by Chris Hauty
Every available parking space is occupied on the block. On both sides of the street, a large percentage of parked vehicles are SUVs. For that reason, Bishop had felt reasonably confident in his choice of stakeouts. One Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows draws no more notice than the GMC Yukon with tinted windows parked directly in front of it. Directly across the street is a Lincoln Navigator. Three cars forward is a Chevrolet Tahoe. Clearly, America loves its vehicles big. What Bishop could not have factored into his decision was Hayley’s photographic memory. She has seen this relatively generic Escalade before, parked outside Scott Billings’s house. She knows this vehicle and can easily recall its license plate number. Virginia plate, YHT-9919.
Somewhere she can hear the joyous howls of the neighborhood children playing in their yards in spite of the raw December air and early night sky. Blue shadows are cast out of the windows of surrounding homes and apartments by televisions tuned to favorite shows. Kitchens are being straightened after family dinners, the familiarity of early-evening routine like a comforting blanket. If Bishop had bothered to look back over his shoulder from the passenger seat of the Escalade and scanned the open space between a Ford and VW van parked at the curb behind where they’d parked, he would see only that: space. The object of their stakeout and pursuit, Hayley Chill, is long gone.
8
DAMOCLES
The J. Edgar Hoover Building, a cast-in-place concrete pile located on Pennsylvania Avenue, had outlived its natural life span and mediocre design more than a decade ago. Embracing its Brutalist architectural style with the bear hug of a professional wrestler, it inspires only dread and existential angst. Against the cold, gray December-morning sky, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation stands as a stark monument to a bulldog of a man who led it for nearly fifty years.
Hayley sits in the lobby, having spent the night wandering from one improvised haven to the next. First, it was an all-night diner on Wisconsin Avenue. Leaving there after an obscenely satisfying meal of eggs, bacon, and pancakes, she walked what seemed like the length of the city, paying homage to deserted landmarks that seemed imbued with the spirits of their historic honorees in the cold hours after midnight. Alone, with ol’ Abe staring down at her from his granite and marble throne, Hayley certainly knew the end of her rope when she’d found it. James Odom had somehow linked her to Scott Billings and was aware she was witness to their treasonous crimes. She had no doubt in her mind what the men in the Escalade would do if they found her.
If Hayley had learned anything in her life experiences and training, it was to be pragmatic. Every action involves a degree of risk, calculated or not. Standing in the shadows of the otherwise deserted Lincoln Memorial and shivering from the subfreezing temperatures, she fully appreciated her dilemma. Should she continue to keep her own counsel and risk her message dying with her or reach out again to a potentially untrustworthy authority?
How far the conspiracy spread throughout the federal government and its agencies was not for her to guess. But one thing was crystal clear: she needed rest in order to think clearly. Sleep-deprived, and with temperatures plummeting, Hayley found refuge at Union Station, that elegant confluence of Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads willed into existence in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Collapsed on a varnished wooden bench and gazing up into that lusciously hypnotic Beaux-Arts geometric ceiling, she slept like the dead.
With first light came her decision. Hayley made the call before seven a.m. and, as instructed, now sits here, under austere architectural expression, and better rested. Helen Udall exits the elevator across the lobby and immediately clocks Hayley on her bench. “Ms. Chill, thank you for calling and coming over straightaway.”
“Thank you for agreeing to meet me, ma’am.”
“Are you okay? Do you need some coffee?”
“I’m fine, Agent Udall. Thank you.”
“It would’ve been better if you had spoken up before. You may recall, I asked you repeatedly if there was more to your story.”
“Sorry, ma’am. First I had to get a better idea who were the good guys and who were the bad.” She pauses, meeting the FBI agent’s gaze squarely. “I’m just an intern and new in town.”
“The FBI would be the good guys, Ms. Chill,” Udall says dryly.
“I really wish I could be certain of that, ma’am.”
“You’re sitting in the lobby of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Is there a more trustworthy place in the country?”
“We could ask John Callahan if he were still alive. I think it was an FBI special agent who helped Whitey Bulger kill him.”
Udall doesn’t particularly enjoy being called on her own bullshit. “Just an intern, huh?” she asks rhetorically. “You in the habit of disrespecting the people you ask for help?”
“Ma’am, I’m just trying to explain the motivations behind my actions.” Hayley wants to appear sincere. She knows Udall is potentially an important ally. A recognizable world teeters on the precipice. “I guess the thing is, you can only trust someone until you can’t.”
“Yes, and that cuts both ways, doesn’t it, Ms. Chill?”
Hayley says nothing. She worries she has lost the FBI agent with her crack about Callahan and the Bulger scandal. She launches into the entire story, relating every detail from discovery of the boot print to Scott’s attack, and wrapping up with her entanglements with James Odom and the hit team staking out her apartment building. Udall takes notes throughout Hayley’s monologue, never lifting her eyes off the pages of her notebook. After Hayley is finished, the FBI agent spends minutes reviewing her own notes, tapping the end of her pencil against the side of her head with increasing excitement as she reads, before finally looking up to meet Hayley’s anxious gaze.
As measured as possible considering what she has just heard, Udall says, “This is all very interesting, but …” She falters, finding it hard to continue.
“What?” Hayley asks warily.
“Frankly, I haven’t been able to find any concrete evidence of wrongdoing in Hall’s death. Our investigation was more or less concluded.”
“So? I’m here. I’ll do whatever is necessary. Make an official statement. Testify. Whatever.”
Udall can only offer defense by way of a thinly veiled criticism: “I wish you had spoken up sooner.”
“Ma’am, the president’s life—”
“Is threatened probably fifty times a day, in one form or another. Everybody wants to kill every president. Monroe is no different. That’s why we have the Secret Service.”
“Agent Udall, the Secret Service, or parts of it, may be involved in this.”
Udall seems unimpressed. “It’ll take some time, Ms. Chill. My superiors will need convincing.”
“What about the drugs you found in Peter Hall’s system? I saw direct evidence of intrusion into the chief of staff’s residence the night of his death.”
The FBI agent is stone-faced. “Further investigation uncovered recreational drug usage in Hall’s immediate history.”
“A Secret Service agent on the president’s detail tried to kill me, ma’am!”
“Wouldn’t be the first time lovers quarreled, Ms. Chill,” Udall reminds her with a slightly judgmental tone. If either of them knew Hayley’s backpack had been retrieved from the Potomac, Udall would have all the hard evidence she needed to believe at least a portion of what the intern alleged. But that evidence had been inventoried the previous night at the Metro Police Department’s Evidence Control Branch at 17 DC Village Lane, in the southwest, and placed alongside more than one hundred thousand other items. The knife and pack have zero chance of being connected to Scott Billings or Hayley Chill by the police.
The FBI agent stands up to leave. “Give me a day or two. Take a beat while I handle things on my end.”
* * *
THERE IS NO time to absorb the whiplash of disappointment in Agent Udall’s failure to act quickly. The sting of regret will diminish as the inevitable c
ascade of emotions and decisions forces its way to the surface of her consciousness. Pushed down, she stands back up. The way blocked, she reverses course and returns to where she has first come. This is her way, a mental toughness that defines her character. After a night spent literally on the street and wearing the same clothes she wore the day before, Hayley must make some stops before returning to the White House. Without looking in the mirror, she’s certain she looks like hell.
After purchasing some necessities at Walgreens on F Street, she brings them into the bathroom there and does a reasonable job of fixing hair, face, and teeth. She finds a Forever 21 on the same block and ducks inside. Any clothing will do as long as it’s a change of clothing. Swapping out of what she’d been wearing for the last twenty-four hours in the dressing room, she puts on the new outfit and places her worn clothes in the shopping bag with her toiletries.
Leaving the clothing store, Hayley heads toward the White House complex, only a few blocks to the west. She scans the streets for any sign of a familiar black SUV in a city where it seems only black SUVs populate the roads. The passenger vans will be leaving the White House for Camp David in twenty minutes. She cannot be late. In order to avoid danger that may be lurking on Seventeenth, Hayley loops north and approaches the White House gate from the west. At Seventeenth and G Street, she slips into Così, a quick-bite joint directly across the street from the EEOB and White House gate.
Before she risks showing herself, Hayley assesses her surroundings from the relative safety of the sandwich shop. After only a few seconds, she sees the hit team’s SUV parked on Seventeenth across G Street. Hayley checks her watch. Less than five minutes remain before the vans are scheduled to depart. To her right, a stack of Washington Post newspapers with a headline reporting Russia’s troop movements on its border with Estonia distracts her only for a moment.
A Metrobus rumbles south on Seventeenth, passing just outside the sandwich shop. With this last opportunity for safe transit, Hayley dashes out the door and, using the bus as cover, runs across the street toward the White House gate. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the SUV lunge from the curb. Martin, behind the wheel, had spilled his cup of coffee when Bishop thumped him on the arm. “There she is! Go!” Were it not for a random black car ferrying two lobbyists to a late-breakfast meeting with a congressman from California and speeding northbound on Seventeenth, the operators would have intercepted their target in the middle of the four-lane street.
Ned greets Hayley with a warm smile as she runs up to the gate. “Saturday morning, Hayley? Don’t you take any days off?”
Hayley glances over her shoulder at the black SUV skulking on Seventeenth Street, the scowling faces of the two men inside like Day of the Dead masks, and then turns back to her friend with a relieved smile. She shrugs. “Guess not!”
Hurrying up the drive toward the South Lawn, she hears a familiar roar and sees Marine One rise high above the trees and pirouette to the northwest. Lower-level staffers accompanying POTUS to Camp David are gathered in the driveway with their roller bags, waiting for the van. They watch last-to-arrive Hayley approach with no other luggage except for the Forever 21 shopping bag and predictably arch their eyebrows.
* * *
MANAHAN ROAD, IN rural northwest Maryland, slices through small homesteads and woodlands. Many of the farms were sold off years ago and their pastures left fallow or sited for brick ranch-style homes. A quiet, peaceful area, it’s unremarkable in every respect except for the proximity of Camp David, the presidential retreat, less than two miles to the south. The sheer anonymity of the area is one of the reasons why US presidents since FDR have used the compound as a retreat from the pressure cooker atmosphere of Washington, DC. No one else comes here.
Twin sport utility vehicles, both with darkly tinted windows, speed incongruently down the two-lane road where farm tractors and pickup trucks more typically travel. Manahan Road is poorly graded and several undulations in its surface necessitate lowered speeds, but the big black vehicles pay no heed to the driving conditions and nearly leave the ground traveling over some of those humps. With little deceleration, the SUVs screech hard into a turn and enter the gravel drive of a farmhouse that has been unoccupied for more than five years after its owner, an alcoholic grandson of a long-deceased barley farmer, emphatically committed suicide with both gun and noose. The doors of a barn a hundred yards from the main house are pushed open from within by Lewis, who stands to the side as the two SUVs drive into the structure with only a few seconds of brake lights flashing. Once both vehicles are inside, Lewis reenters the barn and pulls the big doors closed again behind him.
Within the dimly lit barn, the operators exit their vehicles and begin to unload duffels and backpacks. Sinatra supervises their work, smoking a cigarette. Bishop senses his team leader’s gaze following his every move and feels his gut twist. For an operation of this magnitude, why didn’t the clients hire someone who wasn’t quite so, well, freakish?
“Bishop, c’mere,” Sinatra calls out from near the front of the vehicles.
Bishop finishes stowing his duffel bag with the others and then approaches Sinatra, staying on guard for he’s not sure quite what.
“Remember what you told me, after you braced the intern at her apartment?”
“No,” Bishop says, lying.
“You said she didn’t know shit.”
“If that’s what I said, so?”
“You were wrong.”
The words land with a thud. “Okay,” Bishop says lamely, very nervous now. Sinatra takes a long, dangerous pause. Bishop hasn’t a clue what’s coming next.
“Remember we prayed you were right.”
Bishop remembers all too well. “Yeah.” He can almost feel the cold metal of gun barrel end placed against his forehead. His mouth tastes acrid fear.
“Do you feel it, Bishop? God works in mysterious ways.”
“Feel what exactly?” he asks casually, masking his terror. If he’s going to die, he wants to go out with his dignity intact.
“The power of redemption at work.” Through the blue cigarette smoke, Sinatra’s eyes appear flat and already dead.
Bishop releases a short breath with the realization the psycho isn’t going to kill him. He just wants to get this crazy fucking operation over with, take his half-mil, and fly back to Alaska. Shoot a grizzly bear if he fucking feels like it. Easier than killing a president, right?
“I sure do, bro. Feelin’ it strong,” says Bishop.
“Have you ever killed a woman before? A young, pretty woman?”
“No.”
“Can you, Bishop? Can you kill a young, pretty woman? Do this and provide living proof that the power of prayer and potential for redemption is greater than any one man’s failings.”
Bishop doesn’t even have to think about it. What would he be doing with this crew if he had qualms about killing anything? Well, maybe a kid would be a tough nut to crack. Bishop makes a decision then and there not to ever kill a kid, at least intentionally. “Yeah, man, I’m down. Why?”
“Our client has informed me the individual responsible for Billings’s demise is the intern you questioned. She will be at the operation location. It goes without saying her death is mandatory.”
“You want me to kill her, boss?”
“Yes, Bishop, I’m assigning you that very special task. I’d like you to make sure that bitch ceases to exist.”
Bishop gives it a thought and decides to push his luck, now feeling more in control of the situation. “Extra work means extra pay, dude. Fifty grand for the girl, five hundred for the president.”
Sinatra nods, agreeing to Bishop’s terms. Before Sinatra can make an offer to pray, Bishop turns tail and diddy bops back to his kit. Sinatra watches him go, taking a last pull off his cigarette then dropping it to the hard-packed dirt floor. He carefully grounds out the cigarette butt under his boot. His exchange with Bishop has left him depressed. Try as hard as he might, the men simply don’t seem to like
him, and Sinatra cannot figure out why. He suffered the same bewildering and unwarranted hostility from his ex-wife. What has he done to any of them but offer employment and companionship? If his religiosity is the problem, then there is nothing to be done. Jesus is his life, and his life is Jesus. Consumed with this brooding, Sinatra lights another cigarette and waits for emails from his real estate broker. He feels a headache coming on.
Something over two miles away, the White House van is checked through the secure gate leading into the iconic presidential two-hundred-acre retreat by heavily armed Marines. Given the military presence and a high-security fence that surrounds the entire facility, the one-hundred-plus contingent of Secret Service agents who typically protect the president while at the White House is vastly reduced to less than a dozen. Only six agents maintain constant vigil at the president’s private cabin, Aspen Lodge, while the other six are posted at the “executive” building, Laurel Lodge. Privacy and seclusion are the operating principals of the presidential retreat at Camp David, making for the perfect atmosphere for relaxation, romantic trysts, or leisurely diplomatic talks.
The one-hour-and-twenty-four-minute drive via Interstate 270 from the White House complex to Camp David was routine. Chatter was at a minimum among the six passengers, all of them preoccupied with their electronic handheld devices. Hayley, however, kept her phone in her pocket. She gazed at the passing landscape outside her window for the entire trip, emptying her head of focused thinking as a form of meditation she’d developed while in the army. On long trips in loud and uncomfortable military transports, she discovered a quiet mind was the best preparation for the difficult tasks and challenges that lie ahead.
