The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  His nose was charred away. One of his eyes was so off-center from his face, it looked melted. Out of the other, Marshall watched as the scalpel cut into his arm, starting at his shoulder, down to his wrist. Each slice looked precise, but felt like it was being done with a rake.

  “This is my death! No more!” he screamed, the pain so raw he couldn’t breathe.

  “Marshall, listen to me,” the doctor insisted. “Count from ten to one for me. That’s all. Count from ten to one, and I promise we’ll be done.”

  It wasn’t much of a consolation, but at least the end was in sight.

  “T-T-Ten…” Marshall began, slowly counting and screaming as the scalpel dug into his skin. “Ahuh…n-nine…”

  “There you go…” the doctor said, halfway down Marshall’s biceps.

  “E-E-Eight…oh God…”

  Slowly, over the next few seconds, the doctor sliced downward, finishing the last of his five incisions. Sure enough, the counting helped. The end was finally approaching.

  “T-Two…” Marshall said. And then… “Wh-Wh-One.”

  At the time, Marshall’s face was burned so badly no one could tell he was trying to smile.

  The doctor didn’t smile back. “Okay, Marshall,” he said, grabbing a new scalpel. He glanced at the nurses, who quickly tightened their grip. “Now to your fingers.”

  Marshall screamed so loud, and the pain was so electric, he eventually passed out.

  Looking back, Marshall knew the doctors and nurses were only doing their best. If he had known they’d be slicing his fingers, he’d have never made it through the first part. And as he found out later, that operation was the only thing that’d stopped them from amputating his arm.

  Still, today, as Marshall took his first step into the emergency room and the metallic smell of Silverol invaded his airways, his head went light and the rakes dug back into his arm. All around him, curtained rooms were filled with the sick and injured. He was walking so fast, the curtains on each passing room followed in his wake. But even with his candle-wax skin, he didn’t attract attention. There’s always a rush in the emergency room.

  “Dr. Lemont, please call your office,” the intercom announced from above. There was no Dr. Lemont at the hospital. Marshall knew what it meant.

  He still didn’t run. Panic only brought attention.

  In the back corner of the room, past the graveyard of spare wheelchairs and gurneys, Marshall ducked into a narrow corridor, following it around to the right. It dead-ended at a beige metal door with a bright red sign that read Authorized Personnel Only. Unlike most doors in the hospital, this one had no glass in it. Instead of a PIN-code lock, it had a black, square proximity-reader just above the doorknob. A little sticker in the corner read DOC.

  Department of Corrections.

  In select city hospitals, there are designated rooms in case the local prison has an inmate who needs surgery or has a life-threatening illness. In Washington, D.C., that room connects to the emergency room—and, if the Secret Service needs it, can also be commandeered for a far more private patient.

  Pulling a key fob from his pocket, Marshall pressed it into place. The door popped open.

  “You’re late,” Francy announced, clutching her datebook at her side.

  Marshall didn’t answer. As the door shut behind him, he was still focused on the fading Silverol smell…and the familiar figure standing just behind Francy’s shoulder.

  “Trust me, we’re having one of those days too,” the President of the United States said, stepping forward and wringing his own hands. “Now can we talk about our friend Beecher?”

  20

  Two weeks ago

  Arlington, Virginia

  Clementine knew she wasn’t safe. She had that feeling in the back of her throat, the same feeling from when she was twelve years old and the older men would come check on her in the dressing room while her mom was singing onstage. Back then, those men had a hungry look in their eyes. A look of inevitability.

  It was the same look Ezra had today. Not for Clementine. For their mission. For what he promised her here, in the empty strip-mall parking lot off Wilson Boulevard.

  “Don’t. Not yet,” Ezra insisted, grabbing her wrist as she went to open the door of his gray rental car. His slitted eyes homed in on the digital clock of the car’s dashboard. 3:54 p.m. “These are people of precision,” he warned. “You walk in early, they’ll walk away.”

  Pulling free of his grip but still scanning her surroundings, Clementine didn’t like this corner of the lot, where every passing car on Wilson Boulevard could see what they were doing. Yet as she readjusted her brown wig, she knew that was the point. The best place to hide was usually in plain sight.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said, staring straight ahead at the only storefront with a bright red Closed sign. All the other stores were open. “Why’re you doing this?”

  “I told you. The role of the Knights—”

  “No, forget the Knights. I’m talking about you. Why’re you doing this?”

  Sitting up straight, Ezra followed her gaze out the front windshield, his white eyelashes glowing in the sun. He had the posture of a private-school boy, and that haughty cockiness in his voice that said he wasn’t ashamed it was private school. From his breast pocket, he took out a fine leather wallet. Like his black overcoat, suede shoes, even his belt…it was all brand-new. It took money to look this effortless.

  “See this picture?” he said, handing an old photo to Clementine. “That’s me,” Ezra explained, pointing to a little boy, barely three years old, who you could only see from behind. In the photo, young Ezra’s tiny hand reached upward, excited, as he shook hands with an older man whose leathered skin and slicked pompadour Clementine recognized instantly.

  “Ronald Reagan,” she blurted.

  “I was three years old. Reagan was out of office by then. This was taken at the opening of his library.”

  Clementine stared down at young Ezra shaking Reagan’s hand. “Don’t tell me you’re doing this for the Gipper.”

  “You asked why I’m committed to this. There’s my reason. For him,” Ezra said, pointing to the side of Reagan, at a salt-and-pepper-haired man standing by young Ezra’s side.

  Clementine had missed the figure at first. But there he was, in mid-laugh, his graying hair defying gravity as he bent sideways, holding a proud hand on young Ezra’s shoulder. He was beaming.

  “This your dad?” Clementine asked.

  “My grandfather, Tanner Pope. Taught me how to saddle a horse properly, served twenty-five years with the Secret Service, and was on President Reagan’s personal detail, including the day Reagan was shot.” Looking over at Clementine, he added, “He was also, like his father, and his father before him, a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle.”

  Clementine looked back at the photo and the way the old man’s mouth curved open in mid-laugh. Her own father—Nico—had told her stories of the Knights. From John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, all four presidential assassins had supposedly been Knights. Nico saw himself as a self-made Knight too. Truth is, she’d thought it was her father’s typical ravings, but to hear Ezra tell it… “Does that mean your dad was also—?”

  “I don’t think my father even heard of the Knights. He never had a chance,” Ezra said. “Twenty-two years ago, long before my father could join, the last generation of Knights were hunted down. Slaughtered like dogs. I’m guessing they spared Grandpa Tanner since that’s when he had his first stroke. But his legacy…the work of the Knights…”

  “I get it,” she interrupted, spotting the hunger in his eyes. “You want my father to help you rebuild.”

  “Something like that,” he said, calmly plucking the Reagan photo from her hand. He propped it up on the steering wheel, his thumb over Reagan’s face so it was only him and his grandfather. “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy, Clementine. Haven’t you ever wondered, when you’re lying there in bed, after you shut the TV and th
e house goes quiet, and you’re just staring at the ceiling—don’t you ever wonder if you’re meant for something greater?” His eyes stayed on the picture. His thumb now covered his grandfather too. “When I was three years old, my grandfather took me to meet the most powerful man in the world. Don’t tell me it wasn’t for a reason.”

  Feigning agreement, Clementine stared at the old photo on the steering wheel. She didn’t like Ezra. Didn’t trust him. But what bothered Clementine most was the simple fact that she understood him. The way Ezra’s eyes so desperately begged at the photo, was it any different from the emotional undertow that had caused Clementine to spend the last year searching for her father? These last few months had cost her her soul. She’d become a murderer—she’d taken someone’s life—all in the name of finding answers from Nico, making a connection with Nico, and of course, finding a cure for herself from Nico.

  Even now, as her father ran off yet again, promising that he’d return with a solution for her cancer, Clementine knew she shouldn’t believe him. But she couldn’t help herself. It was a basic rule of life: Parents are full of promises; children are full of needs and longing. The perfect ingredients for disappointment.

  As she sat there in the passenger seat, Clementine came face-to-face with another basic rule of life: It’s far easier to judge others than to judge yourself. Indeed, the more she heard Ezra talk about his grandfather, the more she saw her own misplaced expectations for her father. No, not just misplaced. They were hopeless. Even ridiculous. For months now, Clementine had thought her father would have answers. It was time to admit, Nico didn’t—and never would.

  “You’re really in pain, aren’t you?” Ezra asked.

  Clementine didn’t move. She gulped down a swirl of blood as her back teeth floated in her mouth. If she wanted help, medical or otherwise, Nico couldn’t help. He wanted to. But she’d need to get that help herself.

  And she would. If nothing else, Ezra was at least good for that.

  On the dashboard, the digital clock blinked to exactly 4:00 p.m. Across the parking lot, through the glass door of the closed storefront, a pale figure in a white doctor’s coat appeared, then disappeared just as fast.

  Clementine closed her eyes and swallowed the pain, along with another pool of blood.

  “Just remember,” Ezra added, popping the door and heading outside. “Once we’re done here—”

  “Don’t worry,” Clementine shot back. “In my family, we always keep our promises.”

  21

  Collierville, Tennessee

  Two weeks ago

  It took three fingers before Nico believed him.

  “Nico, please… on my granddaughter’s life— Fahhhh!” Doggett screamed, twisting in his bed as Nico squeezed the needle-nose pliers and peeled a thin ribbon of skin from the colonel’s thumb.

  “That was smart, starting with the thumb,” the dead First Lady pointed out, knowing it was the least sensitive of all the fingers.

  Nico nodded, holding tight to the colonel’s wrist. If he went too big, too fast, Doggett would pass out.

  “I swear to God, Nico! If I knew the answer, you think I wouldn’t—? Guhhhh!” Doggett screamed again. And again. A swell of snot and tears rolled down his face. It got particularly loud when Nico moved on to Doggett’s ring finger.

  “You don’t wear a wedding band, but I see the indentations,” Nico said, using the tip of the pliers to grab a sag of loose skin. “Did your wife die or did she leave you?”

  Doggett was sobbing now, barely hearing the question.

  With another sharp tug, Nico raised the pliers above the colonel’s chest, like a kid playing the game Operation.

  Slowly releasing his grip, Nico opened the pliers just enough to add another thin ribbon of finger-skin to the bloody pile he was building on the colonel’s chest.

  “I think he just said his wife’s name,” the dead First Lady said.

  Nico nodded, eyeing the original wedding photo on Doggett’s bedroom wall. The bond between husband and wife could be profound. But it was nothing like the love for one’s own child.

  “I-I-I don’t know how to save your daughter,” Doggett pleaded, his voice barely a whisper.

  By the time Nico started peeling Doggett’s pointer-finger—the most sensitive of all the fingers—there was no mistaking the tart smell of urine that pooled in the seventy-year-old colonel’s bed.

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…!” Doggett cried.

  Nico smiled at that. The Lord’s Prayer. He glanced down at the carpet, tempted to kneel and—

  “Don’t do it,” the First Lady warned. “Finish the job. There’ll be time for praying later.”

  Of course she was right. And sure enough, as Nico continued to peel the skin from the colonel’s third finger—as Doggett begged and prayed and continued to insist that he didn’t know how to save Clementine—Nico finally did believe him.

  “A-All these years…I knew you’d come,” Doggett muttered, barely conscious. “I knew it’d be you.”

  “Who else?” Nico asked. “Who else knew the details of what you did to us?”

  Colonel Doggett clenched his eyes, refusing to look at the pile of skin on his chest. His body was shaking, his arm a bloody mess. “Tabatchnick. Dr. Adrian Tabatchnick.”

  “Who?” Nico asked, not recognizing the name.

  “Dr. Moorcraft. From the island. Tabatchnick is the new name they gave to Moorcraft…”

  Nico sat up straight, chin out, nearly dropping the pliers. Hnnn. All those years in St. Elizabeths, he’d never even considered it.

  Dr. Moorcraft was still alive.

  22

  Today

  Washington, D.C.

  Phone and metals on the belt,” the agent with the flat nose says, pointing me to the X-ray. We have an X-ray at the Archives. But not like this one.

  As my keys and cell phone roll away on the conveyor, I pull open a heavy plastic door and step into a narrow chamber that has a closed door at the opposite end of it. Sally port. The door ahead of me won’t open until the back one closes. The chamber is the actual magnetometer.

  There’s a soft click behind me. X-rays…chemical scan…I don’t even want to know what radiation I’m being bathed in, but in Secret Service headquarters, you don’t get inside unless you’re clean.

  Click.

  “Push ahead,” Flat Nose calls out.

  As I give the second door a shove, the modern hallway widens and the ceiling rises, revealing an exposed glass staircase that heads to the upper floors. On my left, groups of agents, all big and burly, head to a room labeled the Silver Star Café. The Service’s cafeteria.

  “Beecher, over here,” a female voice behind me says, her voice clipped and hurried.

  I spin to find a tall woman—late twenties—with olive skin and hair the color of honeycomb. As always, she wears it in a jogger’s ponytail, but she’s all business suit as she pumps my hand with a commanding handshake. I’ve known her since my first days in the Archives. Mina Arbogast.

  “I owe you for this one,” I tell her.

  “You owe me nothing,” she says with that accent I can never place. Sounds almost European.

  “By the way, how’s Michael?” I ask, referring to her boss, the Service’s longtime Archivist.

  “They didn’t tell you? I mentioned it to your office when they called. Michael took retirement a few months back. I’ve been running it since.”

  Turning to face her, I crane my neck back. I always forget how tall she is. She’s built like an athlete. “So you’re the new Archivist?”

  “Wow,” she laughs. “Thanks for trying so hard to hide your shock.”

  “Nonono…that’s not what I— I just meant that you’re so—you’re just—”

  “I have to say, I cannot wait to see how you complete this sentence.” She crosses her arms but never loses her grin.

  I feel the blood rush to my face. “I’m going to stop talking now.”

/>   “Smart. You must be an archivist,” she teases, grin still in place.

  I like this woman. I’ve always liked her, back since the first day I met her, years ago, at a conference when we were both on a panel about preserving classified documents. To open the panel, a sweet elderly female moderator announced that at the dinner that night, there’d be parking in the rear. I know. Judge me all you want. The best part was, she kept repeating it, over and over. “Don’t forget, for the dinner…there’s parking in the rear.”

  Mina tipped back on the hind legs of her chair, looking for someone to share a juvenile laugh. She found me. With a quick exchange of eye-smiles, we were instant friends, though truth be told, every time I saw her at a conference, I’d tell myself to ask her out. But I didn’t. The first time, I blamed it on the fact that my fiancée was dumping me. I did the same the time after that. A few weeks back, I finally asked.

  It was kinda a date—a private tour of the Archives for her and her older brother, an army vet who’d been severely injured in Afghanistan and sick since he’d returned. A week after I showed them around, just as I went to ask Mina out again, I heard that her brother had died. Mina had known it was coming, but I didn’t want to be the guy who capitalized on that.

  “You see they moved next year’s conference to Arizona?” she asks. “Don’t these dummies know archivists are like vampires? People with pasty white skin don’t like the sun.” When I don’t laugh, she takes a closer look at me. “Wow, not even nibbling at my cheap archivist jokes. You’re in real trouble, aren’t you?”

  “I just want to know…” I say, following her to her office and reaching into my pocket, “if you can tell me more about this.” Tweezed between my pointer-finger and thumb, I hold out the orange-jeweled Secret Service pin that I swiped from White Eyelashes’s jacket.

  From the look on Mina’s face, my problems are just starting.

  23

  This man who attacked you and Beecher…”

  “He didn’t attack us,” Marshall said.