The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  “It’ll happen. Give him time,” a female voice said softly.

  Beecher glanced toward the sliding glass door. It was the nurse with the crooked teeth, the one who liked pumpernickel.

  “It’s a brain injury. It doesn’t heal overnight,” she added.

  “I know. I just wish he could—” Beecher stopped himself and swallowed hard.

  “He’s fortunate to have you,” the nurse said.

  “I’m fortunate to have him,” Beecher replied, standing up from his seat and wiping his eyes. He turned to the body in the bed. “Tot, you get some rest. I know you’re tired,” he added, leaning in and giving his mentor a gentle kiss on the forehead. “By the way,” he whispered into Tot’s ear, “if you’re good, I’ll bring you a photo of Verona in the black sweater.”

  “If it helps, happy birthday,” the nurse called out as Beecher headed for the door.

  “How’d you know?”

  The nurse shrugged. “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. Heard you say it was a big day.”

  Nodding a thank-you and heading out to the hallway, Beecher glanced over at what bagels were still uneaten at the nurses’ station.

  Each morning, the nurses watched Beecher.

  Each morning, Beecher watched Tot.

  But each morning, Beecher and the nurses weren’t the only ones keeping tabs.

  Diagonally across the hallway, peering through the open door of the visitors’ lounge, the bald man known as Ezra eyed Beecher as he trudged down the hallway toward the elevators.

  Ten days ago, Ezra had come to the hospital searching for the old man known as Tot. He knew Tot’s history. He knew what Tot had done all those years ago. And he knew that with a bit of patience and a side order of good luck, he’d find out everything else he needed just by sitting in this waiting room and studying who else came to Tot’s bedside.

  A few of Tot’s coworkers had visited. There was an old lady who came every few nights and stroked Tot’s arm. But more than anyone else, there was the archivist. Beecher.

  At the National Archives, Beecher was Tot’s protégé and best friend. In a way, he was also Tot’s family. And based on what Ezra had heard thanks to the nightlight-shaped microphone that he had plugged into the wall socket next to Tot’s bed, Beecher was most certainly a member of the Culper Ring.

  “Want a bagel?” one of the nurses called out as she passed the visitors’ room. “We’ve got plenty.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Ezra said, his slitted eyes curving into a grin. “I’ve got a big day ahead of me.”

  2

  There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories.

  I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living. Most of them are family stories. This one is too. But it’s time for me to admit, as I once learned in a novel, when you say you’re looking for your family, what you’re really searching for is yourself.

  “I see it on your face, Beecher. This is bad news, isn’t it?” Franklin Oeming asks, trying hard to look unnerved. In his mid-forties, Oeming’s got a thin face that’s made even thinner by narrow wire-rimmed glasses and a long Civil War–style goatee. He’s a smart guy whose specialty is declassification. That means he spends every day combing through redacted, top-secret documents and reading beneath the black lines. It also means he specializes in people’s secrets. He thinks he knows mine. But he has no idea why I’m really here.

  “Just tell me how he’s doing,” Oeming adds.

  “Same as before,” I say as I slide both hands into the front pockets of the dark blue lab coat that all of us archivists wear.

  He studies every syllable, smelling a rat. Even though he’s in a suit, Oeming’s wearing an awful Texas-shaped belt buckle that displays the words Planet Texas in block letters. I have a matching one in my office. They were old Christmas gifts from the mentor we share, Tot Westman, who gave them to us as an homage to Kenny Rogers. We thought they were gag gifts. To Tot, they weren’t. “Planet Texas” is Tot’s favorite underrated Kenny Rogers song.

  Needless to say, neither of us ever wore the belt buckles…until three weeks ago, when Tot was shot in the head and left in a coma. For luck or superstition, Oeming’s been wearing his since. I’ve been carrying mine in my briefcase.

  “Beecher, I know you’re at the hospital every day. If the doctors say he’s getting worse—”

  “He’s not getting worse. He’s the same. Last week, a nurse said he moved two fingers on his left hand. His right pinkie too.”

  Oeming watches me carefully. For three weeks now, I’ve sent him daily updates by email. So for me to suddenly show up on the fifth floor and see him in person…

  “This isn’t about Tot, is it?” he asks.

  I run my hand over the back of my recently buzzed hair, but I don’t answer.

  “Why’re you really here, Beecher?”

  He puts enough emphasis on my name that just outside his office, I can hear a few employees in cubicles start closing files and covering papers on their desks. Oeming takes a step back toward his own desk and does the same.

  Five floors below us, the National Archives is home to original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and twelve billion other pages of history, including Lincoln’s preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, the actual check that we used to purchase Alaska, and even a letter written by a twelve-year-old Fidel Castro to FDR, asking for ten dollars. If the government had a hand in it, we collect it, including the downed weather balloon that people thought was a wrecked flying saucer outside of Roswell, New Mexico. But like that weather balloon, which was classified for decades, when you store America’s history, you also get America’s secrets.

  And as I said, secrets are Franklin Oeming’s specialty.

  “I actually need your help with something,” I tell him, offering a grin.

  He doesn’t grin back. “What kind of help?”

  “I need a file.”

  Oeming is a second-generation archivist. His mom used to work in the LBJ Library in Austin, and he grew up playing in the stacks and pulling rusty staples from important documents. That makes him more of a stickler than most, which around here is saying something. “You mind taking a walk?” he says, tilting his head toward the door.

  Before I can answer, he’s out of his office, weaving around the cubicles and heading out to the Archives’ marble and stone hallway. Every person in a nearby cubicle is now staring my way. By the time I join him in the hallway, Oeming’s on my left, swiping a security card at a set of locked double doors. As I follow him farther down the hallway, he points to a set of square metal lockers, each one the size of a small safe-deposit box.

  I know the rules. Taking my cell phone from my pocket, I slide it inside one of the lockers, slap the small door shut, and take the orange key. He’s not talking until he’s sure no one’s listening. I don’t blame him. But if he’s taking me here—to the true inner sanctum of fifth-floor secrecy—either things are looking up, or I’ve got a bigger problem than I thought.

  Let’s go, he motions, pointing me to the end of the hallway and stopping at our destination: Room 509. It looks like any other room, except for the thick steel door that resembles a bank vault’s.

  Oeming swipes his ID through an even more high-tech scanner, then punches in a push-button PIN code, which lets out a low wunk as the lock unclenches and the door to this giant safe pops open. In the Archives, we have SCIFs—secure areas to read classified files—all over the building. We also have Treasure Vaults on nearly every floor. None of them hold what we keep in here.

  Inside, it looks like any other fancy conference room: long oval mahogany table surrounded by two dozen black-and-tan leather chairs. On the walls are reproduction posters from World War II, including a navy poster that reads Button Your Lip and another that reads Silence Means Security. It’s not just décor. They mean it.

  “Watch your hands,” Oeming snaps, sounding annoyed as the
automatic door with nonremovable hinges locks us inside. As the door slams, my ears pop. This room isn’t just soundproof; it’s airtight. The concrete walls are double the normal thickness and lined with foil and steel to stop eavesdropping, while the ductwork, telephone, and electrical systems are all on their own dedicated grids to do the same.

  Around the Archives, this is the home of Ice Cap. The official acronym is ISCAP, which stands for Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, which means every other Tuesday, in this fifth-floor vault, some of the highest-level thinkers in the U.S. government come together and take a biweekly vote on which classified documents will get released to the public.

  Set in motion by Richard Nixon of all people, Ice Cap has released thousands of blacked-out files, from Cold War presidential briefings, to My Lai massacre details, to top-secret reports of Soviet nukes. For the American people, it adds trust and transparency. But for the archivists who wade though the documents and read what’s below the black lines, it adds a whole office of people who have access to what’s otherwise top secret and off-limits.

  “Beecher, how could you put me in that position?” Oeming asks, circling around to the far side of the table.

  “Listen, before you lose your cool—”

  “My cool is lost! Are you even listening to what you’re doing? You’re asking me to break the law.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It most certainly is true. If you had a high enough security clearance, you’d get the file yourself. But if you’re asking me to get it for you—”

  “Will you just stop? I’m not asking for myself. This isn’t for me. It’s for the Archivist.”

  He stops when I mention the boss. Our big boss. The Archivist of the United States. “You’re telling me Ferriero asked for this?”

  “He did. Call him,” I challenge. “I told him I was coming up here. He asked me to do him a favor.”

  Back when I first met Oeming, I remember him telling me that when it came to classified information, the only files that had ever haunted him were the ones about the government secretly abducting people who wouldn’t be missed—the elderly and homeless—and the human radiation tests that they were subjected to. Oeming said he was sick to his stomach that day. He looks about the same now.

  “Beecher, y’know whose chair you’re touching?” he asks, pointing to the high-backed chair near the head of the table. “When we vote, that’s where the CIA sits. The chair next to that belongs to DoD, representing our entire military and the Pentagon. On the other side, you’ve got the State Department. Then the NSA. Then the Director of National Intelligence,” he adds, pointing out each chair one by one. “The only bad seat in the room belongs to the Justice Department,” he adds, motioning to a chair by the door. “And y’know why that’s the bad seat?”

  “Because it’s closest to the door,” I say.

  “That’s exactly right. You have to move every time someone wants to go in or out. And y’know why the Justice Department gets that bad seat?”

  “I understand you’re trying to make this analogy work—”

  “It’s because they always want personal favors,” Oeming says coldly, pressing his fingertips down on the table. “Everyone else—CIA, DoD, NSA—they all understand how the process works. But Justice, with all its lawyers, always wants to know if we can make a special exception. So once again, Beecher, what’s the real story behind this file? And don’t tell me it’s for the Archivist, because I was in Ferriero’s office this morning, and if there was anything he needed, he would’ve asked me himself.”

  I take my hands off the back of the chair. “I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t an important one.”

  “So it’s work-related?”

  I shake my head. “It’s personal.”

  “Is it for Tot?” he adds with enough concern that I start to wonder if he knows our real secret: that three months ago, Tot recruited me to become a member of the secret society known as the Culper Ring. The Ring dates back over two hundred years and was originally founded by George Washington.

  I know. It still sounds insane to me too.

  Back during the Revolutionary War, Washington created his own private spy ring to help him move information among his troops and beat the British. It worked so well that after he won the war, Washington kept the Ring around to protect the Presidency. To this day, the Ring still exists, and now I’m a part of it. Sounds sexy, right? I thought so too—until Tot was shot in the head and I figured out that the Culper Ring has been whittled down to barely half a dozen members. Tot chose me to help rebuild it. But right now, that’s the least of my worries.

  “This isn’t about Tot,” I tell Oeming.

  “So if it’s not Tot, how much more personal can you—?”

  “It’s about my father,” I blurt.

  Oeming’s eyes narrow, but not by much. “That’s still about Tot, though, isn’t it? With him in the hospital, and you all alone, well…looking for some info about your father would—”

  “It’s not about being alone,” I tell him, finally realizing that the tone I hear in his voice isn’t anger. It’s concern. Franklin may be a second-generation archivist, but he’s a first-class good person. He doesn’t have a ruthless bone in him, which probably explains why Tot never picked him for the Culper Ring. “Listen,” I tell him, “I’m sorry for lying to you.”

  “I don’t blame you, Beecher. I’d lie for my dad. Hell, I might even lie for Tot.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t,” he says, forcing an awkward laugh and looking down.

  I pretend to laugh along with him.

  “Y’know, Beecher, when you first started at the Archives and Tot started mentoring you, I was so jealous. Those first years he mentored me were some of the best of my life.”

  “That’s funny, because every time I see him talking with you, I feel like you’re that firstborn child I can never measure up to.”

  We both stand there a moment, the giant table between us. He finally looks up.

  “Franklin, my entire life…going back to my very first memories…I was told my dad was a mechanic in the army—that he died when I was a baby, in a car crash on a bridge,” I offer, my voice hitching on the words. “Last month, someone gave me proof that there was no bridge…and no car accident. They showed me a handwritten letter that he wrote a week after his supposed death. Now I don’t know which story is true.”

  Anyone else would cock an eyebrow or ask how that’s possible, but Oeming spends every day reading the secrets that people keep from each other, including their families.

  “You think your dad’s still alive?”

  “No. I actually don’t. But what keeps me turning at night is this one thought: You don’t cover up someone’s death unless there’s a reason to cover it up,” I explain. “Pretend it was your own dead father. Before he died, this is the story he couldn’t tell you. The bosses at his job said he tripped and took a bad tumble. Then you find out he might’ve been pushed.”

  “I assume you’ve searched through everything at Archives II?” he asks, referring to our facility out in College Park, which holds most of our modern military records.

  “There, St. Louis, even out in the Boyers caves. I’ve spent the last month looking for anything that would give me the full story. Then, a few weeks back, I found this,” I say, pulling a folded sheet of paper from the front pocket of my lab coat. As I unfold it, there’s no mistaking the handwritten file citation at the center of the page.

  Oeming reads it for himself. “You said your dad was in the army.”

  “I did.”

  “This file, though…the record group…it’s from a navy file.”

  I nod. “Didn’t make sense to me either. So you tell me: Still think my dad was just a lowly mechanic in the army?”

  Oeming doesn’t answer. “How’d you even find this file?”

  “A friend,” I say quickly enough that he knows not to ask any more q
uestions. “The person who gave it to me, her dad was in my dad’s unit. She was the one who found their real unit name. Apparently, they used to call themselves the Plankholders.”

  Oeming frowns.

  “You know this group?”

  He looks down at the file number, his hand starting to shake.

  “Franklin, if you know something—”

  “This is really your father’s unit?” he says. “He was a member of the Plankholders?”

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I demand. “You’ve heard of them?”

  “Not until yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? What’re you—?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. This group…the Plankholders… When I got into the office yesterday, someone had just asked for this exact same file.”

  I cock my head, totally lost. “If you— If someone— I don’t understand. Who would possibly want my dad’s files?”

  At that, Franklin takes a half-step back. He’s standing right in front of the World War II poster that reads Button Your Lip.

  “Beecher…you’re not gonna believe it.”

  3

  So your office said today’s your birthday,” a Greek fiftysomething archivist named Helena says as she angles our navy blue van onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

  I nod from the passenger seat, staring out the front window and squinting toward our destination. I could walk if I wanted. But if I plan on pulling this off, the van’s my best way in.

  “So no big birthday plans?” Helena asks, with no clue as to why I’m tagging along.

  “Just the usual,” I tell her. “Birthday cake shaped like a book. Strippers dressed like naughty librarians.”

  “The sad part is, you just described the fantasy of every Archives employee.”

  “And some women,” I add.

  “Speaking of, you ever reach out to—”

  “I did. I’m going to,” I say, knowing who she’s talking about. Mina. A fellow archivist I’m friendly with. Helena thinks I should get friendlier, but until Tot’s health starts to—