Overwatch

by Marc Guggenheim

“Like?” Alex has no idea how much of this to believe, but for now he wants to know everything that McCallum will tell him. He’ll sort fact from fiction later.

  “Well, it’s an old example, but a powerful one. Do you remember the Chernobyl disaster?” Kate asks. She’s more lucid when discussing events removed from her personal pain.

  Alex nods, having been taught all about Chornobylska katastrofa, the catastrophic failure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukrainian SSR back in 1986. “Are you saying the Overwatch caused the meltdown?” he asks, trying unsuccessfully to keep incredulity out of his tone.

  “The USSR’s containment and decontamination efforts after Chernobyl virtually bankrupted the Soviet Union. The country lost almost two million acres of agriculture, which was a kidney punch to Russia’s economy. And the disaster gave additional political momentum to the policy of glasnost. The combination of these factors led to the end of the Cold War.” Reading the skepticism on Alex’s face, she adds, “Maybe you need more recent examples.” She ticks them off on her fingers with ease: “We invaded Iraq based on evidence of WMDs provided by the Overwatch to the CIA. The Arab Spring flourished because Overwatch’s army of computer hackers frustrated the Egyptian government’s attempts to cut off its citizens’ access to the Internet. China owns sixty-eight percent of America’s debt. Ten trillion dollars. What keeps them from calling in those loans?” she asks. “It’s not mutually assured financial destruction, like the economists would have you believe. It’s the dozens of different ways, covert ways, the Overwatch asserts pressure on the PRC to keep them in line.”

  Alex takes all this in without accepting or dismissing it. He finds himself unexpectedly intrigued. It’s as if McCallum is showing him an alternative version of history, one where world events are caused not by chance or geopolitical momentum, but rather by individuals intentionally pushing invisible levers of power, turning the wheels of cause and effect. World events, he knows, have a way of seeming like fantasy before they become history.

  Moreover, there’s no question that something is going on. The Solstice file, the deaths of Harling, Moreno, Miller, Zollitsch, and Jahandar, and the attempt on his own life are undeniable proof of that. What’s also undeniable is the involvement of the CIA. What’s the connection between the Overwatch, this other agency, and the CIA?

  “The Overwatch has its tentacles in intelligence organizations and militaries all around the world,” she says, as if she’s sensed his train of thought. “Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has favored SigInt and ElInt—that’s signals intelligence and electronic intelligence—over HumInt, human intelligence. The Overwatch has stepped in to fill that HumInt deficit. And its assets include people inside the CIA. But not just the CIA.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The members of Overwatch have infiltrated all levels of our military infrastructure. They can use our assets—personnel and equipment—for their benefit.” Alex’s jaw sets as he remembers the troop deployments from Fort Eustis to the Middle East. But he finds himself shaking his head. The leap from covert action to actual manipulation of the U.S. military seems like a logically impossible one. “It’s not that difficult, actually,” McCallum notes, reading Alex’s skepticism. “All you need is control over one infantry division. A single carrier group. Once something is set in motion, inertia takes care of the rest. Then concern over diplomatic embarrassment or political liability kicks in and cleans up after the fact. And for the really big stuff, there’s Agamemnon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think it’s ever been used,” McCallum replies. “I don’t know much about it. It’s several feet above my pay grade, as it were,” she says, punctuating the statement with an ironic smile. “But rumor has it, the Overwatch has a facility with systems that mimic the Tap-Dance encryption systems of the White House Situation Room. If need be, someone at the facility could issue orders to our military forces, and those forces would believe the instructions were coming directly from the White House.”

  Alex is stunned. The idea that the most highly trained military in the history of the world could be deceived on this large a scale strikes him as preposterous.

  “I’m getting tired,” she blurts out. “The medication makes me tired.”

  Alex nods. “Okay. Okay, just one more question. Let’s say all of this is true,” he starts, and then immediately regrets his choice of words.

  “It is true,” McCallum snaps, anger finding its way into her fatigue.

  “I think Ayatollah Jahandar was assassinated,” Alex says, pressing forward. “If this Overwatch was involved, can you think of why it’d want Jahandar dead?”

  McCallum looks up at Alex with a clarity he hasn’t seen her display previously. She stares as if he’s the crazy one now. “For years,” she says, “there have been forces within the Iranian government agitating for an all-out assault on Israel, a full-scale invasion.” She sweeps the air with her hand. “Just wipe out the Jewish State once and for all. Jahandar kept them at bay.”

  “And you think Jahandar’s successor—whoever he is—will move against Israel,” Alex says.

  “All the models point to an eighty-six point three percent likelihood.”

  The specificity of the projection catches Alex by surprise. “You sound pretty sure.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  McCallum shakes her head. “Because I developed the model.”

  The revelation hits Alex in his solar plexus. “What?”

  “I worked in Operations. I was asked to develop a scenario, a model for predicting likely outcomes in the event of the supreme leader’s death.” Alex stares at her in disbelief. “I was doing work for the Overwatch. That’s how I found out about it. That’s why I’m in here. I thought you knew all this.” Alex just shakes his head. “I’m not crazy,” she says, not for the first time. But this time, she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than Alex.

  TWENTY-TWO

  OVERWATCH OPERATIONS CENTER

  2:37 P.M. EDT

  THE USEFUL thing about computer hackers for an operation such as the Overwatch’s is that they can work from anywhere in the world. With access to the Internet, they are as close to anonymous as anyone can be. Even better: with three exceptions, no hacker in the Overwatch’s cyberarsenal is aware of the organization’s existence at all. The beauty of the hacker community is that the most capable ones care the least about who pays for their services. As long as they receive a prenegotiated allotment of Bitcoin—a decentralized form of digital currency with a market cap of over one hundred million U.S. dollars—they don’t care where the money comes from.

  Right now, Donovan is working a computer hacker in Belarus who has just pulled Garnett’s credit card information from the cloudy mists of the Internet. Via an encrypted instant-messaging platform called BitWise, the Belarus hacker informs Donovan that Garnett’s American Express account was most recently accessed by an Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Bethesda, Maryland. It takes only a few keystrokes for Donovan to learn that Garnett is now driving a light gray Nissan Sentra. He thanks the anonymous hacker through BitWise and transfers the prenegotiated Bitcoin amount into his or her account. Now all that’s necessary is for Donovan to contact a hacker he likes who works out of Hong Kong and have him forge a BOLO (“be on the lookout for”) order and disseminate it to local law enforcement.

  * * *

  Alex leaves Kate with the promise that he will use all his legal acumen to win her freedom back for her. But she seems dubious, and Alex has the feeling that it’s not because she doubts his abilities as an attorney. What she lacks confidence in, he realizes, is his ability to remain alive long enough to file any kind of legal brief. Alex has similar concerns. If the Overwatch is even a tenth as powerful as she told him and has even a scintilla of the resources she believes are at its disposal, then it’s extremely unlikely Alex will make it to sundown. After all, what hope does an attorney have against an organization tha
t’s powerful enough to dictate the course of world events and that does so without the rest of the world knowing?

  Alex considers these questions while en route to Georgetown. His initial instinct is to drive to the offices of the Washington Post, flag down the first reporter he sees, and unload everything he’s learned and experienced in a soul-cleansing torrent. Even if it led to a room of his own at the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute, at least he’d be doing something. Then he realizes that both Grace and Gerald are still out there and vulnerable.

  Alex considers asking his father for help. He wonders what’s keeping him from making that one simple phone call. Is it dignity? If so, he’s long past the point where that should be a consideration. If Grace had heard half of what McCallum said and believed even half of that, she’d be telling Alex that whatever his issues with his father were, it was time for them to take a backseat to stopping whatever the Overwatch was looking to put in motion with Iran. And she’d be right.

  Alex thinks on this for a minute or so before he spots the flashing red and blue lights in his rearview mirror. A Virginia sheriff’s cruiser trails behind him. He’s been pulled over enough times in his life to know what to do next. He pulls his car to the curb and wonders if, in his distraction, he missed a stoplight or made an illegal turn. Not that he really cares. The thing about global conspiracies, forced civil commitments, and assassinations is that they put little things like traffic tickets in their proper perspective.

  Alex puts the Nissan in park and rolls his window down. The clean-cut officer standing over him sticks his hand out expectantly. “License and registration.”

  Alex dutifully produces his license and the Enterprise agreement. “It’s a rental,” he notes, but the officer couldn’t appear less interested.

  “Wait here,” the man says, starting to turn away from the car.

  “Wait.” Alex stops him. “What was I pulled over for?”

  “Just wait in your car, sir.”

  The officer moves away, but the fact that he didn’t offer up an explanation for the traffic stop sets off alarm bells in Alex’s head. The car idles and Alex gives a moment’s consideration to throwing it in gear and peeling out. Initiating a high-speed chase right now doesn’t seem like the smartest course. What if the officer had made a simple mistake? But Alex should know by now not to buy into coincidences. His foot hovers over the accelerator as his right hand drifts toward the gearshift. Then the officer returns. “I’m gonna need you to step out of the car, sir,” he says in a polite but commanding tone accented with a slight Virginia drawl.

  “Why was I stopped?”

  “Could you step out of the car please, sir?” the officer says, less patiently this time, with his hand resting on his sidearm.

  As Alex sees it, he has three options. He could try putting the car in drive and bolting; he could stay in the car and see if the cop will forcibly remove him; or he could comply and exit the vehicle. None of these choices strikes him as ideal, so he chooses the one least likely to get him shot and reaches for the door handle.

  “I’m an attorney,” he says, getting out of the car. “I want to know what your reasonable suspicion was that formed the basis for this stop.”

  “An all-points bulletin was issued for a gentleman fitting your description driving a Nissan,” the officer says as if reciting the time of day. Alex’s stomach clutches when he turns his head and sees the cop’s partner step out of the waiting squad car. Traffic whips past and Alex can see them craning for a view of the roadside drama. Time seems to slow as the adrenaline does its work in his veins. Getting an APB out is nothing, Alex intuits, for an organization that can manipulate the actions of nation-states. “Please turn around and place your hands on the roof.”

  Cursing himself for not making a run for it when he had the chance, Alex complies, putting his hands on the Nissan’s roof. The officer “helps” him do this as his partner rests a palm on his service weapon, which remains holstered for the moment. The cop finishes patting Alex down and says, “Pop the trunk for me, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I’m gonna need to take a look inside your trunk.” The officer allows a hint of edge to creep into his voice, speaking more sternly and with greater command.

  “I told you, I’m a lawyer. I’m not consenting to a search of my car without a warrant.”

  “You want us to arrest you, sir? Because we can do that. We can take you into custody and they’ll search your trunk at the impound.”

  Alex is about to tell the officer that he guesses that’s just what he’ll have to do then when the partner pipes up, standing behind the Nissan now. “We’ve got something here.”

  The officer leads Alex by the arm to the rear of the car. His partner points to a few rust-colored droplets on the bumper where the trunk door meets the car’s body. “Blood, looks like.”

  “Pop the trunk,” the officer instructs. His partner moves to the driver’s side to do exactly that as he notes with professional dispassion, “It seems you’ve got traces of exsanguination on your car, sir. I believe that gives me and my partner reasonable suspicion to search its contents.”

  Alex’s world spins. He starts to feel light-headed and wonders if that’s from adrenaline or the exhaust fumes from all the passing traffic. “There’s”—he’s grasping now—“there are no exigent circumstances. You still need—” He’s about to say a warrant, but the trunk pops open and the officer pushes him aside to raise the door. Looking inside, he notes, “We’ve got trouble here.” With that, his head emerges from the trunk and he swivels around to Alex, moving with purpose. “Alex Garnett, you’re under arrest,” he begins.

  “What?” Alex instinctively moves toward the trunk. The officer makes a halfhearted effort to restrain Alex, but the truth is he wants this fucking skel to see what he found.

  And the sight turns Alex’s blood to ice.

  A female form rests in the well of the trunk. She’s curled into a fetal position, not moving. There’s something about the still of the dead that’s unique, a lack of movement not found in the sleeping or unconscious. Without laying a finger on her, Alex knows she is dead. Her long hair falls over her face, masking her features. His fiancée is dead. Somehow, they found Grace. Maybe she didn’t throw away her cell phone like he asked. Maybe she was forced to use a credit card. Maybe the Overwatch issued the same bogus APB to law enforcement that they used to snag him. It doesn’t matter how, they found her, and now, because of him, she’s dead.

  Fighting shock and swallowing the impulse to vomit, Alex reaches into the trunk to clear the woman’s hair away.

  But it’s not Grace’s face he sees.

  It’s Leah Doyle’s.

  * * *

  William Rykman gave up on love decades ago. His military training made it impossible for him to feel that strongly for another person. At least, that’s what he tells himself in his more reflective moments. But there are scores of men with just as much training as himself who are still capable of love; in fact, they have deep repositories of it. No, the explanation for Rykman’s lack of love isn’t in what he does, it’s in what he is. While Rykman would never consider himself a sociopath, he has to admit he lacks the capacity for feeling emotion.

  Still, Rykman is a man, with a man’s physical needs. Being both accomplished and not unattractive, he’s had his share of relationships over the years. While one might not expect it, Rykman is drawn to strong, capable women. Women like Leah Doyle. He respected her backbone and was attracted to her intelligence. And she wasn’t bothered by his emotional shortcomings, because she was too focused on her work to maintain any kind of sustained romantic relationship. In this, the two were perfectly suited for each other. Mutual respect, mutual attraction, and a shared lack of expectations for anything more.

  Then the bitch had to go and fuck it up by asking a million questions.

  The nicest thing about being with Leah was that she knew better than to probe too deeply into Rykman’s professional
activities, even when she was aware that some of those activities—not to mention Rykman’s extended absences and late-night meetings—were out of the ordinary, even for a CIA director. But Garnett’s visit earlier that morning clearly stirred up something. The irony was that the intelligence and strength Rykman had found so attractive were the same two qualities that kept Leah from buying the usual bullshit Rykman was slinging. He could tell that she could tell that he was hiding something. And once she caught the scent of deception, she would be dogged in ferreting out the truth. And he simply couldn’t have that.

  She must have seen the shift in his eyes, the coldness that came over him the second he realized he couldn’t let her leave the house alive, because she turned from him abruptly with some crap about suddenly remembering something she had to do. She was moving toward the door when he came up behind her.

  It had been a long time since he’d killed a woman. He’d forgotten how much lighter they were. He smashed her head into the corner of the granite-topped console table harder than he’d intended to. The resulting crack echoed like a gunshot through the otherwise silent house. He dropped her to the wood floor and watched as she stirred, eyes wide and mouth open. Her body shook from shock. Blood from her head pooled into a shallow puddle on the floor. There was something fascinating, almost beautiful about it.

  There were no sirens. Leah hadn’t had the chance to birth a scream. No police came. No friend or cleaning lady suddenly arrived and knocked on the front door. And Leah would most definitely not be regaining consciousness, much less getting up, anytime soon. It occurred to Rykman he could stand and look at her for hours.

  But he didn’t have hours. There was a body to dispose of and containment to handle, and both of those things would take time. So he knelt down on one knee, as if to propose, taking care to avoid the blood, and reached for Leah’s face. With a lover’s gentle touch, he turned her head toward the floor and into the small puddle of crimson. Then he stood and watched Leah Doyle, attorney for the Central Intelligence Agency, sputter her final breaths into a pool of her own blood.