The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  “The medals. The military medals. Do you know who created the Purple Heart?”

  “George Washington,” I shoot back.

  “I appreciate that. I appreciate you knowing your history,” Nico says. “Yes, George Washington created it. It was one of the first medals introduced in the United States. But he didn’t call it the Purple Heart—”

  “He called it the Badge of Military Merit,” I interrupt. “It got its name from the fact that the medal itself was a purple cloth in the shape of a heart. What else do you want to know?”

  “Do you know how many Purple Hearts George Washington gave out?” Nico challenges.

  This time, I’m silent. I’m good, but I’m not Tot.

  “Three,” Nico says. “That’s it. Three. Three men—all of them from Connecticut. As part of the honor, Washington wrote their names into a special book he called the Book of Merit. And do you know where this Book of Merit is today?”

  “In that warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant?” I ask.

  “No one knows where it is,” Nico says, oblivious to my joke as he flashes us a grin of excitement. Clementine looks even worse than she did yesterday. She’s not lasting much longer. “Washington’s book disappeared. Forever. In 1932, they revived the honor of the Purple Heart—it’s been given in our military ever since. But to this day, no one—not anyone—has any idea where Washington’s original Book of Merit—with the original names—actually is.”

  “And this matters to us because…?”

  “It matters because today, the Purple Heart goes to those who are wounded in battle. But originally, back then, Washington’s badge had nothing to do with injuries. In his own words, Washington said it was for extraordinary fidelity. Do you know what extraordinary fidelity means?”

  “It means someone who’s loyal,” I say.

  “It means someone who can keep a secret,” Nico counters. “I didn’t know this. I looked it up. I found it after your visit. I have a lot of time here.”

  “Just get to the point.”

  “I have been. You’re not listening to it. Like your predecessor—”

  “Don’t compare me to a predecessor. Don’t call me Benedict Arnold. Don’t start with all that reincarnation hoo-hoo,” I warn him, still standing across from him. “If you want us to listen, stay in reality.”

  His eyes flicker back and forth. His chest rises and falls just as fast. But to his credit, Nico bites the inside of his lip and stays on track. “The very first recipient of the Purple Heart was a twenty-six-year-old named Elijah Churchill,” Nico explains. “Elijah served under someone I think you’ve heard of—Benjamin Tallmadge.”

  Clementine looks my way.

  “Tallmadge was the organizer of the original Culper Ring,” I say.

  “Then when you look at the third name on that list—Daniel Bissell from Windsor, Connecticut—guess why his name was put in the Book of Merit? He was one of our best spies, who helped infiltrate Benedict Arnold’s own corps,” Nico says, his eyes flicking faster than ever. “And according to some, that’s the real reason the Book of Merit disappeared. It wasn’t stolen. It was hidden—by Washington himself, who collected our best men and used them to build the greatest secret corps that history never knew…”

  “The Culper Ring,” Clementine says.

  “I’m not asking you to believe it,” Nico says. “But even America’s secret history has its experts. Let me help you with this. You know I can help you. This is the world I know best.”

  I’m tempted to argue, but we both know he’s right. When it comes to conspiracies, Nico’s got a PhD.

  “Tell me what you found in the invisible ink,” Nico says. “Tell me and I’ll share what I know. If I fail, you can leave and we’re done.”

  I look over at Clementine, who replies with an awkward shrug. I can’t help but agree. At this point—especially with the President’s pencil apparently being a bust, and still not knowing why Wallace brought me to that room—what do we have to lose?

  From my back pocket, I unfold the photocopy of the dictionary page and slide it across the round table.

  Unlike before, Nico doesn’t snatch it. He stays calm, hands again flat on the table. But as he leans forward and reads the words, I see the thick vein starting to swell on his neck.

  FEBRUARY 16

  26 YEARS IS A LONG TIME TO KEEP A SECRET

  WRITE BACK: NC 38.548.19 OR WU 773.427

  There’s a loud kuh-kunk behind us. Another Diet Dr Pepper for another patient, this one a young Asian man with a dyed blond stripe running down the middle of his head like a skunk streak.

  “Get away from us, Simon—this isn’t your business!” Nico growls without turning around as he covers the photocopy by pressing it against his own chest. The Asian man flips Nico the finger, then heads for the swinging doors that lead back to patients’ rooms.

  Barely noticing, Nico focuses back on the photocopy. His lips move as he reads.

  His lips move as he reads it again.

  Over and over, he rereads the document. The vein on his neck swells larger than ever.

  He finally looks up—not excited, not energized… not anything.

  “I know where you need to go,” he says.

  76

  The barber had gloves in his pocket. But he didn’t put them on.

  It wasn’t that he wasn’t cold. Out here—especially out here in the snow-covered graveyard—the weather was freezing. He was most definitely cold.

  But for now, he wanted to feel it.

  In fact, as he walked up the twisting concrete path of Oak Hill Cemetery, he knew that was his real problem. For too long now, especially the past few years, he hadn’t felt the cold, or fear—or most anything at all. Instead, he’d been lulled. And worst of all, he hadn’t been lulled by anyone. He’d been lulled by himself.

  It was the same reason he came here today.

  He knew he shouldn’t. Palmiotti would tear him apart if he found out he’d trekked all the way out here in the snow. But as he spotted the headstone that was carved in the shape of a baby swaddled in a blanket, the barber couldn’t help but think what else he’d lulled himself into.

  He’d only lived in Washington a few years now. But he’d been here long enough to know where the real strings were pulled. Right now, Palmiotti was the one with the office in the White House. And the private parking spot in the White House. And the best friend who sat in the Oval Office. All the barber had was high rent on his barber chair and a set of presidential cuff links. So if this really was the moment where the tornado was about to uproot the house, Laurent knew who’d be the first one that house was landing on.

  Damn right he needed to come out here and start feeling this stuff for himself.

  But as he took his first step off the concrete path and into the snow, he heard the faint rumbling of voices behind him.

  Hobbling and hiding behind a section of trees that surrounded the edges of the wide-open graveyard, Laurent didn’t have any trouble staying out of sight. Out here, no one was looking for anything except the dead—which is why it made such a perfect drop point.

  In the distance, two voices were fighting, arguing, and far too busy to see what was really going on in the cemetery.

  Still, it wasn’t until they reached the top of the path that Laurent peered out from behind the apple blossom tree and spied who was making all the noise.

  That’s him, the barber thought as the bitter cold settled between the thin bones of his fingers.

  “Stop!” the girl called to the guy with the sandy blond hair.

  The guy wasn’t listening. But there he was. The one who could take away everything they had worked for.

  Beecher.

  77

  Beecher, stop…!” Clementine calls out, chasing behind me.

  I keep running, my lungs starting to burn from the cold, my shoes soaked from the snow as I climb the concrete path and pass a double-wide headstone with an intricate carved stone owl taking flight from th
e top.

  No doubt, Oak Hill Cemetery is for people with money. But if Nico’s right, it’s also for people with something far more than that.

  “Beecher, you need to be smart!” Clementine adds. “Don’t jump in without knowing where you’re going!”

  I know she’s right. But thanks to the GPS in my cell phone, I know exactly where I’m going.

  “542 feet northwest,” it says in glowing green letters. There’s even a red digital arrow that points me in the right direction. Yet as I look down to check it, my phone vibrates in my hand.

  Caller ID says it’s the one archivist who I know is a member of the actual Culper Ring. Dallas.

  “Beecher, that’s it! You cracked it!” Dallas blurts before I even say hello.

  I know what he’s talking about. The note. The invisible ink. Twenty-six years is a long time to keep a secret. Write back: NC 38.548.19 or WU 773.427. Since the moment we found it, we knew those numbers weren’t call numbers on books. So then we kept thinking, What’s NC? What’s WU?

  Until Nico said it was another old George Washington trick.

  “Nico’s the one who cracked it,” I remind him.

  “The point is, he was right. One of our guys—he works at the Supreme Court of all things—he said Nico’s story checked out: Washington apparently used to write these long rambling letters that seemed to go nowhere… until you read just the first letter, or third letter, or whatever letter of every word. When we tried that here, it’s like he said: NC and WU became…”

  “N and W. North and West,” I say, repeating what Nico told me, and I told Dallas a half hour ago when I said to meet us here.

  As I head up the main path, I understand why no one wants to take Nico at his word, but even I have to admit, it was amazing to watch. Once Nico had the N and W, he played with the decimals and the message became a bit more familiar: Write back: N 38º 54.819 W 77º 3.427—a GPS address that converts to the same latitude and longitude system that’s been in place since Ptolemy put them in the first world atlas nearly two thousand years ago. That’s why we were stuck for so long. We were looking for book coordinates. These were map coordinates. “Where are you anyway?” I ask.

  “Just getting to Oak Hill now,” Dallas explains. “I just passed the front gate. Where’re you?”

  “I don’t know—where all the headstones and dead people are. Up the hill on the left. There’s…” I glance around, searching for landmarks. “There’s a wide-open field and a huge stone statue of a… she looks like a farm girl, but her face is all flat because the weather’s worn away her nose.”

  “Hold on—I think I… I see you,” Dallas says. “I see you and—” He cuts himself off. “Please tell me that’s not Clementine with you.”

  “Don’t even start. Y’know I needed her to get into St. Elizabeths.”

  “And what about here? Why bring her here? We talked about this, Beecher. No matter what you think, we don’t know this girl.”

  I hang up the phone, tired of the argument. It’s no different than what Tot said. But what neither of them understands is, without Clementine, I never would’ve made it all the way here. And like I told her earlier, she was in that SCIF too. I can’t leave her behind.

  “Beecher, hold up!” a faint voice calls out behind us.

  I turn, spotting Dallas just as he comes around the corner, halfway down the crooked path. He’s less than fifty yards away. He’s running fast to catch up.

  But not as fast as me.

  “Who’s that?” Clementine calls out, clearly freaked out.

  “Don’t worry. Just Dallas,” I say.

  “Why’d you tell him we were coming here?” Clementine asks, remembering Tot’s advice to not trust anyone.

  I don’t answer.

  On my cell phone, GPS says we’ve got another 319 feet to go. But I don’t need a snazzy cell phone to see my true destination.

  An expansive pie crust of snow covers the ground, and a narrow minefield of footprints burrows straight at a single grave: an eight-foot-tall obelisk that looks like a miniature Washington Monument.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Clementine whispers behind me.

  As I sprint from the paved path, my feet are swallowed by the ice. I stick to my left, careful to steer clear of the evidence. The footprints look new—like they were made this morning. There’s also another set of prints that leads back, back, back to the ring of trees that surround the field.

  “You think someone’s out there?” Clementine asks, spotting the same prints I do.

  I don’t answer. But what catches my eye is what’s sitting at the base of the obelisk: wet leaves… clumps of soil… and a neat little hole in dirty brown snow…

  Like something’s buried underneath.

  Scrambling forward, I dive for the little rabbit hole, stuff my hand down it, and pat around until…

  There.

  The beige rock is smooth and flat, perfect for skimming in a lake. Dallas and Clementine both rush to my side. But as I pull the rock out, I know something’s wrong. The weight’s not right.

  “It’s plastic,” I say. “I think… I think it’s hollow.”

  “Of course it’s hollow. That’s how they hide stuff in it,” Dallas says as if he sees this all the time. “Open it up. See what it is.”

  I flip the rock over. Sure enough, the bottom swivels open.

  All three of us hunch over it like mother birds over an egg.

  And we finally get to see what’s inside.

  78

  Tot purposely chose one of the SCIFs on the opposite side of the building.

  He picked one that was assigned to the Legislative folks. The head of the Legislative SCIFs was a middle-aged guy who spent his nights playing Adams Morgan clubs with a happy but untalented rocksteady and reggae band. He’d never know the room was being used.

  Still, Tot was careful as he came over. He did his usual weaving through the stacks, kept his face off the cameras, and even knew to avoid the elderly volunteers who they’d packed into one of the suites on the eighteenth floor to sort through the recently unearthed Revolutionary War widow pension files.

  In fact, to actually get in the room, he was smart enough to avoid using the regular door code.

  And smart enough to instead use the security staff’s override code.

  And smart enough to pick one of the few SCIFs in the building that didn’t have a single surveillance camera (which is how most Senators and Members preferred it).

  But the one thing Tot did that was smartest of all?

  He made sure he wasn’t working this alone.

  On his right, the quarter-inch vault door clicked and thunked, then opened with a pneumatic pop.

  “You’re late,” Tot said.

  “You’re wrong,” Khazei said as the door slammed behind him. “I’m right on time.”

  * * *

  79

  Nothing.”

  “No. Can’t be,” Dallas says.

  “It can. And it is,” I say, tipping the hollow rock so he and Clementine can get a good view.

  Dallas squints and leans in, examining the small rectangular compartment inside the rock. No question, there’s nothing there, which means…

  “Someone already picked up the message,” Clementine says, looking back at the footprints that lead out to the treeline, which curves like a horseshoe around us.

  “Or no one’s put one in yet,” I say, trying to stay positive, but unable to shake the feeling that Clementine may be right. I follow her gaze to the treeline in the distance. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. But we all recognize that out-of-body gnawing that comes when you think you’re being watched. “I think we need a place to hide. Someone could still be coming.”

  Dallas shakes his head, pointing down at the grave. “If that were the case, where’d these footprints come from?”

  “Actually, I was thinking they came from you,” Clementine challenges, motioning at Dallas even as she eyes the ones back to the treeline.
“I mean, even with Beecher calling you, that’s a pretty amazing coincidence that you show up at the exact moment we do.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same about you,” Dallas shoots back. “But I was going to be cordial enough to wait until you left and tell Beecher behind your back.”

  “Can you both please stop?” I plead. I’m tempted to tell Clementine what Dallas did last night—how he spotted that person in the taxi… and gave me the video of us in the SCIF, keeping it away from Khazei… and told me the true story about the Culper Ring and the President’s private group of Plumbers. But it doesn’t change the fact that with this rock being empty…“We’re more lost than ever.”

  “Not true,” Dallas says, licking flicks of snow from his beard.

  “What’re you talking about? This was the one moment where we had the upper hand—we knew the location where the President and his Plumbers were dropping their message, but instead of catching them in the act, we’re standing here freezing our rear ends off.”

  “You sure this message is between the President and his Plumbers?” Dallas asks, his voice taking on that timbre of cockiness that it gets when he thinks he’s in control.

  “What’s a Plumber?” Clementine asks.

  “His friends. Like Nixon’s Plumbers,” I explain. “The people Wallace is working with.”

  “But you see my point, right?” Dallas adds. “If this note really was between the President and his Plumbers—and they knew you found out about it—”

  “Why didn’t they simply change the meeting spot?” I ask, completing the thought and looking again at the mess of footprints.

  “And on top of that, if the big fear was the fact that you’d rat him out, why didn’t the President make you an offer when he had you in the SCIF? He’s supposedly who the message in the dictionary was for, right?”

  It’s a fair question. And the one assumption we’ve been relying on since the moment this started: that when we found the dictionary in the SCIF, it held a message between the President and someone from his inner circle. But if that’s not the case…