by Randy Singer
For most of the day, Paige withdrew into her own world and said little as they packed Patrick’s clothes, kitchen utensils, sports equipment, and personal items. Being around Bill meant she didn’t have to say much. He provided a running commentary filled with Patrick stories triggered by various items that Patrick had left behind.
It wasn’t much of an apartment. Patrick had never really cared about the finer things in life, and Paige had teased him about it. He’d duct-taped one of the cushions on the old, worn-out leather couch. He had picked up his kitchen table at a yard sale. His television and Xbox were the only things in the living room he had spent any money on.
But to Bill Harris, it might as well have been the palace of Solomon. He carefully boxed up everything, and Paige labeled the boxes with neat block letters.
It was almost noon when Bill knelt down and started cleaning out the nightstand. He came across a small box tucked away in the corner of the drawer, and Paige pretended not to notice as Bill pulled it out and opened it. She continued packing clothes from the dresser, catching the scent of Patrick, but watched with one eye as Patrick’s grandfather paused for a moment, removed his glasses, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
He put his glasses back on, closed the box, and stood. He walked over to Paige and handed it to her. “I think Patrick would want you to have this.”
Paige took it gingerly, knowing what was inside. She opened it with the greatest care, as if it were a sacred artifact.
It was a simple ring with a round-cut diamond, a four-pronged setting, and a yellow-gold band. Traditional. Elegant. The most beautiful thing Paige had ever seen. But she couldn’t keep it—that wouldn’t be right.
“He asked me about marriage on the night before he left,” Paige said, her voice brittle. “I told him I needed time.”
“I know,” Bill said, looking at the ring. “He called me about it.”
“He did?”
“Yep. He was mad at himself. Thought he might have pushed too fast. Too hard. I told him it took me three tries with his grandmother. Good women are worth the wait.”
Paige gave him a wan smile. “Three tries?”
“That woman had a stubborn streak.”
Paige touched the ring. “What did Patrick say?”
“He thought he could do it in two.”
“He was right,” Paige said. “But I still can’t keep this.”
She tried to hand it back, but Bill wouldn’t take it. “It’s not my size,” he said. “Besides, it’s yours. Patrick bought it for you.”
Paige closed the box and gave Bill a hug. “I miss him so much,” she said.
“I know. But this is something to remember him by.”
Paige put the ring in a large cardboard box that had her name on it. It joined a few of Patrick’s T-shirts, his ball cap from Auburn University, and a few dozen photographs that Paige had asked Patrick’s grandfather if she could keep.
They went on packing, and a few minutes later Paige broke the silence. “I should have said yes.”
Bill stopped packing and looked over at her. “He knew it was only a matter of time. He wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up about it.”
Bill was right, but it didn’t change the way she felt. She would forever regret their last night together.
Thirty minutes later, four men from SEAL Team Two showed up. Two of them had gone through BUD/S with Patrick. They had somehow heard, probably though Kristen, that Paige and Bill Harris were packing the apartment today. In no time they had finished loading the U-Haul, tied everything down, and cleared out the apartment.
The men also brought a whole different atmosphere to the endeavor, lifting Paige’s spirits. She could tell they were subconsciously competing with each other about how many boxes they could take at a time or how light various items of furniture were. Paige insisted on grabbing one end of the couch when one of the men took the other. She wouldn’t allow anyone to help her, and they all joked about her being an honorary female SEAL.
The stories were different now too. Bill had gone on and on about all-American Patrick, but Patrick’s SEAL buddies talked about more colorful exploits. All good-natured and harmless, but Patrick obviously enjoyed a good prank.
When the last box was packed, the men and Paige hung out at the counter area in the kitchen, finishing off some energy drinks that somebody had brought. “We all appreciate what you’re doing for Kristen,” one of the men said. “Every one of us on the teams knows this isn’t easy for you guys. But we all want the same answers that you’re trying to get.”
The others murmured their agreement and told Paige that if she ever needed anything, she should just ask.
“Anything,” one of the men emphasized. “Just call us.”
When she got home that night, Paige felt better than she had for a long time. She was still unemployed and alone. But today it felt like she had somehow crossed a threshold into the SEAL community. If you need anything, they had said, we’ll be there. And Paige didn’t doubt for one second that they meant every word. That was the thing about these guys. They were rough-hewn and full of themselves. They had obnoxious amounts of testosterone and egos the size of Texas. But they were there for each other, and that was something that had been missing in Paige’s life.
She placed the box of Patrick’s stuff next to her bed. She pulled out the small box holding the diamond ring and put it on her nightstand. Before she crawled into bed, she put on one of his T-shirts. She was emotionally exhausted, but that night, at least until the phone call came, she slept better than she’d slept in weeks.
33
The call startled Paige out of a sound sleep, her mind full of cobwebs. She looked at the time as she answered: 2:16 a.m. She felt the sickness lodge in the pit of her stomach. Nobody called with good news at that time of night.
“Hello,” Paige said, her voice husky.
“This is the Patriot,” came the metallic voice from the other end. “Are you awake?”
“I am now.”
“Why did Jackson file suit?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t check with me.”
“You’ve got to get him to back off. The judge will dismiss the case, and the whole thing will be over. They’ll block any congressional investigation by saying the court has already ruled.”
Paige didn’t know what to say. The Patriot sounded frustrated. She was still trying to get her bearings. Should she tell him that she was getting ready to sign on as cocounsel?
“I can’t talk Wyatt Jackson into much of anything,” she protested.
“You’ve got to try.”
Paige sat up, her mind clearing. “I’ll do what I can.”
“There’s another thing,” the Patriot said. “You should know that a Muslim cleric named Yazeed Abdul Hamid was killed by our Special Forces inside Yemen. The coalition army took credit for it, but it was definitely our guys.”
Paige was scrambling for a pen and paper. “Spell that name for me,” she said.
The Patriot carefully listed each letter.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s nothing more than a Muslim imam preaching hate in a country where we are not even at war,” said the Patriot. “It was an illegal assassination.”
Paige still didn’t get the connection, but then again, everything seemed unclear when you were jolted out of a sound sleep at this hour.
“Tell Congressman Mason about it,” the Patriot said.
“How can I prove it?” Paige asked.
“Get Mason to launch an investigation. Have him put the commander of the Joint Special Operations Forces under oath in a closed hearing and question him about it. But you’ve got to get Jackson to drop that suit.”
“I already said I would try.”
The line went dead, and Paige wondered whether the whole thing was just a nightmare. Why didn’t the Patriot call Wyatt directly? Why was it so important to drop the case? And what did this Muslim cleric have to do
with anything?
She got up and googled the imam’s name but learned nothing more than what the Patriot had already told her. Abdul Hamid was supposedly killed by Yemeni coalition forces a little more than two weeks ago. She made some notes, then lay down and eventually drifted back to sleep. Her last murky thoughts were of American Special Forces killing an unarmed Muslim imam on his way home from preaching his last sermon.
34
After a brutal weeklong trip to Europe, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, followed by another week of strong-arming congressional leaders, President Amanda Hamilton woke on a rainy Friday morning to a new domestic crisis. Following a two-day deluge, the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania had flooded its banks at a level not seen in a hundred years, forcing the evacuation of nearly a hundred thousand people and causing more than forty casualties. At Scranton, the river had crested at forty-seven feet, five feet higher than the 1972 flooding from Hurricane Agnes.
Other presidents would have just declared a state of emergency, clearing the way for federal aid, and then toured the damage with local officials. But Amanda Hamilton and members of her staff believed in getting their hands dirty. The day after the waters began subsiding, she was on the ground in Scranton, working at a Red Cross disaster-relief outpost, serving meals for people who found themselves homeless. Amanda and her husband, Jason, a professor at Yale University, served the lines for more than two hours, slapping food on plates and talking to the beleaguered residents.
That afternoon, they put on waders and worked with “mud-out” crews, helping to remove limbs and other waterlogged debris from nearby homes. It was a reminder that Amanda Hamilton was young and healthy and a woman of the people. By the end of the day, she was covered in mud and seemed happier than she had been in a long time.
She toured a shelter in a high school gym that evening. Some local kids had started a pickup basketball game, and soon the president and her husband joined them. Secret Service members stood nervously to the side as the president showed she could still hang with the guys. She ended up taking a blow to her left eye that resulted in profuse apologies by the embarrassed young man with the sharp elbow and a nice shiner for the president.
Once the medics were done looking her over, she insisted on finishing the game, and Kilpatrick figured her poll numbers went up a half-dozen points based on that decision alone. With a little luck, he thought, they would soon be able to put the lawsuit behind them, build a real coalition of allies in the Middle East, and cripple the Houthis and Iran.
The press had other ideas. Amanda Hamilton’s swollen face graced the front page of the Washington Herald the next morning. They must have stayed up late working on the headline: “A Bruising Week for the President.”
While the president was getting elbowed in a pickup basketball game, Paige Chambers met with Wyatt and Wellington in the RV that Wyatt had dubbed Court. Clients kept coming over and rubbing against Paige’s leg until she scratched him under his chin. He lay down for a few minutes and then circled back for some more attention. This was not the way Paige had envisioned things in law school.
She told Wyatt about her conversation with the Patriot, but Wyatt wasn’t about to drop the lawsuit. Handing it off to the political hacks in D.C. was a guaranteed way to make sure nothing happened, in Wyatt’s opinion. He didn’t know what to make of the information about Yazeed Abdul Hamid, so he did what he always did when he was in doubt—asked Wellington to research it.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if the CIA deputized a couple of SEALs and took that guy out,” Wyatt said. “This shadow war is out of control.”
They batted around legal arguments for a while, and then Wyatt broke out a fat cigar and started chewing on the end of it. Paige shot him a glance—this place was cramped enough without somebody smoking.
“Don’t worry,” Wellington said. “He never lights them up inside.”
They analyzed the meager evidence they had mustered, with Wyatt doing most of the talking. Paige interjected a few times, but Wellington was conspicuously quiet.
“What’s your theory?” Wyatt asked his young associate. He spit some of the cigar’s outer wrapping into an ashtray.
Wellington spoke softly, hesitantly, as if he didn’t want to rain on everybody’s parade. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he began, “and I keep asking myself the same question: What if Cameron Holloman really was a CIA agent just like the Houthis said?”
He looked from Wyatt to Paige, waiting just long enough for the thought to sink in. “What if he used his journalistic credentials as cover and pretended to be sympathetic to the Houthi cause? That way he could interview a few of their top leaders, and the drone pilots would know which houses to hit.
“Maybe the president and Marcano didn’t want anyone else in the cabinet to know, so she sent her chief of staff to talk to Marcano privately about what they should do. Maybe the CIA had some concerns that the SEALs’ mission was compromised, which explains why she worked so hard on the speech that she would only give if the SEALs died. But maybe she felt like she had to send in the SEALs because the CIA doesn’t leave its operatives behind any more than the SEALs leave their men behind.”
Paige thought it through, and despite the fact that there were a lot of maybes in that theory, it made some sense. It was the truth hiding in plain sight. And it would explain a lot of things.
“No chance,” Wyatt said. “Have you read any of Holloman’s articles?”
“Over a hundred of them,” Wellington said.
“Then you know he’s a real liberal wacko. No way he’s working with the CIA.”
“Did you know that the CIA has set up fake news organizations in the Mideast to spread propaganda?” Wellington asked. “They’ve also paid millions of dollars to Mideast news outlets so they would weave in favorable stories about America from time to time. The CIA believes in the long game. I wouldn’t put it past them to have somebody like Holloman write articles critical of the United States and Saudi Arabia for a year or two just to gain credibility.”
“Was he married?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes. His wife is Muslim. Immigrated to the United States from Lebanon.”
Wyatt chewed on his cigar and thought about it. He stood up and began pacing.
“He always does this when he’s thinking,” Wellington whispered to Paige.
“I think we should go pay the missus a visit,” Wyatt said. “She’ll know if he was a spy.”
Wellington was sitting across the table from Paige and gave his head a little shake as if to tell Paige that spouses seldom knew whether their significant others worked for the CIA. But he didn’t say anything to Wyatt.
“All right then, we’ve got a plan,” Wyatt said. “This calls for a smoke.”
He stepped outside and lit up his cigar. But a few minutes later, he was back, the lit cigar still in his mouth.
“Where are you working now?” he asked Paige.
“I’m setting up my own firm.”
“That’s a bad idea. It’s hard to get clients in this environment, especially ones that pay. Plus, you’ve never worked in a private firm before, so the learning curve will be steep. You ought to come and work for me.”
“Thanks. But I’m good.”
“Wellington, how much are you making?”
“Um, about sixty grand.”
“That’s what I thought. Paige, I’ll pay you sixty thousand, take care of your malpractice and health insurance, and you can start first thing next week.”
“Again, like I said, I’d rather start my own firm.”
“Five-thousand-dollar signing bonus, plus I’ll teach you how to be a real trial lawyer.”
“What part of no don’t you understand?”
“I don’t understand any part of no,” Wyatt said. He smiled with the cigar wedged between his teeth. “And that’s why we’re going to win this case.”
35
The next Monday, Paige woke early, made a cup of coffee, and put toget
her her list. Today would be the official launch of the Chambers Law Firm. She had already ordered the letterhead, settled on a snazzy logo, and put together a website that, despite Paige’s best efforts at buffing up her meager experience, still seemed embarrassingly hollow. Today she needed to open a trust account and an operating account, set up QuickBooks, and take the website live. Then she would be in business.
She felt a small rush of pride. This was the American way. Sure, she had only one client—and one with whom she had never discussed fees—but you had to start someplace. Big dreams, high risk, and the freedom to be your own boss. She still couldn’t believe she was doing this.
After she finished her coffee, she put on her running gear and headed out for her morning run. The ground was wet from thunderstorms the night before, and there was a chill in the air. She shivered for the first half mile or so but then warmed up as she neared the boardwalk, about a mile and a half from her house.
She turned right and ran into a stiff breeze, the ocean air clearing her head of worries and fears and responsibilities. She nodded to folks walking or running in the other direction and glanced out at the surfers in wet suits riding erratic waves. She passed hotels and restaurants and condos on her right. In a few months, the vast concrete boardwalk would be teeming with people, but right now, it was just Paige and the other locals. Her own private oceanfront practically in her backyard.
It was a good run, one of the first she’d had in the last thirty days. The emotional roller coaster and lack of sleep following Patrick’s death had drained her, causing her to skip the exercise she needed, thus draining her even more. But this morning she practically sprinted the last half mile. She finished strong and bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air. She walked around the parking lot of her condo to catch her breath.
Back inside the condo, still sweating from her run, Paige picked up her cell phone and saw two missed calls from Kristen along with a text asking Paige to call. She knew it couldn’t be good, and she felt the sudden crush of pressure again.