The rain in Oakland that Tuesday night was relentless. It did not fall in a polite drizzle or in scattered showers that gave a driver time to breathe between bursts. It came down in sheets, driven sideways by a wind off the bay, hammering the roof of the rented gray Ford Taurus and turning Interstate 55 into a dark, mirror-like surface that caught every headlight and threw it back in smeared ribbons of white and red. Cynthia Holloway gripped the steering wheel with both hands and drove through it at a steady, unhurried pace, enjoying a solitude she had not known in weeks. The wipers beat a metronome rhythm across the windshield, clearing the glass only for the rain to blur it again, and for a little while that simple, repetitive work was enough to quiet the noise in her head.
Three weeks ago she had been sworn in as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the first Black woman to hold the position, and since that morning in Washington her life had become a whirlwind she could barely step outside of. There had been Senate hearings that stretched through long afternoons, classified briefings in rooms with no windows, and a security detail that moved around her like a tide, efficient and protective and suffocating. Every hallway she walked down had someone ahead of her and someone behind her. Every meal was scheduled. Every phone call was logged. Every public appearance was choreographed down to the placement of her hands on a podium. She had earned the office through twenty-eight years of service, from a beat cop in Atlanta learning how to talk a frightened teenager down from a bad decision on a summer sidewalk, to field offices and task forces and finally to the highest office in Washington, and she did not resent the weight of it. She understood it. But tonight she had wanted one ordinary thing, and she had taken it deliberately.
She had ordered her detail to stand down. Not out of recklessness, and not because she believed herself untouchable. She had done it because she needed to drive, to clear her head, to be alone with her own thoughts for an hour without a radio crackling in her ear or a vehicle in her mirror. She was traveling under a civilian alias, using a nondescript vehicle rented under a name that would not draw attention, dressed in a dark blazer and slacks that looked like the clothes of any professional woman traveling for work. The car was gray because gray disappeared. The route was ordinary because ordinary was the point. She had not told anyone where she was going except in the broadest terms, and she had not expected anyone to notice her at all.