With an economy of movement, Odom taps a response to Sinatra’s texts: need diversion.
The meeting with the president and the need to convince him of taking action against Moscow has now taken a back seat to recovering the tablet. Odom cannot take his eyes off the device as Seretti and Vice President Landers get into a low-grade beef, each trying to impress Monroe with their incisive analysis. The president, for his part, doesn’t seem interested. His decision regarding a response to the Russian aggression was undoubtedly made before the meeting even started. Odom waits for his moment.
* * *
WHEN HAYLEY REACHES the “to go” window of the Navy Mess, Leon Washington, white hair matching his chef’s uniform, is just about to cover a piping hot, beautifully grilled cheese sandwich, presented on a stainless-steel room-service-style tray. She is surprised to find the food already prepared, and the cook, in his early sixties, reads her expression.
“How else you think I keep this job goin’ on twenty-five years now?” he asks her.
“Obviously by being very good at it, sir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me,” he orders Hayley, extending a hand. “Leon Washington.”
Hayley accepts his hand. “Hayley Chill, Leon. Good to meet you,” she says, feeling his close scrutiny. “What?” she asks.
“You an intern? Haven’t seen you around down here before.”
“Yes. I’m in White House Operations. Discharged almost two years ago.”
“Veteran? Yeah, I thought so. You smell like army.”
“I hope that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, yes, it is. I’m a retired navy man myself. Now I’m here. Guess you could say I’ve been military all my life.”
Hayley nods with sympathetic understanding. Leon continues to study her.
“If anybody asked for my opinion round here, I’d tell ’em to bring on nothing but vets. White House could use more adults.”
“You couldn’t get any more military than POTUS, Leon.”
“Brass hat,” the chef says in response, using the army slang for colonels and generals. He doesn’t say it nicely.
Hayley declines to comment. Leon smiles broadly, instantly won over by the intern. “Yeah, it’s probably best you not say a damn thing.” He produces a can of Diet Coke and a clean glass from under the counter and places them on the tray. “You best get going or we’ll both be out of a job. The president likes his cheese sandwich hot!”
Hayley slides the covered service tray off the aluminum counter top and takes it in hand. “It was nice meeting you, Leon. See you around.”
Leon winks at her. “You know it, doll. So long now.”
* * *
A BLACK SUV with tinted windows stops on L Street, just behind the Capitol Hilton and only a few blocks from the White House. Traffic is light. There is no one on the sidewalks. The location has been scouted previously and selected as one of several swap-out sites, devoid of incidental surveillance video cameras on the surrounding buildings. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find such CCTV-free sites in the District of Columbia, which is threatening to join London and Beijing as the most spied-upon cities in the world. At last count, the UK’s capital had 420,000 CCTV cameras in the city’s center.
Martin and Bishop emerge from the rear passenger doors of the SUV, which immediately pulls away and disappears down the street. The two mercenaries approach a white delivery van parked at the curb. Both carry large black duffel bags.
Martin unlocks the vehicle’s doors with a remote. They load the duffel bags into the rear of the van and head to the front. Martin climbs in behind the wheel as Bishop enters on the other side. Within moments, the delivery van pulls away from the curb, executes a U-turn, and speeds away in the opposite direction from where the SUV had gone.
5
SHELTER IN PLACE
Hayley reenters the Oval Office, carrying the takeout tray from the Navy Mess. The smell of the grilled cheese instantaneously fills the room. Richard Monroe breathes in the scent, inciting Proustian memories of his youth and his mother. His was nearly an idyllic childhood, spent mostly on military bases all over the US and the world. His father had been career army, and one of Monroe’s fondest memories is sitting down to the rare lunch in which his dad was home from his duties on base. His mother would make the most wonderful sandwich of rye bread; grated Jarlsberg cheese; and hot, yellow horseradish mustard, preferably Zakycoh, a Russian concoction his father secured from God knows where. One might think the president of the United States could get a decent horseradish mustard in the Navy Mess, but apparently, this has been too much to expect. Nevertheless, the boys down on the ground floor have been putting together a pretty good sandwich with the materials at hand.
“Have you ever smelled anything so good in your entire life?” Monroe exclaims as Hayley places the tray on the coffee table in front of the president. Eschewing the glass, he snatches the can of Diet Coke, which Hayley had carefully opened just prior to entering the Oval Office, and takes a long, satisfying draw of its artificially sweetened contents.
As Hayley turns to exit the room again, Rey anxiously hurries to place a coaster on the coffee table next to the service tray where Monroe has placed the Diet Coke. The president regards the coaster with disdain.
“West Virginia’s not coaster country, is it, Ms. Chill?”
Hayley pauses halfway to the door. “Not typically, sir.”
“Drink straight from the can back home. Leave a ring on the coffee table if that’s your preference.”
“Coffee table, sir?”
Monroe laughs boisterously at Hayley’s mild joke. Odom twists around in his seat on the couch and regards the intern with even more interest than he had before. There is no doubt in his mind this remarkable young woman is a force to be reckoned with.
* * *
THE INTERSECTION OF Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue is busy, with a US post office occupying the southwest corner and the northwest corner of the White House grounds directly across the street. The sidewalks are wide and traffic lanes four across on Pennsylvania before being forced either north or south with the avenue closed to vehicular traffic east of Seventeenth Street. Police from five different departments are on patrol at any given time. Pedestrians in the area, mostly federal employees from the various buildings in the immediate vicinity, feel safe in these confines. About the worst thing that can happen around here are protestors from Lafayette Square invading the restrooms at the local Peet’s Coffee shop.
Martin steers the delivery van east on Pennsylvania, approaching Seventeenth Street. Bishop, sitting shotgun, has retrieved an HK MP7 submachine gun from a backpack. Both men pull on lightweight SWAT balaclava tactical face masks as Martin speeds toward the intersection. Bishop presses a button on the vehicle’s low-grade radio, tuning in a classic rock FM radio station. The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” bounces off the bare steel of the van’s cab.
It’s 11:47 a.m. The surrounding buildings haven’t yet disgorged their occupants for lunchtime, and therefore the sidewalks are relatively empty. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. Temperatures have risen to the low fifties. A US Park Police patrol car is parked, engine off, just across Seventeenth Street, in the pedestrians-only portion of Pennsylvania Avenue to the north of the White House complex. Inside the patrol car, two Park Police officers are in the middle of a spirited discussion regarding the relative merits of Amy Schumer’s latest movie.