Overwatch

by Marc Guggenheim

  Alex shakes his head. “That’s not classified?”

  “Not at all. Public filing. Therefore, public record. The VVA is accusing the Agency of exposing soldiers to a variety of psychotropic drugs in the course of the MKULTRA program.”

  “I thought MKULTRA was, like, an urban myth,” Alex says.

  “Oh, no, it was quite real. We’ve been dealing with the legal fallout for decades now, this case being only the most recent example. For the past year and a half, we’ve been trading discovery and holding depositions and we’re finally at the point where it looks like we can hit them with a Rule Twenty-Six motion. Am I boring you, Mr. Garnett?”

  Leah asks because Alex appears preoccupied by the sight of a guy—a kid, actually, from the looks of him—fidgeting nervously at a computer stationed in the bullpen. “‘For the past year and a half, we’ve been trading discovery and holding depositions and we’re finally at the point where it looks like we can hit them with a Rule Twenty-Six motion,’” Alex parrots back, syllable for syllable. “You then asked if you were boring me. Which you’re not. By the way, I wouldn’t bother with a summary judgment motion under Rule Twenty-Six.”

  “You seem a little preoccupied with one of our computer techs,” she says, nodding in the fidgety kid’s direction.

  “He looks kind of young to be working for the CIA.”

  “He’s nineteen. And while currently the youngest person employed by the Agency, he’s not the youngest in its history.”

  Alex struggles to put a name to the face.

  “It’s possible he was in the news at some point. We recruited him a year ago and already his talents rival anyone’s at the Agency, even the cybersavants in the DS and T,” she says, referring to the Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology. “According to those guys, the only person on the planet who can match Gerald’s skill is Free Radical.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Free Radical, the twelve-year-old Ukrainian hacker. We don’t know his real name. That’s how good he is. But Gerald’s better.”

  It clicks for Alex. “Gerald Jankovick,” he says triumphantly.

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah.” And in an eye blink, Alex is ten feet away, closing in fast on Gerald. “Hey, Gerald!”

  Gerald, who’s tightly wound even when medicated, nearly jumps out of his skin. “Jesus!” the nineteen-year-old shouts, turning it into a two-word sentence—Jee-zus—and breaking the quiet hum of the office. People look up from their desks and workstations, clock that it’s just Gerald—his anxious outbursts are already familiar occurrences—and return to their work.

  Gerald glares past Alex to Leah. “I thought I told you I need that kinda scare-the-crap-out-of-me shit kept to a minimum.”

  “Relax, Mr. Jankovick.”

  “I would except I can’t. I told you. I have a psychiatric condition. Diagnosed.”

  “Generalized anxiety disorder, if I’m remembering right,” Alex offers. “I represented Gerald in a little something when I was at my father’s firm.”

  “Small world,” Leah notes dryly.

  “It was back when I was at school,” Gerald explains. “Can you believe I could do anything that would merit the involvement of an attorney?”

  “Yes, Gerald, I can.”

  Gerald shrugs. Guilty as charged. “The principal just didn’t have any kind of sense of humor, is what it was.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not all that sure humor should reasonably have been expected after you hacked every machine in the school that had an Internet connection and made ’em all start displaying porn,” Alex observes.

  “Free porn,” Gerald corrects. “And you got me off with some First Amendment free-speech bullshit.” Gerald smiles, savoring the memory. It had been impressive, watching Alex in the principal’s office, Gerald dutifully sandwiched between his parents, dressed up for the occasion in a sports jacket and tie, as Alex promised that if the school expelled Gerald for exercising what was, after a fashion, a constitutional right, then he would rally the ACLU to dump more difficulties and scrutiny on the school than all the free pornography in the world could bring.

  Alex can feel the lack of interest rippling off Leah like heat off asphalt, so he looks for a graceful exit. “It’s good seeing you. Leah and I have to get back to work.”

  “You’re working here? Here?”

  “Wonders never cease. I’ll see you around.”

  “Cool. Peace out,” he adds in an attempt to sound street that’s so pathetic it borders on charming.

  “Like you said, it’s a small world,” Alex remarks as they walk away.

  “Actually, it’s an extremely large world. That’s why the intelligence community works so hard to make it small. You know what does that? Information.”

  “I think you lost me.”

  “Our business is information. Data. Research. We do our homework. Everyone is a subject of investigation. Consequently, there are no coincidences.”

  Alex stops and turns to Leah, genuinely surprised. “You knew I represented Gerald.”

  “It’s what got you on our radar. Like I said, there are no coincidences in this line of work. We’d been looking at Gerald and you came along as a kind of unexpected bonus.”

  “You consider me a bonus,” Alex muses.

  “Provisionally. Speaking of which, before you spotted Gerald, we were discussing the VVA case.”

  “Yeah. I think I was telling you that summary judgment is a waste of time.”

  “Trying to get the case against us kicked is a waste of time?”

  “No judge is going to grant summary judgment here. The Vietnam Veterans Association litigating against the CIA. The case may not be national news yet, but it absolutely will be the second a judge hands down a ruling on your motion. Under those circumstances, why would any judge smart enough to make it to the bench in the first place rule against war veterans? Why would he expose himself to public scrutiny like that? Public scrutiny,” he adds, “and appeal. There’s zero upside for the judge. None whatsoever.” This last part he punctuates with a dismissive shake of his head. “Instead, what you do is, you let the case go forward, right up to jury selection. Then you hit ’em.”

  “Hit them with what, if not summary judgment?”

  “Motion in limine. All your grounds for summary judgment, you convert into reasons to exclude evidence. Now you’re asking a judge to make an evidentiary ruling. That gives him political cover. He grants the motion…”

  “And I’ve limited the evidence the plaintiffs can use at trial.”

  “Severely. You let ’em keep their fire, but you take away their oxygen. And with all that evidence excluded, the trial becomes either impossible or extremely difficult for the plaintiffs to prove their case. Either way…”

  “They’re inclined to settle.”

  “At a substantially reduced amount.”

  Leah smiles. “Very smart. Come with me.”

  “Where to?” Alex asks, thinking he’s just won himself a place on the VVA/MKULTRA trial team.

  “I want you to sit with a guy.” She points to a glass-enclosed conference room. Inside, Alex notes, there’s a bespectacled man sitting at a polished oak table looking at an open laptop; he has the kind of distinguished air typically found only in Oxford professors. “One of our staff psychologists.”

  The only thing less palatable to Alex than talking to a psychologist is talking to a CIA psychologist. He gave in to the requirement during the recruitment process only because he’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that it was a deal-breaker. The fact that Alex had been willing to spend time telling an absolute stranger things that he hadn’t even shared with Grace spoke volumes about just how badly he wanted this job. But now that he has it, he feels no inclination to catalog his sexual fantasies, personal insecurities, hopes, dreams, and nightmares for another stranger with a psychology degree.

  “Actually,” Alex demurs, “I already had a psych eval as part of my SBI.”

 
“The standard background investigation is just that.” Leah smirks. “Standard. Working in this office requires you to have a more thorough evaluation.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that only the sons of White House royalty get the special treatment?” Leah doesn’t answer. “I went to law school. If I wanted to jump through hoops, I’d have joined the circus.”

  Leah nods. Alex is about to ask what’s next when she stops him with five very unexpected words: “Hope you enjoyed the shower.”

  Alex actually takes a step back, he’s so startled. He wonders if he heard her correctly. Sensing this, she adds, “Nice watch.” She’s pointing to the new Krug Baümen on his wrist. “From your fiancée, right?” She steps forward, cutting the distance between them to inches. “This is the NFL. Last week, the OGC dealt with a coup in Jordan, an assassination in Belgrade, and the arrest of five terrorist cells in Karachi. I report to the general counsel, who reports to the DCIA, who reports to the president of the United States of America. So when I tell you I want you to sit with a guy, it’s not a hoop. It’s your cue to say, ‘Where’s the chair?’”

  THREE

  DR. DAVIS Fordes sits across from Alex, resting his hands—palms up—on the table and exuding a practiced warmth that Alex’s SBI interrogator didn’t possess. Alex notes that the man is taking pains to avoid any body language that could seem judgmental (a hand on the chin) or guarded (arms folded over his chest) or skeptical (finger on the nose). Much to his surprise, Alex finds the approach very effective. He’s breezed through the questions of the last two hours with greater ease than he had expected. Or perhaps he’s just growing accustomed to answering questions about masturbation.

  Ultimately, however, the subject comes up, as it inevitably must: “Did you respect your father?” the psychologist asks.

  Alex shrugs with practiced indifference. “He was chief of staff to Bush One and solicitor general under Clinton. It’s kind of hard not to respect a man like that.”

  “But you’ve tried. Tried not to, I mean.” Offered without a hint of judgment. On the contrary, Dr. Fordes sounds like a co-conspirator sharing a dark secret.

  “I didn’t say that. I respect my father.”

  “But?” Fordes doesn’t give Alex any more rope than that one syllable. But?

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking me.”

  “Your father cast a pretty big shadow.”

  “Not really,” Alex says with another shrug.

  “Your father was a very powerful man. He still is, in fact.”

  Alex doesn’t offer anything more in response than “That’s true.” He may be the fish here, but that doesn’t mean he can’t struggle against the line a little.

  “So, growing up, you didn’t feel any pressure?”

  “Pressure to do what?”

  “To individuate yourself. To step out of your father’s shadow, be your own man.”

  “I don’t think so. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “It’s Oedipal.”

  “I thought Oedipal issues were strictly mommy-related.”

  “On the contrary. Oedipus killed his father, remember? Surely, there’s no greater act of individuation of son from father than that.”

  “Well, killing my father wasn’t an option,” Alex quips. “For one thing, there was a lot of Secret Service around him when he was White House chief of staff.”

  The psychologist nods at that, amused. “Besides—barring patricide—true distinction can come only from playing on an even field. Isn’t that why you became a lawyer?”

  “I became a lawyer because I found it interesting.”

  “And what I find interesting is that you chose to work in the same field where your father initially distinguished himself. In fact, you chose not only the same field but the same specialty—litigation.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t really a choice. Maybe me becoming a litigator wasn’t psychology at all. Maybe it was genetics. Like father, y’know, like son.”

  “So you’re your father’s son.”

  “Sounds like I didn’t ‘individuate’ myself very well, then, did I?”

  “I couldn’t say one way or the other,” Fordes says, shifting gears. “What type of parent was your father?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Fordes throws out possible answers like a croupier dealing cards. “Strict? Controlling? Lax? Cold? Affectionate?”

  “He was focused on his work most of the time.”

  “Most of the time,” Fordes repeats. “Not all of the time.” Alex nods. “So, what about the times he wasn’t at work? What type of father was he when he was home? With you?”

  “Demanding.” Alex’s defenses must be weakening, because the word is out of his mouth before he even realizes it.

  “In what sense?”

  Alex snorts back laughter. “In every sense.” Fordes makes a note on his computer. “This isn’t an area I’m comfortable talking about.”

  “Alex, you don’t have to be uncomfortable. I know it may not feel like it, but you’re among friends here. I can virtually guarantee you that there’s nothing you can tell me about your father that would disqualify you from working for the CIA.”

  “Then what’s the point of this little exercise?”

  “For you to understand yourself better. To understand what drives you. Perhaps that understanding will make you a better attorney.” The psychologist waves at the air. “You’re driven to gain the respect of a man you’ve admitted you don’t respect. It’s a bit of a paradox.”

  “I said I did respect him.”

  “And your conviction was extremely persuasive.” Fordes’s sarcasm is palpable.

  “It was a complex relationship.” This is all the ground Alex will cede.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Alex considers for a few seconds. “Before my mother died, it was just the three of us, me and my parents. Everything revolved around him.”

  “How so?”

  “My father is all about my father. He had an edge. And a temper.”

  “Had,” Fordes repeats. “Past tense?”

  “After I went off to college he…mellowed. I think he’s tried to have a closer relationship with me.”

  “Which you’ve denied him.”

  “You make it sound petty.”

  “Oh, it’s not,” Fordes assures him. “Your father damaged his relationship with you when you were a child. It’s not surprising that you’d deny him a relationship once you departed the family home and became an adult.” Fordes spreads his hands as if to suggest a lack of judgment.

  “All this is really going to help with my job at the Agency?”

  “I hate the term emotional baggage,” Fordes says. “It sounds like magazine psychology. But it’s a useful visual metaphor.” He swipes away the digression with a wave of his hand. “At any rate, everyone has emotional baggage. It’s part of the human condition. Working for the Office of General Counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency, you find yourself at the nexus of two key components of the human condition: secrets and justice.” Fordes leans back and shrugs, as if all of this is obvious. “You’re a lawyer for spies, Alex. You’ll be placed in and called upon to evaluate some very unique circumstances. It’s helpful for Ms. Doyle and your other superiors to have a sense as to how you’ll respond—emotionally, psychologically—to these circumstances.”

  “And how do you think I’ll respond?”

  Fordes just grins. He’ll never tell.

  * * *

  GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, DC

  8:00 P.M. EST

  Paul Langford didn’t go home last night. Instead, he’d checked himself into a room at L’Enfant Plaza Hotel under one of the several aliases he maintains. Yesterday, these precautions seemed more than prudent. It wasn’t so much that his exchange—actually, Langford would have called it a dustup—with Rykman had been tense. The two men have decades of history, and the last two have been spent shouldering the weight of the world. Dustups were to be exp
ected, were even necessary. They offered the opportunity for both men to let off a little steam. But yesterday’s disagreement had occurred in front of an audience, and, worse, it had made Rykman look bad. In his rational mind, Langford doubted Rykman would send a cleaning crew for him purely out of spite, but his less rational, more animal instincts—instincts honed to a knife-edge by years of working in the military and intelligence communities—had prevailed. But the fuel of instinct is adrenaline, and adrenaline’s effects, while powerful, are temporary. So Langford checked out of L’Enfant. And now he’s disarming his condo’s security system, chiding himself for being so fucking paranoid.

  Who was it who said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”? Langford wonders. Kissinger? I think it might’ve been Kissinger…

  He enters his renovated Georgetown brownstone to find it stripped clean. The handwoven afghan rug he bought in Iraq is gone, exposing the floor of polished cherry. The bookshelves stuffed with tomes on foreign policy and the works of Dan Brown and Tom Clancy are missing. The Samsung LCD wide-screen that hung over the mantel is nowhere to be found. Even the television’s metallic wall mount is gone, the hole in the drywall patched up expertly. The apartment didn’t look this pristine the day its construction was completed. To say the effect is disconcerting would be an understatement. It produces a feeling of nausea that even Langford’s practiced stoicism can’t overcome.

  He immediately reaches into his suit jacket, presses his palm against the reassuringly cold grip of his Beretta 92SB 9mm. Then the adrenaline kicks in. Langford wheels around to the front door, less than seven feet away. His actions are the product of pure instinct, much like the previous night’s hotel stay. Were he given the opportunity, Langford would gladly trade his Beretta to be back in that hotel right now, just to have the chance to—

  The world goes cold and black with all the suddenness of a power failure.

  * * *

  The first thing Langford feels when he comes to are the straps. They press into his wrists and ankles, dig deep channels in his flesh. There’s another restraint around his neck that makes it impossible for him to lift his head and get a better look at his surroundings. Not that he needs to. He knows enough about the cleaning crew’s debriefing assets to recognize what’s going on. He’s been in several such debriefings, but this is his first time as the individual in the chair. It closely resembles the kind of chair you’d see in a dentist’s office. In fact, the entire space—a small room no larger than the interior of a moving van—has a clinical look to it, right down to the intravenous drip that snakes its way into Langford’s arm. It’s hard to tell what has Langford’s heart racing right now: self-supplied adrenaline or the IV’s cornucopia of amphetamines. The purpose of this little cocktail is to keep the subject from passing out from severe pain. Immobilized by the leather restraints, he focuses his efforts on using the parts of his body he can move: his eyes. They dart around furtively, like anxious spiders, as Langford tries to seek Rykman out. He knows he’s there. Rykman wouldn’t miss witnessing his debriefing, and if Langford can just talk to him, make a human appeal, explain things, this would all be over. Yes, he could salvage this. It’s stupid to throw away years of productive collaboration over a small difference of opinion. A minuscule one, really. He just needs to have the opportunity to explain that, to look Rykman in the eye, soldier to soldier, man to man, friend to—