The Overseer (4 page)

The first pages were standard form: born ’33 to Hungarian émigrés, public schools, regional wrestling champion, scholarship to St. John’s. Nothing unusual until ’51, when, in a period of less than six weeks, Tieg’s father died, he dropped out of school, and he set sail for Europe. No explanation.

Nothing. Not even the city, or cities, where he had lived.

It picked up again in ’54, charting Tieg’s rise from low-level peon to programming executive with the then-burgeoning television division of NBC. By ’63, he had become a central figure for various regional affiliates and stood as one of the bright boys in NBC’s future.

Sarah took a moment to jot down a few notes and then turned to the last few pages. The story beyond ’69 was common knowledge. Buying up a number of radio stations—the source of the initial capital unclear—Tieg had parlayed them into a series of local television outfits, and by ’73 had the largest media package in the Southwest. Then the shift to telecommunications in ’75, when he started to drum up business in Washington. His involvement in the early stages of SDI remained unclear, but by the time Star Wars hit its prime, he had severed all Washington connections. His current linkups included Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America. By ’92, he had an estimated five to seven pieces of high-tech machinery orbiting, all under the aegis of the recently formed Tieg Telecom, headquartered in San Francisco.

And then, just as quickly as he had gotten into the technology, he moved on, turning his attentions to
Tieg Tonight
, the homespun talk show that blossomed from a four share in ’93 to a twenty-two share by ’97, a legendary rise by any standards. The ratings established Tieg as the premier “
pontificating politico
” on the airwaves.

A final page had been added hastily. Sarah read:

That was where the file ended. Sarah placed it on her lap and closed her eyes. She had read the last few pages without the attention she knew they deserved, preoccupied by the three-year hiatus Tieg had enjoyed in Europe. The question remained: Who—or what—was allowing him to escape the keen eye of the world’s most thorough intelligence agency forty years later? How had those three years remained hidden? Three years of anonymity. Of unaccountability.

Her mind suddenly raced to memories of her own past, images breaking through to conjure an existence she had known a lifetime ago, and which now resonated with an unkind immediacy.
Her
year of anonymity, unaccountability.
Her
gap to be filled. A reality of shadows. A life created by the Committee, a persona shaped by COS that let her slip into the madness of a Middle East ready to implode. And how quickly she had been able to lose herself, abandon Sarah Trent, assume an emptiness without ties. A vacancy that had granted violence a chilling ease, a comfort. Memories still so close, never dulled by the passage of time, ever more acute by their distance.

Amman.

“BWI.” The shrill voice of the conductor bolted her from the violent images. “Arriving BWI Airport. Three minutes.”

She was cold; her hands shook as she reached for her coat. Not bothering to slide her arms through the sleeves, she draped the heavy wool around her shoulders and chest, the swelling in her eyes prompting a quick finger to her cheek. With a deep breath, she leaned her head against the soft slope of the seat and concentrated on the gentle slowing of the train. The numbing throb in her temples began to ease. She was learning to hold the moments at bay.

W
ASHINGTON
, F
EBRUARY
26, 12:43
P.M.
The disc popped from the slot: forty seconds to download the information, twenty to initiate the delay sequence. Everything like clockwork. The young man at the screen took the disc and placed it in his pocket. He was dressed in coveralls, the usual attire for maintenance staff at Hodge Wentworth, bankers to Washington’s elite for over 150 years. He had found the clothes at the drop-off point four hours ago; the ID badge and disc had arrived in the mail yesterday.

He turned off the computer and stepped from behind the desk. Pulling a lightbulb from his pocket, he proceeded to screw it into the lamp’s vacant socket. It was, after all, the reason he had been sent, the reason security had let him onto the eleventh floor in the first place. He tossed the old bulb into the trash and tested the lamp. Perfect.

At the same time, having made his way to the subbasement, another young man—similarly clad, similarly instructed—stood in front of what looked to be a large medicine cabinet filled with wires and computer chips, a tangle of the building’s phone and modem lines. He had snipped one of them and was now threading the second of the two strands of copper through a small black box. After a few seconds, the light on the box flashed green, then turned yellow. Attaching a strip of adhesive to its back, he affixed the box to the side of the cabinet and closed the front panel.

Three minutes later, both men stepped from separate elevators to the lobby, coveralls now folded inside attaché cases, new ID badges hanging from necks on silver chains. One set from the World Bank, the other from the fed. The blue blazers and gray pants screamed intern. No one took any notice as they moved through the revolving door toward a car at the curb and the young woman who sat waiting for them.

It had taken them twenty-seven minutes, four fewer than they had planned on. That meant an additional four minutes for the excursion to Dulles.

Reaching the car, they tossed their attaché cases next to the driver and settled into the backseat. Both slipped off their jackets and began to undo their ties as the young woman handed each of them a plastic bag.

Another set of coveralls. Another set of ID tags. Another black box and disc. As she eased out into the traffic, she glanced in her mirror at the two half-naked men in the backseat.

“Enjoying the view, Janet?” The two men laughed.

She smiled. “Not half as much as you like me watching.”

“What would your daddy say?”

She checked her watch. They would be on the flight to Montana by two.

 

The train arrived at 2:45, on time to the minute. Sarah had been deep within the files at the time and was therefore one of the very last to leave the car. She placed the papers in the briefcase, pulled it and her bag from the window seat, and strode out onto the eerily empty platform. The maze of stairs and corridors that crisscrossed the underbelly of Penn Station sent her in several wrong directions before she broke down and asked a passing redcap for the quickest way to the West Side trains. When he simply pointed to the sign ten feet in front of her, she was mildly embarrassed. She had been to New York too many times to act the tourist.

Twenty minutes later, the iron gates of Columbia University and the smell of roasting chestnuts greeted her as she took the last few steps to street level. Smoke cascaded from the vendor’s cart and lifted gently into the sky, lending an added haze to the wintry gray. As she passed through the gates and into the sudden quiet of the campus—its pockets of brown grass amid a backdrop of overbearing buildings—she noted the stark contrast to the bustle of Broadway. To her right, a lone stone structure, perhaps a hundred yards long, glowered at her through the single eye of an equally long window that stretched the entirety of its second floor. A building to be taken seriously, if only for the names that rose from its facade in huge sculpted letters: Plato, Cicero, Herodotus. An avenue of steps to her left led to an even more grandiose building, whose dome seemed to vanish into the intensifying slate of the sky. Other equally stern buildings completed the quadrangle that sufficed as the Columbia campus.

Following Mrs. Huber’s instructions, Sarah ventured left, toward a set of narrow stairs and the Amsterdam crossway—a concrete platform that covered the avenue from 116th to 118th Streets. Arriving atop yet another set of stairs, Sarah felt the sudden swirl of chilled air unleashed by the open expanse of the crossway. She walked to its railed edge, fighting a gust of wind, to see Amsterdam continue on for miles and disappear to a fine point in the distance. Cabs raced along, somehow less frantic from her raised perch. As she turned away from the hum of traffic, an extension to the crossway drew Sarah’s eye. Moving toward the peninsula, she neared what she assumed to be the Institute of Cultural Research. A simple plaque to the right of the door confirmed the guess.

The three-floor New England house—white wood shingles and all—stood out as an incongruous transplant alongside the more modern buildings that lined the crosswalk. For Sarah, the quaint anomaly conjured images of her own college days, the creaky buildings of New Haven’s Prospect Street, with their faint aroma of damp wood. Mounting the steps, she pushed through the oak door and found herself in a windowed vestibule, the customary umbrella rack to her left. The cold white tile of the small enclosure seemed to heighten the chill and prompted her to move quickly through the second door and into the dimly lit carpeted entry hall. A large wooden banister greeted her, its swirling line leading up to the second floor and the sound of several electric typewriters. In the sitting room to her left, Sarah spotted two ancient scholars in a pair of deep, embracing leather chairs, the men rapt in heated debate. The whining cackle of a fire rose through the conversation.

From around the staircase, a young man suddenly appeared carrying a tray of tea and cookies. He seemed overeager to dive into the fray by the fire—food and drink clearly his means of invitation. As he tried to dash by her, Sarah said, “I’m looking for the office of a Dr. Alexander Jaspers.” Tea in one of the cups swayed dangerously close to the rim as the young man made his abrupt stop. “Jaspers?” he asked, a furrow creasing his brow. “Right,” his eyes suddenly wide. “He’s on the top. The attic thing.” He jerked his ear toward the sitting room, not wanting to miss any of the discussion. A smile touched his lips. “He’s got it all wrong, you know,” he confided in Sarah, nodding toward one of the two by the fire. “All wrong. Anyway, you want Jaspers. This staircase”—he indicated with his head—“and then the corner one at the far end of the second floor. Clara’s always up there. Or usually. You’ll find her. Must run. It’s getting cold.” And with that, the man darted into the room to take his place in the chair nestled between the two older men. He—or rather, the tea—was received with considerable enthusiasm as Sarah began to climb the winding staircase.

Two sets of stairs later, she emerged on the third floor, a large open area, a few chairs placed at center, amid ceiling-high bookshelves on each of the four walls. No doubt this was the Institute’s attempt at a library, she thought, one with a very select clientele. Several desks jutted up against the stacks of books wherever one of about eight windows appeared, each distracting with a lovely view of New York. Only one of the desks was occupied, its claimant deep in the pages of an enormous tome. Directly behind the chairs at center, a set of stairs rose on a leftward slant; a note card tacked to the banister read JASPERS, followed by an arrow pointing up. Sarah’s nerves began to kick in. Images of a wizened old figure bent menacingly over a desk came to mind, his cold stare cutting through her as she reached the topmost step. She tightened her grip around the handle of her briefcase and mounted the stairs.