“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 cascade 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.