The Inner Circle (6 page)

On the corner of the file folder, a single drip of coffee builds to a pregnant swell, but never falls.

“We should open it and see what’s inside,” Clementine offers, far calmer than the two of us.

“No. Don’t open it,” I insist.

“What’re you talking about?” Orlando asks.

“You ever seen a horror movie? There’s that moment where they hear the noise in the woods and some dumbass says,
Let’s go see what’s making that noise!
And of course you know right there he’s number one in the body count. Well… we’re in the horror movie: At this exact moment, this little file folder is Pandora’s box. And as long as we keep it shut—as long as we don’t know what’s inside the box—we can still walk away.”

“Unless there’s a real monster in the box,” Orlando points out.

“Orlando…”

“Don’t Orlando me. This is my
job
, Beecher.”

“Yeah and two seconds ago you were telling me to put it back.”

“It’s still my job. I walk the halls, I check IDs—that’s why it’s called
Security
. Now I’m sorry if I find something in the President’s reading room, but we did. And if he or anyone else is committing a crime or sneaking classified papers in or out of this building, you really think we should just walk away and pretend we didn’t see it?”

I don’t look up, but on my right, I can see the red-lettered warning poster on the back of the closed steel door. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the disappointed expression on Clementine, who clearly doesn’t deal well with weakness. The way her ginger eyes drill me, she has no idea which way I’m going to vote.

I wish she knew me better than that.

I toss the damp folder toward the desk. “Just remember, when the CIA grabs us in the middle of the night and puts the black Ziplocs over our heads,
this
is the moment where we could’ve avoided it.” The folder hits the table with a
ptttt.

Clementine doesn’t say a word. But as she takes a half-step forward, she cocks her head, like she’s seeing something brand-new on my face. I see the same on hers. I’ve known this girl since seventh grade. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her impressed.

“Beecher, it’ll take two seconds, then we can leave,” Orlando promises. “You’ll never regret doing the right thing.”

But as he peels open the folder, as he finally sees what’s hidden inside, I can already tell he’s wrong.

6

Sweet Christmas,” Orlando mutters.

“I don’t get it. What is it?” Clementine asks, squeezing in next to me, though careful not to touch anything.

I have no such concern. From the pockets of my coffee-stained lab coat, I pull out the pair of cotton gloves all archivists carry, put them on, pick up the folder like it’s live dynamite, and open it. Inside, it’s not a top-secret memo, or the whereabouts of bin Laden, or a target list for our spy satellites.

“It’s a book,” Clementine says.

She’s partly right. It has the
cover
of a book—cracked and mottled black leather with faded red triangles in each of the top and bottom corners. But the guts of it—almost all the interior pages—are ripped out. It’s the same with the spine: torn away, revealing exposed, ancient glue and torn stitching. Without its insides, the whole book barely has the thickness of a clipboard.

I rub two gloved fingers across the cover. From the red rot (the aged, powdery residue that rubs off on my gloves), I’m guessing it dates back to at least the Civil War.

“
Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary
,” Orlando reads from the cover.

I check my watch. If we’re lucky, Wallace still hasn’t left the White House.

“Why would someone hide an old, torn-up dictionary for the President?” Clementine asks.

“Maybe
the President’s
hiding it for someone else,” Orlando offers. “Maybe when he’s alone in the room, he puts it in the chair for someone to pick up later, and they still haven’t picked it up yet.”

“Or for all we know, this has nothing to do with the President, and this book has been hidden in that chair for years,” I point out.

I swear, I can hear Orlando roll his eyes.

“What, like that’s so crazy?” I ask.

“Beecher, y’remember when that sweaty researcher with the pug nose and the buggy eyes was coming in here and stealing our old maps?”

“Yeah.”

“And when that looney-toon woman was nabbed for swiping those old Teddy Roosevelt letters because she thought she’d take better care of them than we were?”

“What’s your point?”

“The point is, y’know how they both got away with their crimes for so long? They took a tiny penknife and sliced each page out of the bound collection, page by page so no one would notice, until almost nothing was left,” he says, motioning with a thick finger at the old dictionary like he’s Sherlock Holmes himself.

“And that’s your grand theory? That Orson Wallace—the President of the United States, a man who can have any document brought
right to him at any moment—
is not only
stealing
from us, but stealing worthless dictionary pages?”

For the first time in the past five minutes, the office loudmouth is silent.

But not for long.

“The
real
point,” Orlando finally says, “is that this book—this dictionary, whatever it is—is property of the Archives.”

“We don’t even know that! The spine’s ripped off, so there’s no record group number. And if you look for…” Flipping the front cover open, I search for the circular blue
National Archives
stamp that’s in some of the older books in our collection. “Even the stamp’s not—” I stop abruptly.

“What?” Orlando asks as I stare down at the inside cover. “You find something?”

Leaning both palms on the desk, I read the handwritten inscription for the second and third time.

Exitus

Acta

Probat

“
Exitus acta probat
?” Clementine reads aloud over my shoulder.

I nod, feeling the bad pain at the bridge of my nose. “Exitus acta probat.
The outcome justifies the deed
.”

“You know
Latin
?” Clementine asks.

“I didn’t play Little League,” I tell her.

“I don’t understand,” Orlando says. “ ‘The outcome justifies the deed.’ Is that good or bad?”

“
Moses is in transit
,” Orlando’s walkie-talkie screams through the room. They’ll notify us again when he reaches the building.

I study the book as the pain gets worse. “I could be wrong,” I begin, “but if I’m reading this right… I think this book belonged to George Washington.”

7

Wait whoa wait,” Orlando says. “
George
George Washington? With the wooden teeth?”

“… and the cherry tree,” I say, picking the book up and looking closely at the lettering. The paper is in such bad shape—deeply browned and rough to the touch—it’s hard to tell if the ink is old or new.

Behind me, there’s a jingle of keys. I spin just in time to see Orlando fighting with the small metal lockbox that’s bolted to the wall in the back of the room. With a twist of his key, the box opens, revealing a stack of videotapes and a clunky top-loading VCR that could easily have been stolen straight from my grandmother’s house. Our budgets are good, but they’re not that good.

“What’re you doing?” I ask.

“Sparing you a starring role,” he says, ejecting one tape and stuffing a new one in. “Or would you prefer smiling at the camera while you hold the President’s secret stash?”

I nearly forgot. Up in the corner there’s a small videocamera that’s been taping us since the moment we walked in. The only good news is, to maintain the security of each SCIF—and to keep outsiders from intercepting the video—each room is only wired internally, meaning there’s no transmission in or out, meaning that tape—the one Orlando is pocketing—is the only proof that Clementine and I have even been in here.

“You sure that’s smart?” I ask.

“It’s smart,” Clementine says, nodding confidently at Orlando. In all the panic, she’s not panicking at all. She’s watching… studying… taking it all in. It’s no different than the jump rope all those years ago.

“Maybe you were right, though,” I point out. “Maybe we should report this to Security.”

“I
am
Security—I’m a
security guard
,” Orlando says. “And I can tell you right now—
Absolutely. No question—
this right here shows a definite problem in our security.”

“But by taking that videotape—”

“Beecher, I appreciate that you’re a sweet guy. And I know you don’t like assuming the worst about people, but let me give you a dose of real life for a moment: There are only two possibilities for what’s happened here. Either Roman Numeral One: President Wallace doesn’t know anything about this book, in which case we can all calm down and I’ll start a proper investigation. Or Roman Numeral Two: Wallace
does know
about this book, in which case he’s going to want this book back, in which case handing him a videotape with our faces on it is going to do nothing but make the President of the United States declare war… on us.”

“Now you’re being overdramatic.”

“Overdramatic? What happened to the CIA grabbing us and putting the black Ziplocs over our heads?” Orlando challenges.

“That doesn’t mean the President’s declaring war.”

“Really? I thought you knew your history.”

“I do know my history.”

“Then name me one person—Valerie Plame… Monica Lewinsky… I don’t care who they are or how right they were—name me one person
ever
who went up against a sitting President and walked away the same way they walked in.”

“Mark Felt,” I tell him.

“Mark Felt?”

“Deep Throat. The guy who told the truth about Nixon.”

“I know who he is, Beecher. But the only reason Mark Felt walked away was because
no one knew who he was
!” Orlando insists, waving the videotape in my face. “Don’t you get it? As long as we have this video, we get to be Deep Throat and I get to do my investigation. We lose this video, and I promise you, if this book is something bad—and c’mon, you know it’s something bad—we’re gonna be racing head-on against a man who is so stupidly powerful, wherever he goes, they fly bags of his own blood with him. Trust me here. You wanted smart. This is us being smart.”

“What about you?” I ask Orlando. “When you buzzed us in… when you called downstairs to that guy Khazei… Your name’s already in the records.”

“One disaster at a time. Besides, if we’re lucky, this tape may even have who snuck in the book in the first place,” he says as he tucks the videotape in the front waistband of his pants. “Now tell me about the Latin:
Ex act probe it
?”

“
Exitus acta probat
. It’s the motto on Washington’s personal bookplate,” I explain as he shuts the lockbox. “It’s from his family’s coat of arms—and on the inside cover of all of George Washington’s books.”

“And this is what it looked like?” Orlando asks, already heading for the door. “Three words scribbled on a page?”

“No… the coat of arms is a work of art: There’s a picture of an eagle, two red-and-white stripes, plus three stars. But when Washington designed his coat of arms, he personally added the words
Exitus acta probat
,” I say as Clementine motions me to follow Orlando and leave the room. We need to get out of here. But just as I move, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Caller ID reads
NPRC
, but it’s the 314 St. Louis area code that reminds me why we’re standing in this room in the first place.

Next to me, Clementine eyes the phone in my hand. She doesn’t freak, doesn’t tense up. But as her lips close tight, I get a second glimpse of the side of her she can’t hide. The real Clementine. The scared Clementine. Twenty-nine years of not knowing who your father is? Whatever we stepped in with the President, it has to wait.

“Please tell me you’ve got good news,” I say as I pick up.

“I can bring you information.
Good
and
bad
are the subjective clothes you decide to dress it in,” archivist Carrie Storch says without a hint of irony, reminding me that around here, the better you are with books, the worse you are with social skills.

“Carrie, did you find our guy or not?”

“Your girlfriend’s father? In that year, in that county of Wisconsin, he was the only
Nicholas
to enlist on December 10th. Of course I found him.”

“You did? That’s fantastic!”

“Again, I leave the distinctions to you,” she says, adding a short huff that I think counts as a laugh. Carrie never laughs.