The building smelled new — fresh paint and polished glass, the faint tang of ozone from servers humming on the lower floors.
Carmichael Industries was officially open for business.
From the outside, it looked every bit the cutting-edge think tank: clean lines, bright atrium, whiteboards already filling with diagrams. Men and women in business casual streamed through the lobby, laptops under their arms, security badges clipped where anyone could see. To the public, to Ellie, to Morgan, it was exactly what it looked like — a government-funded consulting firm with brains to rent and research to spare.
But inside, deeper down, it was something else entirely.
The CIA analysts had arrived two days earlier. Some wore the expressionless faces of career spooks, others the restless energy of engineers who had spent too long in Langley's basement. They brought with them terabytes of classified data, access lines to NSA satellites, and a dozen cover projects designed to keep the lights on.
"Morning, Director Carmichael."
The title still felt surreal. I looked up from the spread of blueprints on my desk to see Dr. Anita Patel, one of the lead analysts assigned to the cover division. Her specialty was algorithms, but right now she was knee-deep in a municipal contract for earthquake-resistant infrastructure.
"Morning, Doctor," I said, sliding the coffee her way. "How's Burbank's city council treating you?"
She gave a thin smile. "Better than Langley ever did. They actually say thank you when we deliver results."
Behind her, another analyst hauled in a box labeled "Renewable Energy Study." Civilian contracts, completely above board. Every one of them a brick in the wall of the cover.
I stepped out into the atrium balcony and looked down at the bustle. To the casual eye, it was a hive of consultants solving the world's headaches. To mine — and to the Intersect — it was a lattice of data streams, firewalled layers hiding operations only a handful of us could see.
The Ops Floor lived three levels below, behind security doors even the cover analysts couldn't open. That was where the CIA side ran hot: feeds from satellites, encrypted comms, mission briefings scrolling across dark screens.
Today, a half dozen agents in plain clothes moved through the space, calibrating systems, testing secure uplinks. The hum of readiness filled the air.
"Everything's online, sir," one tech said, sliding a headset off his ears. "We're green across the board. Langley's impressed."
I nodded, feeling the weight of it. "Good. Keep the walls up. No cross-contamination between civilian and covert. If anyone smells smoke topside, the whole thing burns."
"Understood."
By afternoon, I walked the civilian wing again, where the cover analysts worked. They were brilliant — mathematicians, engineers, coders — and none of them suspected the man signing their paychecks was running double lives.
One young hire was deep in a contract simulating traffic light patterns for Los Angeles County. Another was drafting solutions for a commercial airline's logistics problem. All real work. All legitimate. All perfectly boring, which made it the best cover money could buy.
Morgan wandered in around five, peering over shoulders and marveling at equations he didn't understand. "Dude… you weren't kidding. This place is insane. Do you guys… like, solve puzzles for money?"
"Something like that," I said with a grin.
Ellie had come by earlier too, her eyes full of pride as she toured the sunlit conference rooms. To her, it was exactly what I told her: a consulting think tank. The kind of job that finally made sense for Chuck Bartowski.
And that was the point.
When the last civilian analysts filed out and the lights dimmed on the public floors, I rode the secure elevator back down to Ops.
The screens glowed softly in the dark. Incoming data, chatter from Hong Kong, a flag on arms shipments still rippling outward from the Zhou bust.
A message blinked across my private console:
Directive: Operation Phantom Veil. Priority One. Monaco. Details to follow. – Beckman
I leaned back, exhaling. The foundation was solid. The cover airtight.
Now it was time to take Carmichael back into the field.