“I wish I’d had a chance to really know him.”
“He was a good man, Tammy.” Hayley doesn’t know what else to say, wishing she could give her sister more. “He was a really good man.”
It’s getting late. Hayley has to get on the road for the long drive back to Washington. She places the photograph to the side.
“Mind if I borrow this?” she asks, gesturing.
“Of course! Take it! Jeez, you have as much a right to it as I do. Take as many as you like.”
Hayley shakes her head. “I just want this one.”
* * *
WELL PAST TWO a.m., after she returned to her apartment on P Street, a last name scrawled on the back of the photo and sleuthing on the Internet has led Hayley to determine the identity of at least one of the other Marines. Charles Hicks has retired from active duty in favor of a desk job at the Pentagon. He is the other white guy in the photo and resembles Tommy Chill enough to be his brother. They stand next to one another, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. Without access to classified military databases, Hayley has never been able to gather details of her father’s death. Despite repeated requests, the military refused to divulge more information other than the barest essential facts. Thomas Chill was killed in action during the later stages of the Second Battle of Fallujah. The old snapshot has had the profound effect of igniting within Hayley a desire to know more. Answers are within reach, as close as across the Potomac River. Sitting behind a desk in the Pentagon.
Hayley shuts down her computer and stands up from her seat in the apartment’s living room. She has restored order to the space since the break-in, replacing those few items that she couldn’t fix. Her place is a refuge again, familiar and organized. This new determination to learn more about her father’s death is a good thing, Hayley decides. Not knowing the whole truth for so long is a source of constant anxiety. She wonders if the damage done, like her belongings in the busted-up apartment, can ever be repaired.
2
THE BLUE LINE
Monday, 7:56 a.m. Two days after returning from Jessica’s funeral in Charleston, Hayley catches a southbound train on the Washington Metro Blue Line. She arrives at the Pentagon subway station nine minutes later. Charlie Hicks had expressed surprise to receive an email from the daughter of an Iraq War buddy and, with some hesitancy, agreed to her request for a face-to-face meeting. Passing through a secured-access facility on the ground level, Hayley is soon in search of Hicks’s office in a building that is almost seven million square feet in size and the work site of more than twenty-three thousand civilian and military personnel. The pervasive orderliness and gleaming surfaces are a contrast to the West Wing’s cluttered, chockablock work space. Exuding competence and devotional caretaking by its occupants, the Pentagon is the US military’s mountaintop. Here warriors hold council.
As much as she was reluctant to do so, Hayley requested more time off. Public and covert supervisors granted her leave—a few hours of the morning at most—but more grudgingly this second time around. Andrew Wilde’s text was terse in the extreme. No more. Her typical discipline and focus notwithstanding, Hayley feels compelled to take this small amount of time to search for answers regarding her father’s death in Iraq. As she prowls the gargantuan military headquarters in search of Charlie Hicks’s office, Hayley is confident the truth can be found somewhere within its walls.
* * *
SLID DOWN LOW in a chair by the door of a Starbucks on E Street in Foggy Bottom, he wears a Manchester United soccer jersey, black tracksuit pants, and snapback ball cap from the Iron Pony Tap Room. Outside the window to his right, morning in the nation’s capital unfolds with the promise of a gorgeous spring day. It’s perfect riding weather, but duties prohibit rolling his motorcycle out of the garage. Rafi Zamani considers ordering another tea, delaying a return to his dark apartment on F Street. With straight black hair, full eyebrows, a fine nose, and dazzling white teeth, he appears younger than his twenty-nine years. Effectively masking the clatter of the coffee shop with wireless Jabra earbuds, he thumb-scrolls the screen on his Pixel 3 XL, checking out custom motorcycles on Instagram. Rafi owns a Ducati Monster, but he pines for a BMW R nineT because that was Tom Cruise’s ride in the latest Mission Impossible movie.
His French bulldog, Yazat, strains on his leash lashed to the chair leg, toward a crouching coed from Georgetown—long blond hair, dimpled smile—who offers a friendly hand. She says something to Rafi, but he makes no effort to hear her. So fucking annoying. Can’t she see he’s busy? For maybe the hundredth time, he opens the Signal app to see if the message he has been waiting for has come from the Boss.
Sure enough, it’s there. A two-word message.
Do it.
Finally! He’ll make a quick dash back to the apartment and tap a few keys on his laptop. The rest of the day will be his to fill as he pleases. Maybe ride up to Bob’s Motorcycles in Jessup and road test that BMW. Why the fuck not?
He slips the phone into his pants pocket, unlashes Yazat from the chair leg, and stands. The blond chick is saying something to him, about the dog no doubt. Rafi taps one of the earbuds, pausing playback.
“So cute!” the coed says in regard to Yazat.
Like, he hasn’t heard that before?
Rafi says, “Thanks.”
“Just. So. Cute.”
He checks her out from head to toe. What he could do with her, Rafi muses. Man, how incredible would that be?
“What’s his name?” she asks.
They never want to know what his name is.
“Yazat,” he says without expression, staring at her with hollow eyes.
Same old story. Why believe it would be any different this time? He’s a handsome guy, with an insanely adorable dog. Good-looking women are friendly to him… initially. But within moments of meeting—and the inevitable awkward conversation that always follows—that look came over their faces. Disinterest. Rafi has learned from experience that attractive females won’t give him five minutes of their precious time, let alone any sex. Fuck ’em. He taps the earbud again. Music resumes playback. This dumb blonde won’t let up, though, cooing over the dog like she’s never seen one before. Stupid fucking bitches. He’s outta here.
* * *
MONDAY, 8:48 A.M. She finds Charlie Hicks’s small, windowless office, 2B513, on the second floor, B ring. Rapping gently on the open door, Hayley strolls into the cramped office—repository to stacks of stuffed file folders, binders, and loose papers—and finds it empty. Hicks isn’t in. She steps back into the gleaming hallway and looks in both directions for her father’s war buddy. There’s no sign of him. Hayley reenters the office and stands just inside the doorway, contemplating her next move.
Her vetting of Charlie Hicks revealed that he had been a Marine scout sniper with seventy-eight confirmed kills in three tours of duty, bouncing between Iraq and Afghanistan. Never married, Hicks seemed to have little life outside the military. Taking a desk job at the Pentagon pushing paper following his discharge several years earlier seemed the logical solution for a man with few other interests. Hayley knows a small army of keyboard punchers is required to spend $680 billion a year. The resultant mountain of paperwork has given Charlie Hicks a job for life. But why stand her up? Hayley checks her phone for the email confirming their meeting time.