The Overseer (2 page)

“We’re closing in on two of them. Do we shoot to kill?”

The old man slowly drew the radio to his mouth. “You are to stop them. You are to bring them back.” The delivery precise, meticulous, without a trace of emotion. “The method is unimportant.”

There must always be a place for sacrifice.
The words he had read so long ago, whose truth he had accepted without question, once again flooded back. Somehow, though, their certainty could never explain why it was always the ones with the greatest gifts, the ones with the greatest promise, who ultimately disappointed. Fate seemed to be mocking him at every turn.

Several shots rang out, angry streaks through a silent sky. He waited, eyes fixed on the distant trees, the wide expanse shrouded in darkness. A moment later, silence. It was finished. He nodded and turned to the house, aware of the light flicking on inside the first-floor guest room. He had hoped not to awaken any of his visitors. He had hoped not to trouble them with tonight’s little episode. No matter. They had always understood. They had never disappointed. They would understand again.

 

The first volley strafed across a tree not more than five feet from her, the bark ricocheting in all directions, a single piece glancing off her thigh as she dove to the ground. An instant later, a second burst rifled past her, the bullets seemingly inches from her head. Every instinct told her to scream, her throat too tight to offer little more than gasps of air, her chest heaving in abject terror. She wanted to move, but again a wave of bullets sliced into a nearby tree.
The road. Get to the road
. She tried to remind herself that she had been trained for such things, had spent nights in the freezing cold preparing herself for such moments, and yet now, with her own life hanging in the balance, she lay frozen, unable to move, unable to think. The road had become a hollow refuge amid the frenzy around her.

Another wave erupted, this time accompanied by a muted shriek off to her left; she turned, and a moment later watched as a figure staggered out from behind a tree. There, hands held out at her side, eyes wide, stood the youngest of the trio, a strange smile etched across her face. She looked dazed, almost peaceful, swaying ever so slightly with each step. It was impossible not to stare at her, the moonlight cutting across her torso, her entire body streaked with blood as she moved up the incline. She was reaching for a branch to steady herself when a final hail of bullets drove through her tiny frame, almost lifting her off the ground before collapsing her into a pile at the base of a tree. Only her arms, thin reeds draped around the trunk, lent the image a human quality.

Every flashlight seemed to zero in on the lifeless mass; instantly, figures appeared higher up on the incline, making their way down to the kill. For several seconds, the girl who had witnessed the macabre scene stared at her friend’s corpse, unable to tear herself away. Finally, though, after what seemed an eternity, she sprang to her feet and clambered through the rapid descent of trees and underbrush, her fingers digging deep into the soil to grant herself an added leverage. She could give no thought to the lights that, almost at once, cascaded all around her, her only image the vague outline of a border, the road beyond drawing her closer and closer.

The first of the bullets pierced her upper arm, the momentary shock blocking out the surge of pain that, seconds later, drove up through her stomach and ignited her flesh in icy flame. The next tore into her thigh, jolting her legs out from underneath her, her torso and head dashed to the rock-hard ground, pummeling her body over roots and gnarls until her chest collided with the trunk of a tree.

And then silence.

She lay perfectly still, aware of the racing activity behind her, her eyes focused on the strip of road not more than fifteen feet beyond her.
The road
. A gleam of light appeared in front of her, her first thought the flashlights from above. With what little strength she had, she raised herself up and turned toward her pursuers, expecting to feel the probing glare of their high beams on her face. Instead, she saw only darkness. For a moment, she didn’t understand; she then turned back. Lights on the
road
. Lights from a
car
. The pain in her leg now pulsed throughout her left side, but still she forced herself to crawl along the ground. The grassy embankment lay just beyond the tree line, only a few feet from her grasp. She looked to her right and saw the headlights bob up from the distance, the car now no more than a quarter of a mile from her. She tried to stand, but her leg would not respond.

The last wave of bullets drove into her back and pinned her to the embankment. Strangely enough, she did not feel them. Instead, they seemed to lift the pain from her body, the grass now warm, inviting, the lights bathing her in a soft caress. Everything weightless, still.

Numb, save for the sweet taste of blood on her lips.

 

“And there was nothing you could do?” asked the old man. “The driver pulled over before you could get there? You had no chance to retrieve the body?”

“None.”

“I see.” He shifted the pillow under his back and took a sip of water from the glass at his bedside table. “And the two others?”

“Secured.”

He nodded. “You say she was dead?”

“Yes.”

“But not when the driver arrived?”

“I said I couldn’t confirm—”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, the first signs of frustration in his tone. “You said you could not confirm that a sixteen-year-old girl whom you had just shot several times in the back was dead.”

“If she wasn’t dead when he arrived, she was dead within a minute. At most.”

“Marvelous.”

“It was an absolute fluke that the car—”

“Do not try to excuse your incompetence. You permitted her to get within five feet of that road. Fluke or not, the car was there. Which means that our young lady friend is now at some hospital, some morgue, or some police station, under the watchful eye of one of our local law-enforcement specialists. Not exactly what I had asked of you.” Silence. “You will leave here at once. All of you. Weapons, clothing. You will see to it that the grounds are taken care of. No tracks. I want nothing that might lead them here. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“You will then remove yourself until I call upon you. Is this also understood?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” The old man sat back against the pillow, the brief tirade at an end. “Your mistakes, of course, will not be impossible to correct. Difficult, yes, but not impossible.” He nodded. “Still, you did well with the other two.” The younger man nodded. “That is, perhaps, worth something.”

A minute later, the old man lay alone in the dark, his eyes heavy, though as yet unable to rekindle sleep.
A fluke
, he thought.
Only a fluke
. How many times had he heard it?
Once again, fate has played her ace
.

Drifting off, he knew it would be her last.

 

“T
HE FAILED PUTSCH
in Jordan. During Bush’s little war.” Arthur Pritchard looked up from his desk. “Who was onto that before any of us saw it coming?” His long face and bushy eyebrows invariably gave the impression of an angry stork ready to pounce.

“The putsch …?” asked the man seated across from him, suddenly realizing who Pritchard was talking about. “No, Arthur. You know that’s not possible.”

Pritchard nodded, an air of New England refinement in the gesture. “True. Still …” He let the word settle; it was a favorite tactic. A product of the right schools, the appropriate clubs, Pritchard was anything but the dull-witted WASP his family and friends had tried to cultivate. When, at the age of forty, single and painfully aware that he had little to look forward to save another thirty years at the esteemed Boston firm of Digby & Combes, he’d pulled up roots and applied for a position at State. Washington. A city that had always held a certain fascination for him. The power? He often wondered. If so, his meteoric rise had brought more than he could have imagined.

Even through the mayhem of ’74. Somehow he had managed to keep himself far enough from the fray; when everything fell back in place, he had been offered a most unusual position.

The Committee of Supervision. A nebulous title for a Truman brainchild instituted during, of all things, the desegregation of the military. A covert office within State to ensure that “
rules were being followed.
” Truman, of course, had given the Committee considerable leeway in defining those rules—and in safeguarding them, “
by whatever means necessary
.” Over the years, any number of
difficult
tasks had carried the mark of COS, and with each new enterprise, the Committee had consolidated every ounce of leverage thrown its way. Somehow during the power struggles of the seventies and eighties, when CIA and NSC had vied for favorite-son status, COS had quietly established itself as the most adept of the three—Nicaragua, Pnompenh, Iraq. In so doing, it had set itself apart. Above the competition. Autonomous. In fact, only a handful of people in Washington understood the Committee’s capacity. Arthur Pritchard was one. It was why the Montana file lay on his desk.

“She’s perfect,” he continued, framed by a window reflecting Washington at dusk; ceiling-high bookshelves, oak paneling, and antique furniture added to the image Pritchard meant to convey. The beam from a single lamp shone down on the near-empty desk. “She’s familiar with the dynamic, the motivation.” He leaned back in his chair, swiveled so as to take in the last bits of the sun. “Why the hesitation?”

Bob Stein shifted in his chair, his thick cream white fingers squeezing into the green leather. His face, like his body, was pear-shaped, the entire effect accentuated by the small tuft of hair he kept close-cropped at the crown. Bob was most at home when staring at his computer or satellite printouts, painstaking hours fueled by diet Coke and cheese balls. Bringing his hands to his lap, he answered, “Look, I’m as anxious to follow this up as anybody, but she’s not …”

“Yes?” asked Pritchard.

“I just don’t think she’s … capable anymore. That simple.”

“‘Capable’?” Pritchard turned and smiled. “To flip over a few rocks? Wasn’t that what we were in Montana to do in the first place?”

“We were
there
,” Stein explained, “to snap a few photos of the venerable Senator Schenten with a few men he’s not suppose to be that chummy with. Ask the senator why he—champion of the New Right—has been meeting with Messrs. Votapek, Tieg, and Sedgewick, and then see where things lead.”