevator severs the connection.

  * * *

  Alex locates G-8 with little difficulty. He’s been here before, when Gerald led him to the source of the threatening phone call that was meant, he now realizes, to wave him off the hunt and keep him from digging into matters that would lead him to discover the Overwatch’s existence.

  Alex is returning to G-8 for reasons not dissimilar to what led him to remember Leah’s AIN. In thinking—and thinking and thinking—on Agamemnon and its significance, he realized that he’d seen that name once before: inside the moribund file room located in office G-8.

  Alex turns the handle, only to find that the room is locked. “Shit,” he curses under his breath. His mind races and he can feel his heart race with it. He thinks, trying
to come up with some line or lie that might convince someone in security to open the door for him. Tom Ciampa is probably still in the building, and he seems to be Alex’s most viable option. However, he hasn’t thought of a convincing line of bullshit. So that remains plan B. He looks around and then, secure in the notion that he’s alone, kicks the door in.

  Or tries to.

  It’s a formidable steel-reinforced door with a metal lock. It’s not going down without a fight. Alex casts about for something to match the door’s strength. He’s rewarded with the sight of a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall just a few feet down the corridor. Within seconds, he has the fire extinguisher in his hands and is aiming its base at where the handle meets the door.

  His first attempt sounds like a bomb going off. At least, that’s how it feels to Alex in the empty corridor with every last nerve buzzing in anticipation of being caught. For all the noise, however, the door just shrugs off the assault. He aims the fire extinguisher a few millimeters away from the door, intending to use its force to pry the handle loose. He tries again, driving the extinguisher down, and feels the handle give. It moves just the tiniest fraction, but it encourages Alex to believe he may actually win this contest of metal against metal. He tries again. The impact echoes loudly in the hallway, but this time Alex doesn’t bother to stop to see if anyone’s heard him. If someone has, he’ll learn soon enough. For now, he just repeatedly assaults the metal handle, putting his weight into it, fueling the attack with all the pent-up stress of the past twenty-four-plus hours, and finally—finally—the damn thing gives. The handle clatters to the floor, leaving behind an empty hole.

  Alex inserts two fingers in the hole, ignoring the jagged teeth of metal surrounding the wound, and probes within the lock. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s feeling around for, but when he touches something that feels metallic and substantial, he curls his fingers to push it up. After three attempts, he feels a tumbler retract with a pleasing shunk. The door swings open and Alex kicks the discarded handle into the room, enters, and closes the injured door behind him.

  The room is exactly as he remembers it, a museum of dust-covered file cabinets left over from a bygone bureaucratic epoch. He has no idea what such an unremarkable room could have to do with the Overwatch or Agamemnon, but it’s desperation time and he’s out of options. Moving quickly, he scans the labels. The yellowing on them and the fact that they’re typewritten speak to their age, but the cabinets’ contents have no more significance to him now than they did when he first raked his eyes over them.

  Agamemnon, Alex thinks. What the hell is Agamemnon? He consults Google on his father’s phone and learns that Agamemnon was the name of the general who commanded Greece’s forces during the Trojan War, a bloody and ultimately unnecessary fictional conflict. Well, that much makes sense, at least. He consults the cabinets’ labels again in the hope of finding something that relates to Greece, the Trojan War, or the like. Fuck, even Helen of Troy I’ll take, he thinks. But as before, there aren’t any names on the file cabinets at all, merely a sequence of alphabetical ranges: A–F, B, A–G, A–M, D–L, E–M, F–Q, N–O, N.

  Then a gut punch of an epiphany sends him staggering a few steps back: the Overwatch could have learned he’d made it inside and cleansed the room of any evidence, including and especially anything having to do with Agamemnon. It also occurs to him that he’s following the rantings of a woman who has been committed indefinitely to a mental hospital. He’s about to give up all hope and return to Gerald’s basement to figure out his next move when he sees it. The realization is so profound it actually sends a chill up his spine. His eyes dart between the various typewritten labels. Then, in a manic furor, he starts to pull the drawers open again. This time, he does so in a deliberate sequence. First, he opens A–G. Then its neighbor, A–M. Next, E–M. It seems simultaneously insane and eminently logical. He pulls at N–O. But it’s when he completes the sequence—by pulling at the drawer marked N—that it happens: There’s a metallic hum. Alex can feel the linoleum beneath his feet vibrate ever so subtly. And then the far wall of the room, to his right…splits open.

  TWENTY-SIX

  OVERWATCH OPERATIONS CENTER

  4:16 A.M. EDT

  “SITREP,” SAYS CIA and Overwatch director William Rykman. His voice is cold. He paces around the Op Center in a perpetual circle, hands clasped behind his back. The removal of his Brooks Brothers suit jacket is the only allowance he’s made for the stress.

  Tyler Donovan is first to speak. “The president just walked into the Situation Room.” Rykman is pleased. Things are moving in the right direction. “We’ve got a line in there, of course.”

  “Put it up on the big screen,” Rykman says, indicating the seventy-five-inch plasma monitor that dominates the room’s northern wall. In an instant, the interior of the Situation Room appears on the screen. Their surveillance-camera-quality image looks down on the modest room from above. The president sits at the head of the table, flanked by the vice president, the director of national intelligence, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of state and defense. The video feed plays without audio, but Donovan provides commentary.

  “He just asked what our capabilities are to project power into Iran. SecDef”—the secretary of defense—“just told him about our friends from the Seventh Transportation Group being in the region.”

  Rykman allows himself a small smile of satisfaction. The Overwatch maintained agents within all the major arms of the U.S. military. It was a relatively easy matter to use the Overwatch’s assets in the Department of Defense to motivate the transportation group’s deployment to the Persian Gulf. The ostensible justification was for the group to assist in training exercises being conducted by the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group Three (aka CSG-3). The Stennis’s presence in the Gulf was also the work of the Overwatch. The U.S. Navy maintained eleven carrier strike groups. Redeploying one—particularly to a region as politically sensitive as the Persian Gulf—was no easy feat. Fortunately, however, Rykman has a relationship with the rear admiral who serves as CSG-3’s commander. He’s been cultivating this particular asset for the past three years, and although the admiral remains unaware of the Overwatch’s existence, he’s particularly responsive to timely whispers in his ear. Not that a commander can move his carrier group of his own accord, but the commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command listens to his recommendation to occasionally show the flag in the waters of the Persian Gulf. And in the event that he disagrees, well, Rykman has other means of moving the necessary chess pieces on the global board to exactly where he wants them. This is the advantage of being the director of the most powerful U.S. intelligence-gathering organization and the director of its most covert agency—a body so covert, so black, that not even the president of the United States knows of its existence.

  * * *

  Alex has never seen anything like it. He stares disbelieving at the fake wall—now retracted in two equal halves—for a few incredulous seconds. He wasn’t aware of the slightest seam in the wall, although he has to admit he wasn’t really looking for one. Still, the craftsmanship at work here is perfect. The secret door was invisible, and its disappearance reveals a new, surreal obstacle on this journey down the rabbit hole.

  He’s staring at two interlocked doors.

  For a moment, Alex is reminded of the opening credits of the old Don Adams television series Get Smart, with its nested series of portals and doors. Next to the doors is a simple panel with a single button at its center. There’s something very twentieth-century modern about the design. Alex is tempted to place its construction in the 1980s. He reaches out, presses the button—because why not?—and the doors open. Alex half expects their parting to reveal a third set of doors—after all, that’s how it would be on Get Smart—but instead he finds a small chamber. No, not a chamber exactly.

  It’s an elevator.

  Alex enters it to find a second panel with an identical single button inside. He
gives this one a press as well. The doors close and the elevator lurches downward.

  * * *

  Rufus Kalin has been serving in the Overwatch for the past eight months. On loan from the U.S. Army, he thought he’d be assisting in some CIA operation. In fact, for the first two of those eight months, he thought that’s what he was doing. But after those initial eight weeks, he was “invited to come inside,” to use the internal Overwatch parlance. To Kalin’s knowledge, which, he has to admit, is probably incomplete and largely incorrect, everyone aware of the Overwatch’s existence is in the Op Center right now. This is why the alert that just popped up on his workstation is more than a little puzzling. He checks again and runs a quick systems diagnostic to confirm it isn’t a glitch. Only when he’s satisfied that it’s not does he announce what the computer is telling him. “Sir,” he says, swiveling in his Aeron chair to face Rykman, “the G-eight access point has just been activated.”

  “What?” Rykman looks like he’s been hit in the ass with a cattle prod.

  “Confirmed, sir. The elevator is on descent.” Kalin picks his next words very, very carefully. “Are we expecting additional personnel tonight?”

  Rykman offers no reply but the grinding of his teeth.

  * * *

  After what feels like an interminably long interval, the elevator comes to a gentle stop and the doors automatically open. Alex alights and orients himself. What he has just walked into doesn’t make any kind of sense to him. He’s standing in what looks like a subway station circa 1985. True, there is no signage to indicate an era. In fact, there’s no signage whatsoever. But the overall architecture feels like the old Metro stations his father took him to when he was a kid.

  Unlike the Metro stations of his youth, however, this one has only one track. He wonders whether he’s stumbled upon some vestigial piece of the OHB’s construction but then reminds himself that he was able to access the elevator only by making use of what he now considers the Agamemnon pass code.