by Brad Meltzer
I nod, appreciating the news.
Within a few seconds, everything goes silent.
The calm before the storm.
From outside, there’s a quiet clip-clop as a set of finely polished dress shoes makes its way up the long hallway.
As Orson Wallace turns the corner and steps inside, I instinctively step back. I’ve never seen him face-to-face. But I know that face. Everyone knows that face. And those rosy cheeks. And those calming gray eyes. It’s like the front page of a newspaper walking right at me.
“Sir, this is Beecher White. He’ll be staffing you today,” the blond agent announces as I realize that Wallace has come here without any staff.
There’s another audible pop as the two-ton metal door slams shut and metal bolts kunk into place, sealing me in this windowless, soundproof, vacuum-packed box with the President of the United States.
“Nice to meet you, Beecher,” Wallace says, heading straight for the desk, the research cart—and the single wooden chair—at the center of the room. “I appreciate your helping us out today.”
68
That’s the single dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” the barber snapped. “Why would you send him in like that!?”
Through the phone, Dr. Palmiotti didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question!” the barber added.
“And I heard you. Now hear me: Be careful of your tone,” Palmiotti warned through the receiver.
“There’s no reason to put him at risk!”
“Be careful of your tone,” Palmiotti warned again.
Taking a breath, the barber stared up at the brick walls of the narrow alleyway that was used as a breakroom behind the barbershop. An unkind wind shoved the rotting stench from the nearby garbage cans into his face.
“I’m just saying, he didn’t have to go there,” the barber said, far more calmly. He knew he was already out of bounds by making the phone call. But he never forgot the rules—especially after what they think happened. Not once did he refer to the President by name.
“I appreciate your concern,” Palmiotti shot back, doing a poor job at hiding his sarcasm. “But we know what we’re doing.”
“I don’t think you do. By bringing him in like that—”
“We know what we’re doing, okay? He’s not at risk. He’s not in danger. And right now, he’s in the best possible position to find out exactly who’s holding the tin can on the other end of the string. So thank you for the concern, but this time, why don’t you go back to doing what you do best, and we’ll go back to doing what we do best?”
Before the barber could say a word, there was a click. Dr. Palmiotti was gone.
Even when he was little, he was a prick, Laurent thought as he shoved his way through the back door of the barbershop, anxious to refocus his attention on his next haircut.
69
I’m waiting for it.
And watching.
And standing there, swaying in place as my hands fiddle in the pockets of my blue lab coat, pretending to fish for nothing at all.
The President’s been here barely two minutes. He’s sitting at the long research table, eyeing the various boxes and documents that are stacked in neat piles on the rolling cart.
“Do you need help, sir?” I ask.
He barely shakes his head, reaching for a file on the second shelf of the cart: a single-page document encased in a clear Mylar sleeve. I saw the request list. It’s a handwritten letter by Abraham Lincoln—back when he was a regular citizen—requesting that better roads be built by the government. There’s another on the cart from Andrew Jackson, petitioning for money well before he was elected. From what I’d heard, Wallace loves these records: all of them written by our greatest leaders long before they were our greatest leaders—and proof positive that life exists before and after the White House.
But today, as Wallace squints down at Lincoln’s scratchy, wide script, I can’t help but think that he’s after something far bigger than life advice from his predecessors.
If Dallas and his contacts in the Culper Ring are to be believed—and that’s a big if—they think Wallace is here to talk. With me.
I eye the blond Secret Service agent who’s still standing in the opposite corner. He stares right back, unafraid of the eye contact. At the table, the President leans forward in his chair, both elbows on the desk as he hovers over the document. I watch him, picking apart his every movement like a mall cop studying a group of loud kids with skateboards.
The SCIF isn’t very big. With three of us in here, the room temperature inches up just enough that I’m feeling it.
But that’s not what’s causing the heat that’s swallowed my palms and is now plotting to take over the rest of my body.
At the table, Orson Wallace is calm as ever—ridiculously calm—like he’s reading the Sunday paper.
For ten minutes, I stand there, my lab coat making me feel like a baked potato in tinfoil. The only movement I allow myself is licking the salty sweat mustache that’s staked a claim on my upper lip.
Ten feet away, the President gives me nothing.
At twenty minutes, my back starts to ache from the lack of movement, and the sweat mustache doesn’t even taste that salty anymore.
Still nothing from the President.
At the half-hour mark, he pulls a pencil—usually only archivists and researchers use pencils—from his jacket pocket and then flips to another set of presidential letters.
But otherwise, more nothing. And more nothing. Until…
Diagonally across the room, the blond agent puts a pointer-finger to his ear. Something’s being said in his earpiece.
Without a word, the agent heads for the door and twists the metal latch. The President’s used to people moving around him. He doesn’t look up, even as our ears pop.
Sticking his head out the door, the blond agent listens to something being whispered by the agent outside. Something’s definitely up. And the way the agent keeps looking back at me, then back to his boss, I can tell—clearance or no clearance, secure room or unsecure room—there’s no way they’re leaving me alone with the President.
“I need two minutes,” the agent calls to me. He steps outside.
Before I can react, there’s a sharp sucking sound as the door shuts and the vacuum again takes hold.
I look over at the rosy-cheeked President, who’s still lost in his reading. But like before, all I see are the ghosts that float behind him: Orlando and Clementine… the spilled coffee… then the chair crashing to the floor. If it weren’t for this room… and what we found… and what Orlando was fast enough to…
I almost forgot. What Orlando grabbed.
I glance up at the corner of the ceiling. The videocamera is right where it’s always been. Watching us.
The sweat mustache puddles in the dimple of my lip.
That’s why the President hasn’t said a word. That’s why he hasn’t moved as he leans over the old documents. And that’s why Dallas said Wallace created his so-called Plumbers in the first place.
He knows he’s being watched. He’s always being watched.
If he’s sending a message, it has to be a subtle one.
That’s fine.
I’m an archivist. I know how to wait.
Sticking to my corner and tightening the microscope, I study him sitting there—the way he favors his right arm, putting more weight on it as he leans on the desk.
I notice that he never touches the documents, always being respectful of their value.
I even observe the way he keeps both his feet flat on the floor. But beyond that…
Still nothing.
I wait some more.
More nothing.
He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t make eye contact. Doesn’t ask any questions—just another five minutes of…
Nothing.
The door to the room unpuckers on my right as the blond Secret Service agent rejoins us. But he doesn’t take his spot in the back corner.
“Sir, we really should get going,” he says, staying by the door, which he holds open with his hand.
The President nods, tapping the eraser of the pencil against his chin. Still trying to get the last few seconds of reading done, he’s quickly out of his seat, twisting himself so that it looks like his body is leaving the room even as his head is still reading.
“You have a good one now,” the blond agent says to me.
As the President heads for the door—and toward me—it’s the only other time the President’s heavy gray eyes make contact with me.
“Thanks for helping us out,” the leader of the free world offers as I crane my neck up to take in his six-foot-one frame. “Just amazing what you have here.”
Then he’s gone.
Poof.
He doesn’t offer a handshake or a pat on my shoulder. No physical contact at all. All I get, as he cuts past me, is that he smells like talcum powder and Listerine.
As the silence sets in, I look over my shoulder, searching the room. The chair… the cart… everything’s in place. Even the Mylar-encased document he was reading is still sitting there, untouched, on the desk. I rush over to it to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
There’s nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And then I see it.
Something.
70
That’s your great find? A pencil?” Dallas asks.
“Not just a pencil. His pencil,” I say, pushing open the doors to all the bathroom stalls to make sure we’re alone. “The President’s pencil. That’s what he left behind.”
“Okay, so Wallace left a pencil. It’s hardly the nuclear codes.”
“You’re really not seeing this? We were in the room…”
“I heard the story—you were in the SCIF, Wallace came in, and then, instead of reaching out to you, he spent the next forty minutes reading through old records. So fine, he held back. Maybe he got scared.”
“He wasn’t scared! Look at what he did: In the middle of everything, he reaches into his jacket and takes out a pencil—not a pen, like every other person outside the Archives uses. A pencil.”
“Oh, of course—now I see it,” he says sarcastically as he starts washing his hands in the bathroom sink. I’m not thrilled to be dealing with Dallas, but at this point—based on the info he gave me yesterday… based on his explanation of the inner and outer rings… and everything he anticipated about the President… and the safehouse and the videotape and the wireless ear thingie… plus with Tot now giving me the silent treatment—I can fight alone, or I can fight with his Culper Ring behind me. The answer’s easy. Dallas may not have my complete trust, but for now, he’s got some of it.
“I think Khrushchev and Mussolini were also pencil men,” he adds with a laugh.
“I’m serious, Dallas. Think about it: Why does someone pull out a pencil? To follow our procedures for the research rooms—and to take notes, right? That’s fine—that makes sense. But here’s what doesn’t make sense. Wallace wasn’t taking notes. The entire time, he didn’t have paper… didn’t have a notebook… didn’t have or ask for a single thing to write on.”
“Maybe he would’ve—but instead, he didn’t find anything worth writing about. And even if that weren’t the case, what’s the big deal about having a pencil?”
“The big deal isn’t having it. The big deal is that he left it behind! And truthfully, I wouldn’t think it was such a big deal, except for the fact that—oh yeah—two days ago, we found a book in the same room that also wasn’t a big deal… until we found it had a hidden message written in invisible ink.”
At the sink, Dallas opens and closes his fists, shaking the excess water from his hands. He’s listening. “So where’s the hidden message in the pencil?”
“There are marks. Look at the pencil. Those indentations.”
He picks up the pencil from the sink counter, holding it just a few inches from his nose.
He wants to tell me they’re bite marks. But he knows they’re not. In fact, as he looks close, he sees that the length of the pencil is dotted with perfect tiny pockmarks—like someone took the sharp point of a pin and made a few dozen indentations.
“Who does that to a pencil?” I ask.
“Beecher, I know you’re all excited about the Culper Ring, but I think you’re reading too many mystery novels. Not everything has to be a clue,” he says, tossing me the pencil and rewashing his hands.
“You really don’t see it?” I ask.
“I really don’t—and even if I did, invisible ink is invisible ink. Since when are a few random dots a secret code?”
“Maybe now.”
I toss him back the pencil. He tugs hard on the eraser.
“The eraser’s attached. There’s nothing hidden inside.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Dallas says.
“I do. I brought it downstairs and ran it through the X-ray. It’s not hollowed out.”
Dallas again brings the pencil close to his face—so close it almost touches his patchy beard.
“It still could be nothing,” he says.
“It’s supposed to look like nothing. And that dictionary was supposed to look like a dictionary. Until you find the exact right someone who knows how to read what’s hidden underneath.”
Standing at the sink, Dallas glances back at me. “You got someone in mind?”
For the first time today, I smile. “I very much do.”
71
The archivist knew there was trouble when the cell phone started ringing.
The sound came from across the office, back by Beecher’s desk.
Of course, he knew the ringtone—the theme song from the History Channel’s Last Days of the Civil War. Everyone knew Dallas’s phone.
But it wasn’t until Dallas went darting out of the office that the archivist got concerned.
Being smart, the archivist didn’t stand up… didn’t panic… didn’t even look up above the sightline of the cubicle.
Instead, all it took was the best tool in his arsenal—the one tool every historian must have.
Patience.
For sixteen minutes, the archivist sat there.
For sixteen minutes, the archivist waited.
He heard the door to the office again slam open. Dallas rushed in, bursting back into the office to grab something—sounded like winter coats sliding together—then darted back out again.
And then, giving Dallas time to make his way downstairs, the archivist turned to the one tool that served him, at this moment, even better than patience: the large plate glass window that doubled as an entire wall of his cubicle—and that gave him a perfect bird’s-eye view of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Staring outside, the archivist watched as the two familiar figures bolted out of the building, racing across the street.
There they were.
Dallas. And Beecher.
Dallas and Beecher.
Definitely together.
The archivist’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Just like he knew it would. No way would they let something like this slip by.
“Yeah, I see it,” the archivist answered.
As they talked it through, an old silver Toyota—Dallas’s Toyota—eventually stopped in front of the Archives. That’s where Dallas and Beecher ran: to get Dallas’s car. And from what it looked like, Beecher was the one driving. The car stopped and Dallas got out. From this height, four stories up, the archivist couldn’t hear the screech. But he saw how fast Beecher drove off.
Like he was on a mission.
The archivist wasn’t thrilled.
Now there was definitely no choice.
“I know… I see it too,” Tot said into the phone, pressing his forehead against the cold plate glass window and watching as Beecher turned the corner and disappeared down 9th Street. “No, I don’t know for sure, but I can guess. Yeah. No, of course we tagged the car. But it’s time to tell the others,” Tot added. “We’ve offic
ially got ourselves a problem.”
72
Who you here to see?” the female guard with the bad Dutch-boy hair asks through the bulletproof glass window.
“We’re on the list,” I say, handing over my ID and stepping aside so she sees who I’m with.
From behind me, Clementine steps forward and slides her driver’s license, along with her own temporary ID badge (the one that says she’s a graduate student), into the open metal drawer just below the glass. With a tug, the St. Elizabeths guard snaps the drawer shut, dragging the contents to her side of the glass, but never taking her eyes off me. No question, she remembers me from yesterday.
“He’s my assistant,” Clementine explains.
“I don’t care who he is. He still needs to be checked in,” the guard pushes.
“I did. I called,” Clementine pushes right back, tapping her thumb ring against the counter. Unlike last night with her grandmother, her voice is back to pure strength. “Check your computer.”
The guard hits a few keys, and as her face falls, it’s clear I was right to bring in Clementine. But as I take back my ID and the new sticker, and the guard motions us through the X-ray, it’s also clear that Clementine’s not exactly ready for the victory dance. “End of the hall,” the guard says. “Escort’ll meet you upstairs.”
With a baritone tunk, the thick steel door on our left pops open, and we head inside to the heart of the building. Barely two steps in, we come to another steel door. This one’s closed. It’s the same system they have in prisons—a sally port—the next door won’t open until the previous one is shut. That way, the patients can’t escape.
Behind us, the first door clamps shut. I’m barely half a step behind Clementine. All I see is the back of her head, and a black beauty mark on the curve of her neck. But you don’t have to be fluent in body language to see the way she’s not moving. This is harder than yesterday. She knows what she’s about to face.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper.
She doesn’t look back.
