Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  Everyone stands with the president’s arrival, the electricity in the Rose Garden supercharged by his charismatic presence. Monroe smiles good-naturedly. This morning’s event is one of the “good” ones, a time of celebration. After a wet and cold spring, the weather in the nation’s capital has finally turned. Bright, warm sunshine bathes the proceedings in magnificence. The president is relaxed, and his casual attitude goes a long way to putting all in attendance—especially the US Navy warrant officer who accompanied him from the Oval Office and now stands at attention beside him—at ease. Monroe gestures with both hands. “Thank you, everyone. Please, sit.”

  All those assembled before the podium take their seats, while aides and staff members to either side of the garden remain standing.

  “Thank you again, everyone, for coming out for today’s event. It gives me enormous pleasure to be here today to honor one of America’s finest and a true hero, US Navy chief Edward Ramos. The Medal of Honor is the highest award our great nation bestows on an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Chief Ramos receives this award, the Medal of Honor, for conspicuous gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a Hostage Rescue Force Team Member in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom on November 9, 2012.”

  Generous applause washes over the president and his invited honoree. Hayley watches from the sidelines, standing next to Kyle Rodgers. She listens to the president’s speech and reflects on her extraordinary journey from an impoverished childhood in West Virginia to the White House Rose Garden. The deeper state plucked her from the army’s infantry ranks, trained her in covert operations, and infiltrated her into the West Wing as an intern. Hayley fully appreciates the enormity of her responsibilities.

  After Monroe finishes his speech and has draped the medal around the war hero’s neck, the assembled crowd remains seated while the president and Ramos turn and retreat to the West Colonnade. A trio of Secret Service agents follows at a discreet distance. Kyle Rodgers and Hayley Chill, having ducked out from the ceremony moments from its conclusion, wait near the French doors leading into the Oval Office as the president approaches with his honored guest.

  Monroe exchanges small talk with Chief Ramos as they stop in front of the West Wing staffers. “Well, the weather couldn’t have been better for the occasion.”

  The war hero is understandably stiff in the presence of his commander in chief. “Yes, Mr. President. Thank you.”

  “So very grateful for your service, Chief.” Monroe gestures toward his top advisor. “Mr. Rodgers will show you the way out of here. Kyle?”

  Hayley looks to the ground to avoid Rodgers’s startled expression. He’s not used to being dismissed in favor of his much more junior chief of staff.

  “Yes, sir. Of course,” says Rodgers. He indicates the way back up the West Colonnade. “Chief, after you.”

  CWO4 Edward J. Ramos and Kyle Rodgers walk off, leaving the president alone with Hayley outside the French doors that lead into the Oval Office. They remain there, rooted in place, avoiding whatever prying eyes or electronic ears might be lurking on the other side of those doors.

  “What do you want?” Monroe’s voice is flat and hostile. That he hates the young woman with the powder blue eyes is abruptly clear. His transformation from charismatic chief executive to an angry old man is instantaneous.

  Hayley absorbs the president’s aggressive malice with cool aplomb, glancing over her shoulder to ensure the president’s protection detail, posted at different points on the colonnade, is out of earshot.

  Turning back to Monroe, she says, “You read my message earlier. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have saddled Kyle Rodgers with the task of the lowliest aide.”

  “I’ll flag the dead drop when I go upstairs again before lunch… okay?” The man’s bitterness doesn’t befit his station. Hayley ignores it.

  “Ask them if they know anything about the cyberattack on the newspapers’ servers last night.”

  Monroe smolders. He cannot bear taking orders from the twenty-seven-year-old female. By all appearances, he has no choice but to do so.

  “Mr. President?” Hayley prods him, desiring only one thing: his unquestioned compliance.

  “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 t
o 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.

  The bartender approaches. “Usual, Sam?”

  Sam McGovern nods.

  Hayley silently curses herself. If she didn’t want human interaction, why come to a bar?

  “Put it on my tab, Billy,” she says. Or maybe it’s just because he is so good-looking.

  Both Billy and Sam are surprised by the gesture. Without further comment, the bartender draws a tall, chilled mug of Bass Ale for the firefighter, who casts a questioning look in Hayley’s direction.

  She fixes her gaze on the Strat but feels his eyes on her. “For the lives you saved today,” says Hayley.

  Billy places the beer in front of Sam, who lifts it high.

  Sam says, “To the lives we save.”

  The bartender retrieves his bottomless mug of heavily iced diet root beer from next to the cash register and clinks it with Sam’s.

  * * *

  MORE THAN TWO hours later, Hayley stands on the sidewalk with Sam McGovern outside Darlington House. Despite the late hour, a warm breeze wafts over them. The grin on the firefighter’s face is playfully inebriated, a testament to several pints he raised to defuse a stressful day. But it’s not just the alcohol. Sam vibes on Hayley in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time. The opportunity presents itself. Their initial banter, easy and jocular, begat actual conversation, words that fit together like one thousand puzzle pieces to form a picture of something real.

  Hayley gives him a quizzical look. “What the hell are you thinking?”

  He only laughs, at himself, in response.

  “I’m not going home with you,” she says.

  “I don’t remember inviting you.”

  “That smile was invitation enough.” Her resolve is especially admirable given the amount of tequila consumed and regrettable history of casual intimacies.

  “What’s yours saying?” Sam asks, appreciating her beaming face.

  Hayley realizes how rare it is for her to smile and says nothing.

  “I want to see you again.”

  “I’m a busy girl.”

  “That’s not a valid excuse.”

  “How do I get in touch with you? Dial 911?”

  He laughs. “Sure. Ask for Sam.”

  She turns and takes a few steps toward the Prius that has just stopped at the curb, her Uber.

  “I had fun,” Hayley says over her shoulder, her right hand reaching for the door handle. “Thanks for cheering me up.”

  She climbs into the back of the Prius and pulls the door closed, leaving Sam feeling weirdly bereft. As the vehicle pulls away, however, the rear window rolls down and Hayley’s face appears.

  “Hayley Chill. I work at the White House. Last I checked, we’re listed.”

  * * *

  ARRIVING AT HER apartment on P Street near Logan Circle well after midnight, slightly buzzed from the tequila she consumed, Hayley discovers the door ajar. Sobering instantly, she pushes it open and sees the place is ransacked. She remains on her guard; whoever wrecked the apartment might still be inside. Keeping her back to the wall, Hayley moves quickly to the kitchen area and retrieves the biggest blade in the knife block. Checking each room and closet with the butcher’s knife in hand, the White House staffer establishes she is alone in the apartment.

  She picks up one of her dining chairs lying on its side and sets it upright. After retrieving her laptop from her bag, Hayley accesses the server that stores images from the surveillance cameras she placed inside the apartment for precisely this occasion. She has zero concerns that the break-in has compromised her identity as a covert agent for the deeper state. Hayley carries on her person at all times the KryptAll phone issued to her by Andrew Wilde. No other physical evidence exists tying her to Publius. But was the break-in an ordinary case of robbery, or was it counterespionage?

  Locating the minicam’s footage online is a trivial matter. Motion-activated, the camera’s recording is time-stamped a few minutes past three that afternoon when Hayley would have been at the White House. With the camera focused on the main living area of the apartment, the single intruder enters the frame from the left. The individual is slim and average height, wearing loose-fitting dark clothing and a balaclava mask that obscures the entire head and face. Gender is impossible to establish. Stopping, the individual scans the entire living room for several seconds. After that lengthy pause, he or she approaches the camera with a purposeful stride. Hayley can now see the expandable steel baton in the individual’s right hand. The intruder draws nearer to the surveillance camera and swings the baton violently forward as t
he footage abruptly ends.

  Hayley looks up from the computer and glances toward the shelf on the opposite wall, where she wedged the matchbox-size minicam between a stack of books. She reverses the recording playback and then freezes frame on the intruder approaching the camera. There is much to suggest the break-in was something more than simple robbery. The tactical balaclava and telescoping steel baton are not the typical kit of the average meth addict, but these objects aren’t absolute proof of a professional operative. Nor is the fact that the front door showed no sign of forced entry. What troubles Hayley most is how the intruder methodically scanned the room and so readily spotted the recording device, as if they knew to look for it.

  The break-in indicates the possibility of a severe security breach. Suspicion of her being something more than a White House staffer is the only reason to target Hayley. Before doing anything else, including putting her place back together, the deeper state operative knows what she must do. Reaching for her KryptAll phone, she prepares in her head how best to communicate the news to Andrew Wilde.

  * * *

  THURSDAY, 5:15 A.M. When she sets out for her run the next morning, the season’s first hint of predawn humidity reminds her of Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas. Hayley enlisted in the US Army straight out of high school, reveling in the regimentation and directedness of military life. At that time, a career with the army seemed more rewarding than anything available to her back home in Lincoln County, West Virginia. In a single meeting at a Red Lobster fifty miles south of the base, Hayley’s journey shifted, taking a turn that she could never have predicted. Having appeared in her life only the day before, like the professional spook that he was, Andrew Wilde offered the opportunity for patriotic service that far surpassed her role as a corporal in the US Army.