The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  “I’m surprised they put their names on them,” Dallas says as we pass one for the FBI.

  “Those are the rooms they want you to see,” Gina says with a laugh. “We’ve got over twenty-two miles of tunnels back here. You don’t want to know how much more space they’ve got.”

  I pretend to laugh along, but as we go deeper into the cave I can’t take my eyes off the ceiling, which seems to be getting lower.

  “You’re not imagining things,” Gina says. “It is getting lower.”

  Dallas shoots me a look to see if I’m okay.

  Throughout the cavern, the jagged rock walls are painted white, and there are fluorescent lights hung everywhere, presumably to make it feel more like a workplace instead of an anthill.

  To my surprise, it works.

  On our right, two employees wait at an ATM that’s built into the rock. Next to that, there’s a red awning over a fully functioning store called the “Roadway Café.”

  I thought being this far underground would feel like I was being buried. Instead…

  “You’ve got a full-blown city down here,” Dallas says as we pass a new group of construction workers—this one putting the finishing touches on an area that holds vending machines.

  “Almost three thousand employees. Think of us as the Empire State Building lying on its side and buried three hundred feet underground. We got a full-service post office… our own water treatment plant to make the toilets work… even good food in the cafeteria—though of course, it’s all brought in. There’s no cooking permitted on site. We get a fire and—forget burning the files that’re stored down here—y’know what kinda death trap we’d be standing in?” she asks with a laugh.

  Neither Dallas nor I laugh back—especially as we both look up and notice the cargo netting that’s now running along the length of the ceiling and keeping stray rocks, cracked stalactites, and what feels like the entire cavern from collapsing on our heads. Back by the café and the ATM, we were in the cave’s version of Times Square. But as the employees thin out and we head deeper into the catacombs, this is clearly one of its darker alleys.

  “Home sweet home,” Gina says, flicking on the golf cart’s lights.

  Straight ahead, it looks like the cave dead-ends. But as the golf cart’s lights blink awake, there’s no missing the yellow police tape that keeps people from turning the corner, or the enormous red, white, and blue eagle—part of the National Archives logo—that’s painted directly on the cave wall. Above the eagle’s head is a partially unrolled scroll with the words: Littera Scripta Manet, the Archives motto that translates as “The Written Word Endures.”

  Damn right it does, I think to myself, hopping out of the golf cart and darting for the bright red door that serves as the entrance to the Archives’ underground storage facility.

  102

  Anything else I can help with?” Gina calls out, standing in the cave, outside the threshold of the open red door.

  “I think we’re fine,” I tell her.

  Dallas is already inside the storage unit.

  I’m anxious to follow.

  Gina never leaves her spot. As a sales rep, she’s in charge of clearing our visit with Mr. Harmon and the Presidential Records Office, checking our IDs, and even putting in the six-digit code that opens the steel door (and the secondary door that sits just behind that). But without the necessary security clearance, she can’t join us in here.

  “Both doors open from the inside,” she assures us as the cold air pours out from the room. Just inside the door, I take a quick glance at the hygrothermograph on the wall. The temperature is at a brisk fifty-eight degrees, which is colder than we usually keep it.

  “If you think of anything else, just gimme a call,” she adds, tapping the leather phone holster on her hip. Reading my expression, she says, “Reception’s great. We’ve got cell towers throughout.”

  Her point hits home as my own phone starts to vibrate.

  As I glance down, caller ID tells me it’s Tot. Again.

  “I should grab this,” I say to Gina, who nods a quick goodbye, keenly aware of when a client needs privacy.

  As the red steel door slams shut and my phone continues to vibrate, I spin toward our destination and step through the second door, where the damp darkness of the cave has been replaced by an enormous bright white room that’s as big as an airplane hangar and as sterile as our preservation staff can possibly manage. In truth, it’s just a taller, brighter version of our stacks in D.C., filled with row after row of metal shelves. But instead of just books and archive boxes, the specially designed shelves are also packed with plastic boxes and metal canisters that hold old computer tape, vintage film, and thousands upon thousands of negatives of old photographs.

  There’s a reason this stuff is here instead of in Washington. Part of it’s the cold temperature (which is better for film). Part of it’s cost (which is better for our budget). But part of it—especially the archive boxes that are locked in the security cage on my left—is what we call “geographical separation.” It’s one of the National Archives’ most vital—and least known—tasks. If there’s ever a terrorist attack that turns Washington into a fireball, we’re fully ready with the documents and paperwork to make sure our most vital institutions survive.

  But as I step into the room, the only survival I’m really worried about is my own.

  “You find it yet?” I call to Dallas, who’s racing up the center aisle, checking record group numbers on each row of shelves that he passes.

  His only answer is a sharp right turn as he disappears down one of the far rows in back. We’re definitely close.

  My phone vibrates for the fourth time, about to kick to voicemail. I have no idea if Tot knows where we are. But now that he can’t get in the way, it’d probably be smart to find out.

  “Beecher here,” I answer, waiting to see how long it takes him to fish.

  “Where the hell are you?” Tot asks. “I left you half a dozen messages!”

  “I didn’t get them. I’m just… it’s been a crazy day.”

  “Don’t. I know when you’re lying, Beecher. Where are you? Who’re you with?”

  I take a moment to think about a response. Even through the phone, I swear I feel Tot’s good eye picking me apart. “Tot, you need to—”

  “Are you still with Clementine? I thought she left after the cemetery.”

  I pause. “How’d you know I was at a cemetery?”

  “Because I’m not an idiot like the rest of the idiots you seem to be in love with!”

  “Wait… time out. Did you have someone following me!?”

  Before he can answer, my phone beeps. I look down and recognize the number. It’s the only person who could possibly take me away from this one.

  “Tot, hold on a sec.”

  “Don’t you hang up on me!”

  With a click, I put him on hold.

  “Mr. Harmon?” I ask the man in Presidential Records who not only helped us get into the cave but also knows exactly what document we’re looking for. “I-Is everything okay?”

  “That’s my question for you,” he says, though his tone surprisingly seems softer and more helpful than usual. That’s all I need to be suspicious. “Everything going okay down there?”

  “It’s… we’re fine.” I pause a moment, confused. “Is there a reason we shouldn’t be fine?”

  “Not at all,” he says, back to his military matter-of-factness. “Just making sure you got there. I’d asked the Copper Mountain folks to stay a little later when I heard you lost the directions.”

  “When I lost the what?”

  “The directions I sent. Your secretary said—”

  “My secretary?”

  “The woman who called. She said you lost the directions.”

  Up on my left, back in the stacks, there’s a metal thunk. The problem is, Dallas is all the way down on my right.

  According to the hygrothermograph, it’s still a cool fifty-eight degrees. But sudd
enly the long white room feels like an oven. Clearly we’re not alone in here.

  “Mr. Harmon, let me call you right back,” I say, hanging up the phone.

  “Dallas, we got problems!” I shout, racing up the aisle and clicking back to Tot.

  “Wait—you’re with Dallas!?” Tot asks, hearing the last bits through the phone.

  “Tot, this isn’t—!”

  “Beecher, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

  “You’re wrong! For once, I know exactly what I’m doing!”

  “Pay attention!” Tot explodes. “I know what Clementine did… I know her grandmother’s long dead… I even know how she did it! We got the tox report—they found a dose of oral chemo in Orlando’s blood, even though he never had cancer. That’s how she poisoned him—she put it in his coffee! Now where in God’s name are you so I can get you someplace safe?”

  My brain kicks hard, fighting to find the right places for each new puzzle piece. What’s amazing is how quickly each one fits.

  “Where are you, Beecher?” Tot asks again.

  There’s a part of me that knows to stay quiet. It’s the same part that has kept Tot at arm’s length since the night I went out to Clementine’s house. But no matter how easy it is to paint him as the enemy, the one picture I can’t shake is the one from three years ago, at lunch in our dungeony cafeteria, when Tot finally trusted me enough to tell me about the first night, after fifty years, that he slept alone in his house after his wife died. He said he couldn’t bring himself to sleep under those covers as long as she wasn’t there.

  I don’t care what anyone says. There are some things that can’t be lied about.

  “Tot, listen to me: I think Clementine is here. With us.”

  “What’re you talking about? Where’s here? Who’re you with besides Dallas?”

  “Them. The Culper Ring.”

  I hear him take a deep breath.

  “You need to get out of there, Beecher.”

  “We are… we’re about to,” I say as I reach the back of the room and spot Dallas down one of the rows. He’s on his knees, rummaging through a cardboard file box—a new box—that’s marked Wallace/Hometown in thick magic marker. “We’re just getting—”

  “Forget the Culper Ring. Get out of there!”

  “But don’t you see? You were right about them. Dallas brought me in and—”

  “Dallas isn’t in the Culper Ring!”

  Turning the corner, I hit the brakes, knocking a square file box from the shelf. As it tumbles and hits the concrete floor, it vomits sheets of paper in a wide fan.

  “What’d you say?” I ask.

  “Dallas isn’t in the Culper Ring. He never was.”

  “How do you know?”

  Tot takes another breath, his voice more of a grumble than a whisper. “Because I’m in the Culper Ring, Beecher. And I swear to you—the moment he finds what he’s looking for, Dallas is going to end your life.”

  At the end of the row, down on his knees and flipping through one particular file, Dallas looks my way and peers over his scratched black reading glasses. “Y’okay, Beecher?” he calls out. “You don’t look so good.”

  103

  I-I’m great,” I tell Dallas, who quickly turns back to the file he’s flipping through.

  “Turn around and walk away from him!” Tot barks through the phone. “Dallas has been in the Plumbers from the start—his uncle is Ronald Cobb, the President’s law school pal, who used to work at the Archives and got Dallas the job here! That’s why they picked him!”

  It makes no sense. If that’s the case, why’d Dallas bring me here? But before I can ask it—

  “If you think I’m lying, at least get out of there,” Tot adds. “At the very worst, I keep you alive!”

  I take a few steps back, my body still in shock. It’s like staring at your reflection in the back of a spoon. In front of me, the spoon flattens—the distortion fades—and life slowly becomes crystal clear. Since the start of this, I’ve learned how good the Culper Ring was at keeping secrets… how they protect us like a big outer ring without ever revealing their existence… and how hard they’ve worked to shut down corrupt Presidents like Nixon or Wallace when they start their own private, self-serving inner rings like the Plumbers. But last night, within the first three minutes of being in that safehouse, Dallas spilled every secret, revealed his own membership, and took control of my entire search for the Plumbers, including making sure that I stopped sharing with Tot.

  I thought it was for my own good.

  But if what Tot says is true… if Tot’s the one in the Culper Ring and Dallas has been lying… the only ones who really benefited were Wallace… Palmiotti… and…

  “This is it…!” Dallas shouts, excitedly pulling out a few sheets of paper and slapping the file folder shut. “We got it, Beech. Here it is!” Closing the file box, he shoves it back on the shelf and rushes right at me.

  “Get away from him, Beecher!” Tot yells in my ear.

  Dallas stops right in front of me, the hospital file clutched at his side.

  “Who’re you talking to?” Dallas asks, pointing to my phone and sliding his reading glasses back into his jacket pocket.

  “He found the file? Do not let him have that!” Tot adds as another noise—this one louder, a metal thud—erupts from this side of the stacks. Whoever’s in here, they’re getting closer.

  “That noise… you think that’s Clementine?” Dallas asks, sidestepping past me and racing into the main aisle, back toward the door. What Tot said first is still my best move. I can deal with Dallas later. Right now, though, I need to get out of here.

  “Watch him, Beecher!” Tot says in my ear as we pick up speed.

  With each row we pass, I glance down each one. Empty. Empty. Empty again.

  The air feels frozen as we run. It doesn’t stop the even colder sweat that’s crawling up my back.

  The red doors are just a few feet away.

  We pass another empty row. And another.

  “Do we need a code to get out!?” Dallas asks.

  “She said it opens from—”

  Kuh-kunk.

  The metal door flies wide as Dallas rams it with his hip. It’s the same for the next door, the outer red door, which whips open, dumping us both back into the dusty air and poor lighting of the cave. We’re still moving, skidding, slowing down. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

  That’s the reason we don’t see who’s standing there, waiting for us.

  There’s a soft click. Like the hammer on a gun.

  “Put the phone down, Beecher,” she says, and I drop it to the ground. To make sure Tot’s gone, she picks it up and hangs up the phone herself.

  I was wrong. She wasn’t inside. She was out here the whole time.

  “I’m sorry. I really am,” Clementine adds as she points her gun at Dallas’s face, then over to mine. “But I need to know what they did to my dad.”

  104

  You really think I believe a word you’re saying?” I ask, my eyes narrowing on Clementine’s gun.

  “She’s a liar,” Dallas agrees. “Whatever she’s about to tell you, she’s a liar.”

  “Don’t let Dallas confuse you,” Clementine says. “You know what’s true… you met Nico yourself. They ruined him, Beecher. They ruined my dad’s life.”

  “You think that excuses everything you did? You killed Orlando! And then that lying… exploiting our friendship…!” I shout, hoping it’s loud enough for someone to hear.

  There’s a small group of employees all the way down by the cave’s cafeteria. They don’t even turn. They’re too far.

  She points with her gun, motioning us around the corner as we duck under the yellow police tape with the word Caution written across it. Back here, the lights are dimmer than those in the main cavity. From the piles of metal shelving on our right, and the rolls of cable wire piled up on our left, it looks like this section of the cave is mostly used for maintenance a
nd storage. No one’s hearing us back here.

  My brain whips back to our old schoolyard and when she tied that jump rope around Vincent Paglinni’s neck. Two days ago, when Clementine saw her father, I thought the girl who was always prepared was finally undone. But I was wrong. As always, she was prepared for everything.

  “Beecher, before you judge,” she says. “I swear to you… I tried telling you the truth.”

  “When was that? Before or after you hired someone to play your dead grandmother?”

  “I didn’t hire anyone! Nan’s the woman I live with—the landlord’s mother-in-law. Instead of paying rent, I take care of her!”

  “Then why’d you say she’s your grandmother?”

  “I didn’t, Beecher! That’s what you said! And then—You cared so much about it, and I just wanted—You have no idea what’s at stake.”

  “That’s your response!? You’re not even pregnant, are you? That was just to suck my sympathy and lead me along!”

  “I didn’t tell her to blurt that! She saw me throwing up and that’s what she thought! The woman hates me!”

  “You still let me believe some old woman was your dead grandmother! You understand how sick that is?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You’re sick just like Nico!”

  “Don’t say that!” she erupts.

  “You killed my friend!” I erupt right back. “You murdered Orlando! You’re a murderer just like your crazy-ass father!”

  She shakes her head over and over, but it’s not in anger. The way her chin is tucked down to her chest, she can’t look up at me. “I-I didn’t mean to,” she pleads. “I didn’t think he would die.”

  “Then why’d you bring that chemo with you!? I know how you did it—don’t say it’s an accident, Clementine! You came in the building with that chemo in your pocket—or was the real plan to use that on me?”

  “It wasn’t meant for anyone,” she says, her voice lower than ever.

  “Then why’d you bring it!?”

  Her nostrils flare.

  “Clementine…”