The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  As a young Civil War hero, Lieutenant General Nelson Miles had risen to the top command of the U.S. Army. But when he criticized our policy in the Philippines, he earned the anger of President Teddy Roosevelt, who, when Miles retired, wouldn’t even send him the standard congratulatory note. From that alone, A.J. was well aware why Wallace had picked this place. As with any U.S. President, everything came with a message.

  In the end, Miles had lived out the remainder of his life as a nobody. At the age of eighty-five, on a trip to the circus with his grandchildren, as the band began playing the national anthem, Miles stood at attention, saluted the flag, and dropped dead of a heart attack. The new President, Calvin Coolidge, made amends by offering a first-class burial.

  Nearly a century later, A.J. stepped across the damp dirt, toward Miles’s reward. Planks of rotted wood covered each of the mausoleum’s windows and clanked in the wind. A squirrel skittered up one of the building’s carved columns, then raced down again as A.J. approached.

  Weaving his way among nearby graves, A.J. never took his eyes off the dark mausoleum. There were no lights on inside. No nearby cameras—and most oddly, knowing the Service’s protocols for any presidential visit—no guards either. For the first time, A.J. wondered if the mausoleum led to someplace farther underground. Getting closer to the meatball shrubs and the front door, he didn’t know whether to knock or just—

  Rrrrrrrrr.

  The metal door swung open, scraping against the stone floor. A familiar face poked out from the shadows.

  “Don’t worry, there’re no ghosts,” Francy O’Connor called out.

  “Is he—? He’s in there?” A.J. asked, referring to the only he who ever mattered.

  Looking over A.J.’s shoulder, Francy made sure they were alone. “He’s not happy about it either. Now c’mon. Before we let all the heat out.”

  A.J. strode toward the open door just as a light went on in the mausoleum.

  73

  It’s nearly midnight as we pull up to the locked chain-link gate. Outside, a gangly, middle-aged man in a cheap sport jacket and no winter coat squints into our headlights, undoing the single padlock. Not much of a security system.

  I lean out the passenger window. “We’re here to see—”

  “Mr. Mulligan is waiting for you,” the man says, pointing a long elegant finger toward our destination: the wide airplane hangar on our right.

  “Mr. Mulligan?” Mina asks, shooting me a look as she hits the gas and pulls forward.

  I nod, knowing it’s a fake name. Mr. Mulligan is Hercules Mulligan, an Irish tailor who, two hundred years ago, had the single greatest name in the Revolutionary War, and also saved George Washington’s life (twice!) by passing British plans to the Culper Ring. Mulligan wasn’t an official Ring member, but he was there when they needed him. Like the man waiting for us now.

  “I didn’t even know there was an airport out here,” Mina says as we pull into a canopied parking spot that keeps us hidden from prying eyes.

  That’s the whole point of coming out to Manassas, Virginia. If we fly out of Reagan or Dulles, even on a private charter, we’re subject to an array of camera surveillance. But out here, Manassas Airport allows the wealthiest people to fly in and out of our nation’s capital without ever being seen.

  “You’re Beecher,” a Southern voice insists, more Kentucky aggressive than Virginia calm. Tall and fit in a black, no-nonsense pea coat, he has short cropped hair dyed blond to offset his seventy years. His belt buckle and shirt buttons form a perfect line. No question, former military. Mac said he works for one of the big government contractors; she wouldn’t say which.

  “Mr. Mulligan,” I reply, extending a handshake.

  Mulligan doesn’t take it. His right hand stuffed in his pocket, he motions for us to follow him to the back of the hangar. “You’re younger than the last one,” he says over his shoulder.

  Last one? Tot told me it’d been years since they asked anyone to join the Ring.

  “Tell Mac if my wife dies, Mac’s still the first one I’m calling,” he adds, making sure to always stay a few steps in front of us.

  He stops at the back of the hangar, giving us our first good look at what we’re really here for. Mac gave me three things for the trip. This is the first: a private jet with two thin black stripes running along the side. Most companies prefer a low profile and won’t put their logo on their private planes—though they sometimes hide it in the plane’s tail number. This one reads N619LM. LM. Lockheed Martin. Uncle Sam’s top contractor. “Do me a favor,” Mr. Mulligan adds as the pilot sticks his head out. “Don’t wreck my plane.”

  74

  The crypt was warm inside—they had a heater and a light.

  Following behind Francy, A.J. scanned the mausoleum as he stepped inside. There were bodies all around him, hidden behind ancient marble slabs, each one marked by an engraved nameplate draped with spiderwebs. Along the back wall stood a round iron table that held a vase of dried flowers and two goblets that hadn’t been touched in decades.

  “Dinner for none,” Francy joked, her steps scratching against the floor’s dried dirt and mortar.

  As the heavy door shut behind them, A.J. cocked an eyebrow. Still no guards, no cameras, and no hidden staircase that led to an underground bomb shelter.

  “The President isn’t here, is he?” A.J. asked.

  Francy sat on the edge of the wrought iron table, arms flat at her sides.

  “So the reason you brought me here…” A.J. began. He thought about it a moment. “This was a test. You were checking my loyalty.”

  “We needed to know who you were talking to.”

  “Then ask me; I’ll tell you! You know I’m not with the Knights!”

  “What about Beecher?” Francy challenged. “We know you let him go, A.J. Truthfully, I’m okay with that. We need Beecher and the Ring in this one. But when things like that happen…and you don’t tell us…we need to know who you’re really playing for. And who else you’re talking to.”

  “Are you high? I haven’t called anyone! Not even my dad! Tap my phone! Run my phone records right now!”

  Francy rubbed her middle finger against her thumb, severing a nearby spiderweb. “Already did.”

  “What?”

  “Your phone. We tapped it hours ago.” She spread her five fingers wide, like a magician finishing a trick. “You passed, A.J. You could’ve called anyone and told them we were here. You didn’t.”

  A.J. stood there, now burning from the heat. “You really think that little of me?”

  “Don’t sulk. You know what’s at stake here. You saw how close the Knights got. Answer me honestly: If you were me, and Wallace asked you to double-check everyone—including swiping his daughter’s phone to see if they were tracing us through that—you’re telling me you would’ve done anything different?”

  Now A.J. was the one who was silent.

  “Exactly,” Francy said. “By the way, want to tell me what Beecher knows about Wallace’s past, because last I checked, sitting Presidents shouldn’t be spending this much time thinking about lowly archivists, even Culper Ring ones?”

  “If Wallace wants to tell you, he’ll tell you.”

  “Fair enough,” Francy said. “Now you ready to help me find where Beecher and Ezra are really headed to?”

  A small grin took A.J.’s face. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question.”

  75

  Somewhere in South Carolina

  Did it work?” Marshall whispered in his sleep.

  “Did what work?” Clementine asked.

  Blinking awake, Marshall squinted up at the fluorescent light. Fluorescent lights meant hospital rooms and operations. This wasn’t a hospital, though. The smell was wrong. It smelled of black tea. And cats.

  Marshall was flat on his back. A thin polyester blanket, like from a cheap motel, covered his chest. Clementine sat at the edge of his pulldown bed, watching over him. He
r cheek was scraped raw, though a scab was forming. The room was moving back and forth.

  “We’re on a train?” Marshall asked, trying to sit up as a deep pain in his armpit argued otherwise. Now he remembered. He’d been shot. Ezra had used an antique, retrofitted revolver, probably to make some awful historical parallel that only Beecher would appreciate. This was why he hated—

  “Did what work?” Clementine repeated. She was feeding a piece of cheese to a skinny white cat in her lap.

  Marshall didn’t like cats. He felt like they knew the truth about him. “You took their cat?”

  “It needed a new owner. But what you said: You asked if it worked,” Clementine explained. “What were you talking about?”

  Marshall stared back at her and the cat. “No idea.” Looking around, he saw that his shirt was off. Strips of white medical tape covered his wound. Now he remembered the black tea. Clementine had grabbed boxes of gauze from the dentist’s office. Marshall had her soak the gauze in black tea, then wring it out. The real pain came when she had to shove the gauze into the wound at his armpit. He’d passed out from the pain, but the tannins in the tea had helped shrink the blood vessels and encourage clotting. No doubt, it’s what’d saved Marshall’s life.

  “Why’re we on a train?” Marshall asked.

  “You think I could’ve gotten you through an airport? You couldn’t speak, much less stand. The auto-train left before dark. The porter helped me get you into a wheelchair. I told him you had a tough day of chemo, so if you see the guy, pretend you have my cancer.”

  Marshall lifted his arm, gauging the pain in his armpit. Clementine had dug out the musket ball with tweezers. The throbbing would be there for a while. He’d been through worse. Marshall’s breathing was still heavy, though. Harder than it should be. Through the oblong window, the sky was dark. It was the middle of the night.

  “You need sleep,” Clementine said.

  Marshall nodded. Wedged against the headboard of his bed was the stub from the train ticket. Destination: Florida. “What’s in Florida?”

  “The one person who can help us,” Clementine said. “We’re going to see my father.”

  76

  Twenty-nine years ago

  Devil’s Island

  Gotta pee,” Alby said.

  That’s all it took. The marine guard barely turned as Alby raced down the brick staircase, from the roof, toward the barracks. He didn’t enter the barracks, though. Instead, as Alby reached the ground floor, he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled out an unread week-old newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

  They didn’t get much news on the island. Papers came once a week, shipped from abroad in a separate delivery from the one that brought food and fresh water. If Alby got caught, this was his excuse, that he was delivering the new issue to Dr. Moorcraft.

  By now, he knew the pattern. Every day after breakfast, Dr. Moorcraft carried a set of file folders to the colonel in the officers’ quarters. A few hours later, Dr. Moorcraft left the offices, carrying those files deeper into the fort’s brick labyrinth.

  Just as he’d planned, Alby walked as calmly as he could, pretending to read the Stars and Stripes. Sure enough, up ahead, Dr. Moorcraft was exiting the colonel’s quarters. Like clockwork.

  Still holding the Stars and Stripes, Alby kept his pace, walking evenly. A hundred feet ahead of him, Dr. Moorcraft weaved through the fort’s connecting brick rooms. According to what Julian had said, during the Civil War these rooms had held cannons and guns. Today, sand and rat droppings were everywhere.

  As the hallway bent to the left, the true labyrinth began. There were barely any windows, barely any light. With a sharp turn, Dr. Moorcraft disappeared. Alby didn’t panic. For a week now, he’d been wondering where Dr. Moorcraft disappeared to. Now it made sense. Straight ahead, a metal plaque was bolted to the wall:

  Dr. Mudd’s Cell

  Around to the left

  From the very first day the Plankholders had arrived, this was the place with the best ghost stories: the old dungeons where they locked up the men who tried to kill Abraham Lincoln.

  As Alby turned the corner, he didn’t hear anything. No footsteps. No running. No shuffling in the sand. Just the usual rhythm of ocean waves in the distance. He squinted down the dim hallway. An orange crab walked sideways along the stone floor. But otherwise…

  Dr. Moorcraft was gone.

  Confused, Alby headed around the corner. The Stars and Stripes was now damp where he clutched it. The ceiling was lower down here, the hallway narrower. Ahead of him was an archway that framed a metal jail door, like you’d see in an old Western. Above it was a plank of wood that held a hand-carved message:

  Whoso Entereth Here

  Leaveth All Hopes Behind!

  This was it. The entrance to the dungeon and Dr. Mudd’s cell.

  As Alby got closer, he saw that the door with the metal bars was still shut, locked with a chain.

  It didn’t make sense. Where was…?

  Fwuuup.

  The sound came from behind him, from the main hallway, like a door scraping against the floor. Alby spun. As he raced back to the hallway, he heard the click and thunk of a lock.

  There. On his left was another narrow corridor, this one with white-painted bricks. At the end of the corridor was an old wooden door. Alby had been here before, during their safety orientation. It used to be one of the fort’s old gunpowder rooms. Now, because it had an interior location that didn’t face the ocean, it was the go-to hurricane shelter in case another storm hit.

  Now it made sense. Every day, Dr. Moorcraft met with the colonel. Every day, when that meeting was done, the doctor came here. The perfect hiding spot for his files.

  Alby walked away, still pretending to read Stars and Stripes.

  Soon enough, Dr. Moorcraft would be gone. And then, later tonight, Alby would get what he wanted.

  77

  Today

  Somewhere over North Carolina

  This is it?” I ask, leaning over the private jet’s eucalyptus-wood desk and staring down at the oversize, mottled sheet of paper. The map Mina found. It’d been rolled up for so long, we put my two shoes on it to keep it open. “Anything special about it?”

  “All maps are special,” Mina explains from the opposite side of the desk as she redoes her ponytail. It’s past one in the morning, though even with the jet’s dimmed lights and reclinable caramel leather seats, neither of us can sleep. “Think of the maps Magellan used to circle the globe. They were filled with trade routes that every rival country wanted. But for centuries, as someone smarter than me once said, the Portuguese controlled the Indies because they controlled the maps.”

  I study our own map, which features an old aerial satellite photo that looks like it was taken during the Cold War. At the center is a black-and-white hexagonal building, surrounded by water on all sides. Fort Jefferson, aka Devil’s Island, aka the prison that held Abraham Lincoln’s killers—and, for some reason, my father and his Plankholders unit. If my hunch is right, it’s also where my dad died.

  “You okay?” Mina asks for the fourth time in the last hour.

  I keep staring at the map. “Why’d you come here?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m serious, Mina. You did your job; you got me this map; you pointed me where to go. Why get on the plane with me and put yourself at risk?”

  She doesn’t hesitate. “Because you did the same for me, Beecher. When my brother needed you, you gave him the very best day of his life. I want to pay that back. And if I’m wrong, and this is all some big lie, well, then I guess I’m on the case of my life.”

  Makes sense. “Now why’d you really come?” I add.

  “I just told you—”

  “No. You didn’t do this for some karmic payback, or even for some casework. You may be a fellow archivist and even a friend, but first and foremost, you’re a Secret Service employee. Job one is reporting suspicious activity. So for you to be here with no backup, no one to
help you, and no cover in case this all blows up and you’re suddenly the one knee-deep in manure…? You could’ve called in a supervisor and watched it play out from your office. Try again, Mina. A real answer this time. Why. Are. You. Here. With. Me?”

  Across the pullout desk, Mina stands up straight. With the jet’s low ceiling, she’s too tall. She lowers her chin toward her chest. Her voice is barely a whisper. “I don’t know.”

  Her words, packed with a far-too-familiar loneliness, catch even her off guard. I stay right where I am. There’s something about this girl. This stubborn, unstoppable girl. I know she loves the past as much as I do. But unlike me, when it comes to her personal history, she’s figured out a way to embrace it…and draw strength from it. It’s the only way to reach the future. “I’m glad you’re here,” I tell her.

  “So am I,” she agrees.

  I can’t help but grin.

  “Beecher, now would be a good time to kiss me.”

  “I was about to.”

  “Sure y—”

  I flip up the table, sending the map and my shoes catapulting across the cabin. She’s a good two inches taller than me. It excites me even more.

  My fingers slide to the nape of her neck. I pull her toward me, kissing her hard as our tongues find each other. She tastes warm and somehow familiar.

  There’s no such thing as a perfect kiss. But this one’s definitely in the running.

  “Mm,” she murmurs, catching her breath. She plants a soft kiss on my cheek and whispers three words into my ear: “Do that again.”

  I’m facing the front of the plane, Mina’s facing the back. With the momentum of the jet, she’s closer than ever, pressing hard against me. Her body’s so strong, her muscles are tensed. She’s a thoroughbred.

  “This’s the reason you wanted the private jet, isn’t it?” she whispers, her lips vibrating against mine.