“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.
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.”