The Inner Circle

3

Today

Washington, D.C.

Thirty-two minutes later, as Clementine and I are waiting for the arrival of the documents she came looking for, I swipe my security card and hear the usual thunk. Shoving the bank vault of a door open, I make a sharp left into the cold and poorly lit stacks that fill the heart of the Archives. With each row of old files and logbooks we pass, a motion sensor light goes off, shining a small spotlight, one after the other, like synchronized divers in an old Esther Williams movie, that chases us wherever we go.

These days, I’m no longer the short kid. I’m blond, tall (though Clementine still may be a hair taller than me), and dressed in the blue lab coat that all of us archivists wear to protect us from the rotted leather that rubs off our oldest books when we touch them. I’ve also got far more to offer her than a nosebleed. But just to be near this woman who consumed my seventh through tenth grades… who I used to fantasize about getting my braces locked together with…

“Sorry to do this now. I hope you’re not bored,” I tell her.

“Why would I be bored? Who doesn’t love a dungeon?” she says as we head deeper into the labyrinth of leather books and archival boxes. She’s nearly in front of me, even though she’s got no idea where she’s going. Just like in junior high. Always prepared and completely fearless. “Besides, it’s nice to see you, Beecher.”

“Here… it’s… here,” I say as the light blinks on above us and I stop at a bookcase of rotted leather-bound logbooks that are packed haphazardly across the shelf. Some are spine out, others are stacked on top of each other. “It’s just that we have a quota of people we have to help and-”

“Stop apologizing,” Clementine offers. “I’m the one who barged in.”

She says something else, but as I pull out the first few volumes and scan their gold-stamped spines, I’m quickly lost in the real treasure of this trip: the ancient browning pages of the volume marked November 1779. Carefully cradling the logbook with one hand, I use my free one to pull out the hidden metal insta-shelf that’s built into each bookcase and creaks straight at us at chest height.

“So these are from the Revolutionary War?” she asks. “They’re real?”

“All we have is real.”

By we, I mean here-the National Archives, which serves as the storehouse for the most important documents of the U.S. government, from the original Declaration of Independence, to the Zapruder film, to reports on opportunities to capture bin Laden, to the anthrax formula and where the government stores the lethal spores, to the best clandestine files from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and every other acronym. As they told me when I first started as an archivist three years ago, the Archives is our nation’s attic. A ten-billion-document scrapbook with nearly every vital file, record, and report that the government produces.

No question, that means this is a building full of secrets. Some big, some small. But every single day, I get to unearth another one.

Like right now.

“Howard… Howard… Howard,” I whisper to myself, flipping one of the mottled brown pages and running my pointer finger down the alphabetical logbook, barely touching it.

Thirty-four minutes ago, as we put in the request for Clementine’s documents, a puffy middle-aged woman wearing a paisley silk scarf as a cancer wig came into our research entrance looking for details about one of her relatives. She had his name. She had the fact he served in the Revolutionary War.

And she had me.

As an archivist, whether the question comes from a researcher, from a regular person, or from the White House itself, it’s our job to find the answers that-

“Beecher,” Clementine calls out. “Are you listening?”

“Wha?”

“Just now. I asked you three times and-” She stops herself, cocking her head so the piercing in her nose tips downward. But her smile-that same warm smile from seventh grade-is still perfectly in place. “You really get lost in this stuff, don’t you?”

“That woman upstairs… I can’t just ignore her.”

Clementine stops, watching me carefully. “You really turned out to be one of the nice ones, didn’t you, Beecher?”

I glance down at the logbook. My eyes spot-

“He was a musician,” I blurt. I point to the thick rotted page, then yank a notepad from my lab coat and copy the information. “That’s why he wasn’t listed in the regular service records. Or even the pension records upstairs. A musician. George Howard was a musician during the Revolution.”

“Y’mean he played ‘Taps’?”

“No…‘Taps’ wasn’t invented until the Civil War. This guy played fife and drum, keeping the rhythm while the soldiers marched. And this entry shows the military pay he got for his service.”

“That’s… I don’t even know if it’s interesting-but how’d you even know to come down here? I mean, these books look like they haven’t been opened in centuries.”

“They haven’t. But when I was here last month searching through some leftover ONI spy documents, I saw that we had these old accounting ledgers from the Treasury Department. And no matter what else the government may screw up, when they write a check and give money out, you better believe they keep pristine records.”

I stand up straight, proud of the archeological find. But before I can celebrate-

“I need some ID,” a calm voice calls out behind us, drawing out each syllable so it sounds like Eye. Dee.

We both turn to find a muscular, squat man coming around the far corner of the row. A light pops on above him as he heads our way. Outfitted in full black body armor and gripping a polished matching black rifle, he studies my ID, then looks at the red Visitor badge clipped to Clementine’s shirt.

“Thanks,” he calls out with a nod.

I almost forgot what day it was. When the President comes, so does the…

“Secret Service,” Clementine whispers. She cocks a thin, excited eyebrow, tossing me the kind of devilish grin that makes me feel exactly how long I haven’t felt this way.

But the truly sad part is just how wonderful the rush of insecurity feels-like rediscovering an old muscle you hadn’t used since childhood. I’ve been emailing back and forth with Clementine for over two months now. But it’s amazing how seeing your very first kiss can make you feel fourteen years old again. And what’s more amazing is that until she showed up, I didn’t even know I missed it.

When most people see an armed Secret Service agent, they pause a moment. Clementine picks up speed, heading to the end of the row and peeking around the corner to see where he’s going. Forever fearless.

“So these guys protect the documents?” she asks as I catch up to her, leading her out of the stacks.

“Nah, they don’t care about documents. They’re just scouting in advance for him.”

This is Washington, D.C. There’s only one him.

The President of the United States.

“Wait… Wallace is here?” Clementine asks. “Can I meet him?”

“Oh for sure,” I say, laughing. “We’re like BFFs and textbuddies and… he totally cares about what one of his dozens of archivists thinks. In fact, I think his Valentine’s card list goes: his wife, his kids, his chief of staff… then me.”

She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t smile-she just stares at me with deep confidence in her ginger brown eyes. “I think one day, he will care about you,” she says.

I freeze, feeling a blush spread across my face.

Across from me, Clementine pulls up the sleeve of her black sweater, and I notice a splotch of light scars across the outside of her elbow. They’re not red or new-they’re pale and whiter than her skin, which means they’ve been there a long time. But the way they zigzag out in every direction… whatever carved into her skin like that caused her real pain.

“Most people stare at my boobs,” she says with a laugh, catching my gaze.

“I–I didn’t mean-”

“Oh jeez-I’m sorry-I embarrassed you, didn’t I?” she asks.

“No. Nonono. No.”

She laughs again. “You know you’re a horrible liar?”

“I know,” I say, still staring at her scars.

“And you know you’re still staring at my scars?”

“I know. I can’t stop myself. If we were in a desert instead of in these dusty stacks, I’d bury myself right now.”

“You really should just go for my boobs,” she says. “At least you get a better view.”

Instinctively, I look-and then just as quickly stare back at her scars. “It looks like a dog bite.”

“Motorcycle crash. My fault. My elbow hyperextended and the bone broke through the skin.”

“Sounds excruciating.”

“It was ten years ago, Beecher,” she says, confidently shrugging the entire world away as her eyes take hold and don’t let go. She’s staring just at me. “Only the good things matter after ten years.”

Before I can agree, my phone vibrates in my pocket, loud enough that we both hear the buzz.

“That them?” Clementine blurts.

I shake my head. Caller ID says it’s my sister, who lives with my mom back in Wisconsin. But at this time of the day, when the supermarket shifts change, I know who’s really dialing: It’s my mom, making her daily check-up-on-me call, which started the day after she heard about Iris. And while I know my mom never liked Iris, she has too much midwestern kindness in her to ever say it to me. The phone buzzes again.

I don’t pick up. But by the time I look back at Clementine, all the confidence, all the conviction, all the fearlessness is gone-and I’m reminded that the real reason she came to the Archives wasn’t to share old scars or see overmuscled Secret Service agents.

Last year, Clementine’s mom died, but it wasn’t until a few months back that Clementine called in sick to the radio station and went back home to clean out her mom’s closet. There, she found an old datebook that her mother had saved from the year Clementine was born. Sure enough, on December 10, there were hand-drawn hearts and tiny balloons on the day of her birth, there was a cute smiley face drawn on the day she came home from the hospital, but what was most interesting to Clementine was when she flipped back in the datebook and saw the entry on March 18, which had a small sad face drawn in it, followed by the words Nick enlists.

From that, she finally had a name and a lead on her dad.

From me, thanks to our recent emails, she had the Archives.

From those, I had only one call to make: to our facility in St. Louis, where we store the more recent army enlistment records.

Ten minutes ago, Clementine was in front of me. But now, as I head for the metal door ahead of us, she starts falling behind, going surprisingly silent.

In life, there’s the way you act when you know people are watching. And then there’s the way you act when no one’s watching, which, let’s be honest, is the real you. That’s what I see in Clementine right now: I spot it for just a half-second, in between breaths, just as I take the lead and she ducks behind me, thinking I can’t see her. She’s wrong. I see her. And feel her.

I feel her self-doubt. I feel the way she’s unanchored. And in the midst of that single breath, as her shoulders fall, and she looks down and slowly exhales so she won’t explode, I spot that little dark terrified space that she reserves for just herself. It only exists for that single half-second, but in that half-second I know I’m seeing at least one part of the real Clementine. Not just some fantasized cool jazz DJ. Not just some ballsy girl who took on the bully in seventh grade. The grown her. The true her. The one who learned how to be afraid.

“I should go. I hate when I’m all woe-is-me-ish,” she says, regaining her calm as I tug the metal door and we leave the stacks, squeezing back out into the pale blue hallway. She’s trying to hide. I know what it’s like to hide. I’ve been doing it for the past year of my life.

“Don’t go,” I shoot back, quickly lowering my voice. “There’s no-They said they’ll have the results within the hour and… and… and… and we’ve got so much stuff to see here… if you want.” I bite my lip to stop myself from talking. It doesn’t help. “Listen, I didn’t want to have to do this,” I add. “But if you really want, we can take out the Louisiana Purchase and write ‘Clementine Rulz!’ along the bottom.”

She barely grins. “Already did it on the Constitution.”

“Fine, you win,” I say, stopping in the center of the hallway and leaning on the marble wainscoting. “You want to meet the President, I’ll take you to meet the President.”

She doesn’t blink. “You don’t know the President.”

“Maybe. But I know what room he goes to when he does his reading visits.”

“You do?”

“I do. Wanna see?”

She stands up straight and twists her forearm back and forth so her vintage bracelets slide from her wrist toward her elbow and her scars. “Is it far from here or-?”

“Actually, you’re standing right in front of it.”

I point over her shoulder, and she spins to find a metal door that’s painted the same color as the pale blue hallway. Easy to miss, which is the whole point. The only thing that stands out is that the square glass window that looks into the room is blocked by some black fabric. Down by the doorknob, there’s a round combination lock like you’d find on a safe.

“That’s it?” Clementine asks. “Looks like my old gym locker.”

I shake my head. “SCIFs are far safer than gym lockers.”

“What’d you call it? A skiff?”

“SCIF-Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” I explain, rapping the knuckle of my middle finger against the door and hearing the deep thud that lets you know just how thick it is. “C’mon, when you read a classified document, you think you just open it at your desk? People are watching from everywhere-through your windows, from listening and video devices-Big Brother doesn’t just work for us anymore. So all around the government, we’ve got rooms built and certified by the CIA.”

“Skiffs,” she says.

“SCIFs. Walls with quarter-inch metal shielding, floors with eight-inch metal plates to stop eavesdropping, no windows, copper foil in the corners to stop transmissions, bars over the vent shafts so Tom Cruise can’t lower himself on his trapeze…”

“And you have one of these SCIFs here?”

“You kidding? Our legislative guys alone have sixteen of them. Every major building in D.C.-the White House, the Capitol, every Senate and House building-if you’ve got a bigshot in the building, we’ve got a SCIF in there too. And the biggest bigshots get them in their homes. Tiny little rooms for you to read the world’s most vital secrets.”

“Can we peek inside?” she asks, rapping her own knuckle against the door.

I force a laugh.

She doesn’t laugh back. She’s not trying to pry. She means it as an honest question.

“If you can’t, no big deal,” she adds.

“No, I can… I just…”

“Beecher, please don’t make that stress face. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“No, I’m not uncomfortable.”

“Let’s go do the other stuff,” she says, already walking away.

“Oh, just take the damn girl inside already,” a deep voice echoes on our left. Up the hallway, an older black man with a caterpillar mustache heads our way carrying an oversized cup of coffee. Despite his age, he’s still got the muscular build that first got him the job as one of our uniformed security guards. But one look at his dimpled chin and big-toothed smile, and it’s clear that Orlando Williams is more pussycat than lion.

“This that girl you used to have a crush on? The one that’s gonna mend that broken heart Iris left you?” Orlando shouts even though he’s only a few steps away.

“Who’s Iris?” Clementine asks.

Every office has a loudmouth. Orlando is ours-or more specifically, mine, ever since he found out that:

a) I was from his home state of Wisconsin, and

b) I was the only archivist willing to give his brother-in-law’s boss a private tour of the Treasure Vault.

For better or worse, he’s determined to return the favor.

“Just take her inside-I won’t even put you in my floor report,” he adds, tucking his clipboard under his armpit and taking a deep swig from his coffee cup.

“Orlando, I appreciate the kindness, but would you mind just-”

“What? I’m trynna help you here-show her your love of… adventure.” Turning to Clementine, he says, “So he tell you about his wedding photographer days?”

“Orlando…” I warn.

“You were a wedding photographer?” Clementine asks.

“After college, I moved here hoping to take photos for the Washington Post. Instead, I spent three years doing weddings in Annapolis. It was fine,” I tell her.

“Until he got the chance to help people directly and then he came here. Now he’s our hero.”

Clementine cocks a grin at Orlando. “I appreciate the unsubtle hype, but you do realize Beecher’s doing just fine without it?”

Orlando cocks a grin right back. He likes her. Of course he does.

“Will you c’mon?” Orlando begs, focused just on her. “The President’s not scheduled here until”-he looks at his watch-“ya got at least an hour, even more if he’s late. Plus, the cart with his files isn’t even in there yet. Who cares if she sees an empty room?”

I stare at the pale blue door and the combination lock, which of course I know by heart. No doubt, it’d be easy, but the rules say-

“Sweet Christmas, Beecher-I’ll open the damn room for her!” Orlando calls out.

He heads for a call box and presses the silver intercom button. A small red indicator light blinks awake as a soft-spoken voice answers, “Security.”

“Venkat, it’s Orlando,” he says, speaking close to the intercom. I recognize the name from our staff list. Venkat Khazei. Deputy chief of security. “I’m opening SCIF 12E1,” Orlando says. “Just doing spot checks.”

“Sounds good. Just remember: Moses is on his way, eh,” Khazei replies through the intercom, using our own internal code name for the President.

“That’s why I’m checking the room first,” Orlando barks back.

The intercom goes quiet, then crackles once more. “Enjoy.”

As Orlando strides back toward us, his toothy grin spreads even wider.

Under my shirt, I wear a thin leather necklace with an old house key on it. During high school, when I worked at Farris’s secondhand bookshop, I found the key being used as a bookmark in some old dictionary. It’s kooky, but that day was the same day I got accepted to Wisconsin, the first step in escaping my little town. The magic key stayed. I’ve been wearing it so long now, I barely even feel it. Except when I’m sweaty and it starts sticking to my chest. Like now.

“Beecher,” Clementine whispers, “if this is skeeving you out, let’s just skip the room and-”

“I’m fine. No skeeving at all,” I tell her, knowing full well that Iris would’ve had me leave ten minutes ago.

“Here, hold this,” Orlando says, offering me his cup of coffee so he can work on the combo lock.

“No food or drinks allowed in the SCIFs,” I remind him, refusing to take it.

“Really, are those the rules, Beecher?” he shoots back. Before I can answer, he hands Clementine his coffee cup and gives a few quick spins to the lock.

With a click and a low wunk, the door pops open like the safe that it is.

Even Orlando is careful as he cranes his neck and glances inside, just in case someone’s in there.

I do the same, already up on my tiptoes to peer over Orlando’s shoulder and make sure we’re all clear.

Clementine’s different. She doesn’t rush-she’s not overeager in the least bit-but with a quick, confident step she heads inside, totally unafraid. It’s even sexier than telling me to stare at her breasts.

“Our own little Oval Office,” Orlando adds, motioning palms-up like a flight attendant showing off the emergency rows. Yet unlike the Oval and its grand decor, the small windowless room is beige, beige, and more beige, centered around a wide oak table, a secure phone that sits on top, and two wooden library chairs.

When they first see it, most staffers blurt, “That’s it?”

Clementine circles the desk, studying each beige wall like she’s taking in a Picasso. “I like the poster,” she finally says.

Behind me, stuck to the back of the metal door, is a poster featuring a steaming hot cup of coffee and a red-lettered warning:

A lot of information can spill over one of these.

Make sure that your conversation is secure to the last drop.

Yet as I read the words, my brain backflips to-

Crap. Orlando’s coffee.

“No, not on there,” I plead with Clementine just as she’s about to take a seat and lower the open cup onto the President’s desk. If it spills…

I reach to grab it; she jerks her hand to protect it. That’s all it takes. The back of my hand brushes against the styrofoam-the cup tips-and the light brown liquid splashes across the desk, racing to Clementine’s side of the table.

A waterfall of coffee pours down, tap-dancing in a fine neat kick-line across the polished floor.

We need to get this clean before the President…

Clementine jumps back to avoid the mess, and her legs slam into her chair, sending the wooden seat toppling backward.

“Orlando, go get paper towels!” I yell, ripping off my blue lab coat to use it as a sponge.

The wooden chair hits the floor with a crack…

… followed by an odd, hollow thump.

I turn just in time to see the exposed bottom of the chair, where a square piece of wood pops out from the underside, falls to the floor-and reveals the shadow of an object hidden within.

From the table, coffee continues to drip down, slowing its kick-line across the linoleum.

My throat constricts.

And I get my first good look at what was clearly tucked inside the chair’s little hiding spot and is now sitting on the floor, right in the path of the spreading puddle of coffee. It looks like a small file folder.

“Beech?” Orlando whispers behind me.

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me you had no idea that was in there.”

“No idea. Swear to God.”

He picks up the coffee cup and takes a final swig of whatever’s left. As my magic key spot-welds to my chest, I know he’s thinking the same thing I am: If this was put here for, or even worse, by the President…

“Beech?” he repeats as the puddled coffee slowly seeps into the folder.

“Yeah?”

“We’re dead.”

“Yeah.”