The House of Secrets

by Brad Meltzer

  Dr. Morrison hadn’t shown her any. Nor had any of the therapists. Neither had Skip. There weren’t even any photos in Jack’s house.

  Maybe it didn’t matter.

  Of course it did.

  “My dad was a showman, not a fighter. And he certainly wasn’t James Bond.”

  “Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t alone,” Butchie said, opening the brown bag and pulling out a single syringe.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you watched those episodes in Iran, Moscow, all those places? Especially then, he needed help getting there. You know anyone who worked with him back then?”

  The only person Hazel remembered was just a name that was in the TV show credits: Ingrid Ludlow, an assistant. When was the last time she’d seen her? It’d been years. Hazel sorta remembered Ingrid being a part of their lives as children, always around, and then…gone. She’d ask Skip about her, see if she came to Dad’s funeral.

  “Did I ever talk to you about my dad?”

  “Sometimes,” Butchie said, ripping open the plastic packaging, freeing the syringe. “It seemed to annoy you, so I didn’t make a habit of being like, ‘Oh, remember that time your dad did that alien autopsy?’ That one pissed you off. You said it was a personal affront. Got all Professor Nash on me.”

  She’d watched that episode and had a flash of memory. Her father had actually called her, asking for some of her expertise. And even then, the episode?

  It was…an embarrassment.

  Her entire life was devoted to the real stuff, and here was her father, cutting open a doll and doing The Voice: “If aliens really did come to our planet, this is what we think their organs would actually look like.” I should’ve told him it would all be white fuzz, Hazel thought.

  Wait.

  White fuzz.

  What was that?

  And then she was in her bedroom, holding the scissors, cutting open the bear, shoving the book in. The book. No. Wait.

  There was a story.

  A man.

  Frozen.

  An autopsy. Something shoved in his chest.

  Benedict Arnold’s bible.

  She remembered something else. Benedict Arnold’s full name was actually Benedict Arnold V—the fifth one born—though in truth, he was really Benedict Arnold VI. They named him the fifth when his baby brother died. A historical glitch. A trick.

  Agent Rabkin said it earlier—maybe Benedict Arnold wasn’t the bad guy in the story. But now Hazel wondered this: In all these stories, was her father the good guy? All those trips he made abroad…always with children. Everyone saw Jack Nash as the hero. But what if his trips had a darker purpose?

  “What I’m saying,” Butchie said, “is that maybe they made up that stuff about your dad doing work with the government…maybe that was just to get you riled, to see what you’d do.”

  “I almost pulled Drea through your window and smothered her,” Hazel said, now wondering just how much darkness runs in a family.

  Butchie raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything for a minute. “Drea’s a good kid. She helped me put down Butchie.”

  “You put your own dog down?”

  “People you love, you don’t want them going out seeing some stranger. It’s a blessing to be there when someone passes.” Butchie held up the syringe. “You ready?”

  “Not really,” Hazel said, her body tensing against the ropes. She clenched her teeth. A Hail Mary. “Do it,” she said. Butchie pulled a small vial from the brown bag.

  “You’re gonna incriminate yourself, on film,” Butchie said. “You realize that?”

  “I need to know what’s real. Especially about myself.”

  “You’re the worst criminal ever,” Butchie said, as he stabbed the syringe into the vial, pulled back the plunger. “How do you even know this truth serum shit works?”

  “I saw an episode of House of Secrets once,” she said, “where my dad debunked it.”

  37

  Druzhba, Russia

  1985

  Season 9, Episode 3 (1985): “The Moscow Diamonds”

  Jack Nash can’t believe his luck. He’s traveled six thousand miles, across two continents and one ocean, over the rutted back roads outside Moscow, paying off locals, drinking vodka, eating solyanka, and still he hasn’t been killed.

  He has thirteen people, a full production team, in a tiny hotel a few miles away, waiting for his phone call. This episode of The House of Secrets is about a cache of jewels, found sewn into a dress, that just might be the famous Romanov diamonds, missing for nearly a century. But that’s not the reason Jack’s here.

  He’s outside a farmhouse, chain-smoking Belomorkanals with a man named Dmitry Volkov, a professor from the university in Moscow. Jack’s waiting for his researcher Ingrid to come back outside to let him know what she thought of their offer.

  Dmitry is probably KGB.

  Well, no.

  There’s no probably.

  He is KGB. But he’s also a professor of history, a celebrated voice in the Soviet world. The Kremlin rolled him out whenever they needed a friendly academic face for the West. And judging by the pristine black car—a Volga—he rolled up in, a well-compensated face too. On TV, he seems more refined, but up close Jack sees that his teeth are a little crooked, the bottom row obviously capped, the top row slightly angled to the right, like italics. The bags under his eyes are thick and black.

  Dmitry is the cover story for why this American TV show is let into town, the bit player who will show the world how refined and cooperative the Soviets are. For the next two days, for the benefit of the cameras, Dmitry and the famous Jack Nash will put on a relentless search for the Romanov diamonds. But behind the scenes, for the benefit of their governments, these two men will be trading something far more valuable.

  “Don’t worry,” Dmitry says, “no one can hear us out here.”

  “You can hear us.”

  “I’m an academic, not a general. Not like your Benedict Arnold.”

  Jack rolls his eyes. Was there a single Russian who understood the meaning of subtlety? Yes, Jack was doing a favor for Uncle Sam—“just a lil’ errand,” the man with the government badge and Texas accent had said. Jack had done a few of these errands before, including during a trip to East Germany for a show about what was stolen from Hitler’s bunker. The errand then? Jack was to leave a manila envelope under his hotel mattress. Two days later, a Generalleutnant in the East German army would be staying in the same room and would retrieve it. Today’s errand? Jack wasn’t just a delivery boy anymore. He was authenticating and picking up a potential new page from Benedict Arnold’s bible. But that didn’t mean Dmitry had to blurt it all out loud.

  “Why such fascination still with the man?” Dmitry asked.

  “People like a bad guy,” Jack says.

  “Not so bad,” Dmitry says. “One of your finest warriors. In Russia, he would be a hero. We’d just leave out his last actions. Rewrite the books, make it look like he’d been framed, blame it all on someone else. Assign blame and you create a martyr. Keep reminding people of how he didn’t believe in your cause, you only remind the world why your cause shouldn’t be believed in.”

  “I think we’ve done all right.”

  “History,” Dmitry says, “it is not constant. Maybe a rewrite is due?”

  “Well, when you guys take over, I’ll put that in your hands.”

  Dmitry chuckles, then breaks into a series of phlegmy hacks. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his mouth, then examines what he’s left on the cloth, turning it this way, that way. “I had a part of my lung taken out a few years ago,” he says after a while. “A tumor the size of my thumb.”

  “Cancer?”

  “No, no,” he says. “They said it was benign. But I always wonder: Was it the entire thumb? Just the tip of the thumb? The bones that connect down to the wrist? They were never clear.”

  “I’m sure it was just the tip,” Jack says.

  �
�What is the difference between being sure and believing?”

  “I’d need evidence before I believed—and before I make any deal,” Jack says.

  Now Dmitry is the one rolling his eyes. He understands what Jack is saying. When it comes to this page of the bible, there’s no deal until they can authenticate it.

  “This is why I think, yes, you will win this Cold War. Because Americans, you will wait out anything, even those things that seem impossible.” Dmitry coughs some more. “The woman inside, what is her name?”

  “Ingrid,” Jack says.

  Dmitry pulls out his pack of Belomorkanals, offers another one to Jack. They’re like smoking industrial waste.

  “I don’t actually smoke,” Jack says.

  “I don’t either,” Dmitry says.

  Ingrid steps out of the farmhouse and waves to Jack that all is okay. There’s nothing urgent about her movements. She adds a thumbs-up. Everything checks out. This page of Benedict Arnold’s bible is real.

  “Looks like we have a deal,” Jack says.

  “Your friend Ingrid?” Dmitry says. “We keep her here for a few days, just in case.”

  “That wasn’t part of the agreement,” Jack says.

  “Consider it an addendum. Until we both get what we want.”

  A teenage boy steps out of the farmhouse then and stands beside Ingrid. Jack hadn’t seen the boy before, and doesn’t know where he showed up from.

  Even from a hundred yards away, Jack can tell the kid is sick. It’s the way he’s standing, like he’s missing something from the middle of his body. Jack has seen that before, when he’s been in hospitals visiting kids with bone cancers, kids who have a couple of days to live, who want to spend some of those days talking to him about whether or not ghosts are real, just like Hazel always wanted to know. This kid, Jack thinks, will know before I will.

  “I need something from you,” Jack says.

  “You are getting it. Your bible, yes?”

  “No, something different. Something that gives us another reason to talk. For one of our episodes. Truth serums and lie detectors. We’ll meet somewhere tropical, the Dominican Republic maybe, sit down, have a drink, pretend we’re interrogating each other. Show that it’s crap, you and me, tougher than the spies.”

  “I like it,” Dmitry says. “Let me talk to the university.”

  “Let me talk to the CIA,” Jack says.

  Dmitry is silent for a moment, then starts laughing hard, which turns into hacking again, now he’s bending over at his waist, a shudder working up out of him.

  “You should get that checked out,” Jack says.

  Ingrid is still standing in the doorway. She won’t be happy about needing to stay behind, but when it comes to the crew, she’s the only one who knows the true secret of the bible.

  “I hope you can sleep tonight,” Dmitry says, walking slowly back to his car, leaving a dwindling trail of smoke behind him.

  38

  Oakland, California

  Today

  Butchie flicked a switch on the GoPro camera strapped to Hazel’s head. “Okay. You’re running hot now.” He put his iPhone in her left hand, already open to the video with her questions. She’d recorded ten of them, spaced out at ten-second intervals; that way, if she started to babble, she’d interrupt herself. That was the hope, anyway. “How long you want me gone?” he asked.

  “A mile away,” Hazel said, “then turn around and come back.”

  It made no sense to Butchie, Hazel arguing that if he stayed and could hear her answers, maybe she’d lie. No sense at all! If this so-called “truth” serum worked, she’d have no choice but to tell the truth as she knew it. But Butchie knew some things deserved privacy.

  “When you get back, if I’m dead or in a coma or something, call Skip. Tell him who you are; he’ll take care of it. Then…” Hazel tried to figure out the best thing to tell Butchie. She decided on the truth. “Get out of town.”

  “Girl,” Butchie said, “I already thought you were dead once, and I stayed right here. If someone wants me, they can come get me.”

  “Also, if I’m knocked out when you’re back, don’t watch the video. You have to promise me.”

  “I promise you.”

  “One mile,” Hazel said.

  “One mile,” Butchie said, and backed out of the storage unit, pulled the rolling door down after him, and hit the padlock.

  Hazel sat and stared at the phone screen, waiting to hit the Play button on her video. The storage unit was 10 × 20 and packed meticulously with Butchie’s belongings. Furniture, boxes of books, racks of clothes, bikes, skydiving paraphernalia, but also pictures in frames everywhere, stacked up, leaning on the wall. In each one, Butchie was with people, always with people, smiling, a drink in his hand, his dog by his side. Hazel wondered if he had a boyfriend, if whatever his secret life was had room for love, since it didn’t seem hers did. She wondered how it was that she’d ended up alone, bungeed to a papasan chair in a storage unit, getting ready to shoot herself up.

  Hazel waited two minutes, then looked down at the needle and shoved it into her arm.

  39

  This time, there was a soft yellow glow and then it was gold and warm and like summer vacation, like flying, like being back in the air, like jumping from the top of El Capitan in Yosemite and floating, never coming down, never landing, just keep moving, keep on moving, never wake up, everything gold.

  40

  You got spotted,” Moten said.

  “I didn’t,” Rabbit told his boss. He was inside Hazel’s apartment. The local cops were leaving, a few neighbors were gawking, and Hal, the building manager, was smoking outside. “I’m the one who called 911.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “You think Hazel isn’t keeping an eye on this place? I want her to know we’re here. Once she hears that, she’s not coming back. Now we’ve got her running. Off balance. The perfect time for her to make a mistake.”

  “So we’re putting our hopes on what the cleaning lady tells her?”

  “First, she’s not just the cleaning lady. If I’m right—and I’m telling you, I’m right—she’s a friend. Second, Hazel’s not stupid. You want to see what she’s up to, we need to be smart. Smarter than just skulking around in the shadows and hoping for the best.”

  Moten didn’t say anything for a moment, but Rabbit could hear him tap-tap-tapping with something. It was late on the East Coast. This time of night in Bethesda, Rabbit imagined Moten was at home with his wife, catching a ball game, eating some dinner, maybe wearing a robe. “Skip’s about to go on a plane,” Moten said. “According to his phone, he’s headed to LAX.”

  “I saw. The moron is flying under his own name, on a flight to Dubai that leaves at nine,” Rabbit said. “He’ll be in Dubai tomorrow night. I checked the manifest. There’s a cameraman scheduled to join him on a later flight. They think pulling out TV cameras will get folks talking. Not a bad plan—though I wouldn’t trust Skip with anything.”

  Tap-tap-tap. “I didn’t know about the cameraman. Good work on that, Rabbit.”

  “You hired me for a reason, sir. Whoever killed Jack Nash, we’ll find them.”

  “Just tell me where Hazel is.”

  “I’m betting with someone named Butch Vasquez,” Rabbit said. “His name wasn’t in her file, but I make him as a friend, maybe sometime coworker.” The fact was, the only name in Hazel’s file was her own. Everything else was redacted. “A local cab driver said he dropped Hazel at Butch’s shop this morning. I’m on his place next.” Rabbit was staring at a photo of Butchie now, of Butchie and Hazel breaking gravity. Butchie had a plane. Keep an eye on that.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap. “Now do you want to hear what went wrong here today?” Moten asked.

  Rabbit didn’t answer.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap. “Did you talk to our friend Dr. Morrison recently?”

  “No,” Rabbit said.

  “Hazel did. When you get to her, find out the tenor of her con
versation, okay?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’d like to know why he had a sudden change of heart.”

  “Pardon me, sir?”

  “I just got a call from UCLA Medical Center. Seems Dr. Morrison is no longer in our corner.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He jumped from the hospital roof. They’re now scraping what’s left of him off the sidewalk.”

  41

  As Hazel came to, all she saw was stars. Except they weren’t actually stars. They were glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, all the major constellations, and for a second she thought she was ten and at a sleepover somewhere. She half expected to look over and see a bunch of stuffed animals, but instead she found Butchie.

  “There you are,” Butchie said. His hands were clasped in front of him.

  “Were you praying?”

  “Something like it.”

  “Where am I?”

  “A place I keep,” he said. Hazel let her eyes adjust. They were in an old warehouse space, broken up by three-paneled shoji dividers and a wall of windows, half of them open, a light breeze billowing in through white blinds. It was like waking up in a dream. “You remember me coming to get you?”

  “No. Did I say anything?”

  “You asked for a cheeseburger and a glass of water,” Butchie said. “Then you started talking gibberish about a stuffed bear. That’s when I knew you’d be okay.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Couple hours. It’s late. Figured better not to have the entire world see me carrying a body in here.”

  Hazel propped herself up on her elbows, her entire body pulsing now. She needed her medication. She was overdue, even with the horse tranquilizers in her body. “This is where you live?”

  “This is where I hide.”

  She was woozy, maybe still asleep, now that she considered it. The ceiling glowed down on her, covered with stars.