“I’ll ask them, goddammit.” His voice is a low growl of frustrated rage.
“Good. That’s why you’re here, sir, remember? Instead of a federal prison.”
Monroe’s lip curls as if he’s on the verge of a bestial snarl. But he remains silent.
“Xорошо. До скорого.” Hayley’s Russian is flawless, spoken only with the slightest American accent. Good. Until later, then.
The president of the United States looks over his shoulder, confirming their privacy. He grudgingly says, “Bсего.” Later.
Monroe turns and reenters the Oval Office, where a scrum of subservient aides meets him. Hayley Chill remains just outside the door, watching him. Inside that hallowed space, Richard Monroe is the leader of the free world, the face of the greatest democracy that humanity has ever achieved. But Hayley—and only Hayley, in these precincts—knows better. Since before her arrival at the White House as a covert agent of the deeper state she has known the truth. Richard Monroe is a Russian mole, covertly entering the US with his parents as a one-year-old and since then under orders of the Main Directorate of the Russian General Chief of Staff. Moscow’s corruption of America’s highest office represents the most successful operation in history until Hayley Chill flipped Richard Monroe and, as his handler, uses him to undermine Russia.
Message delivered, and anxious to get to other pressing tasks, she turns away from the door and nearly collides with a female Secret Service agent. Hayley experiences a sharp, stabbing fear. How long had the agent been standing so close behind her and the president? How much did she hear?
The expression on the woman’s face is stern, even for a Secret Service agent. Her eyes are accusatory.
Stepping aside, Hayley begins improvising a response to a possible inquisition. Why is she speaking Russian with the US president?
The agent peers through the glass door, into the Oval Office, and then looks to Hayley again. Her expression softens, culminating in a friendly smile.
“It never gets old, does it?” she asks.
Hayley effortlessly masks her relief, returning the other woman’s smile. “No, ma’am, it never does.”
* * *
KYLE RODGERS HAD correctly predicted the day would be a difficult one. But that’s a safe bet on almost any day in the Monroe White House. The president was elected on the promise of being a disrupter. The voters who turned out for Richard Monroe, of course, didn’t know just how much of a destructive force his Russian handlers intend for him to be. Blunting that attack on US institutions is only one of Hayley’s responsibilities. Another is turning the Russian mole Richard Monroe back on Moscow in the form of a disinformation campaign. In both cases, Hayley relied on her supervising agent with Publius, Andrew Wilde, for direction. He contacted her before five that morning with new orders regarding the night’s cyberattacks on the nation’s major newspapers. Even for someone as cold and relentlessly officious as Wilde, so devoid of human emotion, his manner seemed brusque. Has she done something to displease her superiors in the deeper state? Paranoia is a career hazard in both of her worlds, public and covert. One fact for certain is that the low-grade insanity of running Kyle Rodgers’s office seems like a vacation in comparison to her clandestine duties for Andrew Wilde and the deeper state.
Leaving the White House complex after ten that night, she Ubers to the Darlington House, a restaurant in Dupont Circle on Twentieth Street. For forty years, the Darlington was one of Washington’s legendary bars. Musical artists, including the Ramones, Bonnie Raitt, and Bruce Springsteen, wailed, thrashed, and bounced across its ancient floorboards. In 2007, new owners gave all three levels of the building a makeover. They made only a faint effort to preserve the venue’s original ambiance, with electric guitars bracketed to exposed brick walls. Open mic night once a week fails to capture the magic of a bygone era.
The guy behind the bar greets her with a friendly wave.
“Repo?”
She nods and pulls up a stool at the all-but-deserted bar.
Billy Esposito has long nurtured a thing for Hayley Chill, one that the White House staffer has deftly sidetracked. Her work for the deeper state precludes a normal life, but this simply perpetuates a long pattern of Hayley’s being stubbornly single. Physical entanglements have been easy and, no doubt, she has been willing to go there in more convenient times of her life. Some of those casual affairs ended badly. Others were complete debacles. Hayley long ago made peace with the realization that she might not fulfill a man’s vision of a female partner. If hindsight is twenty-twenty, then her ability to predict the inevitable failure of a possible romantic entanglement is positively uncanny. Love is for civilians. She’s got a job to do.
Grabbing a bottle of tequila from the shelf behind him, Billy pours her a double.
“An hour ago, this place was packed. Think it was something I said?” He grins, hoping for a kind smile or full-fledged interaction.
“Not you, Billy. Them.”
The bartender takes her polite response as an invitation to hike one foot up on the cooler behind the bar and settle in for a more extended conversation. Hayley feels her phone vibrate. Checking it, she finds a message from her drinks date canceling five minutes after their meeting time. Hayley would throttle her phone if it did any good.
“I tell you about the gig I’ve got next weekend? We’re playing—”
She raises a hand. “You mind, Billy? Need a little downtime.”
He drops his foot down and backs away with both hands raised, grinning sheepishly. “Like I said. Radioactive.”
Billy retreats to the far end of the bar, leaving Hayley to her concerns about the president’s hostility. Will Monroe have increasing difficulty concealing his potentially dangerous emotional outbursts? Hayley can hardly blame him. He’s in a terrible situation despite being “the most powerful man on Earth.” Richard Monroe is beholden to rival espionage entities simultaneously. Even Hayley has no idea what the endgame is here. These uncertainties do nothing to mollify Hayley’s perennial feelings of isolation and exposure.
“Hey, there.” The voice is a male. Mid- to late twenties, she surmises, keeping her gaze fixed on the Strat on the opposite wall. Friendly and assured.
“Bad timing, friend,” Hayley says, without looking in that direction. “I mean, bad in a tragic, gothic kind of way.”
“Guess I’m the run-toward-danger type of guy,” the male voice says, not too close to her ear to be weird but not exactly fleeing for the hills, either.
Hayley slowly turns to look at him. He has an open expression and hazel eyes under an unruly mop of auburn hair. The stubble on his face suggests either a careless man or one too busy to bother shaving. The DC Fire Department T-shirt he wears isn’t clean, either. An off-duty fireman is an easy guess. The “run-toward-danger” comment, then, was tongue in cheek. Funny, even. He seems harmless enough. But, as she stated, tonight is not a good night.
“Honestly, you have a better chance driving over to Arlington National Cemetery and romancing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,” Hayley says, despite feeling that particular feeling.
The fireman puts up both hands in mock surrender and moves so that one empty bar stool is between him and Hayley.