In these early days, Hayley was reduced to a more passive role than she was accustomed. Her astonishing ability for recall was a subject of wonder by many of her interrogators. But the long, laborious interviews were more exhausting than any physical or mental exercise she had undergone in the past. The agents allowed her to venture out for her morning runs, accompanied by a minder, of course. Just before dawn, the cold air sharp in her lungs and nostrils, running with a feeling of release and celebration of her physical body, these were the minutes of that time in which she actually experienced something akin to contentment.
She wasn’t distraught over killing the as-of-yet unidentified man who threatened the president with a Sig Sauer. The assassin’s death was the unavoidable consequence of saving Monroe’s life. What else was there to consider? An army psychologist had told Hayley she exhibited a form of mental rigidity, arising from her earliest childhood traumas. The suggestion was that her low tolerance for uncertainty pushed Hayley to find a quick answer without bothering to look for the right answer. At the risk of only confirming the shrink’s analysis of her, Hayley terminated the session early and never went back.
Whether or not Hayley was “closed off” emotionally had little bearing on the FBI’s investigation. After seven days of nonstop interviews, she is cleared to return to the White House. Much of the federal government remains in the thrall of rumor and innuendo. The FBI itself is unscathed. Not a single agent or director of that investigative agency is found to be sympathetic to the Shady Side conspirators. Among the five thousand agents in the Secret Service, exactly twenty-three agents are revealed to be complicit to varying degrees, and suffer consequences commensurate with their levels of involvement. More than a hundred conspirators are ferreted out from the ranks in the intelligence community and in Congress. Other agencies undergo vicious purges as well. Old scores are revived and at times settled with the slightest suggestion an adversary was party to the conspiracy. Lives and livelihoods are ruined overnight. Hayley’s morning bus ride seems a fractured reality. The city has been altered, irrevocably thrown askew, though the other passengers on the Metrobus can’t possibly know of Hayley’s role in the explosive events that have convulsed the United States of America.
Even Ned, the Park Police officer at the Seventeenth Street White House complex gate, doesn’t seem to be the same person. As Hayley approaches, he appears tense and on edge. Half of his fellow Park Police officials are unfamiliar and obviously new to their positions. Where had the previous officers gone? Hayley had heard rumors that the social media accounts of federal employees at every level of the government were analyzed for evidence of disloyalty to the administration. Personal cell phones were apparently scrutinized as well. For the sake of thoroughness, the purge was more widespread than the conspiracy could have ever been.
Hayley smiles at her friend as she has on dozens of previous mornings. “Morning, Ned.”
He takes her ID card and scrutinizes it as if today were her first occasion to enter there. Hayley watches him, repressing a glib comment. Ned returns her ID and gestures.
“Proceed, thank you.”
Hayley is slightly taken aback by Ned’s formality and is momentarily flustered. Unable to make eye contact with her friend, she inputs her code and receives the green light to proceed to security scanning. As she moves forward, Hayley hears him quietly speak after her.
“I’m sorry, Hayley. It’s … different now.”
She turns back toward him and nods, sympathetic. “I know.”
Hayley perceives a changed West Wing within moments of entering its ground floor, initially by clocking the sheer reduction of people inside the building. Those staffers who survived the purge remain on edge, paranoia and distrust the underlying dynamic of all interactions either within or outside the West Wing. Like the entire federal government, the Monroe administration staggers forward but under a siege mentality.
Staffers are aware of Hayley’s heroic actions at Camp David, in spite of the news blackout. As she walks the hallway and climbs the stairs to the first floor, White House personnel regard her with a mixture of awe and fear. Her public persona is almost mythical and superheroic, a mixture of Joan of Arc and the X-Men’s Rogue. Before Camp David, Hayley had been something of an outlier. Now she is utterly unapproachable. No one says a word to her in the entire journey from the West Wing’s entrance to the White House Operations office on the first floor.
Asher is gone, of course. He has been charged but released on bail, confined to his luxurious condo on Water Street. His mother has moved temporarily from Connecticut to be with her son. Asher’s father has hired the same lawyer who defended Bill Clinton when he was impeached. The case will crawl through federal courts over the next four years. With Asher’s full cooperation, federal prosecutors ultimately offer the disgraced White House aide a deal in which he will plead guilty to an assault charge under US Code Title 18, Section 111, that prohibits “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” officers and employees of the United States while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties and be sentenced to time served. As a convicted felon, Asher will no longer be able to vote, let alone run as one of the nation’s first openly gay presidential candidates. To his father’s immense pleasure, he will obtain an MBA from Harvard and join the hedge fund soon thereafter. It will take years, but Asher eventually will find true love with a wildly successful television celebrity chef and marry. Though he’ll never speak again with the intern who altered his life’s path so dramatically, Asher and his husband will name their first and only daughter Hayley.
Her first order of business once arriving back in the West Wing is to venture down to the Navy Mess takeout window. In the early-morning hours after the attempted assassination, Hayley had been kept apart from Leon Washington as FBI agents interviewed them separately. From Camp David, Hayley was driven to the Hoover Building and placed in what was termed “protective custody” for the following week. Consequently, she had no opportunity to communicate with Leon, or anyone else for that matter. Hayley repeatedly asked after the one individual who had been of incalculable assistance in saving the president’s life but was told only the cook’s situation was still a subject of FBI investigation. It was an absolute imperative for her to check in with Leon Washington before anything else.
The old man’s face lit up upon seeing his fellow presidential savior.
“You packing? Was beginning to get used to the idea of a ‘life of danger.’ ”
“No, Leon. Once was enough for me.” She pauses to shift the mood, her face reflecting a genuine concern for her friend. “You okay? The FBI … ?”
The cook interrupts her with a gesture, waving off her concern. “In the beginning, they weren’t too sure about me. I wasn’t necessarily the president’s biggest fan.” He laughs. “Maybe now that I saved his bacon, he’ll do something about my brother’s health care!”
“I’m pretty sure the president’s grateful for your help that night, Leon,” Hayley assures him before moving on.
After straightening up the office for an hour, Hayley sits at her desk and waits for further instructions. Her only communication with Karen Rey since Camp David has been in the form of emails assuring Hayley that, despite the momentous events of the past few weeks, her internship in the West Wing would continue. Rey had survived the purge and, in many ways, benefited by it. Her record and loyalty to the president were unblemished. Like most of the dozen staffers on-site at Camp David that fateful weekend, Rey had been snug in her cabin a half mile from Aspen Lodge and blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding there. Hayley would learn only after the fact that staffers were expected to remain in their accommodations after nightfall. This standard sequestering of personnel was an important element in the conspirators’ scheme, as were the military personnel’s routine orders to steer clear of the president’s cabin. The dozen Secret Service agents who had withdrawn from their assigned posts that night remain in jail for their treasonous activities, as does their supervising agent.