The Inner Circle (48 page)

“It’s definitely haunted house,” I say with a nod.

With a few quick turns, Dallas weaves us deeper into the hills, where at every curve in the road the nearest tree has a red reflector sunk into its trunk. Out here, the roads don’t have lights, which we need even more as the winter sky grows black.

“You sure this is right?” I ask.

Before he can answer, my phone vibrates in my hand. Caller ID tells me who it is.

“Tot?” Dallas asks.

I nod. It’s the fourth time he’s called in the last few hours. I haven’t picked up once. The last thing I need is for him to fish and potentially figure out where we are.

As we round the final curve, the hills level out and a brand-new glow blinds us in the distance, forcing us to squint. Straight ahead, giant metal floodlights dot the long field that stretches out in front of us. A familiar churn in my stomach tells me what my eyes can’t see.

“This is it, isn’t it?”

Dallas doesn’t answer. He’s staring at a white bus that slowly rumbles through the brightly lit parking lot on our left.

The only other sign of life is a fluorescent red triangle that looks like a corporate logo and is set into a haystack-sized man-made hill and serves as the sole welcome mat. You don’t come this way unless you know what you’re looking for.

Just past the red triangle, at the only intersection for miles, a narrow paved road slopes down to the left, toward a high-tech check-in building, then keeps going until it dead-ends at the base of the nearby stone cliffside that surrounds the little canyon that we’re now driving in.

But as we make the left toward the check-in building, it’s clear that the road doesn’t dead-end. It keeps going, into a black archway that looks like a train tunnel, inside the cliff and down underground.

“Stay in your car! I’m coming to you,” a guard calls out in a flat western Pennsylvania accent, appearing from nowhere and pointing us away from the check-in building and toward a small freestanding guardhouse that looks more like a construction shed.

I look again to my right. There are two more sheds and a bunch of workers wearing hard hats. The check-in building is still under construction.

“Here… right here,” the guard says, motioning us into place outside the security shed—and into view of its two different security cameras. “Welcome to Copper Mountain,” he adds as Dallas rolls down his window. “I assume you got an appointment?”

101

Racing in the golf cart, our hair blows in a swirl as Dallas and I whip down one of the cave’s long cavities.

“… just so glad to have you both here,” gushes Gina Paul, our driver, a short, overfriendly woman with a pointy-beak nose, smoker’s breath, and straight blonde hair that’s pulled back so tight, it acts as a facelift.

“I’m sorry it’s such short notice,” I tell her.

“Short notice… it’s fine. Short notice is fine,” she says as I realize she’s just like my aunt who repeats everything you say. Her nametag says she’s an account manager, but I don’t need that to know she’s in sales. “So, so great to finally meet you, Beecher,” she adds even though she doesn’t mean it.

She doesn’t care who I am.

But she does care where I work.

Fifty years ago, this cave was one of Pennsylvania’s largest limestone mines. But when the limestone ran dry, Copper Mountain, Inc., bought its 1,100 acres of tunnels and turned it into one of the most secure off-site storage areas on the eastern seaboard.

And one of the most profitable.

That’s a fact not lost on Gina, who, by how fast this golf cart is now moving, realizes just how much money the National Archives spends here every year.

We’re not the only ones.

The narrow thin cavern is about as wide as a truck, and on our right a painted red steel door is set deep into the rock, like a hanging red tooth on a jack-o’-lantern. Above the door, a military flag hangs down from the ceiling. I know the logo.
U.S. Army
. As the golf cart picks up speed, there’s another door fifty yards down from that—and another flag hanging from the ceiling.
Marines
.

It’s the same the entire stretch of the cavern: red steel door after red steel door after red steel door.
Air Force. Navy. Department of Defense
.

“I’m surprised they put their names on them,” Dallas says as we pass one for the FBI.

“Those are the rooms they want you to see,” Gina says with a laugh. “We’ve got over twenty-two miles of tunnels back here. You don’t want to know how much more space they’ve got.”

I pretend to laugh along, but as we go deeper into the cave I can’t take my eyes off the ceiling, which seems to be getting lower.

“You’re not imagining things,” Gina says. “It
is
getting lower.”

Dallas shoots me a look to see if I’m okay.

Throughout the cavern, the jagged rock walls are painted white, and there are fluorescent lights hung everywhere, presumably to make it feel more like a workplace instead of an anthill.

To my surprise, it works.

On our right, two employees wait at an ATM that’s built into the rock. Next to that, there’s a red awning over a fully functioning store called the “Roadway Café.”

I thought being this far underground would feel like I was being buried. Instead…

“You’ve got a full-blown city down here,” Dallas says as we pass a new group of construction workers—this one putting the finishing touches on an area that holds vending machines.

“Almost three thousand employees. Think of us as the Empire State Building lying on its side and buried three hundred feet underground. We got a full-service post office… our own water treatment plant to make the toilets work… even good food in the cafeteria—though of course, it’s all brought in. There’s no cooking permitted on site. We get a fire and—forget burning the files that’re stored down here—y’know what kinda death trap we’d be standing in?” she asks with a laugh.

Neither Dallas nor I laugh back—especially as we both look up and notice the cargo netting that’s now running along the length of the ceiling and keeping stray rocks, cracked stalactites, and what feels like the entire cavern from collapsing on our heads. Back by the café and the ATM, we were in the cave’s version of Times Square. But as the employees thin out and we head deeper into the catacombs, this is clearly one of its darker alleys.

“Home sweet home,” Gina says, flicking on the golf cart’s lights.

Straight ahead, it looks like the cave dead-ends. But as the golf cart’s lights blink awake, there’s no missing the yellow police tape that keeps people from turning the corner, or the enormous red, white, and blue eagle—part of the National Archives logo—that’s painted directly on the cave wall. Above the eagle’s head is a partially unrolled scroll with the words:
Littera Scripta Manet
, the Archives motto that translates as “The Written Word Endures.”

Damn right it does
, I think to myself, hopping out of the golf cart and darting for the bright red door that serves as the entrance to the Archives’ underground storage facility.

102

Anything else I can help with?” Gina calls out, standing in the cave, outside the threshold of the open red door.

“I think we’re fine,” I tell her.

Dallas is already inside the storage unit.

I’m anxious to follow.

Gina never leaves her spot. As a sales rep, she’s in charge of clearing our visit with Mr. Harmon and the Presidential Records Office, checking our IDs, and even putting in the six-digit code that opens the steel door (and the secondary door that sits just behind that). But without the necessary security clearance, she can’t join us in here.

“Both doors open from the inside,” she assures us as the cold air pours out from the room. Just inside the door, I take a quick glance at the hygrothermograph on the wall. The temperature is at a brisk fifty-eight degrees, which is colder than we usually keep it.

“If you think of anything else, just gimme a call,” she adds, tapping the leather phone holster on her hip. Reading my expression, she says, “Reception’s great. We’ve got cell towers throughout.”

Her point hits home as my own phone starts to vibrate.

As I glance down, caller ID tells me it’s Tot. Again.

“I should grab this,” I say to Gina, who nods a quick goodbye, keenly aware of when a client needs privacy.

As the red steel door slams shut and my phone continues to vibrate, I spin toward our destination and step through the second door, where the damp darkness of the cave has been replaced by an enormous bright white room that’s as big as an airplane hangar and as sterile as our preservation staff can possibly manage. In truth, it’s just a taller, brighter version of our stacks in D.C., filled with row after row of metal shelves. But instead of just books and archive boxes, the specially designed shelves are also packed with plastic boxes and metal canisters that hold old computer tape, vintage film, and thousands upon thousands of negatives of old photographs.

There’s a reason this stuff is here instead of in Washington. Part of it’s the cold temperature (which is better for film). Part of it’s cost (which is better for our budget). But part of it—especially the archive boxes that are locked in the security cage on my left—is what we call “geographical separation.” It’s one of the National Archives’ most vital—and least known—tasks. If there’s ever a terrorist attack that turns Washington into a fireball, we’re fully ready with the documents and paperwork to make sure our most vital institutions survive.

But as I step into the room, the only survival I’m really worried about is my own.

“You find it yet?” I call to Dallas, who’s racing up the center aisle, checking record group numbers on each row of shelves that he passes.

His only answer is a sharp right turn as he disappears down one of the far rows in back. We’re definitely close.

My phone vibrates for the fourth time, about to kick to voicemail. I have no idea if Tot knows where we are. But now that he can’t get in the way, it’d probably be smart to find out.

“Beecher here,” I answer, waiting to see how long it takes him to fish.

“Where the hell are you?” Tot asks. “I left you half a dozen messages!”

“I didn’t get them. I’m just… it’s been a crazy day.”

“Don’t. I know when you’re lying, Beecher. Where are you? Who’re you with?”

I take a moment to think about a response. Even through the phone, I swear I feel Tot’s good eye picking me apart. “Tot, you need to—”

“Are you still with Clementine? I thought she left after the cemetery.”

I pause. “How’d you know I was at a cemetery?”

“Because I’m not an idiot like the rest of the idiots you seem to be in love with!”

“Wait… time out. Did you have someone following me!?”

Before he can answer, my phone beeps. I look down and recognize the number. It’s the only person who could possibly take me away from this one.

“Tot, hold on a sec.”

“Don’t you hang up on me!”

With a click, I put him on hold.

“
Mr. Harmon?
” I ask the man in Presidential Records who not only helped us get into the cave but also knows exactly what document we’re looking for. “I-Is everything okay?”

“That’s my question for
you
,” he says, though his tone surprisingly seems softer and more helpful than usual. That’s all I need to be suspicious. “Everything going okay down there?”

“It’s… we’re fine.” I pause a moment, confused. “Is there a reason we
shouldn’t
be fine?”

“Not at all,” he says, back to his military matter-of-factness. “Just making sure you got there. I’d asked the Copper Mountain folks to stay a little later when I heard you lost the directions.”

“When I lost the
what
?”

“The directions I sent. Your secretary said—”

“My secretary?”

“The woman who called. She said you lost the directions.”

Up on my left, back in the stacks, there’s a metal
thunk
. The problem is, Dallas is all the way down on my right.

According to the hygrothermograph, it’s still a cool fifty-eight degrees. But suddenly the long white room feels like an oven. Clearly we’re not alone in here.

“Mr. Harmon, let me call you right back,” I say, hanging up the phone.

“
Dallas, we got problems!
” I shout, racing up the aisle and clicking back to Tot.

“Wait—you’re with
Dallas
!?” Tot asks, hearing the last bits through the phone.

“Tot, this isn’t—!”

“Beecher, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

“You’re wrong! For once, I know exactly what I’m doing!”

“
Pay attention!
” Tot explodes. “I know what Clementine did… I know her grandmother’s long dead… I even know how she did it! We got the tox report—they found a dose of oral chemo in Orlando’s blood, even though he never had cancer. That’s how she poisoned him—she put it in his coffee! Now where in God’s name are you so I can get you someplace safe?”