The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  “How’s it going?” A.J. texted to Francy, who was upstairs in the room with Beecher and Director Riestra.

  A.J. stared down at his phone. Ten minutes passed. Francy didn’t text back.

  Glancing up the sixteen steps, A.J. had a clear view to the second floor. There was a closed door and a glow of light coming from the open mail slot. It’d be easy to climb up and eavesdrop through it. But even A.J. wasn’t that paranoid.

  He didn’t blame Francy for being inside. The President and Francy had spent decades together, come into power together, and even sat at the deathbed of Wallace’s mother together. To the First Lady especially, Francy was family.

  But A.J. was family too. Thirty years ago, A.J.’s father had been one of President Wallace’s dearest law school friends. They were in each other’s wedding parties. In fact, during their last semester together, when money was so tight that the school wouldn’t let the future President register for classes until he paid his tuition bill, A.J.’s father had called his own father. The next day, an anonymous donor wrote a check that settled Wallace’s law school bill. It was never again discussed. But like in any family, it was never forgotten.

  Years later, A.J. didn’t use his connection when he applied for the job. The Service knows talent when it sees it. But as he rose through the ranks and made his way to the President’s Protective Detail, it did explain why Wallace began asking for him personally. During those first few months, the President put his life in A.J.’s hands—and after those trips to Blair House and Lake George and of course that off-the-record trip to Ohio that tested his loyalty, A.J. began to put his life in the President’s.

  Yet despite everything he’d done for Wallace and all the secrets he was keeping, A.J. was still here, standing heels-together on the needlepoint rug, staring up at the closed door, sixteen steps from the action.

  Not a big deal, A.J. told himself, though he couldn’t help but think that the same thing had happened earlier at the hospital when the President and Francy met with Marshall. They were in. A.J. was out.

  Once again squinting up at the mail slot, A.J. put the tip of his foot on the first step. Then took it off. Every day, he saw staffers vying to fight their way into the President’s inner circle. But as everyone in that circle knew, the worst smell of all was desperation.

  All is fine, he insisted to himself, well aware he was still wearing the blue-jeweled lapel pin that signaled his proximity to the President. They’ll tell you everything when it’s done. Just having Beecher up there—not to mention his direct boss, Hurricane Riestra—Francy already had enough to deal with.

  It was good advice. It was the right advice.

  But as A.J. stood at the foot of those sixteen steps, that didn’t mean he believed it.

  43

  Pee?”

  “Trust me. Urinate on it,” I tell Dr. Yaeger through the computer teleconference.

  “Invisible ink,” the director of the Secret Service says.

  Riestra knows what he’s talking about. Two months ago, I caught Nico using invisible ink to hide secret messages on a set of playing cards. It was a magic trick he stole from George Washington himself, who, as head of the Culper Ring, used invisible ink to hide his own Revolutionary War secrets. It wasn’t a new trick. Invisible ink dates back thousands of years, from Egypt to China, using the juices of leeks, lemons, and limes. But as every science fair winner knows, if you write something in lemon juice, all you need to do is hold a hot candle to the paper, and presto—you bring the secret message to life.

  For that reason, George Washington decided to replace the heating process with a chemical one. Washington wrote his notes in an invisible ink, called the agent. Then when the recipient applied a different chemical, called the reagent, the hidden message would appear. As long as the British couldn’t find the reagent, they’d never crack the code. It’s a trick our government still uses today.

  “You think we didn’t know it was invisible ink?” Dr. Yaeger asks. “I tried every reagent we have—from the Service’s private formula to the CIA’s…even MI5.”

  “You’re forgetting who you’re dealing with,” I point out. “Nico was locked in St. Elizabeths for nearly a decade with no chemistry set. The only liquid he used there was the one he always had immediate access to.”

  Onscreen, the doctor stares down at the blank index card they found clutched in the hand at Camp David. Next to me, Francy and Riestra’s deputy are so silent, you can hear the wallpaper glue hardening.

  “Go piss on the paper,” the head of the Secret Service says.

  44

  Where’d you get this?” Agent Goddard asked, hunched at the desk in his cubicle, his tongue flicking the stray hairs of his gray goatee.

  “A friend,” Mina said, staring down at the photocopy of Beecher’s flattened penny.

  “And your friend’s sure this was a navy unit?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Then why didn’t you bring your friend with you?” Goddard asked.

  “He’s not a fellow employee.”

  Goddard looked up, his professor eyes simmering and starting to boil. “Mina, I’m Danny Glover in every Lethal Weapon movie. I’ve got 133 days until retirement. So if you’re bringing me a tornado of feces…”

  “This isn’t a tornado. It’s nothing bad. It’s official Service business,” Mina promised, watching Goddard again look down at the image.

  “You see something, don’t you?” Mina asked. “The owl and the Lord’s Prayer. They’re not just…they stand for more than just an owl and the Lord’s Prayer?”

  “Actually, I think they’re pretty much exactly that: The Lord’s Prayer is always on these pennies…and the owl with the plank is clearly the mascot for whatever unit this is. But what I’m more interested in is this…” he said, stabbing a papery finger at the inscription below the owl: HL-1024.

  “That’s not their unit number?” Mina asked.

  “That’s not how unit numbers run,” Goddard explained. “Navy units are usually single or double digits—like Squadron 7…or the Nimitz, which is CVN-68—but I can’t think of a single navy squadron that has three digits, much less a four-digit one like 1024. Even army units usually only have three digits. I think the only four-digit ones are reserve units or medical ones. Like the 4077.”

  Mina stared at him.

  “From M*A*S*H,” Goddard explained.

  Still nothing.

  He rolled his eyes and turned back to the image of the penny. “What’s even more hinky is this so-called HL part,” he added. “In the navy, we have HS squadrons like the HS-10, which does helicopter anti-submarine work, or the HSC-3, which does helicopter sea combat. There’s even HSL and the newer HSM squadrons. But I can’t think of anyone that’s an HL.”

  “So HL-1024…”

  “It’s not a unit number. In fact, if I had to guess…” Goddard leaned in closer, squinting to see the tiny writing. He studied it in silence.

  “I think it’s a map,” he finally blurted.

  “A what?”

  “A map. Look at the format—HL-1024—two letters followed by four digits. That’s the standard format on nearly every military map in existence: two letters, four digits.”

  “So this is someone’s map?”

  “Or the whole unit’s map. Maybe it’s where they were founded, or had their first battle. Whatever it is, if I’m a betting man, and I’m always a betting man, I’d wager that what you’re looking at are coordinates.”

  As Goddard handed her the photocopy, Mina reread the HL-1024 for herself. “Can you tell me where this map is pointing?”

  “Nope,” Goddard replied, tonguing the corner of his goatee. “But I know someone who can.”

  45

  Ten days ago

  Carter Lake, Iowa

  Mother of pearl, what a neighborhood,” AnnaBeth said, ducking down to peer out the car’s front windshield.

  “It will be on our left,” Nico said from the passe
nger seat, staring straight ahead and showing no interest in the upscale homes of Shoreline Estates.

  It was still dark, so early in the morning the newspapers hadn’t been delivered yet. It’d taken longer than they’d thought to reach Iowa. To hide, they’d traveled only at night, plus an extra day just to deal with Nico’s injuries. In the motels, AnnaBeth and Nico never slept together. Never kissed. Barely even touched, which AnnaBeth took as a blessing. Courtship first. Sometimes she put her hand on top of Nico’s, and he wouldn’t pull away.

  “When you tear her throat out, you think you’ll be able to see her in ghost form, like me?” the dead First Lady asked.

  Nico didn’t answer. He’d been thinking about it. Usually he continued to see his last victim, but with Colonel Doggett, nothing had happened.

  “Maybe it only works with women,” the First Lady added with a laugh. “Though let’s be honest: What would you do without me?”

  “Here. This one,” Nico told AnnaBeth, pointing at the outdated, stone-fronted ranch house with the Christmas wreath still on the front door. The home belonged to Dr. Moorcraft, who used to give Nico, Alby, and Timothy all those vaccinations on the island.

  “Your friend is going to be so excited to see you. So thrilled,” AnnaBeth said, her round face beaming, her voice so excited it popped like fireworks. She reached over to the center console and put her hand on top of Nico’s. “And when he helps you clear your name— He must be a lawyer, a big lawyer—”

  “If I wanted to tell you about him, I would,” Nico blurted.

  AnnaBeth shrunk in her seat, but not by much. On the center console, Nico still hadn’t pulled his hand away.

  “How do you think she’d react if she knew what you were about to do in there?” the First Lady asked.

  Nico’s eyes slid sideways, up the long driveway, to the overbuilt beige house with the Christmas wreath. For all these years, this was where Moorcraft had been hiding, in Iowa.

  “Don’t park in front,” Nico said, pointing her toward the house next door.

  Halfway up the block, AnnaBeth shut the car off and unclicked her seat belt. Nico shot her a look.

  “I can wait here if it’s easier,” she offered.

  “That’d be better,” Nico said, staring at her until she reclicked her seat belt. If something went wrong, at least she could drive him out of here. Kicking open the door, he added, “This way I can surprise him.”

  46

  Today

  Crystal City, Virginia

  You don’t believe me, do you?” Clementine asked from the kitchen.

  “I told you I wouldn’t,” Marshall shot back, still holding his knife as he glanced back toward the living room. “I don’t believe anything you say, Clementine.”

  “But if they go after Beecher—”

  “No. Enough lying,” he said, turning toward her, then back to the living room.

  “Why do you do that?” Clementine interrupted.

  “Do what?”

  “That thing with your head. Every time you talk, you turn away. Are you—?” She went to say something, then decided against it. “You’re worried about your looks?”

  Locking back on her, Marshall took a deep breath through his nose. Like an ox. “Don’t play the burn card with me,” he warned.

  “Wait, wait, wait…or are the burns— Is that why you live like this?” she continued, pointing toward the living room starter sofa, glass-and-metal coffee table and matching glass-and-metal entertainment center. “That came right out of the catalog, including the little candy dish and the candlesticks, didn’t it? You’ve got no photos, no picture frames, there’s not even a single book in the whole apartment. C’mon, the only personal effect here is that painting,” she said, motioning toward the far right wall, at the elegant painted canvas barely bigger than an iPad. It was of a woman with blurred eyes and no mouth. As she enters a soothing, turquoise body of water, her arms and torso dissipate, spreading outward and becoming part of the water. The signature at the bottom read Nuelo Blanco. “I looked Blanco up, Marshall. That’s a forty-two-thousand-dollar painting. So let me ask: Is this even your real life, or just another front where, if something bad happens, you can grab the painting, run off, and rebuild the way your dad did after your mom died?”

  “Don’t talk about my parents either. I know how you fight: gouging and biting down through whatever emotion takes you inside. You’re like a termite.”

  “And you’re a mule,” she shot back. “I just told you they’re trying to kill your pal Beecher, and you just stand there with no reaction, turning away and worrying about what I think about your sad burned face?”

  Marshall refused to take the bait. “Y’know what I remember about you, Clementine? Your earrings.”

  “My what?”

  “Back in seventh grade, there was this girl from the high school who you picked a fight with.”

  “Kathy Stankevich.”

  “Whatever her name was. She was waiting in the schoolyard, and when they came running to your locker to tell you, I was right there in the hallway. They said this girl was waiting outside to fight you, and I’ll never forget, when you heard those words, you took off your earrings, stuffed them in your pocket, and stormed, fists clenched, out to the schoolyard. Always looking for a fight.”

  “You know what I remember about you, Marshall? When we were in third grade, everyone at church pitched in to buy you a bunny. They said you wanted a pet.”

  Marshall didn’t react.

  “We all know why the town did it. You were the poor kid whose dad was paralyzed in a wheelchair. Every Christmas, they felt the need to buy you something, and that year, it was a bunny.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The point is, later that year, when the church made all of us go to your birthday party, my mother took that bunny home with us. Y’know why? Because when she saw it in your house, that bunny hadn’t been played with in so long, its nails actually grew and curved around the outside of the metal cage.”

  Marshall’s stiff posture never wavered. “I was allergic. My mother kept it in her room.”

  “I didn’t say you did it on purpose, Marshall. I said you did it years ago.” She kept her eyes locked on his. “When you know of an old disaster in someone’s life, all you see is who they were. But none of us are who we used to be.”

  Glancing down at the floor, Marshall extended all his left-hand fingers, stretching the skin. He knew who Clementine was. He knew her disasters. And he also knew she was right. “Who’s they?” he finally asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Before, when you first mentioned Ezra, you said they want to kill Beecher. Always they. Who’s they?”

  Walking over to the sink, Clementine spit out a mouthful of blood. It wasn’t a quick spit like a baseball player in a dugout. It was a slow-motion one, gathered by her lips, then dangling down like a tear on a shiny spider’s web. “Ever hear of the Knights of the Golden Circle?”

  47

  Twenty-nine years ago

  Devil’s Island

  Today, it was cannonballs. Or at least it was supposed to be.

  At 4:40 a.m., Alby’s alarm ripped him from a dream where he was doing that trick he used to do in the kitchen: walking with his three kids—his two daughters and young Beecher—wrapped around his ankles, dragging them playfully along. In the dream, though, he was walking into the ocean, all of them sinking from the weight and drowning.

  For the past week, as they were finishing the brick furnace, he’d spent his breaks on the edge of the island, staring out at the blue-green ocean and telling himself the work was making him stronger. On some days, he believed it.

  This morning, as he rolled out of bed and joined the line for the bathroom, Alby still felt the soreness in his arms, his back, and especially his blistered hands.

  “That was too late,” Arkansas said, referring to last night, when the guards had kept them working on the brick furnace until one in the morning.


  Alby nodded, stepping into the shower and keeping the water cold. Except for the officers’ quarters, there was no air conditioning on the island, so the instant Alby turned the shower off, warm beads of sweat pooled across his forehead, poised to run into his eyes.

  His diarrhea was getting worse, which he blamed on the food. So was the throbbing at the base of his skull, which he blamed on his lack of sleep. But the morning’s roughest hit came when Alby got back to his cot and noticed that next to him, Julian’s bed was already made, like it hadn’t been slept in.

  “Julian, you here?” Alby called out, glancing around the room, which was a blur of young men pulling on tank tops and tying bootlaces. The heat was so ruthless, the sergeant had stopped making them wear full uniforms.

  No one answered. Where the hell was he? Alby replayed last night. Julian had been in the barracks, reading, as always.

  “Anyone seen Julian?” Alby said to no one in particular.

  “Let’s go—barracks empty!” Timothy shouted as the group of young Plankholders began to scramble down the aisle that separated the two long rows of beds. They knew the consequences if they didn’t arrive as one unit.

  Fighting with his bootlaces, Alby hopped to the door, noticing that one person wasn’t moving at all.

  “Nico, you coming?” Timothy called out.

  Nico didn’t look up. He was sitting on his cot, elbows on his knees, boots still untied.

  “What’re you doing? What’s wrong?” Timothy asked.

  “Something bad happened,” Nico whispered.

  “Nico, I know it’s early. We’re all tired—”

  “You’re not listening,” Nico said. “My hearing. I can hear things. Something bad happened. Outside.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Timothy asked.

  Alby didn’t hear the exchange. He was already halfway out the door, still scanning for…

  “Julian! You out here…?” Alby shouted into the morning darkness.