The night shift has just come on, and that irritated the assistant subdirector since it meant extra hours, the sacrifice of family time again, the third time that week. For Harvey Littel, country came before anything else, and perhaps this explained the elevated rate of divorce among those working in this branch, though not yet in his case.
He’d covered a lot of miles through these corridors. He punched in at seven in the morning. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and now he returned crossing them toward the elevator to the east wing. His thirty-minute run every morning before coming to work gave him an enviable physique that enabled him, at fifty-three, to endure the daily pressure to which he was subjected as assistant subdirector.
Harvey Littel’s function could be explained fairly simply. He carried out all the dirty work for the subdirector, who could present it to the director as his own work, or, if Harvey Littel, by some chance, screwed up, everything could go to hell, but only one head would roll… his.
He glanced at the windows that reflected the darkness of the night, noting how he’d spent one more day unable to take advantage of the sun. At five in the afternoon, he’d told his wife, Lindy, not to count on him for supper.
‘Harvey, it’s the third time this week,’ she complained as soon as she was able to get to the phone, out of breath. Harvey didn’t even need to tell her why he was calling. ‘See if your boss will let you off. This is what happens when your husband does more than everyone else.’ She continued to complain, more with herself than with him, speaking faster. She was a lonely woman, now that the children had gone their own ways. She believed her husband was too busy with his work in the computer store where he was head of the sales department. Lindy couldn’t figure out why her husband thought he was saving the world every day. Nor did Harvey imagine that her protests over his not showing up for dinner were made from on top of the bed, his bed, where she’d been romping at five in the afternoon with her lover, Stephen Baldwin, who, by chance, happened to look like the famous one, and who, by another coincidence, also worked at the agency, in the commissary. Stephen Baldwin was at Harvey Littel’s house at five in the afternoon every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, without realizing that Lindy’s husband was the assistant subdirector of the CIA.
Once in the elevator, Littel swiped his card with level-two clearance and punched in the code assigned to him. The elevator read the order and began to descend to the second basement floor, buried well underground, where they waited for him. These clearances went from the lowest grade, six, to one, and controlled the security and information each individual could access inside the building and in other branches around the territory. The security system was able to monitor in detail the work of everyone associated with the agency. So, if it was necessary, it would be possible to consult the dates and know that Harvey Littel descended in elevator number twelve to the second basement floor at twenty-three hours, forty-five minutes, and twelve seconds today. The cards assigned to the employees not only cut off access to classified information, but also the entrance of all whose card didn’t permit access. If anyone inattentively tried to enter where he shouldn’t, he’d see the door stay closed, the elevator immobile, and would be called soon to Internal Security to explain himself.
But these are the house rules, of little interest to most mortals, and only serve to entertain us while the elevator takes Harvey Littel to his floor.
A soft braking came before a male voice announced the obvious, ‘Door opening.’ Harvey went down the dark hall, with hidden sensors that turned on fluorescent lights as he walked with a firm, energetic pace.
After turning once to the left and twice to the right, he came out into another hallway, narrower, with a bluish light and a door at the end. Harvey swiped his card through the scanner on the wall and entered the code. Once he was on the other side, the door closed behind him, separating one world from another.
The light created an eerie atmosphere, as if transporting the passersby to another dimension. Several doors ran along both sides, all closed. The one Harvey Littel wanted was the third on the right side. He passed his card through the scanner. It was surely one of the movements he performed most often during the day, facilitating access to places he wanted to go. The door opened as soon as he entered the code, and, taking a deep breath, he went in. There were seven people inside awaiting him.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he greeted them, his tone appropriate to his professional role.
Almost everyone got up from around the large rectangular table the participants barely filled. Only the old colonel, Stuart Garrison, didn’t. Not because of the born arrogance that made him insufferable but because of the wheelchair in which he sat. These were the wounds of war that remain for life, received, as he never tired of telling, in March of 2003, on the outskirts of Nasiriyah, during the second Gulf War, when the allied forces were marching at top speed through Iraqi territory on the way to Baghdad. A rocket launched by some Shiite fighter at the Humvee in which he was riding took away from him any capacity for movement from his waist down, affecting his sexual ability, as well, although nothing affected his strong character. That act of terrorism earned Colonel Stuart Garrison the Medal of Valor. In colorful terms the report said that Stuart Garrison, trapped in what remained of the frame of the twisted Humvee, was able to destroy the menacing fighter about to give the coup de grace with another rocket. A sure shot to the head of the insurgent saved the lives of the six occupants of the vehicle, although one didn’t survive his wounds and died on the way to the field hospital, after waiting five hours for a rescue team. What the report didn’t mention was that the shot killed a teenager less than fifteen years old whose action was revenge for the allies annihilating his innocent family. These were the atrocities of war, implacable for both sides. Once removed from the battlefield, Stuart Garrison was invited to join the agency because of his privileged contacts in the Middle East, making him the most imbecilic, arrogant, and deficient man in the CIA — words not spoken out loud by those who knew him.
Having explained the trivia of why some get promoted and others not, let’s move on to the rest of the group in hierarchical order. They were seated three on each side, leaving the head of the table for the assistant subdirector, Harvey Littel. If the subdirector or director had been here in person, they would have been at the head. On the right side, from the point of view of the assistant subdirector, we have Colonel Stuart Garrison, responsible for communications with the Middle East and Russia, followed by Wally Johnson, lieutenant colonel, liaison with the US army, intrepid and proud, some forty years old, although still in puberty in regard to military careers. Across from them, Sebastian Ford, diplomatic attache, politician by profession, one of those who seem to have excellent judgment, but, when you squeeze their words, seem to have no juice, nothing there. He was the demagogue who connected the department with the president, always prepared to sacrifice anyone for the good of his career… and, of course, national security. The others were not important enough to name, since they have little relevance for the unfolding of our story. But let’s not forget the woman who wasn’t seated at the table. She was next to the wall, behind Harvey Littel with a notebook ready to take her frenetic notes. She was Priscilla Thomason, Harvey’s secretary.