“Not until,” Chapel said. But he didn’t finish the sentence.
“Not until what?” Hollingshead asked.
Chapel looked at him with the strangest expression. Then he collapsed, tumbling headfirst toward the floor.
It took forever to get over to Georgetown, creeping along through every traffic light, fighting weird traffic patterns as people kept trying to cram themselves into the Mall. Wilkes drove because Julia kept thinking she was going to throw up.
In the backseat, Angel was all but catatonic. Whether that was because of the news they’d gotten from Hollingshead or if she was just burned out after having to work so hard in the middle of so many people, well, who knew? Julia had stopped worrying about Angel.
She had somebody else to occupy all of her worrying faculties, now.
When they reached the DoD safe house Julia pushed open her door and jumped out onto the pavement even while Wilkes tried to park the car. Ralph, the one-armed vet, was standing by the door and he tried to say something to her as she pushed him away. He tried to grab her hands. She bulled past him and inside, then realized she didn’t know where to go next.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
Ralph tried to calm her down. “Just—”
“Where the fuck is Chapel?” she said, and then there was somebody else there. The house was full of Top’s boys. They tried to talk to her, maybe they even tried to answer her question, but she couldn’t hear them. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she wouldn’t have heard anybody. She couldn’t think, could barely see. Dolores appeared, briefly, but didn’t even try to get in Julia’s way. Somebody pointed up a flight of stairs stained with blood. She should have known. Blood in the hallway upstairs. You want to find Jim Chapel, follow the trail of blood. Inside Julia’s head a whole symphony of worry and fear was just tuning up.
Top himself opened a door for her. She stepped through into a little room.
The floor was littered with torn paper and foil wrappers and pieces of plastic tubing, a bright blue latex glove. The debris left by a team of paramedics. Blood everywhere. Stained towels and sanitary wipes. A syringe with no needle, lying on a carved wooden end table.
But no Chapel.
“Where is he?” she asked again, softly this time, because one of the possible answers was going to destroy her.
“Walter Reed,” Hollingshead said. He was there. She hadn’t noticed that before, but Rupert Hollingshead was there and he was alive and even unhurt. “He held on just long enough, you see. He waited until Norton was taken away, until he was sure we were done and then. Then he. Well. I, ah — he had sustained, that is—”
“Gunshot wounds, I’m guessing,” Julia said. Not because of what the paramedics had left behind. Because that was what happened to Jim. He got shot. All the fucking time. She put a hand to her forehead, then dropped it because she didn’t know why she’d done that. She thought maybe she should sit down. She thought she should run back downstairs and tell Wilkes to take her to the hospital, so she could see Jim again.
“What’s the prognosis?” she asked. “Is he going to live?”
“Ah,” the old man said.
Then Angel came running into the room. She ignored Julia and the very obvious absence where Jim Chapel should have been. Instead she ran over to Hollingshead and threw her arms around his neck and held on to him for dear life. Hollingshead closed his eyes and hugged Angel back and kept saying, “Oh, my dear, you’re safe.”
Julia wheeled around and stared daggers at them. Jim might be dying, right then, and all Angel wanted was to hug her sugar daddy. “You two are awfully glad to see each other,” she spat out, as if the words tasted nasty in her mouth.
“I imagine that’s, well,” Hollingshead said, “natural enough. Given that Angel — Edith — is my granddaughter.”
EPILOGUE
The attorney general carried out Patrick Norton’s debriefing the next day. The two of them sat in a small room in one of the White House subbasements, a room that was fully wired to record sound and video. The session went on for many hours. Norton was provided with food and water as requested.
Rupert Hollingshead observed the proceedings through a one-way mirror from a rather underheated adjoining room. Present with him were three of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including the vice chairman. It was one of the very few times in his adult life when Hollingshead had found himself in a room full of people who outranked him.
No one in the observation room spoke during the debriefing. They were too busy listening to what Norton had to say. The former secretary of defense made a full and detailed confession of everything he had attempted. He described every one of the drone attacks and how it was carried out. He named all his confederates, starting with Charlotte Holman and Paul Moulton.
There was a certain… excitement in the observation room when Norton named one of the Joint Chiefs as a coconspirator. The man resisted briefly, but he was eventually convinced to leave the room in the company of a pair of armed MPs. After he was gone, the chilly room seemed positively arctic.
Norton did not spare himself in his confession, nor did he offer any apology for what he’d done. Not even an explanation of his motives. He simply laid out the facts of the case and answered the AG’s questions as they were asked.
When the AG had finished with his questions, he thanked Norton for his candor. Then he packed up his briefcase and left the room. Norton remained where he was, shackled to the table. He did not seem particularly worried or afraid, as far as Hollingshead could tell.
Then again, Norton had proven already that he would make a very good poker player, based on his ability to bluff.
The door of the observation room opened and the AG stepped through. He addressed the Joint Chiefs with deference and nodded at Hollingshead. “It’s clear that he’s indictable under any number of statutes,” the man told them. “I’m going to advise we go ahead and just charge him with treason. If we had to try him for every attempted murder and violation of national security protocols, he’d be in court for a hundred years.”
“What’s your recommendation on sentencing?” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked.
“I think we have to seek the death penalty,” the AG said. “I respect the man’s office and his military service, but… this isn’t something we as a nation should ever forgive.”
There was no dissent among the Joint Chiefs. Hollingshead had been invited to the room as a courtesy — his opinion was not of interest to anyone there.
The AG and the Joint Chiefs filed out of the room then. Hollingshead waited at the back of the line out of respect, but before he could reach the door, he saw motion inside the debriefing room and he stopped to look.
The door had opened and Walter Minchell, the president’s chief of staff, entered with a single piece of paper in his hand.
Hollingshead stayed behind to see what would happen next. When the last of the Joint Chiefs had left the room, he closed the door behind them.
In the debriefing room, Norton looked up at Minchell with a warm smile. Ever the politician.
“This is how it’s going to be,” Minchell said. “You’re not going to trial. You’re not going to jail or the gas chamber, either. If you sign this piece of paper, the president will give you a conditional pardon and send you on your way.”
Norton had the good grace to at least look confused. “A… a pardon?”
“The conditions are these,” Minchell told him. “You will go immediately to Guam, and you will never come back. You’ll be put on the no-fly list without possibility of appeal. We’ll do what we can to make you comfortable there. Do you agree to these conditions?”