by Chris Hauty
Sadly, bigger breasts won’t help her now. POTUS is furious with her for exiling Hayley Chill, that sneaky little bitch, to the Library of Congress and has demanded the West Virginian be re-installed within the hour or else. Monroe’s “else” needs no elaboration. Rey can no more easily imagine being fired from this job than a parent can imagine the death of a child. Several calls to Deb Spellman over at the Madison Building have achieved nothing. Hayley hasn’t been seen in more than two hours and cannot be located. Calls to her cell phone go straight to voice mail. What can Rey do to find the missing intern? Call up the National Guard?
How the president could concern himself with the whereabouts of a single intern while Malkin visits and Lafayette Square explodes with riot is beyond Karen Rey’s comprehension. Unless the intern is located soon, Rey is finished in the West Wing. She sits at Hayley’s old desk in White House Operations and looks around the room. Asher Danes disappeared. Hayley Chill missing. Her future in shambles. If there were a loaded handgun on the desktop, Rey would blow her own brains out. To have come this far only to be undone by an undereducated, thin-lipped, taciturn hillbilly from God Knows Where, West Virginia, is too dismal a fate. In her desperation, Rey wonders if her two-fuck, ex–Bumble date would help in securing a job at his lobbying firm.
The landline on Hayley’s desk rings, and Rey, shot through with renewed hope, answers before the second ring.
“Yes? Who?” she barks into the phone. On hearing the answer, Rey experiences euphoric relief. “Yes, dammit! She works here!”
* * *
WITHIN TEN MINUTES, Deputy Chief of Staff Kyle Rodgers greets Hayley as she enters the first floor of the West Wing from the stairwell.
“Well, I guess this is what they mean when they say, ‘the worm turns,’ eh Miss Chill?”
“I think this is exactly what they mean by that one, sir.”
Hayley respectfully starts to walk around the deputy chief of staff, assuming he has more important things to do than chat, but apparently office gossip is significant enough.
“You would’ve enjoyed the look on her face when POTUS was asking after you.”
“Yes, I imagine I would’ve liked that very much.”
Rodgers works his imagination coming up with a relatable image. “Deer in headlights doesn’t really do it justice.”
“Back home folks hunt for wild boar and such with a Moultrie feeder hog light. Something like that, I’m guessing.”
The deputy chief of staff grins as he starts to move on, enjoying the image. “Yes. Something a lot like that.”
When she arrives finally at the deserted White House Operations office, she stands in the open doorway, stopped by the sight of Asher Danes’s empty chair. He hasn’t returned any of her calls. All she wants is to know he is okay. There is no reason to think he isn’t fine, well north by now and home in Connecticut by nightfall. But then she thinks of Homer Stephens and recalls the glimpse of Peter Hall through the pantry window, lying on his back on the kitchen floor. Death stalks all of them. Its specter increases her sense of isolation. Almost but not quite, she wishes she were home or, better, back at Fort Hood. Death is not what she fears but rather this arid loneliness, gnawing at her from within. She misses Asher’s companionship.
“Well, there you are!” exclaims Karen Rey, standing in the other doorway, her voice too bright and shiny. “We were worried about you.”
Hayley smiles lightly, adopting the persona required for the situation, dark thoughts packed into a box and put away for the time being. “Thank you, ma’am. Nice to be back.”
“I can’t believe you were caught up in all that craziness out there. Were you hurt? Shall I call the doctor?”
Hayley shakes her head. “Thank you. No, ma’am. I’m fine.”
There will be no mention of her banishment to the Library of Congress. From this point forward, they will be best friends. Karen Rey’s job depends on it. “Hayley, I wonder if you’d be available this weekend?”
“Ma’am?”
“POTUS is spending the weekend at Camp David. We could use your help out there. Asher would normally be on tap to do it, but he seems to have flown the coop!”
Rey’s forced cheeriness threatens to shatter her entire face into a million pieces of bitterness and rage. If she can’t retreat back to the safety of her own office in the next few seconds, the White House aide feels like she might kill this vicious bitch with her bare hands. Hayley, pretending to be unaware of the power she now holds over Rey, mercifully refrains from drawing the moment out. Vanquishing her West Wing nemesis is neither a priority nor of any real interest to Hayley. “Yes, of course, ma’am. It would be an honor.”
The smile creasing Rey’s face like an open wound disappears. “Caravan leaves from the complex at eleven sharp tomorrow,” she tells Hayley before vanishing from the doorway.
* * *
THE PARKING LOT to the side of Andy’s Crab House in Shady Side is again packed with black cars, SUVs with tinted windows, and a familiar Buick Regal TourX. Out on the bay, the wind pushes up a frantic chop across the water. A small-craft warning is in effect. The trees framing the property twist and heave in the wind. The louvered windows on the large, walled-in porch are closed with blinds drawn. What transpires inside the wood-frame building is meant to stay private and hidden from view.
Inside, the conspirators meet. Seated around a picnic table are the six men, all with grave expressions. Andy knows well enough to stay inside the kitchen. None of the men care whether or not their coffee is hot, their guts in the grip of fear and regret. Their business is grim, the stakes monumental. The world as it has existed all of their lives teeters on the brink. To do nothing risks becoming an anachronism. The decision facing them is one they didn’t want to make and did everything they could to forestall, including the murder of a friend and sometimes colleague who had betrayed their collective interests. But to show ambivalence or empathy is weakness and not a habit of their tribe. Bravado is a mask, and stabs of gallows humor a better one still.
“I swear, if I have to watch the country led by this despot one more day, I’ll take a gun to him myself!” Senator Cox mutters.
“Is that a campaign promise you can actually keep, Senator?” quips one of the other conspirators.
The senator raises himself up as tall as his faltering spine will allow. “I fail to see the humor in the situation, sir.”
Odom gestures for quiet. He holds affection for none of these men and considers all of them his intellectual inferiors. But this is a democracy, or so they say. What was Rumsfeld’s line? You go to war with the army you have. In James Odom’s opinion, truer words were never spoken. He wishes he had been the one to say it first.
“Gentlemen, a show of hands. The operation can be approved only by unanimous vote.”
Senator Cox quickly raises his hand, followed by the four other conspirators. Odom pauses, then also raises his hand. “So be it. Damocles is a go.”
For a moment, there is an unnatural silence at the table. All of these men, including Odom, are rarely hesitant to talk. Over the course of four months, they have met here almost a dozen times to discuss the Monroe presidency and devise a plan to contain it. These discussions have been heated and marked by fear, obscenity, and disagreement. How could you expect less from a roomful of powerful, inside-the-beltway egomaniacs?
But with their momentous decision made, the men seem spent. A shadow of depression and emotional exhaustion has fallen on each of them, abruptly and unexpectedly. Those capable of reflection wonder how they got here and if a better man couldn’t have devised a better alternative. Those not prone to looking inward simply feel numb and shove their broodings to less threatening arenas. All of them, however, experience a sudden passivity to which they are unaccustomed. Trigger pulled, they are reduced to the roles of spectators. All will be saved or all will be lost. There is no middle ground in the panorama of potential consequences.
Only a few seconds have ticked past since Od
om last spoke, but those moments seem like eternity. One of the white-haired men stares down at his hands folded on the tabletop, hesitant to look the others in the eye. “God save the United States,” he says quietly.
* * *
THE POTOMAC ANGLERS Association charges its members neither dues nor initiation fees. With total membership numbering eleven, the PAA meets every Saturday morning at the Whole Foods in Alexandria to discuss, over coffee and baked goods, nearly everything except fishing. They are all male, except for Susan Cho, and they are all over the age of sixty-five. The founders of the Potomac Anglers Association are Hal and Stan, and the most frequent attendees. What is generally understood but never discussed is the fact that Susan Cho is the best angler of them all, though the newest member, Terry Winch, just might give her a run for her money.
Hal and Stan had mentioned the possibility of taking a boat out last Saturday, but the weather had been poor all week—cold and cloudy—so that plan wasn’t likely to be realized. The members of the PAA dislike going out on the river on weekends. Too many drunks. Too much trouble. It was enough to gather at Whole Foods on Saturdays and then watch sports on television on Sundays. Surprising to each of them, really, was just how busy they found themselves in retirement. How better to manage their hectic, overscheduled lives was a much-discussed topic at the Saturday-morning roundtable. Despite this carping, they all remember to count their blessings. Too many friends and family members have passed on far too young.
Friday morning saw more of the same inhospitable weather, not a day to take a boat out on the water. But then, miraculously, the wind died down around lunchtime, and with clear skies and temperatures in the low fifties, the opportunity for some fishing seemed ripe. Today could be the last chance for any of them to get out on the water again until late March or early April. Stan was a better organizer than Hal, and he texted all of the members with an official PAA alert: No better time than the present. To the founders’ disgust, however, none of the other club members took the bait. Stan and Hal would have the river to themselves.
They met at Fletcher’s Cove Boathouse on Canal Road after one p.m., leaving them with only four hours of fishing. Renting a rowboat meant rowing, and rowing meant they wouldn’t travel far up or down the river. In their last expedition, a month earlier, Stan had had some luck just above Key Bridge and suggested they go to that spot. Hal disagreed. Key Bridge was almost three miles downriver, making their return before nightfall an arduous chore and potential risk. Stan had been a Virginia state policeman and was accustomed to uncertainty. He also was more adventurous than his friend, Hal, who had been a toll taker for the county. To settle their disagreement, they agreed to flip a coin. Stan, the natural born gambler, won the toss, and off they rowed, south toward the Key Bridge.
Hal set anchor a hundred yards north of the bridge. Stan lit a cigar. Hal threw his line into the water, having gotten his rig in order while Stan rowed. Settling back and enjoying the truly awe-inspiring view, Hal reflected on how intensely he loved his life in retirement. Thirty-five years spent in a tollbooth on the Dulles Greenway will give a man a keen appreciation for simple pleasures, such as fishing with a buddy from a Fletchers rowboat one hundred yards north of the Key Bridge. What fish can one hope to snag on the Potomac, within the sight of the nation’s Capitol building? Striped and largemouth bass, shad, and catfish are the primary prey of a typical angler, but the members of the PAA count the elusive snakehead as their prized catch. Susan Cho has caught them all and in infuriating abundance.
But it isn’t for fish any of them journey onto the river, with all members espousing a “catch and release” philosophy. No, their true, shared motivation is having the experience and companionship. Unspoken is the urge to feel the texture of life while they still can. They each can feel the hot breath of death on their shoulders. Time is short and life is sweet. Fishing is only an excuse to just stop and breathe. All that being said, the tug on a line was still a thrill, the connection with something down there, below the surface of the water and cloaked in murkiness. Such was his delight when Stan threw his rig over the side, watching the line carried south by the gentle current toward the bridge and when, to his eternal surprise, he felt that joyous and sudden pull.
“Holy shit, Stan! You’ve got a big one! Holy fucking shit!” Hal immediately starts to reel in his line so he can be available to help his friend with his catch.
“Goddamn, Hal. I can barely reel ’er in. This sucker’s fightin’ like a sonuvabitch.” Stan, the stout-hearted fisherman, reels steady and true.
His rig secure, Hal peers into the water where Stan’s line disappears taut into the murk. “Christ, I think you’ve got a snakehead, Stan! Holy goddamn, a snakehead! Wait until Susan Cho gets a load of this!” Hal fumbles for his phone so he can record the mighty feat for posterity.
Stan continues to bring the beast to the surface, the inexorable reeling-in like the work of a divine machine. “Let’s just wait and see, Hal. Almost there.” The pole bends almost in half. “Goddamn, she’s a motherfuckin’ fighter, this one!” The smile on the old man’s face is one of unadulterated joy. It’s the smile he wore fifty-seven years ago when he landed his first fish. Life is good. Life is so very good.
As the shape at the end of Stan’s fishing line materializes from the depths, it looks neither like fabled snakehead or any other fish the men have plucked from the gentle Potomac. “What in the world is that?” Hal asks no one in particular as he gazes over the boat rail. “What the hell did you catch there, Stan?”
Stan cannot lift the object out of the water with his fishing pole. His line would snap from the weight and bulky shape of the thing. But he can see it with his own eyes now, hovering just an inch or two below the river’s surface. He can read the label on the object from where he sits, plain as day: JANSPORT.
“That’s a goddamn backpack, Hal,” he needlessly informs his fishing buddy. “Some poor dummy lost their backpack in the river.”
Hal leans over for a better look. “Holy shit, Stan. Look. There’s a freakin’ knife stuck in it. Like it’s been stabbed!”
* * *
JAMES ODOM IS back at his office. He had called Sinatra from the car just after leaving Andy’s. The operative received the go-ahead without comment. General plans are already in place, but the president’s schedule shifts daily and the operation would not be truly set in motion until Sinatra has reviewed the immediate schedule in detail. He promises to get back to Odom as soon as he can give him operational details and an exact time of kickoff. That was only a couple hours earlier. Odom is surprised when he sees that Sinatra is calling again so soon.
“Received an interesting call from my contact with Metro Police,” the operative informs Odom.
“I’m all ears.”
“A backpack was recovered from the river by a couple old farts fishing. Our guy’s knife was stuck in it.”
“Yes?” Odom can’t hide his excitement. The other conspirators had expressed a good deal of anxiety green-lighting the operation while an unidentified witness remained even a possibility. He allayed their fears with assurances his team would find the witness if in fact one existed. Privately, Odom worried the mysterious second passenger would emerge after the operation’s successful conclusion and present a significant problem. That a lead had materialized from the bottom of the Potomac at the end of a fishing pole was a delicious twist of fate. He wished he could share his delight with someone, but Sinatra was an unlikely candidate. His operative was just too damn weird to relate with casual emotion or humor.
“Mostly emptied out by the currents and whatnot. Cops can’t determine for certain it came from the car, having no way to tie the combat knife to our man. But there were some building keys. Henry House, in Rosslyn.”
“Henry House? What the hell is that?”
“Intern housing. Only interns live at Henry House.”
* * *
WALKING ON JACKSON Place, along the west side of Lafayette Square, Hayley can
see city workers cleaning up the detritus of the earlier riot. Having gone from seeing the inside of a prisoner transport van to cruising the carpeted hallways of the West Wing, Hayley has experienced circumstantial extremes in a span of less than six hours that few can imagine. The phone call from Karen Rey informing her of the transfer to the Library of Congress seems a very long time ago. Ending the day once again stationed only steps from the Oval Office, Hayley might be tempted to believe her world restabilized. But hope can be a drug, the self-medication of the deluded and mentally lazy. She has a job to do and a clear path to completion of that mission. A whole weekend in the more casual environment of Camp David affords her the perfect opportunity to speak directly and in private with the president.
Her stomach hurts from not eating. The only food she consumed the entire day was after her run that morning, a small bowl of dry granola and fruit. Waiting for her at home, in total, is a can of tuna and an avocado. She’s too exhausted to contemplate going to the store. Rest is what she needs. Close and lock the door behind her. Turn off the phone, television, and computer. Read nothing. And sleep. Of all the days since leaving Fort Hood, many of them difficult and long, this day had been the longest and most difficult.
The walk from her bus stop in Rosslyn to Henry House is less than ten minutes. Many of her neighbors are also arriving home from work. Cars are stacked up in the street, circling the block in the eternal search for an available parking space. Hayley only has to round the corner at Ode Street, walk the fifty or so feet to the walkway leading to the building entrance, then into the vestibule, up one flight of stairs, and stroll the few steps to her apartment door. She’s almost home, her refuge. Approaching the corner, Hayley stops suddenly and shifts laterally, stepping off of the curb and crouching between two parked cars.
