Checkmate (17 page)

“My job is to keep an eye on you,” Beck told Tessa.

She was standing beside his sedan. A few moments ago he'd stepped out when he saw her approaching and now he was scanning the neighborhood. Alert and vigilant. It made her feel safe.

“Well, far be it from me to keep you from fulfilling your duty,” she said.

Wait, don't sound too excited to have him tag along. It'll seem like that's what you want.

But it is.

Well, you can't let him know that!

Slightly conflicted, she said, “I think I'll be safe from the bad guys while I'm in the Library of Congress.”

Lien-hua was at the Academy, where the NCAVC team had set up shop after their building was attacked, so Tessa was here alone with Beck.

“Will it distract you if I sit at a table near you?” he asked. He hadn't shaved that morning and he had this slightly scruffy look going on.

Um. Yes.

“Why would that distract me?”

“Good. Then I think I'll come in with you.”

“I'm afraid you're out of luck there, Agent Danner.” She dug through her purse and fished out her Library of Congress card. “You can't get into the main reading room without one of these.”

He pulled out his creds. “I think I'll be alright. If they
give me a hard time I'll just tell 'em I'm your research assistant.”

“My assistant, huh?”

“Whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

Oh, man, why does he have to keep saying things like that?!

She put her Library of Congress ID card away and just went for it: “In that case, do you really think we need to take two cars? I mean, does that really make sense—having to find two parking spots?”

“Hop in.” Beck walked around to the passenger's side and opened the door for her. “I'll drive.”

+ + + +

Guido wore black jeans and a pink polo shirt. Medium height, brown hair, early forties, an easily forgettable face. When he greeted us he shook my hand a little too enthusiastically. “Good to meet you, good to meet you. I'd be glad to show y'all around.”

“Okay,” I replied.

Ralph handed him the keys to our rental car. “You drive. The curator of the Mint Museum will be meeting us there at eleven thirty—at the Randolph Road location. That means you have eighty minutes to give us the history of Charlotte. Let's get started with downtown.”

“Actually, we don't call it downtown,” Guido gently corrected him. “We call it Uptown, or maybe Center City.”

“Ah.” Ralph's tone was impossible to read. “Good to know.”

“You see”—we were walking to the car—“interestingly enough it was a bit of a controversy. Back in the
seventies the city went through the process of trying to decide what to call it. Finally landed on Uptown because, even though it's not so evident now, it was originally located on a hill. It was a trade route for the Native Americans. It's where the settlers used to—”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted him as we arrived at the car. “A trade route for Native Americans? Catawba?”

“Yes, yes. Very good.” Guido sounded impressed. “And Cherokee. That's how it came to be called Trade Street.”

“That's where we start.” Ralph swung his door open. “Take us up Trade
Street.”

The drive into the heart of DC had passed quickly. Now Beck walked alongside Tessa as they approached the Library of Congress.

“A lot of history here in this city,” he said.

“You know, I'm not a big fan of history.”

“You don't like history?”

“I mean, I like the stories. But names? Dates? Come on. And when you ask a history teacher why it's so important, they always give you the same answer.”

“Let me guess: ‘We study history so we can learn from it, so we don't repeat the same mistakes again.'”

“Exactly. But how does knowing the dates of the Chicago fire help us learn not to make that mistake again? Most teachers don't use it as an example of how you need to be careful with lanterns while you're milking a cow.”

They reached the steps.

“That's just a theory, about the cow, isn't it?”

“Either way, what does it have to do with daily life? And it's not like you're ever gonna need to know the names of all the presidents—like someone randomly asks you who the twenty-second president of the United States is and you're like—‘Grover Cleveland, who was also the twenty-fourth,' and then—”

“Is that true?”

“What?”

“That Grover Cleveland was the twenty-second and the twenty-fourth president?”

“Yeah.”

“So you remembered.”

The two of them got in line to enter the building.

“I remember a lot of stuff, but that doesn't mean any of it is useful. Point is: No history teacher I've ever had teaches history from that perspective. They never say, ‘Okay, here's what happened during Grover Cleveland's presidency and here's what we can learn from it and apply to our lives today so we don't make the same mistakes he did.' Doesn't happen. Instead they end up feeding you facts—dates and names—instead of application. The very reason they use to justify their jobs—using the past as examples and warnings for the present—is the very thing they almost universally fail to do.”

They passed through the doors, entered the building, and got in line to step through the metal detector.

Beck was quiet.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I always liked history.”

“Oh.”

“It was my favorite subject in school, actually.”

Tessa, you are such an idiot!

“Really, um . . . You know, I get that. When you think about it, it's . . . I mean, it can be sort of . . .”

He grinned as he showed his creds to the Capitol Police officer, then removed his gun and set it on the conveyor belt. “Gotcha.”

“What?”

“I was kidding. I hated history.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“So,” she said, “we have something in common, then.”

“I guess we do.”

They headed through security to the restricted-access
reading rooms while Tessa told herself she was not, not, not going to be distracted by having this guy sit at a table beside her.

+ + + +

Guido showed us the four statues on the corner of Trade and Tryon and told us a little about what each one represented as he gave us an abbreviated history of the city—from the early days of textiles and gold mining to the development of the banking industry.

Then he emphasized transportation, with the railroads cutting through the city. And, more recently, the Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which had become the country's second-largest hub for American Airlines since its merger with US Airways.

Four statues: Commerce, a gold prospector; Transportation, a railroad worker; Industry, a mill worker; and Future, a woman holding up her baby.

“This is known as Independence Square, and it's where they signed the Mecklenburg Declaration.”

“The Meck Dec,” I said.

“You know your Charlotte history.”

“I'm starting to take an interest in it. Talk to me about the layout of Uptown.”

“Well, there are four districts that used to be the voting precincts, we call them wards. Just remember that Third Ward is growing fast, lots of construction, and Fourth Ward is the historical district. That'll get you by.”

I considered what he said in light of the three-dimensional view of the city that my phone had revealed earlier.

A bus passed us and Guido pointed toward it. “The bus routes radiate from the transit center Uptown; the light rail goes southwest and northeast. An extension is under construction. That might be helpful. What are y'all looking for exactly?”

“Anything that helps me understand your city,” I said.

“What about segregation?” Ralph asked our guide. “I've heard about issues here over the years.”

“Well,” Guido said, “just like most major U.S. cities, people here tend to live next to folks who look like them. There used to be desegregation busing, but that ended in the Reagan era. Actually, in the public arena—politics, media, business—Charlotte is pretty well integrated. The most segregated hour of the week is Sunday morning during church.”

“Yeah, well,” Ralph replied, “Charlotte's not alone there.”

“We've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.” Then he abruptly switched topics. “The city continues to grow. People are moving back Uptown again. The trend started maybe a decade or so ago. Lofts going up all over the place.”

One was being built about a block away from us and scaffolding covered one side of the unfinished building. They were at nine stories now. I wondered how tall it was going to be when it was finished.

Guido drove us past some of the famous public art Uptown, as well as the statue of Captain Jack, then guided us past the Tudor homes of Myers Park, where he told us the old money was.

A young mom was pushing a jog-stroller along the winding sidewalk, taking advantage of the cooler morning before the crushing heat of the day took over.

Then Guido took us to the famous intersection where Queens Road curls around itself and meets up with . . . well, Queens Road. “We're named after Great Britain's Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,” he told us. “She was married to King George III. And, of course, to this day Charlotte is known as the Queen City.”

Capitalizing on the Queen City motif, there were
crowns on most of the major street signs as well as the streetlamps in Uptown. Even the taxis had crowns emblazoned on their sides. Guido explained that most of the skyscrapers were built to appear to have crowns on top. “Most famously, the Bank of America building.”

Just as it was with so many things, now that he'd pointed it out, it was obvious. The spires on top did look like a crown.

We drove past Bank of America Stadium, where the Panthers, Charlotte's NFL team, play. “Tomorrow is Fan Celebration Day,” Guido informed us. “The season doesn't start quite yet, but you'll have tens of thousands of fans packed in there to meet Panthers players and watch them scrimmage.”

I could almost see the wheels in Ralph's head turning. He was a huge gridiron fan and I imagined that he was trying to figure out a way he could meet some of the players.

South Mint Street wrapped around the stadium. “It's called Mint Street for a reason,” Guido told us. “It's where the mint used to be. That makes sense—I mean, that's obvious. They've since moved the building and now it's the Mint Museum over on Randolph, where you're heading, but this whole area was involved in gold mining.”

“Yes,” I said, “tell us about the gold mining.”

“Well, gold was discovered in 1799 by Conrad Reed, a twelve-year-old boy who lived about twenty miles from here. He found a gold nugget that weighed more than seventeen pounds. His family didn't know what kind of rock it was and ended up using it as a doorstop for three years before someone was able to identify it.”

Ralph just shook his head. “That's crazy.”

“Well.” Guido was obviously in his element
expounding all this to us. “In the coming years North Carolina became the richest gold-producing state in the Union, bringing with it an influx of foreign mine workers, until the 1849 gold rush in California, during which many of the miners from North Carolina moved out West. They say there are still places where the old mines stretch underneath Uptown, over in Third Ward.”

Ralph looked at him disbelievingly. “You're saying that the city was built right on top of these abandoned gold mines?”

Guido shrugged. “I guess. I mean, it wouldn't be feasible to fill up three- or four-hundred-foot-deep shafts—not to mention all the horizontal tunnels. It's a lot easier to cap 'em and go ahead with your building project. You hear about the mines, but I've never actually met anyone who can tell you where one of 'em is located, so I guess you gotta take it all with a grain of salt.” Then he added, “By the way, our city streets really are paved with gold, because gold dust was in the tailings that were used to make the roads.”

He swung us past Little Sugar Creek before pulling to a stop in one of the city parks near Uptown. “This might be interesting to you gentlemen. You see that culvert over there?” He indicated an overflow tunnel that was obviously there to keep the stream that disappeared into it from flooding during times of severe rain.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, a few years ago, News Channel Thirty-Six sent a reporter down there with a cameraman. Walked right in. No gate blocking the entrance. Nothing. There are
storm sewer tunnels that run all under Charlotte, more than three thousand miles of them.”

“Three
thousand
miles?” Ralph exclaimed.

“That's right. You can get just about everywhere—light comes down from the manholes and the grates. This reporter, she even found that her cell phone worked down there in most places. She could track exactly where she was with her GPS. And the maps of the tunnels are all online. She planned her entire four-mile trek through the storm-drainage system using the county's website.”

Most cities have better-protected storm-sewer systems. It was staggering to think how vulnerable a metropolitan area would be with its drainage tunnels this easily accessible.

“Thought you might find that interesting.” Guido smiled.

“I do,” I said softly.

Yes, Guido was definitely the right guy to be taking us around. He really did know his city.

I checked the time—just after eleven. “Let's head to the Mint Museum.”

“Actually,” he said, “there are a few things I need to take care of. Can you drop me off at the Chamber of Commerce?”

“Is there enough time?”

“There should be just enough.”

“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

+ + + +

No one came.

Corrine Davis had listened and waited and strained her eyes for any indication that someone was coming down the shaft, but no one did.

Besides catching some of that dripping water on her tongue, she hadn't had anything to drink since she woke
up in this tunnel. She'd been fighting off her thirst for as long as possible, but now it got the best of her.

Go to the water on the other end of the tunnel. You can always swim to—

You're not going to swim in the water, Corrine!

But she needed to drink. She needed that for sure.

With one hand trailing along the wall, she started back toward the far end of the tunnel where the water lay.