Shadow of the Dragon

12

“Reduced to eating nails?” Mary Pat Foley said, smiling as she poked her head in the door to Hendricks’s office. The DNI wore a snazzy gray pantsuit in light wool, warm enough for the crisp spring weather and light enough to spend hours in the stuffy, artificial environment of her office at Liberty Crossing.

Hendricks dropped the nails into her hand and placed them on the corner of her desk. She knew Foley well. They’d worked together early in Monica’s career, each earning the other’s trust from living through dangerous times — dodging thugs, losing surveillance, and generally risking their lives in hostile environments. Poor Steve would never sleep again if he knew the half of what she’d done over the course of her career.

“Madam Director,” Hendricks said. “This is a nice surprise. I’d shake your hand, but I just spit out those frame hangers…”

“Knock it off with the ‘Madam Director’ stuff, Mony,” Foley said. “You and I have drunk too many grappas over the years for you to call me anything but Mary Pat. Anyway, I hear you’re popping smoke, as they say, to what, teach high school?”

Hendricks moved a stack of frames off the chair so the DNI would have a place to sit. “That’s correct. I know it’s a necessary part of the job, but I’m just too tired of… well, the lying. You know?”

Foley chuckled. “Yeah, and high school kids don’t lie.”

“At least I won’t have to. Seriously, ma’am… Mary Pat, it is nice of you to drop in and say good-bye.”

Foley toyed with the frayed corner of the leather desk blotter with the tip of her manicured thumbnail. It was a marvel how far this woman had come from the days she’d broken her fingernails to the quick digging under rocks to retrieve an asset’s message from some iced-over dead drop.

Foley glanced up, her hand lingering on the desk. “I didn’t, actually,” she said. “Come to say good-bye, that is. I came to ask you to stay.”

Hendricks scoffed, thinking it was surely a joke. “Due respect, Mad… Mary Pat, but the director of national intelligence doesn’t come down to Langley and ask a lowly CIA minion to hang around. My daddy told me the story of pulling the hand out of the bucket of water when I was a little girl. I’m self-aware enough to know my worth.”

Foley smiled and shook her head. “I’m not sure you do, Monica. And I’m here to tell you, that’s exactly what this DNI is doing. I need you to hang around.”

Hendricks gave a little nothing-she-could-do-about-it shrug. “Sorry, ma’am. No can do. I have a teaching job lined up for the fall and I promised Steve we could do some traveling this summer.”

Foley nodded, mulling this over, but obviously not taking no can do for an answer. “Remember that time you and I sat up for five days straight watching that safe house?”

“Outside Addis Ababa,” Hendricks said and chuckled. “The Soviets were up to their armpits in that place. I can still smell the curtains in that shitty apartment.”

“I know,” Foley said. “Mango-scented curtains… What was that all about? About three days in, you told me a story about how you wanted to stage a protest against people in your hometown when you were in high school.”

“Right,” Hendricks said. “Even the local ministers were against the state putting in a group home because of the so-called black troublemakers it would bring into the county.”

“And your dad told you to stand up for what you believe in, but to be smart about it. He said—”

“He said that some causes were worth losing your life over, and some were like jumping off a cliff and screaming at the wind on the way down.” Hendricks sighed, giving a solemn nod. “It was good advice. Served me well in picking my battles. That’s why I’m quitting here to teach for a few years while I’m still young enough.”

“I really do need you to stay,” Foley said.

“Why?”

“Here’s the funny part,” Foley said. “I can’t tell you that just yet. But I can promise you this. You won’t be screaming against the wind. There’s a good chance that what I’m going to ask you to do will keep friends of ours alive.”