The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  “Our own little Oval Office,” Orlando adds, motioning palms-up like a flight attendant showing off the emergency rows. Yet unlike the Oval and its grand decor, the small windowless room is beige, beige, and more beige, centered around a wide oak table, a secure phone that sits on top, and two wooden library chairs.

  When they first see it, most staffers blurt, “That’s it?”

  Clementine circles the desk, studying each beige wall like she’s taking in a Picasso. “I like the poster,” she finally says.

  Behind me, stuck to the back of the metal door, is a poster featuring a steaming hot cup of coffee and a red-lettered warning:

  A lot of information can spill over one of these.

  Make sure that your conversation is secure to the last drop.

  Yet as I read the words, my brain backflips to—

  Crap. Orlando’s coffee.

  “No, not on there,” I plead with Clementine just as she’s about to take a seat and lower the open cup onto the President’s desk. If it spills…

  I reach to grab it; she jerks her hand to protect it. That’s all it takes. The back of my hand brushes against the styrofoam—the cup tips—and the light brown liquid splashes across the desk, racing to Clementine’s side of the table.

  A waterfall of coffee pours down, tap-dancing in a fine neat kick-line across the polished floor.

  We need to get this clean before the President…

  Clementine jumps back to avoid the mess, and her legs slam into her chair, sending the wooden seat toppling backward.

  “Orlando, go get paper towels!” I yell, ripping off my blue lab coat to use it as a sponge.

  The wooden chair hits the floor with a crack…

  … followed by an odd, hollow thump.

  I turn just in time to see the exposed bottom of the chair, where a square piece of wood pops out from the underside, falls to the floor—and reveals the shadow of an object hidden within.

  From the table, coffee continues to drip down, slowing its kick-line across the linoleum.

  My throat constricts.

  And I get my first good look at what was clearly tucked inside the chair’s little hiding spot and is now sitting on the floor, right in the path of the spreading puddle of coffee. It looks like a small file folder.

  “Beech?” Orlando whispers behind me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Please tell me you had no idea that was in there.”

  “No idea. Swear to God.”

  He picks up the coffee cup and takes a final swig of whatever’s left. As my magic key spot-welds to my chest, I know he’s thinking the same thing I am: If this was put here for, or even worse, by the President…

  “Beech?” he repeats as the puddled coffee slowly seeps into the folder.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re dead.”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  4

  Seventeen years ago

  Sagamore, Wisconsin

  Running up the snowy front path, young Clementine Kaye bounced up the wooden staircase toward the small house with the dangling green shutter. She made sure her left foot was always the first one to touch the steps. Her mom told her most people lead with their right foot. “But hear me on this, Clemmi,” Mom used to say, “what’s the fun in being most people?”

  Even now, at thirteen years old, Clementine knew the answer.

  Reaching the front door, she didn’t ring the doorbell that went ding, but never dong. She didn’t need to ring the doorbell.

  She was prepared. She had a key and let herself inside.

  As the door swung open and the whiff of rosewater perfume washed over her, she didn’t call out or ask if anybody was home. She knew no one would answer. Her mom was still traveling—three shows in St. Louis—which meant she’d be gone until next week.

  Clementine didn’t even worry about getting help with homework, or what she’d eat for dinner. She’d grown accustomed to figuring things out. Plus, she knew how to cook. Maybe tonight she’d make her sausage stew.

  In fact, as Clementine twisted out of her winter coat and let it drop to the linoleum floor, where it deflated and sagged like a body with no bones, she was all smiles. Giving quick chin-tickles to two of the three ginger cats her mom had brought back from various trips, Clementine was still moving quickly as she burst into the overcluttered living room, turned on the CD player that teetered so precariously off the edge of the bookshelf, and inserted the disc labeled Penny Maxwell’s Greatest Hits.

  Penny wasn’t just Clementine’s favorite singer. Penny was Clementine’s mother—who still had nearly three hundred copies of her Greatest Hits CD stacked in the closets, under the bed, and in the trunk and backseat of the car. It was yet another of Mom’s brainstorms that brought more storm than brain. (“If you do a Greatest Hits first, it’ll sell faster because people will think they’re missing something.”) Clementine didn’t notice. For her, this was life.

  Indeed, as the music began and the sly hook from the trumpet seized the air, Clementine closed her eyes, soaking in the familiar husky voice that’d been singing her to bed—with this same song, Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”—since she was a baby.

  Mama may have, Papa may have

  But God bless the child that’s got her own

  Clementine had no idea that her mom had changed the words so it was about a little girl. And had no idea that Billie Holiday had written the song after a particularly brutal argument with her own mother, over money—which is what that’s got his own really refers to. But right there, as she stood there in the living room, swaying back and forth in the pretend dance she always did with her mom after school, thirteen-year-old Clementine Kaye wasn’t sad about being alone… or having to cook dinner… or even having to fend for herself.

  She was prepared. She was always prepared.

  But more than prepared, she was just happy to hear her mom’s voice.

  5

  Today

  Washington, D.C.

  I don’t see what the big disaster is,” Clementine says in the SCIF.

  “Nonono—don’t touch it!” Orlando yells as I reach for the small file folder.

  “What? It’s soaking wet,” I argue, snatching it, now dripping, from the coffee puddle.

  “We could’ve put it back,” he says.

  “It’s soaking. Look. See the soaking?” I hold up the file so he can spot the drip-drip from the corner of the manila folder. “You think I can just shove this back under the chair like nothing happened? We need to report this.”

  “Lando, you there? Vault all clear?” a voice crackles through his walkie-talkie.

  We all turn toward the upended wooden chair and the gaping hollow hiding spot underneath.

  “Y-Yeah, perfect,” Orlando reports back through his walkie.

  “Good, because company’s coming,” the voice crackles back. “Service says ten minutes till departure.”

  From here, the White House is a ten-minute trip. But only three if you’re coming by motorcade.

  “We need to get out of here,” I say, trying to sop up the coffee with my lab coat.

  Orlando stays focused on the chair. On the side of it, just underneath the actual seat, there’s a narrow slot—like a mail slot—cut into the piece of wood that connects the left front leg with the back leg. “D’you have any idea what this—?” He shakes his head, his toothy grin long gone. “You were right. We gotta report this.”

  “I take that back. Let’s think about this.”

  “Beech, if someone’s using this room as a dead drop…”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “A dead drop?” Clementine asks.

  “Like a hiding spot,” Orlando says.

  Reading her confusion, I add, “It’s a place where you leave something for another person, so you don’t have to risk a face-to-face meeting. Like taping something below a mailbox, or in a hollowed-out tree, or…”

  “… in a chair,” Clementi
ne says, quickly seeing the full picture. With the narrow mail slot underneath the seat, it’d be simple to slide an item into the chair seat, then take it out through the removable hollow bottom. “So if this SCIF is used only by President Wallace, and there’s something hidden here for him…”

  “Or by him,” Orlando points out.

  “Don’t say that. We don’t know that. We don’t know anything,” I insist.

  “And you believe those words as they leave your lips? You really think this is all just some innocent Three’s Company misunderstanding, Chrissy?” Orlando asks. “Or are you just worried that if I file an official report, your name will be permanently linked to whatever presidential bullcrap we just tripped into?”

  On the corner of the file folder, a single drip of coffee builds to a pregnant swell, but never falls.

  “We should open it and see what’s inside,” Clementine offers, far calmer than the two of us.

  “No. Don’t open it,” I insist.

  “What’re you talking about?” Orlando asks.

  “You ever seen a horror movie? There’s that moment where they hear the noise in the woods and some dumbass says, Let’s go see what’s making that noise! And of course you know right there he’s number one in the body count. Well… we’re in the horror movie: At this exact moment, this little file folder is Pandora’s box. And as long as we keep it shut—as long as we don’t know what’s inside the box—we can still walk away.”

  “Unless there’s a real monster in the box,” Orlando points out.

  “Orlando…”

  “Don’t Orlando me. This is my job, Beecher.”

  “Yeah and two seconds ago you were telling me to put it back.”

  “It’s still my job. I walk the halls, I check IDs—that’s why it’s called Security. Now I’m sorry if I find something in the President’s reading room, but we did. And if he or anyone else is committing a crime or sneaking classified papers in or out of this building, you really think we should just walk away and pretend we didn’t see it?”

  I don’t look up, but on my right, I can see the red-lettered warning poster on the back of the closed steel door. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the disappointed expression on Clementine, who clearly doesn’t deal well with weakness. The way her ginger eyes drill me, she has no idea which way I’m going to vote.

  I wish she knew me better than that.

  I toss the damp folder toward the desk. “Just remember, when the CIA grabs us in the middle of the night and puts the black Ziplocs over our heads, this is the moment where we could’ve avoided it.” The folder hits the table with a ptttt.

  Clementine doesn’t say a word. But as she takes a half-step forward, she cocks her head, like she’s seeing something brand-new on my face. I see the same on hers. I’ve known this girl since seventh grade. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her impressed.

  “Beecher, it’ll take two seconds, then we can leave,” Orlando promises. “You’ll never regret doing the right thing.”

  But as he peels open the folder, as he finally sees what’s hidden inside, I can already tell he’s wrong.

  6

  Sweet Christmas,” Orlando mutters.

  “I don’t get it. What is it?” Clementine asks, squeezing in next to me, though careful not to touch anything.

  I have no such concern. From the pockets of my coffee-stained lab coat, I pull out the pair of cotton gloves all archivists carry, put them on, pick up the folder like it’s live dynamite, and open it. Inside, it’s not a top-secret memo, or the whereabouts of bin Laden, or a target list for our spy satellites.

  “It’s a book,” Clementine says.

  She’s partly right. It has the cover of a book—cracked and mottled black leather with faded red triangles in each of the top and bottom corners. But the guts of it—almost all the interior pages—are ripped out. It’s the same with the spine: torn away, revealing exposed, ancient glue and torn stitching. Without its insides, the whole book barely has the thickness of a clipboard.

  I rub two gloved fingers across the cover. From the red rot (the aged, powdery residue that rubs off on my gloves), I’m guessing it dates back to at least the Civil War.

  “Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary,” Orlando reads from the cover.

  I check my watch. If we’re lucky, Wallace still hasn’t left the White House.

  “Why would someone hide an old, torn-up dictionary for the President?” Clementine asks.

  “Maybe the President’s hiding it for someone else,” Orlando offers. “Maybe when he’s alone in the room, he puts it in the chair for someone to pick up later, and they still haven’t picked it up yet.”

  “Or for all we know, this has nothing to do with the President, and this book has been hidden in that chair for years,” I point out.

  I swear, I can hear Orlando roll his eyes.

  “What, like that’s so crazy?” I ask.

  “Beecher, y’remember when that sweaty researcher with the pug nose and the buggy eyes was coming in here and stealing our old maps?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And when that looney-toon woman was nabbed for swiping those old Teddy Roosevelt letters because she thought she’d take better care of them than we were?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The point is, y’know how they both got away with their crimes for so long? They took a tiny penknife and sliced each page out of the bound collection, page by page so no one would notice, until almost nothing was left,” he says, motioning with a thick finger at the old dictionary like he’s Sherlock Holmes himself.

  “And that’s your grand theory? That Orson Wallace—the President of the United States, a man who can have any document brought right to him at any moment—is not only stealing from us, but stealing worthless dictionary pages?”

  For the first time in the past five minutes, the office loudmouth is silent.

  But not for long.

  “The real point,” Orlando finally says, “is that this book—this dictionary, whatever it is—is property of the Archives.”

  “We don’t even know that! The spine’s ripped off, so there’s no record group number. And if you look for…” Flipping the front cover open, I search for the circular blue National Archives stamp that’s in some of the older books in our collection. “Even the stamp’s not—” I stop abruptly.

  “What?” Orlando asks as I stare down at the inside cover. “You find something?”

  Leaning both palms on the desk, I read the handwritten inscription for the second and third time.

  Exitus

  Acta

  Probat

  “Exitus acta probat?” Clementine reads aloud over my shoulder.

  I nod, feeling the bad pain at the bridge of my nose. “Exitus acta probat. The outcome justifies the deed.”

  “You know Latin?” Clementine asks.

  “I didn’t play Little League,” I tell her.

  “I don’t understand,” Orlando says. “ ‘The outcome justifies the deed.’ Is that good or bad?”

  “Moses is in transit,” Orlando’s walkie-talkie screams through the room. They’ll notify us again when he reaches the building.

  I study the book as the pain gets worse. “I could be wrong,” I begin, “but if I’m reading this right… I think this book belonged to George Washington.”

  7

  Wait whoa wait,” Orlando says. “George George Washington? With the wooden teeth?”

  “… and the cherry tree,” I say, picking the book up and looking closely at the lettering. The paper is in such bad shape—deeply browned and rough to the touch—it’s hard to tell if the ink is old or new.

  Behind me, there’s a jingle of keys. I spin just in time to see Orlando fighting with the small metal lockbox that’s bolted to the wall in the back of the room. With a twist of his key, the box opens, revealing a stack of videotapes and a clunky top-loading VCR that could easily have been stolen straight from my grandmother’s house. Our budge
ts are good, but they’re not that good.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask.

  “Sparing you a starring role,” he says, ejecting one tape and stuffing a new one in. “Or would you prefer smiling at the camera while you hold the President’s secret stash?”

  I nearly forgot. Up in the corner there’s a small videocamera that’s been taping us since the moment we walked in. The only good news is, to maintain the security of each SCIF—and to keep outsiders from intercepting the video—each room is only wired internally, meaning there’s no transmission in or out, meaning that tape—the one Orlando is pocketing—is the only proof that Clementine and I have even been in here.

  “You sure that’s smart?” I ask.

  “It’s smart,” Clementine says, nodding confidently at Orlando. In all the panic, she’s not panicking at all. She’s watching… studying… taking it all in. It’s no different than the jump rope all those years ago.

  “Maybe you were right, though,” I point out. “Maybe we should report this to Security.”

  “I am Security—I’m a security guard,” Orlando says. “And I can tell you right now—Absolutely. No question—this right here shows a definite problem in our security.”

  “But by taking that videotape—”

  “Beecher, I appreciate that you’re a sweet guy. And I know you don’t like assuming the worst about people, but let me give you a dose of real life for a moment: There are only two possibilities for what’s happened here. Either Roman Numeral One: President Wallace doesn’t know anything about this book, in which case we can all calm down and I’ll start a proper investigation. Or Roman Numeral Two: Wallace does know about this book, in which case he’s going to want this book back, in which case handing him a videotape with our faces on it is going to do nothing but make the President of the United States declare war… on us.”

  “Now you’re being overdramatic.”