The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  Alby cocked a confused eyebrow as he held a cotton swab to his arm.

  “On the plane. The old couple,” Julian whispered, chewing his thumbnail.

  “No,” Alby said. “You?”

  Julian shook his head. His eyes danced back and forth. “I keep thinking about ’em.”

  Alby nodded, thumbing the Charlie Chaplin button in his pocket.

  At the front of the room, the colonel was looking right at them, his Santa eyes tightening.

  “Over these next few months, not everyone will make it through the program,” Doggett insisted. “But if you persist and push forward, if you can see where that fork takes you, we won’t just make you better soldiers. We—and you—will make history.”

  With the shot of verbal adrenaline, every young soldier was sitting up straight. Julian was no longer biting his thumb. Alby was no longer fiddling with Charlie Chaplin. And in the front row, as the boat slipped away from the dock and set a course for its destination, Nico and Timothy were no longer the only ones convinced they would change the world.

  27

  Two weeks ago

  Arlington, Virginia

  这样会伤害,” the chubby Asian dentist insisted, a surgeon’s mask covering his mustache.

  “This will hurt,” his female assistant translated as the doctor lowered his scraping tool into Clementine’s open mouth.

  “Ah uh-huh-hann,” Clementine replied from the dentist’s chair. I understand.

  She knew the alternative: cutting out her jaw and disfiguring her face. This way, she at least had a chance.

  Outside, the sign on the closed storefront read Happy Jade Herbal Shop. Inside, it smelled the part—sandalwood incense—and looked the part: The far wall was lined with small glass cookie jars, giving it a candy store feel, though the jars were filled with ginseng, dried ginkgo, dong quai, plum flower, and every Chinese herb imaginable. On the left-hand wall, a bamboo bookcase held teapots, rice wine, and medicated honey. There were even Himalayan salt lamps and fingerless gloves up by the register for the local potheads who always wandered in.

  Still, only certain customers were invited to the breakroom in back.

  “This way,” a young Chinese woman had offered when they first stepped inside. She wore a sage green uniform top with a logo of a lotus. A white cat lay asleep on the counter by her desk.

  “I don’t understand,” Clementine whispered to Ezra, starting to panic as they followed the woman behind the counter and into the back.

  You’ll see, Ezra said with a glance.

  Three seconds later, she did.

  Reaching the small breakroom, the young assistant made a beeline for the huge refrigerator and tugged it open…

  Then climbed in and kept going.

  Inside, the fridge had no shelves. No back.

  “This way,” the young Chinese woman repeated, ducking her head and stepping into the hollowed-out refrigerator, which led them into the sterile beige room that was hidden so carefully behind the storefront.

  A chubby Asian doctor in a white lab coat was waiting for them. Behind him was a medical rolling cart.

  For the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans, and any other spy willing to pay cash, when an appendix ruptured or a broken arm needed to be set, Happy Jade Herbal Shop was less than ten miles from CIA headquarters, and just a phone call away. Indeed, as Ezra explained, even the very best of us sometimes need a doctor, a surgeon…or a dentist.

  “我可以将它保存,” the Asian man told Clementine, stuffing the tips of his fingers deep into her open mouth as she lay flat on her back on a massage table that was draped in a white sheet.

  “He thinks he can save it,” his assistant said, though neither of them sounded convinced.

  Staring up at the swivel light above her—and trying to pretend that, through his surgical mask, she couldn’t smell the whiff of eggs on the dentist’s breath—Clementine nodded a hesitant thank-you, her mouth still wide open. There was no dental vacuum or little sink to rinse in. Every few minutes, she’d spit blood into a bucket. But based on the carefully set-out array of mouth mirrors, dental picks, and various-sized scrapers, the dentist seemed to know what he was doing. At least he was equipped.

  Turning to the rolling cart, he reached for what looked like a narrow pair of pliers. Pliers! Clementine thought as he twisted the implement into her open mouth. Thanks to the Novocain, she didn’t feel anything, but as he pulled the pliers out, she saw the grayish-white lump of flesh that came too. More dead gum.

  “它看起来很糟糕的,” the dentist said in a low voice.

  This time, the assistant just nodded.

  Glancing sideways, Clementine saw that Ezra was no longer there. She knew he’d be back soon. Once his part of the bargain was done, Clementine had promised she’d make an introduction to Nico.

  Over the course of the next two hours, the dentist drilled a groove behind Clementine’s back left teeth, inserted a thin metal wire into that groove, and with a bit of cement to hold it, used the wire to tie her four back teeth together so they wouldn’t fall out of place.

  As he knotted the wire, he was pressing so hard on Clementine’s mouth that tears spontaneously erupted from her eyes as her body tried desperately to protect itself.

  As long as I get to keep my face, Clementine told herself, staring with determination at the blinding swivel light. When it came to what had happened on the island all those years ago, Beecher was searching for his father. Clementine was searching for something far more selfish. A cure. Or at least a treatment.

  From the soft grin in the dentist’s eyes, she thought all was probably going well enough. But the longer Clementine lay there on the table…and spit into the blood bucket…and felt the tears blur her eyes…she knew, even in the best of circumstances, this victory was nothing more than temporary.

  Fighting cancer was hard enough. But fighting a rare cancer no one’s ever heard of?

  “她再次出血,” the dentist said to his assistant.

  The assistant nodded, and this time didn’t even look down at Clementine.

  Staring up at the swivel light, her mouth open wider than ever, Clementine fought to keep her head still as the dentist knit the last knots together. With a final tug, he stood up straight, pulling his hands from her mouth.

  “打开你的手,” the dentist told her.

  “Open your hand,” the assistant said.

  Before it even registered, Clementine felt the dentist uncurl her fingers and press a small white object into her palm. A tooth. Her back molar.

  “From tooth fairy,” the dentist said with a huffy laugh.

  Lying there on her back and forcing her own shaky laugh, Clementine raised the fat tooth to her face. It weighed nothing. She studied the two bloodied divots where the roots used to be. There was a metaphor in there somewhere: From her mother to her father, so many roots had been ripped from her life. And as she tried to save herself, she’d ripped so many roots from others.

  As Clementine held the tooth up toward the blinding white swivel light, it seemed to disappear above her…and right there, for the very first time, she knew what the ending of this story would be. Had to be. For all the running around she was doing, for all the pain she put up with, there was only one way she was getting out of this.

  “Tooth fairy. You know tooth fairy, yes?” the dentist repeated.

  Clementine just lay there, staring up at the light.

  Any minute now, Ezra would be back. By bringing her here, by getting her help… She knew it came with a catch. He’d want her decision: About her father. About their involvement. And of course about the Knights.

  “Spit please,” the dental assistant said, holding up the blood bucket.

  Clementine blinked, but didn’t move.

  During near-death experiences filled with white light, some people find God or see lost loved ones. Today, in a makeshift dental office in Arlington, Virginia, Clementine stared up at a blinding white swivel lamp and foun
d something else entirely.

  There was no mistaking it. Her whole body felt lighter as months of pain and fear lifted from her chest.

  “You okay?” the dental assistant asked.

  Clementine nodded, her eyes burning from the light.

  Finally. She knew exactly what to do.

  28

  Today

  Washington, D.C.

  Can we just agree there’s no such thing as a good computer?” Mina asks, standing over her desk and squinting at her monitor.

  “Can’t find it?” I ask.

  “No. Chill. It’s here. Just in a different—” She’s already moving, sidestepping me and headed to a small storage closet in the corner of her office. As Mina passes, she smells of old books and lavender shampoo. God, how good that smells. The fact that that excites me shows just how long it’s been since I had a proper date.

  “So now that you’re in charge, what’s the head Secret Service Archivist do?” I call out, trying to make small talk as I notice how neat her desk is. Funny. Most archivists are pack rats.

  “Same as you,” she calls back from the other room. I can see her through the door, her fingers walking along the spines as she scans a large bookshelf. “Preserving and cataloguing our current items, plus we get a lot of collectors. Every day, there’s some guy saying he’s got an old gun, or old metal baton, or a 1960s vehicle that was used in the LBJ administration, and could we please check the car’s VIN number to verify authenticity.”

  Above Mina’s desk, there’re no diplomas, no vanity pics like you see in most D.C. offices. Instead, there’s just a single framed poster from World War II, warning GIs about the dangers of malaria. This Is Ann… She Drinks Blood! the headline reads, pointing to a bright red cartoon mosquito with a crooked nose. But as I look closer at the mosquito and the crooked nose…

  “Is this Dr. Seuss?” I ask.

  “Kick-ass, right?” Mina calls back from the other room. “He and Walt Disney did tons of cartoons and posters during World War II. I know most people prefer Disney, but c’mon, Dr. Seuss didn’t have to kill off the mother to make a solid plot line.”

  “Still, cartoonists fighting Hitler.”

  “Amen,” she says. “Though still doesn’t make up for Epcot.”

  I laugh. “You blame that on Walt? He died sixteen years before it opened.”

  “I blame so much on Walt,” she tosses back.

  As I scan the rest of her work space, I see it’s pretty sparse. This is her new office. In fact, besides the Dr. Seuss on her wall and a pair of running shoes tucked beneath the desk, the only evidence of her actual life is a framed four-by-six photo with a newer, similar-sized photo propped against the frame. The newer photo is from the Archives. Her brother, in his wheelchair and with oxygen cannulas at his nose, holds up both hands in victory and flashes a frail but glowing smile. He’s sitting right in front of the Declaration of Independence.

  “Sorry…you weren’t supposed to see that,” Mina calls from the storage closet.

  I keep staring at the photo. As an archivist, she knows the rules. When it comes to the Declaration, no pictures allowed. By anyone.

  “We took it when you were in the bathroom,” she explains, already apologizing. “You saw what kinda shape James was in. He barely lived another week. He just wanted the photo so bad—it made him so stupidly happy.”

  I nod, still focused on his proud smile and the way his crooked arms are up in victory. It’s like looking at the photo of a kid you just heard was abducted. All you see is the lost potential.

  “Christ on toast. You knew,” Mina calls out.

  I stay silent.

  “You went to the bathroom on purpose, didn’t you?” she says. “You knew what we were doing.”

  I still don’t answer. On the day I gave them the tour, James said the Declaration was why he’d fought for this country. He deserved far more than just me faking a dumb bathroom break.

  Still kneeling at a file cabinet in the storage closet, Mina stares over her shoulder at me.

  “You would’ve done the same,” I tell her. “In fact, right now, you kinda are.”

  Unwilling to argue, she turns back to the filing cabinet, more determined than ever to help. I turn back to the framed photo on her desk. It’s of Mina.

  I lean close. It looks like it was taken years ago, at a school track meet. I remember her mentioning that she liked to run, but I’ve never seen this. In the photo, she’s in pain, crouched down on both knees, head bowed. This isn’t the thrill of victory. It’s young Mina meeting the agony of defeat.

  “And jackpot was his name-o!” she calls from the storage closet. Through the door, I see her flipping through a stack of old ledgers.

  Wasting no time, I pull out my phone, open a browser, and enter Mina’s name, along with the words AT&T Indoor Championships, which are printed just above the bib number pinned to her back in the photo.

  According to Google—and some track-and-field website—Mina wasn’t a runner. She was a long jumper, a high school and college star. The photo’s from the Olympic trials eight years ago. From what I can read, she was the underdog, but when she took second place in something called Flight 1, she made it all the way to the finals.

  She lost by .02 meters.

  Less than an inch.

  I look back at her photos. In one, she’s crouched in defeat. In the other, there’s her dead brother. Most people keep their life’s highlight reel on their desk, but these—the longer I look at them—something tells me they’re the two worst moments in her life. For Mina, this is her motivati—

  “Wanna tell me what’s going on?” she asks behind me.

  I spin, starting to apologize. But as Mina towers over me, she’s holding the orange pin in one hand and an old, open ledger in the other.

  “Where’d you find it, Beecher?”

  “The pin?”

  “Yes, the pin. Now answer my question.”

  “I already told you—”

  “Tell me again. And this time, try including some truth. I appreciate what you did for my brother, but according to these serial numbers, this isn’t just some random find.”

  “Mina, if you’re accusing me of something, you have my word, I have no idea what it is.”

  She shifts from one foot to the other, digesting my reaction. “From what it says here, this pin went missing—and might’ve been worn by someone else—on a very specific day.”

  “And that day is?”

  “March 30, 1981.”

  My face goes white. A chill spreads out from my chest.

  March 30, 1981.

  The day President Ronald Reagan was shot.

  29

  Camp David

  Every Secret Service agent has a day that’s the most important day of their life. For Agent Scottie Koller, that day was today.

  Looking back, Scottie could blame it all on a movie. When he was twelve years old, back in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, he was sick with diarrhea and home from school. His mom was the one who put it on: In the Line of Fire.

  His mother had a crush on Clint Eastwood. Scottie fell in love with something else entirely: Brave men willing to take a bullet. Watching history from a front row seat. And of course, Rene Russo with a gun.

  Scottie didn’t rewatch the movie until years later, but like the best dreams, once they take root, they have a way of digging in. Even back then, it was so clear: wearing that crisp black suit; running alongside the President’s bulletproof limo; joining the Secret Service.

  A decade later, when Scottie arrived for his training at the Service’s Beltsville, Maryland, facility, six other agents in his recruiting class told the exact same story. To this day, In the Line of Fire remained one of the Service’s best recruiting tools, which explained why, soon after it was released, the army and the rest of the military created entire departments to engage Hollywood.

  At the time, for Scottie Koller, it was day one in the Service.

  Today was day 1,927. J
ust over five years.

  “Koller, from Command Post,” a voice crackled through Scottie’s earpiece as he lugged a bag of golf clubs down the outdoor slate steps and to the backyard of the President’s elegant, California-style Camp David bungalow. “How’re things looking? Are the golf clubs safe?”

  “That’s funny, Command Post,” Scottie shot back through his hand mic, readjusting the golf clubs and approaching a wide patch of grass where the marines had already melted away the snow. The President’s private driving range. Didn’t matter that it was always ten degrees colder at Camp David. Wallace was on his way; everything had to be ready. “By the way, I took a piss in your thermos yesterday,” Scottie added.

  “I know. That’s why I switched my thermos with yours,” Command Post replied as Scottie dumped the golf bag in the back of an all-terrain golf cart.

  During Scottie’s first couple of years on the job, he’d been one of the youngest at the White House…until the U.S. women’s national soccer team came to visit and Scottie got caught hitting on one of the assistant coaches. The worst part was, he wasn’t even hitting on her. That much.

  These days, Scottie sat in the Baltimore field office, doing background checks on new Service applicants. The Rubber Gun Squad, they called it. The only bone he was thrown was when the President came out to Camp David and they needed extra help doing perimeter checks. Usually, that had Scottie ruining his shoes as he walked through the surrounding woods. Today, though, they wanted him inside the fence.

  “Homerun and Hyacinth are fifteen minutes,” Command Post added, using the Service’s code names for Wallace and the First Lady. Fifteen minutes until arrival. Time to clear out. Especially at Camp David, the First Lady hated to have agents lingering.

  “Almost done,” Scottie told Command Post, following his training and scanning the golf range from left to right, then up and down. The golf clubs were in place. Same with the cart. On his right was an extra sled for the kids. Everything was—

  No. Everything wasn’t in place.