The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  “Len, you ask him yet or not?” the old man barks onscreen.

  “Thanks for the subtlety,” Riestra says, forcing a chuckle, this one more strained. He has a laugh like a drain sucking.

  “Ask me what?” I say.

  “Beecher, meet Dr. Malcolm Yaeger,” Riestra says as the doctor snaps on a pair of light blue rubber gloves. “Dr. Yaeger is the medical examiner for Virginia’s Tidewater district. He’s also a Great Patriot.”

  I’ve heard Tot use those words before. Great Patriot.

  Back in the eighties, when the hostages came back from Iran, a Great Patriot put them all up at the posh Greenbrier resort, so they could finally have a place to privately relax. More recently, after the CIA’s annual retreat, a Great Patriot flew the top CIA chiefs to the small town of Cuero, Texas, so they could have their own private meetings and an off-the-book vacation. Sometimes, Patriots are former members of the government. Other times, they’re simply regular citizens who step up when they’re needed. Either way, whoever Dr. Yaeger is, the President and the Service trust him more—and think he’ll keep far quieter—than the regular D.C. medical examiner who would normally be assigned to this case.

  “A.J. told you we found a second arm, yes?” Riestra asks, though I’m starting to realize he doesn’t ask a question unless he already knows the answer. As I nod, he picks up his gold pen and glances over my shoulder at the open mail slot. I turn, expecting to see another shadow. Nothing’s there.

  “This second arm was buried in the garden, just behind Aspen,” Riestra explains, referring to the President’s private cabin at Camp David. “We brought in Dr. Yaeger to see if we have a match.”

  “Which we can’t know yet,” Yaeger shoots back, his voice high-pitched and meticulous. “Nothing’s conclusive until we run DNA, but when you dismantle a person… Whoever dismantled this…” He puffs out his cheeks and holds up a wide towel that looks like gauze dotted with dirt. He doesn’t have to say it. Whoever did this is a monster.

  Sagging at the center of the gauze is a pale green arm, severed at the elbow. Like the one they found in the Rose Garden, its outer layer of skin is slipping and peeling away from decomposition. Unlike the other, the fingers are open, each slightly black at the tip.

  “He went for the hard cut too,” the doctor adds, pointing to the elbow. “Sliced between the radius and ulna, then tore the elbow joint. If you ask me, the shoulder’s a far easier one to hack through. Other than that, the digits of both hands are similar in size and appearance. Ungual surface too.”

  “Ungual?” I ask.

  “Nail bed. His fingernails,” the doctor explains, cradling the arm like he’s a pageant winner holding roses. “Both hands were manicured. Either the victim was from money or liked to look like he was.”

  “And how old do you think the deceased was?”

  “Late twenties, early thirties,” he says, pinching the sagging skin. “Based on decay and disintegration, I’d say he’s been dead two weeks tops,” he adds as my mind flips back to Tanner Pope, the Reagan Secret Service agent who supposedly died three weeks ago. Pope was an old man. This corpse is someone young.

  “That mean something to you, Beecher?” Riestra challenges. As I turn his way, I realize he’s never taken his eyes off me.

  I shake my head; Riestra keeps it friendly, deciding not to push. Once again, he glances back at the door’s open mail slot. If he’s waiting for someone, they’re still not there.

  There’s a low buzz as Francy’s phone vibrates. She pulls it out, checking who it is. When Riestra shoots her a look, Francy holds the phone up, trying to keep me from seeing it. Too late. Caller ID simply says SW. Riestra nods. Shona Wallace. When the First Lady calls, you don’t ignore it.

  “Malcolm, tell him what you said about the actual cut,” Riestra prompts, though I’m still eyeing Francy. Her call doesn’t last long. Covering her mouth for privacy, Francy whispers something, then quickly hangs up.

  “See for yourself,” the doctor says onscreen, turning the elbow toward us. “Clean cut. Not ragged. He used something sharp like a butcher’s knife. But when you look close, the multiple nicks in the cartilage and bone suggest it was probably something small, like a scalpel.”

  “Tell him abou—” Francy interrupts.

  “I wasn’t finished speaking,” Yaeger growls. “And just so we’re clear, as far as I’m concerned, we don’t need you here.”

  Francy starts to speak, but Riestra shuts her down with a cold glare. It reminds me of our time in the White House basement. If what Francy said is true, she’s not entirely sure why Wallace hates me—or what he did all those years ago to put that kid into a coma. It’s a detail worth holding on to.

  “Malcolm, you were saying…” Riestra adds.

  “What I was saying,” the doctor continues, “is that when you look at the margins where the arm was severed, the skin is yellow and waxy at the edges. No bruising whatsoever.”

  “Which means?” I ask.

  “Means it was done post-mortem. Whoever chopped the victim’s arms off, he waited until he was dead,” the doctor clarifies, his voice slowing down as he turns his gaunt face toward me. It’s the same around the table. On my left, both Riestra’s balding deputy and Francy are watching my reaction closely. On my right, Riestra’s clutching his gold pen tighter than ever.

  I stare back at all of them. “What’s really going on here?” I challenge.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Riestra says.

  “I appreciate you inviting me here—and especially for catching me up to date. But considering I don’t know the first thing about forensic science…and that the director of the Secret Service probably doesn’t ask for much help from local archivists…and that there are a few hundred more reasons I shouldn’t be here, I can’t stop wondering: Why’d you bring me here?”

  Riestra taps the side of his glasses with the back of his pen.

  “You found something in the second hand, didn’t you?” I challenge.

  Still no answer.

  “I heard what Dr. Yaeger said,” I continue. “The cuts were the same, the blades were the same, even the polished fingernails were the same. So considering that when I spoke to the President this morning, he told me that the Rose Garden arm was clutching a flattened penny that traced back to my dad, let me just ask: What’d you find in the new arm, and what’s it have to do with my father?”

  Looking over my shoulder, Riestra eyes his deputy. The deputy shakes his head.

  Ignoring him, Riestra turns to the computer screen and throws a silent nod at Dr. Yaeger. “Tell him, Malcolm.”

  “Len…”

  “Tell him,” Riestra says in a tone that reminds everyone he’s in charge of a multibillion-dollar fighting force that could take out most small countries.

  Onscreen, Dr. Yaeger again puffs out his gaunt cheeks. He holds up a white index card, aiming it at the camera. It’s no bigger than a baseball card, but with vertical and horizontal creases, like it’s been folded and folded again. “When they dug up the new arm, this was found in his fist,” the doctor explains.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did we,” the doctor says. “It’s blank on both sides. Francy said you’ve seen that before.”

  He flips it over, then back again. It’s definitely blank. But the instant I see it, I’m reminded of the one suspect they’re always looking at—the person who used to live in St. Elizabeths—and the one subspecialty where I’m the true expert.

  Nico.

  “You need to pee on it,” I blurt.

  41

  Twenty-nine years ago

  Devil’s Island

  Today, it was bricks.

  “Six more?” the marine guard named Dominic asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Timothy agreed as the guard stacked another six bricks onto the double-wide stack that Timothy was struggling to carry.

  “Six more?” Dominic said to the next person in line—Arkansas Ovalface—who was already car
rying nearly twenty.

  A single bead of sweat rolled down from Arkansas’s freshly buzzed brown hair. This time of day, it had to be at least 110 degrees. “Yes, sir,” he replied as Dominic added six antique red bricks from the messy pile on the edge of the island’s beach.

  As Nico stepped up, he was carrying a triple stack. On day one, when the new recruits were moving rocks for a retaining wall, Nico had carried the most. Same for day two. Today was day nine.

  “Eight more or ten more?” Dominic challenged.

  Staring down at the pile of bricks he was balancing against his still-new camo uniform, Nico stayed silent. His legs were swaying. His eyes started to flick back and forth. He thought it was because of the heat or the lack of sleep. Just like he thought his constant diarrhea was from something he’d eaten.

  “You know best, sir.”

  “Good for you. You’re learning, Nico.”

  “But Sergeant, if we could just use the wheelbarrow, our speed would—”

  “A full dozen it is,” the guard said, gathering up another twelve bricks and dropping them one by one on the pile for maximum effect. “Alby, six more?” Dominic added, turning to the next person in line.

  Alby had seen The Karate Kid enough times to know that when they tell you to sand the floor, you sand the floor. “Yes, sir,” he said as Dominic gave him six new bricks.

  “What about your friend? Where’s he?” Dominic asked.

  “Julian? He’s on his way.”

  “You sure? Because by my count, he’s been gone twenty minutes. Now, let’s try this again: Where’s your friend?”

  Alby didn’t answer, feeling that familiar pinch in the back of his neck. He didn’t like lying.

  “Alby, do you have any idea why this place was built?” Dominic asked, pointing over Alby’s shoulder at the island’s only real feature: the six-sided redbrick fortress known as Fort Jefferson. “Back before the Civil War, our government was worried about foreign enemies invading the southeastern tip of America. So they spent decades shipping in sixteen million bricks and building these massive walls. They put in a moat that ran all the way around…and the cannons that you see up top?” he said, pointing up to the twenty-five-ton Rodman cannons, a few of which still pointed out over the parapet of the fort’s outer wall. “At one point, those were the most powerful guns in the world, making this place the most impenetrable and expensive coastal fort ever built. It rivaled the biggest and best castles in Europe. Nothing could get through it,” he explained. “And then the steamship was invented, along with artillery that plowed through brick like it was a pillow fort. By the time the Civil War began, no government in the world was building forts like this anymore. The whole place was obsolete. Abraham Lincoln turned it into a prison for Civil War deserters, and it was quickly overrun by mosquitoes and malaria.”

  “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

  “Alby, our job today is to build that next steamship, that next tank, that next type of soldier that no one sees coming. That’s why we brought you here. If we build you right, we’ll plow through our enemies. If we build you wrong, they’ll be plowing through us.”

  “And by us, you mean Julian.”

  “By us, I mean all of us. Including Julian,” the guard said, grabbing four bricks and adding them to Alby’s stack. “We all know Julian’s struggling. Help him help himself. You need to find him. Now.”

  “I am… I’ll find him, sir,” Alby said, fighting to cradle his bricks like a lumpy bag of groceries. Alby had always been a nervous person, but after everything he’d been through—from the plane crash to a week on the island—he was starting to feel it physically. The ache in his neck had swelled into a thick knot at the top of his spine. He told no one. Like Nico, Alby never let on he was in pain.

  “I’ll find him right now,” Alby added, tripping through the sand as he sped back toward the main entrance to the fort.

  As Alby headed through the shaded brick archway, he stared at the four narrow vertical slits on either side of him. Loopholes. Three centuries ago, if an enemy approached the castle, archers would stand behind the walls and point arrows through the slits, killing the attackers from a protected space. Once arrows became obsolete, they did it with guns. Over time, the word loophole came to mean something to exploit.

  “You seen Julian?” Alby called out to the tall kid from Texas who was racing past him in the fort’s grassy courtyard, a sixteen-acre plot that was dotted by date palm trees and patches of windblown sand.

  The tall Texan ignored him. No one wanted much to do with Julian. Or Alby, for that matter.

  “Bricks here!” another marine guard yelled, pointing Alby to a nearby pile, where Nico and Timothy were dumping their own. Next to them, two other recruits were laying the foundation of a small rectangular structure about as long and wide as a racquetball court. At first, Alby had thought it was going to be a retaining wall or a drain, but the walls were getting too high.

  “Anyone seen Julian?” Alby asked. Again, they ignored him.

  Adding his bricks to the pile, Alby scanned the wide courtyard. On his left were the concrete barracks. On his right was the New Orleans–style redbrick house with a square porch that served as officers’ quarters. Otherwise, most of the fort was empty and abandoned, except for the section that was…

  Of course.

  The prison cells, where Dr. Mudd and the rest of the Lincoln conspirators had been locked up a century ago. Yet just as Alby started to run, a flash of orange caught his eye. There, on his right. By the sliding yellow pine door marked:

  Mechanical Area—Do Not Enter.

  From the angle and the way the sunlight pried though the open door, Alby knew that flash of orange anywhere. Julian’s red hair.

  What in the hell’s he doing? Alby thought, making his way to the door. Behind him, Nico and Timothy were headed back for more bricks. The other marine guard and his fellow Plankholders were back to building the brick structure. As usual, nobody was looking at Alby.

  Tugging the pine door open, Alby snuck inside and slid it shut. He was hit with a whiff of stale rainwater and the even staler smell of urine. Along the back wall were three rusted generators. On the left wall were milk crates filled with rusty tools. Julian was down on his knees, hands at his chest, his back to Alby.

  “Julian, you okay?”

  Julian didn’t answer.

  “Why’re you—?” Alby cut himself off, stepping closer. “Are you praying?”

  Still nothing.

  “Julian, can you please not be crazy for once? They’re gonna crucify you. Sarge knows you’re not working!”

  Julian turned, but just barely. He smacked his lips. “Alby, how’ve you been feeling?”

  “What’re you talking about? C’mon, we gotta go!”

  “Answer my question. Since we got to the island…have you felt well?” Julian asked, turning some more. There was something in his hands. A thin paperback book. Julian wasn’t praying. He was reading. “Alby, I think I found it.”

  “Found what?”

  “What we’re making. All this work…all these bricks,” he said, smacking his lips again. “Do you know what we’re building out there?”

  “A retaining wall…an outhouse… Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s training—they make us work until—”

  “An oven,” Julian blurted.

  “A what?”

  “A furnace. That’s what these are for,” he said, pointing to the corner of the dark room where there was a messy pile of iron rails, thick like pool cues, but each one at least twenty feet long. Next to them was a neat stack of black metal grates, like you’d see on a barbeque.

  “Julian, when was the last time you had something to eat? You don’t look so—”

  “It’s in this book. I found this book,” Julian said, his eyes dancing faster than ever as he held up an old paperback. It had a white cover and a black-and-white photo of a nineteenth-century balding man with an overgrown, pointy beard. Dr. Samuel Mudd, it r
ead in thick letters. One of Lincoln’s famous killers. “The structure we’re making…it used to be here back when he was here…back when the fort was first built. It’s called a hot shot furnace.”

  “Let’s get you out of here. You need water.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Alby. This is technology from ancient Rome. It was one of the world’s first super-weapons. The Romans would build a long brick furnace, like two lanes of a bowling alley. Then they’d take cannonballs and roll them down these sloping iron rails which sat above the flames. When the cannonballs came out the other side, they’d be heated to over a thousand degrees. Then they’d fire them at attacking ships, where the balls would skip across the water. A regular cannonball does enough damage. But these heated ones would set your ship on fire. Instantly.”

  “Julian, maybe you should—”

  “So elegant, isn’t it?” Julian asked, gripping one of the black grates and resting it in his lap directly on top of the book. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s our real specialty as a people: We forever get better at killing ourselves.”

  “Not ourselves,” Alby said. “An enemy. All this training is to fight an enemy.”

  “Yeah, no…” Julian said, staring down and letting his open palm hover above the black grate in his lap. “That’s what I meant.”

  42

  Today

  Washington, D.C.

  A.J. counted the steps. There were sixteen in all.

  In the world of the Secret Service, the agent closest to the action—the one whose shoulder practically touches the President as he moves through a crowd—is said to be an eyelash away. The agent who rides shotgun in the presidential limo is said to be an arm’s length away. And the one who sits in the back of the ambulance, trailing the motorcade and guarding extra pints of the President’s blood, is thirteen cars away.

  Right now, as Agent A.J. Ennis stood heels-together on the gray-and-rose-colored needlepoint rug at the base of Clara Barton’s refurbished staircase, that number was sixteen steps. Not bad, really. Unless, of course, you’re used to being an eyelash.