“Haven’t you heard?” the Bearded Man asks, gesturing to the cigarette dangling Jean-Paul Belmondo–style from Sinatra’s lips. “Those things will kill you.”
“Sitting with you on this bench, in broad daylight, has a higher probability of killing me than cancer,” Sinatra retorts. “Let’s talk about your hat.”
The Bearded Man doesn’t have a self-conscious bone in his body. The cap sits atop his head with aplomb. “ ‘Astrakhan’ is the Russian word for the pelt of a young Karakul lamb, a breed of sheep native to Central Asia,” he explains. “Harvesting at birth, when the wool is still black, soft, and very tightly coiled, it creates a pleasurably dense mat.” The Bearded Man gives Sinatra a wink. “Popular among Soviet Politburo members back in the day.”
Sinatra is spectacularly uninterested. Then again, he had asked about the damn thing. He flicks the cigarette a dozen yards away, where it rolls to a stop against a curbstone. “Why am I talking to you?”
“I want to hear there were no errors made on Kalorama Road. Your lips, my ears.”
Sinatra sighs, a wheeze of petulant arrogance. “Peter Hall died of a massive heart attack. Dead before he hit the floor,” Sinatra relates. “Read about it in the New York Times.”
“Your men performed to expectation, then? No mistakes.”
“I was first in and last out. The team’s execution was flawless.”
The Bearded Man nods approvingly. “Excellent.” He checks his watch.
“That’s it?” Sinatra appears both surprised and annoyed.
“Well, I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks with your safety.” The Bearded Man stands.
Sinatra also rises, eye-to-eye with him. “Our man inside 1600 requires direction.”
The Bearded Man levels an irate look toward Sinatra, disappointed with an operative who had been selected by another member of the task group less particular than himself. If it had been up to him to choose a candidate for the job, given the targets, he would have looked offshore. His fellow Americans can be such outrageous brats, spoiled children weaned on a steady diet of network television and McDonald’s hamburgers who never really ever grow up. The Bearded Man is grateful he was raised well before the Internet age and ubiquitous handheld devices. He’s doubly grateful not to have children himself.
“He is to do what he’s been ordered to do and nothing more.”
“Damocles?” Sinatra presses.
“At the present time, there is no need for further action,” the Bearded Man reiterates.
“At the present time,” Sinatra restates pointedly.
“Should the situation change, I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, your man is to remain in ready position, and that is all.”
Sinatra nods, message received. He finds himself staring at the battling sparrows. The partially masticated beetle lies between them on the damp concrete, not three feet from where rival gang members had exchanged close-quarter gunfire.
The Bearded Man follows the other man’s gaze. “Anthus rubescens. American Pipit.”
Sinatra clearly doesn’t know what the Bearded Man is talking about. His mind is elsewhere. What if the job on Kalorama Road wasn’t error-free? What if he or one of his team had made a mistake? There would be no escape or avoidance of consequence. He and every man on his team would be the most wanted men on earth. It’s a dreadful and terrifying thought, and Sinatra can feel a thunderclap headache coming on.
“What?” he mumbles, eyes blinking.
The Bearded Man makes a dismissive gesture. “Never mind. We’ll be in touch.” And he walks off, wrapped in his duffel coat and astrakhan cap riding jauntily atop his head.
* * *
IN THEIR GROUND-FLOOR office of the West Wing, the four interns spent most of the morning in confused idleness. With Peter Hall’s death and the entire White House shell-shocked, demand for intern services is at low ebb. In the first three and a half hours of the workday, not a single call comes down to the repurposed janitorial closet. Sophia and Luke pass the time with heads pressed together in intimate conversation. Becca chats on the phone with friends who aren’t really friends but means to an end. Unlike the others, Hayley keeps silent and still, replaying in her head the sequence of events at Kalorama Road over and over again.
Finally, just before noon, a tearful Karen Rey appears in the doorway. “That’s it. Everybody go home. Unless someone calls to tell you otherwise, come back tomorrow at the usual time.”
“Are we being let go?” This coming from Luke with a somewhat hopeful tone that he isn’t clever enough to hide.
“Internships are the last thing we’re trying to deal with up there,” Rey replies haughtily. Peter Hall had been her best and most cherished mentor. Losing him has created a mosh pit of emotions in Rey, the most impassioned of which are fear and bitter frustration. Few of her tears are shed out of sadness for a human life snuffed out at too young an age.
After Rey departs, the interns begin to gather their things. Sophia and Luke make a plan for lunch at Zaytinya. “Do you like Mediterranean?” the USC junior asks Becca.
Becca makes a face and shakes her head no. Actually, she absolutely loves roasted branzino but can’t afford splurging on such an extravagance. Her savings are running alarmingly low. Kept secret from the others is the fact that she goes to Taco Bell every day and fills up with a five-dollar Triple Melt Burrito Box. Many years later, after Becca has amassed a personal wealth of several million dollars as head of her own secular church, and before her incarceration in federal prison, she will occasionally slip away from her small army of assistants and sycophants, driving to a Taco Bell one town over from her own to briefly relive those delicious, bad old days.
Sophia looks to Hayley next but says nothing, refraining from extending a lunch invitation to the West Virginian. After these few weeks sharing a work space with Hayley, Sophia has decided that class divides really do exist in America. The naturally occurring barriers that segregate one income group from another actually matter. Hayley’s experiences growing up in near poverty and her time in the military are utterly foreign to the Los Angeles native, whose primary and college education will generate nearly a million dollars in tuition expenses. The army vet is so strange, so alien and unapproachable. The fact that Hayley is prettier than Sophia makes their incompatibility even more pronounced. Until this hillbilly showed up, Sophia ranked herself hottest female in the West Wing.
Rather than lunch at Taco Bell or Zaytinya, Hayley eats her peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting on a bench on the Mall. By 12:30 p.m., the temperature has risen to the high forties or perhaps even the fifties. Hayley has spoken very little since her interview with the FBI agent, rebuffing the other interns’ gossipy inquiries regarding what she saw on Kalorama Road. Leaving the White House complex, Hayley had encountered Scott Billings. He was completely sympathetic to her circumstances and anxious to console her. But Hayley didn’t need comforting. Death was not an abstract and therefore did not disturb her all that much. Peter Hall was a man who had extended to her a measure of kindness and respect. Now he was dead, and only that. What Hayley did in fact require was time to think and devise her best course of action with the scant evidence in her possession.