“What?” Hayley asks.
“Nothing.” His silly speculations don’t complement the persona of a grave Secret Service agent he strives to project. “One for the road?” he proposes.
Hayley shakes her head. “I need to go. Home, then work.”
Scott accepts her refusal good-naturedly. But he is already eager to see her again and is relieved they both work in the White House complex. What the hell is happening to him? he wonders, rising from bed. Hayley isn’t above admiring his physique as much as he had hers. As sexual partners, they fit.
“This fits,” she admits to him out loud.
He envelops her in his arms and kisses her. But despite this connection with Hayley, shockingly fast and somewhat terrifying, career comes first. “We might want to keep this on the down low,” he advises.
“Yes,” she agrees. “That would be wise.”
* * *
THE REDBRICK GEORGIAN mansion on Kalorama Road squats close to the street, constructed in 1754, and in that pre-motorized era conveniently sited. The proximity to public roadway and subsequent lack of privacy today seems expensively anachronistic. One would expect to see candles burning in the windows or a horse-drawn carriage in the drive. Only the rich and powerful can afford the inconvenience of such a relic. Look closely. Triple-pane windows and instead of candlelight, there is the faint glow of amber LED on the panel of a sophisticated alarm system down below window level at the northeast corner of the stately home.
Snow drifts down from an opaque sky, leaving a tentative, sugary coating on scattered surfaces. Accumulation seems unlikely. The temperature is just below freezing. But these early flurries are a harbinger of the winter to come.
Cloaked in this haphazard dusting of snow, the mansion is dark and graveyard silent. The street and sidewalks are empty. Six figures emerge from shadows, materializing like y–urei of Japanese folklore, clad in tight-fitting dark clothing, knit caps, and stealth duty boots. Each man—self-evidently special tactics operatives—carries a stuffed duffel or backpack.
Taking care to stay on the gravel bed that frames the home’s perimeter, the operators stop under a window off the northeast corner of the mansion. One of the men, code-named “Lawford,” attaches a suppression device to the side panel of the home security system. The LED light on the console briefly flickers and then resumes a steady glow. The suppression device boasts its own LED light, verifying the device is jamming signal flow to the security console from sensors placed throughout the residence. With a gesture from Lawford, a second man, “Bishop,” slides open the window left unlocked in an earlier intrusion. A third operator withdraws a white full-body contamination suit from his duffel and slips it on. Code-named “Sinatra,” he is the unit leader.
After making what appears to be the sign of the cross, Sinatra clambers through the open window without making a sound as the other operators slip on their contamination suits. Each man follows the other through the open, first-floor window. The operators, six in number, regroup inside a formal dining room, where they pause, awaiting a signal from Sinatra. The faint sound of a television tuned to a cable news channel is now detectable, drifting into the darkened room from elsewhere on the lower level of the mansion. The unit leader gestures to Lawford, who immediately proceeds to one of two doorways leading out of the formal dining room.
Meanwhile, a fourth operator, “Martin,” withdraws a peculiar device that only superficially resembles a small-size syringe and hypodermic needle. Manufactured with a resilient, boron-nitride nanotube attached to one end of a glass pipette and coated with a micro-thin layer of gold, the injection apparatus is a nanoneedle capable of penetrating the membrane of a living cell for targeted delivery of one or more molecules into the cytoplasm or nucleus. Injection with nanoneedle is virtually impossible to detect. Sinatra watches Martin prepare the apparatus, awaiting his go-sign.
In the mansion’s modest kitchen, Peter Hall sits at a butcher-block table on a hard-backed chair perusing the morning paper while a television murmurs in the background. He had managed to sleep only a few hours, at best. Resistance to the administration’s agenda from his own party in Congress has been relentless, to say nothing of the opposite party’s near hysteria. On trade issues, relations with China and Russia, and ongoing tensions with allies in Europe, Monroe has advocated a consistent course of disruption. Such was his mandate in winning the election, a victory that few had predicted. The chief of staff lost several friends, both personal and professional, over his early support of Monroe’s presidential bid. In fact, Hall’s oldest son had broken off all contact with his dad over these political disagreements. But losing sleep and relationships is all part of the bargain in attempting to save the country from ruin. Hall’s lifelong custom had been to wake at five a.m. Since Carol’s death, this morning routine has gained even more traction. Sleep is the happy indulgence of the less burdened.
Turning the page of the front section of the Washington Post and eagerly awaiting arrival of the morning’s State Department security briefing package to be delivered by the impressive intern in his support office, Hall looks up to see three men clad in white contamination suits standing silently in the kitchen doorway. With their presence now revealed, the men respond by moving forward, in apparent choreography, toward a startled Peter Hall. Only the briefest grunt escapes the White House chief of staff’s lips as Sinatra and another operator, code-named “Davis,” take hold of Hall, restraining him while Bishop swiftly inserts the tip of a small squeeze bottle into one of his nostrils and pumps three bursts of its contents into the victim’s sinuses. Hall continues to struggle against the men, who immobilize him for the few seconds before he goes completely limp.
Sinatra and Davis gently ease Hall’s head and upper torso down onto the kitchen table as Martin appears with the nanoneedle. Working with the aid of a Keplerian Loupe, which magnifies the insertion area, the operative threads a micro-thin wire through the nanoneedle and into Hall’s jugular vein and feeds the length of it down the vein, into the right atrium of the chief of staff’s heart.
Satisfied the wire end has found its intended target, Martin attaches the other end of the wire to a battery amplifier. Once all is in order, he gives Sinatra a look. On that cue, the unit leader and Davis place their hands firmly against Hall, pressing him against the tabletop. Sinatra gestures to Martin to proceed. Without emotion, Martin flips a switch on the amplifier.
Hall’s body seizes. Sinatra and Davis continue to lean on the spasming chief of staff. After a few moments, Hall becomes still. Martin already has a stethoscope in hand, and he checks their victim for heartbeat. Finding none, he nods to Sinatra.
“Dead,” Martin declares.
Sinatra nods, businesslike and without expression. They have exactly fifteen minutes before the intern normally arrives with the daily brief. As Martin and Bishop begin to clean up and stow the apparatus, Sinatra turns and walks out of the kitchen, followed by Davis. In the hallway, they encounter Lawford and the sixth man, “Lewis,” standing at the open door of a hallway closet. Inside the closet is an array of security and surveillance equipment. Lawford has removed the security system’s hard drive and is just about finished replacing it with another drive of the same exact specifications and manufacture.