The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  “Please don’t tell me you’re waiting for Tot to get better. He’d hate that more than anyone,” she says, making me wonder if there’s anyone in the Archives who doesn’t know my business. It’s the occupational hazard of working in a building full of researchers. “Beecher, let me pass you the proverbial folded-up note in class…”

  “No one passes notes anymore. They text.”

  “Then I’m texting you,” she says, pantomiming a fake phone in her hand. “Mina likes you. Ask her out.”

  “We went out. We had a good time. It’s just her brother was sick and—”

  Before I can finish, my phone vibrates in my pocket.

  “You there yet?” a text asks, popping up onscreen. It says it’s coming from our old hometown church in Wisconsin. That tells me who it really is. Marshall Lusk. Also known as a penetration tester who spends his days breaking into buildings and security systems. Also known as one of my oldest childhood friends and the kid who always had nudie magazines in his treehouse. Also known as the one person I’m hoping will help me rebuild the Culper Ring.

  Marshall wants no part of it—or pretty much part of anything. Years ago, he was burned and disfigured, leaving his face looking like a melted candle. It also left him with an understandable bitterness and a ruthless streak that means I’m still not sure he’s 100 percent trustworthy. But since Marshall’s dad apparently served in the same Plankholder unit as mine, he’s willing to help. For now. As a result, he’s the only one who knows where I’m currently going. And who I’m trying to see.

  “Almost there,” I text back.

  Marshall knows what it means. My phone vibrates again, this time with a phone call. It’s from a different ten-digit number. I pick it up but never say a word. On the other end of the call, neither does Marshall. But now he’s listening. If anything happens, at least there’ll be a record of it.

  “Y’know, Beecher, even putting Mina aside, I’m just glad you’re getting out of the building,” Helena adds from the driver’s seat, tucking a thick ringlet of graying black hair behind her ear. “I know how hard it’s been. I say a prayer for Tot every night.”

  “I appreciate that. And I appreciate you letting me ride along with—”

  The van hits a pothole, sending our cargo in back—half a dozen red plastic collection bins—bouncing through the van. Right now, every one of the bins is empty. Not for long.

  “See? Even he has pothole problems,” Helena says with a laugh. In Washington, D.C., there’s only one he who gets talked about like that, and it’s not God.

  Helena makes a sharp right, sending the old van bumping and climbing through a set of black metal gates, stopping at a small security shed.

  I lean forward in my seat, looking out through the front windshield and finally seeing it: the world’s most famous mansion—and the home of the one person who, yesterday, requested the military files that hold information about my dead father.

  “Welcome to the White House,” a uniformed Secret Service agent says. “Who’re you here to see?”

  4

  I’ll need to see some ID,” the uniformed agent says in a New Orleans accent as Helena hands over our driver’s licenses.

  In the National Archives, we call it a gift run. At least once a week, Helena drives up Pennsylvania Avenue, making trips to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, to the other executive branch buildings across the street, and even here, to the White House, where she picks up everything from the priceless to the mundane.

  All Presidents have the same problem. At each grip-and-grin, every guest, big shot, and visiting dignitary brings you a present. The Russians bring Fabergé eggs, the Australians bring crocodile luggage, the British once brought a Ping-Pong table, and the King of Jordan personally designed his very own motorcycle to give to the President. That doesn’t include the hundreds of signed footballs, basketballs, baseballs, golf clubs, hockey pucks—plus the countless jerseys with President Wallace’s name on the back—that every Little League and pro team brings, all of them thinking they’re being original.

  At each event, President Wallace fakes a smile, takes a photo, and hands the gift to an aide, who eventually hands it to us. At the Archives, our job is to store it until Wallace’s presidential library is built, but also to keep it nearby—just a few blocks away—in case it has to be rushed back to the White House when the Jordanian delegation suddenly asks to see its favorite jewel-encrusted motorcycle. For Helena, gift runs are part of the job. For me, even Marshall agrees, they’re the single best way to get into the White House.

  “You’re late. Usually, you’re right on time,” the uniformed Secret Service agent says, glancing down at my ID, then up at the side of the van with its National Archives logo.

  “Just one of those days,” I say, keeping my smile and trying not to think about who I’m going to see. Back in college, President Orson Wallace plowed a baseball bat and car keys into the face of another man, eventually shattering the man’s eye socket, puncturing his face, and driving bits of skull into his brain, causing irreversible brain damage.

  That’s the man who’s currently sitting in the Oval Office. If I could prove it, I would. Though this’ll be even better.

  “Won’t take me but a minute,” the uniformed Secret Service agent says in his New Orleans twang, walking our IDs back to his shed and motioning another agent over to our blue van.

  “Pop the back,” the second agent says as Helena unlocks the back doors and a rush of cold air floods us from behind. On my right, a third agent takes a thin pole that looks like a golf club with a round mirror on the end of it and runs it underneath the van. Bomb search.

  “They do this every time,” Helena says, reading my expression. “Though usually”—she thinks for a moment—“usually they wait until I get up to West Exec,” she says, motioning with her chin to the narrow parking lot that runs along the west side of the White House.

  In the security shed, the New Orleans agent takes a long hard look at our IDs. In the side passenger mirror, the other agent extends the pole and slides it even farther underneath the van. Through the open back doors, the last agent examines the empty red storage bins, checking them one by one.

  It’s all standard White House procedure. No reason for concern.

  Behind me, there’s a loud ca-chunk as the back doors slam shut and the agent gives us the all clear. Faint puffs of smoke roll out of our tail pipe into the cold air.

  With a twist of the ignition, Helena shifts the van into gear, hits the gas, and—

  Tuuk-tuuk-tuuk. The knuckles tap against my passenger window. On my right, an all-too-familiar agent in suit and tie stares back at us. He’s got a military crew cut, no winter coat, and a blue-jeweled lapel pin that’s worn by all active Secret Service.

  Jackpot. That’s the fastest service I ever got.

  “What’re you smiling about, Beecher?” Agent A.J. Ennis asks as he pulls my door open. “Do me a favor and get the hell out of the van.”

  5

  We’re old friends,” A.J. tells my Archives colleague. I nod enthusiastically.

  She actually believes it. As we leave the van behind, A.J.’s right hand grips the back of my arm and his knuckles dig into my armpit. He’s moving so fast—forcing me forward and almost lifting me off the ground—I’m practically walking on tiptoe. In the Secret Service, this armpit carry is what they use during an emergency to rush the President out of a room. Usually, the President picks up his feet and the agents lift him out. I keep my feet moving. He has no idea this is all I was hoping for.

  “You missed me, didn’t you?” I ask. No response. “It’s okay to say you missed me,” I add as we head up the South Lawn toward the White House. “I certainly missed you. At the Archives, there’s a real lack of muscular people bursting through their suits.”

  As we pass the swing set that Obama put in for his daughters, A.J. sticks to the rolling lawn, weaving between trees to keep us out of sight. Wherever we’re going, it’s off t
he beaten path.

  “This way,” he whispers, leading me toward a rectangular patch of grass with the most perfectly manicured garden I’ve ever seen. The White House Rose Garden.

  A.J. pauses, searching my face.

  In the corner, a huge blue painter’s tarp is tacked to the trees, draping down to the ground and covering a wide swath of flowers and plants. There’s yellow maintenance tape and a warning sign that reads:

  Broken Sprinkler Heads

  Ground Crew Repairs Underway

  A.J.’s eyes continue to drill me. I’m too busy staring past the garden at the tall French doors on the back of the building. The entrance to the Oval Office. There aren’t any Secret Service agents stationed outside. That means the President isn’t in there. He’s somewhere else in the White House.

  With a nudge to the right, A.J. steers me past the bright white columns of the West Colonnade and through a set of doors that take us inside the mansion, toward the Residence. Across the pale red carpet, there’s no Secret Service agent outside the President’s private elevator. That means he’s not upstairs either.

  A.J. shoves me to the left, through another set of doors that dumps us in what looks like an outdoor hallway and construction area. The place is a mess. Crates, boxes, and files. Spools of cables and wires. It’s all stacked up everywhere. “Workers’ area, huh?” I ask, loud enough that Marshall can hear it through the phone in my pocket.

  A.J. again won’t answer.

  Nearly tripping on a crate of hammers and handsaws, I smell French fries and chocolate. We’re back by the White House kitchen. Sure enough, as we cut through another door, chefs in spotless white aprons and black hairnets are scrubbing pots and stacking dishes. They don’t look up. It’s like we’re not even here.

  With a final shove, A.J. steers me into a narrow hallway that, on the right, has two stainless steel doors and two stainless steel dumbwaiters. This is how they move the food upstairs to the Residence. But as A.J. opens the first steel door…

  It makes no sense. We’re on the ground floor of the White House—level with the garden. But when the door swings open, there’s a dark circular staircase that goes down, down, down.

  I freeze, confused. A.J. urges me on. In front of me, the circular stairs are so narrow that we have to go single file. I use the distance to pull out my phone and make sure Marshall’s still listening.

  No bars. No service. No nothing. My phone’s useless. At least Marshall knows where I was when I disappeared.

  It only gets worse at the next landing, marked Basement. Instead of going through the door, A.J. keeps me on the stairs, which continue going down. There’s a second level that goes down even deeper. There’re nearly as many floors below the White House as above it.

  As we get closer to the bottom, the smell of fries and chocolate yields to the scent of rusted metal, bleach, and warm rain. In Wisconsin, when I was little, I got bitten by a dog on a night that smelled like this.

  The stairs dead-end in a narrow hallway that’s connected to—

  White House Laundry, the sign on the closed door says. Yet as A.J. shoves the door open, a heavyset woman with short-cropped hair stands up from her seat at an old card table.

  “Francy O’Connor,” she says, introducing herself. I know who she is. So does everyone in the White House. “They told me you’d be coming,” she adds with a handshake that tugs me into the room. “I just didn’t think it’d be this quick.”

  6

  Beecher, I dropped my phone in the toilet this morning. It’s that kind of day,” Francy says, her pale Irish coloring looking flushed. “Don’t make me ask this more than once: Why are you really here?”

  “I was about to ask you that same question,” I say. “We’re pretty far from the press office.”

  She knows what I’m getting at. The daughter of a law professor, Francy grew up arguing cases at the dinner table, eventually making her way to a Minneapolis newspaper (it shut down). Then she jumped to Newsweek (it shut down too). Then she jumped into Wallace’s world back when he was governor and a true reformer. She became a true believer and the ghostwriter for the autobiography that transformed Wallace into a President and Francy into one of those friends who becomes D.C.-famous for being one of those friends. Every President brings a few with him. Scrappy brawlers he can trust.

  By the time she reached the White House, Francy had been crowned deputy press secretary to the First Lady, but like almost everything that leaves Wallace’s mouth, it’s never the full truth. I’ve never met Francy, but I know that her tightly cropped reddish-brown hair didn’t get this gray by dealing with just the press. Last year, when the President’s chief of staff happily announced that it was time for him to move on, every wonk in D.C. whispered that Francy, annoyed with his inability to manage staff infighting, had engineered his departure. By flying low as a deputy, tucked away in a quiet office, she’s Wallace’s hidden eyes and ears. And personal fire extinguisher.

  “Y’know, my ex used to think you should go everywhere twice: once for a good time, and once to apologize,” she says in a flat midwestern accent that reminds me of home and calms me more than I want to admit. It’s the same with her rumpled blue blazer, her never-stylish shoes, and the cheap reading glasses, bought at the nearest pharmacy, that dangle down around her thick neck. Most people around the President start to think they’re important. Francy dresses like she never wants to forget where she came from. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” she adds.

  I’m tempted to agree, but I see the way she keeps her arms flat at her sides instead of crossed at her chest. Like the best press secretaries, she’s a black belt at avoiding conflict and making you feel calm even when you’re on fire. If she’s trying to make nice—much less hiding in the subbasement of the White House—there’s something important going on down here. And I’d bet money that it has to do with my dad’s missing file.

  “Why don’t you take a seat,” A.J. interrupts, pointing me to a nearby chair as Francy shoots him a look and reminds him who’s in charge.

  “Please, c’mon in,” she adds, smile wide. In her fist, she clutches an outdated leather datebook like it’s the Bible.

  “You seem pretty busy down here,” I say.

  Neither of them answers.

  On my right, a massive ten-foot-wide machine looks like a huge pasta press, though instead of pasta, a long white tablecloth dangles lifelessly from its open mouth. On most days, this is where they press the linens for the state dinners.

  As the door closes behind me, I count one…two…three foldable card tables scattered throughout the room. Each one holds a laptop, a printer, and an outdated corded phone. On the far left table, there’s a TV with the view from four different security cameras around the mansion. Plugs and extension cords snake everywhere. Whatever this operation is, it was just thrown together. In the Archives, we have the blueprints for the White House. The Secret Service command post is two floors above us. What the hell is this place?

  “So you were saying that the reason you came…” Francy offers.

  “Actually, I hadn’t said anything. If President Wallace wants to know why I’m here, tell him he can ask me himself.”

  Her smile grows wider at that. “That’s not exactly how it works.”

  “It’s not? Because that’s how I remember it. He locked me in a room, sat me down, and told me that the next time I saw him, he’d bury me and the Culper Ring.”

  A.J. goes to say something, but Francy again cuts him off. More important, she doesn’t flinch at the mention of the Ring. “Beecher, I know what your group is capable of. For decades…”

  “For centuries,” I correct her.

  “…the Ring’s been a trusted weapon for those who have held this office. But I also know you and the President don’t exactly see eye to eye. I don’t know why; I don’t care why. That’s your business. But what’d you think was going to happen when you got here? That you’d sneak inside, and the President would give you a tour
of the Oval?”

  “Not at all. I assumed that once I handed over my ID, my name would be keyed to some notification system, which it was. Then it’d notify someone the President trusted, like A.J, which it did. And then, I figured that whenever that person came to get me, they’d take me someplace private (though I didn’t think it’d be some makeshift hideaway in the subbasement), and that we could sit down and talk like human beings.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. We want the same darn thing.”

  “You sure about that? Because the way it looks to me, the President of the United States is hiding one of his most trusted staffers in a secret subbasement that’s clearly designed to be tucked away from every other person on staff. The only logical explanation is that you’re dealing with some nasty bit of news that the President is hoping will go away. Like me. So. If Wallace wants to get rid of me, he can give me my file and send me on my way.”

  Across from me, Francy and A.J. share another silent glance. It lasts a second too long.

  “He’s listening right now, isn’t he?” I blurt.

  They don’t respond.

  I scan the ceiling, the rolling cart that’s filled with cloth napkins, even the top of the tablecloth-pressing machine. There’s not a single security camera in sight. No surveillance. No microphones. But for some reason, Francy and A.J. are still standing there silent.

  “Wallace, I know you hear me!” I call out at the ceiling. “Tell me why you wanted my father’s file!”

  7

  The President can’t hear you,” A.J. says.

  “You know how I know you’re lying?” I ask. “Because you’re talking.” Shouting toward the ceiling, I add, “I know you hear me! If you’re trying to use my father—!”

  “Beecher, please,” Francy pleads. “Have you opened a paper this morning? We’ve got a Cabinet member pulled over for a DUI, zinc shortages threatening U.S. Steel, plus this governor in South Carolina who’s blaming Wallace for his high electricity rates during the long winter—and that’s just this morning. He’s the President of the United States. He doesn’t have time to eavesdrop on—”