by Hauty, Chris
Leaving restricted parking at the Senate Office Building, the CIA deputy director calls Sinatra at the W Street safe house. Odom dispenses with small talk in dealing with Sinatra, who seems to prefer it that way. “What did you learn from analysis of the computer? Fingerprints?”
“Yours. Whoever used it last wiped it clean.”
Odom’s impatience and frustration get the better of him. “Nothing?!”
“Someone brought the device to the White House after the accident. Accessed minutes before you arrived at the West Wing or concurrently.”
“Data?” Odom asks guardedly.
“Not everything, but he had enough on there to cause problems.”
“How secure?”
“Impossible to crack, for an eight-year-old.” The silence from Odom communicates his disgust. Sinatra walks it back. “Not a fatal leak, just damaging. Suggestive.”
Odom mutters a curse. “What are the names of possibles on your list?”
“Put tails on all of them. Had to hire a dozen more guys. Nobody jumped and ran.”
Odom sighs. This minor annoyance is fast becoming something much more than that. “Your team was at the residence two hours after the guy’s car went off the bridge?”
“Someone set off our vehicle’s alarm while we were inside the house. In hindsight, clearly a diversion.” Sinatra ruefully admits, “Whoever we’re looking for was inside the residence while we were there.”
Odom broods, mentally shuffling the jigsaw pieces available to him and seeing if any of them fit together to form a recognizable image. Blurry outlines of a hypothetical scenario come to him.
“Your guy was fucking someone. She was in the car, had to erase her presence at his house.”
“First I’m hearing about it,” a defensive Sinatra is quick to confess.
In the privacy of his vehicle, Odom sneers. “Sit tight,” he orders his operative. “I’m digging deeper.”
“You’re going to hit up another asset in the West Wing.” Sinatra’s educated guess is more statement of fact.
“You know, for a psychopath, you’ve got a fine, analytical head on your shoulders.” Odom disconnects the call.
* * *
THE MIDAFTERNOON CROWD in the Starbucks on Stuart Street in Arlington, Virginia, is overwhelmingly underemployed adults of diverse ages exploiting unlimited Wi-Fi access for the price of a cup of coffee. Odom enters and makes a face, finding the acrid smell common to the franchise an affront. Such are the sacrifices one must make in defense of the country, he muses. Odom continues toward the rear of the store, where Asher Danes is waiting for him at a small table against the wall.
“Asher, my friend, how are you?”
The low-level White House aide is feeling a good deal less bonhomie than the older man. “All things considered, I’m grandly fucked. Thanks for asking.”
Odom sits opposite Asher. “These are trying times for sure. Defending our freedom and democracy isn’t a trivial matter.” A dark look comes over the White House aide. “What?” Odom presses, clocking Asher’s every mood swing.
“Is that what you call murdering the White House chief of staff?” Asher has assumed he was only providing privileged information to the president’s adversaries within the government and not playing a role in any active conspiracy aligned against Monroe. Having been swayed by Hayley’s intense convictions, Asher is finding it difficult to play both sides of the fence and requires assurances from the older man.
Odom seems uncomprehending enough. “Murder? What are you talking about?”
“Peter Hall. Kinda convenient him dying and everything.”
Odom smiles wearily at Asher in the way one would to a puppy that has just peed on the kitchen floor. No damage done. Just needs the quick swipe of a paper towel.
“Peter Hall died of a massive heart attack. Your suggestion I had anything to do with his untimely demise is paranoid and baseless.”
Asher isn’t so easily mollified. “The FBI came around to question the intern who found Hall’s body. They seem to feel the cause of death is worth investigating. Drugs were detected.”
Odom appears aggrieved by Asher’s persistent suspicions. “Asher, when I first asked for your help, I explained with complete candor and transparency the nature of our effort. We all share an acute concern over the danger Monroe represents to our nation and a singular interest in legal avenues of diminishing that threat. Murder is not in our toolbox. Information is our best weapon to wield against the ongoing disaster of the Monroe administration.”
This gentle pushback seems to have its intended effect. Asher says nothing, settling for a disapproving frown. Odom rolls forward, unimpeded. “We haven’t heard from you in more than a week. Besides these irrational fantasies, is there anything wrong?”
Asher dials back the petulance. “I’m fine.”
“Anything to report?”
Asher shakes his head. “Nothing that isn’t in the news. I have the clearance level of a White House usher, holed up in the Operations office doing mostly administrative stuff.”
“Have you been worried about any kind of personal exposure?”
Asher dismisses Odom’s solicitousness with an emphatic shake of his head. He hates to be treated like a baby even if he’s acting like one. “No. I told you, I’m fine. No one in the West Wing suspects I’m a rat.” Asher pauses and then tries a different tack. Probing. “Was that Secret Service agent working for you, too?”
“Yes, he was,” Odom admits matter-of-factly.
Odom’s confirmation of what Asher knows to be fact only magnifies his indecision and paranoia. Could Hayley be wrong after all? But why would Scott Billings attack her? Was it, in fact, only a lovers’ quarrel? What does he really know about Hayley anyway? One verifiable fact only gives birth to a dozen more questions.
The CIA deputy director seems only too happy to discuss the dead Secret Service agent. “Mr. Billings was a second set of eyes and ears in the West Wing. We regret his death terribly. Such a tragic accident.” Odom pauses, and then asks innocently, “Are you aware of any personal associations the agent might have had in the White House, Asher? Any romantic entanglements?”
Odom isn’t the only proficient dissembler. Asher makes a creditable display of pondering the question. “None that I know of,” he tells the CIA deputy director.
“Are you sure, Asher? This is important.”
“Why is it important? You said he died in an accident. What difference does it make if he was seeing someone?”
“We need to know if Mr. Billings had confided in a third party, of course. Monroe is a vengeful and vindictive man. If he became aware of our intelligence gathering—”
“Spying, you mean,” Asher corrects him.
“As you will, but surely you can see the need for confidentiality.” Odom pauses, gazing more intently into Asher’s eyes. “You’ve been completely discreet, haven’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What about Hayley Chill?” Odom persists.
“The intern?”
“Yes. Was she involved with Mr. Billings?”
Asher gestures emphatically. “Hayley? No way.”
“Anything strike you as odd about Ms. Chill? Is she unusually devoted to the president? He certainly seems to favor her.”
“I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, no more so than you’d expect from a relatively unsophisticated and uneducated military vet.”
Odom nods, grateful for Asher’s seemingly candid assessment. “Not that we doubt your intuition and representations, but we might have a chat with Ms. Chill.”
A flash of panic crosses Asher’s face, despite his effort to maintain neutral composure. Of course, Odom notices the younger man’s anxiety.
“You wouldn’t mind that too much, would you, Asher? If we speak with your friend?” Odom’s words are intended to rattle Asher, but the White House aide has had time to recover his poise.
“Why in the world would I mind?”
Asher watches the CIA man hustle through the crowd forming a ragged line at the counter and out the door. Should he call Hayley and warn her? He wouldn’t put it past Odom to have his phone bugged. Asher wonders if his condo isn’t bugged as well. Maybe the cabal already knows everything about his friendship with Hayley and her allegations. If Odom was willing to kill Peter Hall and attempt to kill a White House intern, what’s to stop them from killing him? How did he ever find himself in this crazy situation anyway? With a sensation not unlike a gut punch, Asher recalls how it all started.
He met Daniel on a rainy afternoon in February, not quite a month after the inauguration. Asher had started at the White House less than a week before. Though he had moved to Washington in January, having been hired by Karen Rey in those giddy first weeks after the election, almost all of his spare time had been spent looking for someplace to live, working with his dad to purchase the condo at 3303 Water Street and the long but enjoyable process of furnishing his new home. Asher was grateful for the enormous amount of work required in making the condo an expression of his own exquisitely good taste and character. Having that activity helped stave off the crushing isolation he felt in the odd duck of a city that is Washington, DC.
Once he had started in the West Wing, Asher thought his loneliness would abate somewhat but such was not the case. Hours were brutal in the Monroe administration, with limited socializing. And it wasn’t as if there were other young people (or older) who really appealed to Asher on a personal level. His taste ran a bit more refined than the cultural and culinary preferences of most of the White House staff. Since the bar, club, or dating app scene wasn’t really his métier, Asher had begun to accept the reality of a very lonely existence in DC, at least for the first year or so.
Which is why it was such a happy surprise to strike up a conversation with a very cute guy his age at Theodores on Wisconsin, the rare, if not only, showroom with a modicum degree of real taste in the District. Asher was mulling over a Tonelli Penrose Desk on sale for under three thousand dollars, and was fully prepared to pull the trigger, when Daniel, blue eyes highlighted by a yummy gray Buck Mason henley under a Taylor Stitch chambray, intervened charmingly, suggesting the desk was a square peg in a potential round hole. For opening lines, not stellar, but Daniel followed up with a recommendation of a BDI Duo desk that portended a less dramatic, more practical sort of fellow just right for this time in Asher’s life.
Sunday brunch at Le Diplomate preceded a Friday drinks date at Nellie’s for their Beat the Clock happy hour, which led to a long, chilly weekend at a bed-and-breakfast in Lewes, Delaware, filled with long snuggle sessions, a warm fireplace, walks on the empty beach, and plenty of belly laughs. Asher’s romantic history before Daniel (BD) was a fairly barren landscape, his heart having been badly mauled his junior year at Harvard when he fell helplessly in love with a sexually conflicted nationally ranked lacrosse forward who dumped him for the daughter of an Oscar-winning actor. Asher adopted a more cautious line following that flameout, hooking up when the need and opportunity arose but his desire for committed companionship remained at low ebb.
He had always dreamed of a boyfriend like Daniel, and miracle of miracles, he materialized as if the universe had decided that Asher had suffered long enough. With Daniel’s job at the Department of Health and Human Services, a darling flat on Riggs Place just off Dupont Circle, and a rescue dog that was the spitting image of Zeus from a childhood favorite, Zeus and Roxanne, Asher was more than ready to ordain him as The One. Daniel, blue eyes and all, seemed happy to accept this designation. After three months of exclusive dating, Asher booked a summer’s long-weekend trip to Connecticut so he could show off his new boyfriend to the parents. Unmentioned to Daniel was Asher’s private fantasy they would “just happen to” bump into the lacrosse champ, who had accepted a job with a Greenwich hedge fund after graduation.
In fact, the problems began right around that aforementioned three-month mark. From the outset of their relationship, Daniel had engaged in a low-grade but constant criticism of Richard Monroe. Sometimes their political discussions would devolve into argument, with Daniel upbraiding Asher for being on the president’s staff. But these tiffs would always quickly blow over, followed by wonderful, amorous reconciliations that made the disagreements all the more worth it. As the weeks passed, Asher found himself increasingly in agreement with Daniel’s hostility toward Monroe. The man who was once a political hero to Asher was transformed into false prophet. The arguments ceased. Happiness between them again reigned supreme.
Daniel introduced him to James Odom on a Saturday night in June at Mayahuel, where the couple had gone to celebrate Asher’s twenty-eighth birthday. Odom had been dining with a colleague at a table next to the one where the hostess seated Daniel and Asher. Odom’s jack-o’-lantern smile seemed to fit right in with the grinning skulls and colorful Mexican Day of the Dead decor. He insisted on buying the birthday boy and his date a round of twenty-five-dollar tequilas and instantly connected with Asher by regaling him with thrilling stories of espionage and foreign intrigue. Indeed, Odom made no secret of his job at the CIA. He was the opposite of what Asher romanticized as “spy material.” Odom seemed more like an oddball professor of anthropology at Georgetown than anything else. Daniel vaguely identified the older man as a family friend. Of Odom’s dining companion, Asher had no memory.
The twosome became a threesome, in a strictly friendship way, of course. Odom would take the young men on expensive junkets around town or field trips where they might get a privileged view into the machinations of the US intelligence apparatus. It was heady stuff. All the while, Odom and Daniel put forward a constant and persistent case attacking the president’s character, judgment, and agenda, with Asher serving as appreciative, agreeable audience. The strongest argument made against the president occurred one Sunday afternoon when Odom brought Asher (Daniel couldn’t make it because of other commitments) over to Langley and the offices of the Defense Clandestine Service. Odom encouraged Asher to have a peek of a top-secret dossier compiled by allied intelligence operatives overseas that more than hinted at some bizarre and disturbing connections between Monroe’s campaign and Moscow.
Two days after Asher’s Sunday visit to the deserted DCS offices, without warning or preamble, Daniel announced at dinner he felt suffocated by the relationship and needed out. Asher was more than floored. Had Daniel ripped off a mask and revealed himself to be Quasimodo, it would’ve been less of a shock. Asher was gobsmacked. No amount of pleading or angry demands would dislodge one word of explanation from his lover. Within an hour of his appalling announcement, Daniel was gone from Asher’s life completely. Texts and telephone calls went unanswered. Asher had been irrevocably ghosted.
James Odom called a few days following the breakup. Asher told him the news and received sympathetic support from someone who had evolved into something of a surrogate father. Lunches, events at the Kennedy Center, and invitations to parties flowed at a steady pace. Asher felt as if he would never fully get over Daniel, but the friendship and understanding Odom offered him went a long way toward making that emotional pain bearable. Agreeing to Odom’s casual request for inside information from his lowly perch at the West Wing seemed like small compensation for all the CIA man had done for him. But that request for hallway gossip became discussions overheard in cabinet meetings and finally actual documents sneaked out of the White House. Before Asher truly realized it, he was Odom’s mole in the Monroe administration. Then Hayley Chill walked into White House Operations, and Asher’s world shifted once again.
* * *
IMPROVED RELATIONS WITH Russia had been a top priority with the Monroe administration, included in the campaign speech boilerplate from the beginning. Throughout his long and storied m
ilitary career, the president had come to respect Russia for its soulful endurance and national strength. A lifetime student of military history, Monroe was particularly interested in the Soviet Union’s horrific experience in the Second World War. With perhaps as high as twenty-seven million military and civilian dead, no other country suffered worse in that conflict than Russia. And yet, unlike many other European countries, the Russian people never capitulated. Despite horrendous losses and the Wehrmacht’s overwhelming military superiority, Russia persevered. There was much in that country’s monumental will to survive that Monroe had always admired.
An alliance of Russia and the United States, in Monroe’s unshakable belief, was the only way to compete with the historical merging of a Chinese communist dictatorship with rabid, unchecked capitalism. The president’s earliest warnings on the subject, dating back a quarter century, had indeed proved to be well-founded. In the last decade, Beijing has edged closer and closer to assuming a position as the world’s greatest superpower, eclipsing the United States by every measure except military. It had been too easy for US political leaders to overlook the steady advancement made by the Chinese while seemingly more urgent flash points around the world drew Washington’s focused attention. ISIS, al-Qaeda, Iraq, Russia, Syria, Mexico had all been massive commitments, pulling attention and resources away from a far graver threat to US power and prestige.
In Monroe’s estimation, after China achieved economic hegemony, inevitable within years and not decades, their logical next step would be to realize military dominance as well. In other words, once economic supremacy is established, the game is essentially over. Or so President Richard Monroe had long suggested, to a rising chorus of fellow believers. The president’s exemplary military career has given weight to his argument, though pundits early on dismissed his theory with patronizing counterarguments. But growing numbers of Americans, experiencing a falling standard of living, began to see it Monroe’s way. China’s astounding economic success and lightning-fast development, while being home to the world’s largest population, had created real fear in the United States. The country needed a strong leader to counter the Chinese threat, someone who had long predicted the very frightening conditions that now exist in the world. The nation needed Richard Monroe at its helm and it elected him president.