The Inner Circle

54

"I know about the Culper Ring,” I tell Dallas. “They were George Washington’s civilian spy group. They hid messages… they stayed secret… and from what I can tell, they stuck around long enough to have a hand in Gettysburg, World War I, and even somehow Hiroshima.”

“How’d you know that last part?” Dallas challenges.

“You think you’re the only history nut in the building? We all have access to the same records. Once we found the name Dustin Gyrich-”

“Gyrich. Okay. Okay, you’re further than we thought,” he says, almost to himself. “But you’re wrong about one thing, Beecher: From Gettysburg to Hiroshima to anything else, the Culper Ring has never had a hand in these events. You’re missing the mission completely.”

“But we’re right about the rest, aren’t we? The Culper Ring that George Washington started, it still exists.”

Leaning forward on the leather sofa, Dallas uses his top two teeth to comb the few beard hairs below his bottom lip. He does the same thing when our boss scolds him for falling behind on the quota we have for answering researchers’ letters and emails. It’s also my first clue that while he’s happy to answer some of my questions, he’s not answering all of them.

“Beecher, do you know what the President of the United States needs more than anything else? And I don’t just mean Orson Wallace. Any President, any era. Obama, the Bushes, Thomas Jefferson. What’s the one thing they need more than anything else?”

“You mean, besides smart advice?”

“No. Smart advice is easy. You’re the President. Every genius in the world is banging down your door. Try again.”

“This is already a stupid game.”

“Just try again.”

“Privacy?”

“That’s top three. You’re Reagan. You’re Obama. You have more power than anyone. What’s even more vital than privacy?”

“Trust.”

“Getting warmer.”

“Someone who cares about you.”

“Getting colder. Think back to George Washington. Why’d he say the Culper Ring helped him win the Revolutionary War?”

“They brought him the best information.”

“Information! There. Bull’s-eye. You see it now, right? That is the most, and I mean the most, vital thing that a President needs to do his job: reliable information. You understand that?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Then understand this: Our bureaucracy is so vast, by the time a piece of information makes its way to the President’s desk, it’s like a chewed-over dog bone. It goes from the guy on the ground, up to a supervisor, up to an analyst, up to a chief of staff, up to a deputy secretary, then up to the real secretary, then through the true honchos who pick through it… and then, if it’s lucky, there it is… dumped on your desk, Mr. President. And now you have to take that drool-covered piece of info and use it to make a military, or environmental, or financial decision that’ll affect millions or maybe billions of lives. You ready to rely on that?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple. It’s always been that simple. And it is-still-the greatest problem facing every President: You’re the one man in charge, and every day you’re making life-and-death decisions based on the work of total strangers with unknown agendas. And that’s why, when you’re sitting there with all those above-top-secret reports about every problem in the world, you can’t help but wonder: What don’t I know? What’d they leave out of these reports? And what’re the motives and biases built in to the info I’m getting?”

“So the Culper Ring works for the President.”

“No. The Culper Ring doesn’t work for the President. It works for the Presidency. It serves the office, just as George Washington designed it-a built-in backstop to be used when it was needed most. Think about it, Beecher-before you drop the bomb on Hiroshima, wouldn’t you want to be absolutely sure the Japanese weren’t already about to surrender? Or before you went to slaughter your brother in Gettysburg, wouldn’t you want to make sure you had the right general in place? Major General Meade was installed just four days before the fighting at Gettysburg began. Pretty good timing by Lincoln, eh?”

My mind swirls through the examples we found in the Archives-the Bay of Pigs… Sputnik… the Lusitania-each one its own critical moment in presidential history. It swirls even more when it reminds me that of all the theories we had, it’s still Nico who was most correct. The President’s definitely communicating through that dictionary. But it doesn’t change the one thing I refuse to lose focus on:

“You said there were two,” I tell Dallas. “Two Rings.”

“And now you’re seeing the problem,” he says with a nod. “Every once in a while, there’s kind of a… speed bump.”

“Define speed bump.”

“Beecher, I’ve already kept you here for too long. If they’re watching-”

“Tell me about the second Ring, Dallas. Tell me, or I swear to you, I’ll type up this crap and you’ll be reading about it in the Washington Post tomorrow!”

“I know that’s not true-that’s not who you are. And if I didn’t know that, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“Then have the damn conversation!”

Like before, he uses his teeth to comb at some stray beard hairs. But unlike before, his head is cocked to the side, his eyes staring off. Like he’s listening to something.

“What’re you doing?” I challenge.

He doesn’t answer. But as he turns his head, I spot-in his ear-there’s something in his ear.

“Is that an earpiece? Are you-? Is someone listening to us right now!?” I shout as I start to search the room. No mirrors. No cameras in the corners.

“They said to calm down, Beecher. You already passed the test.”

“What test? Who’s they? How the hell’re they seeing us!?”

I rush to the little minibar, shoving the bottles of alcohol aside. I pull the top off the ice bucket. No wires anywhere.

It’s on you, isn’t it? You’re wearing a camera!”

“Listen to me, Beecher-”

I hop over the coffee table, knocking the flowers to the floor. He leaps off the sofa and, like a lion tamer, grabs the armchair, trying to keep it between us.

“Will you listen to me!?” he says. “This isn’t about you!”

“That’s not true! This is my life you’re screwing with!”

“You idiot! Your life’s already over!”

I stop at the words.

His fingers dig into the back of the armchair.

“What’d you say?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer.

“You said my life is over.”

“We can protect you. We’re protecting you right now.” To prove the point, Dallas heads to the closed curtains and spreads them just a few feet apart, revealing a city block filled with parked cars, but empty of people and bathed in darkness. We’re on the second floor of a brick townhouse, and though it takes me a moment, as I scan the restaurants across the street… that CVS.

“We’re in Woodley Park,” I say.

“We are. But we’re also in the only residential house on a busy street where it’s difficult to stop, making this building nearly impossible to observe without being observed. When it went up for sale, we were bidding against both the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

“So this is… what?… some sorta safehouse?”

“You see that homeless guy across the street?” Dallas asks. “He’ll be there until 4 a.m., at which point another ‘homeless man’ will clock in and take his place for a full eight-hour shift. Think about it, Beecher. There’s a reason the FBI is the second biggest property renter in Washington, D.C. This is how you do it right.”

I turn away as he lets the curtains shut. “You said my life is over.”

“Beecher, you have to understand. When you found what you found…”

“I don’t even know what I found. Tell me what I found.”

“You found proof. That dictionary-That’s proof that they exist.”

“That what exists? A second Culper Ring?”

Dallas shakes his head, double-checking that the curtains are shut tight. “Don’t call them that. They don’t deserve to be called that.”

“That’s what they are, though, aren’t they?”

Dallas sits with this a moment. I can’t tell if he’s thinking, or listening to whatever’s being whispered in his ear, but eventually he says, “Every dozen or so administrations, it happens. It has to happen, right? Every person who’s sworn in as President has his own agenda, and some of these guys-I heard the first was Millard Fillmore, though I think if you look at Ulysses Grant, or probably Harding-”

“I don’t care about the 1920s or Teapot Dome.”

“What about Watergate? You care about that one?”

“Time out. You’re telling me that this other Culper Ring-whatever you want to call them-that they’re the ones who pulled off Watergate?”

“No. Richard Nixon pulled off Watergate. But to make it happen, well…” Dallas heads over to the framed photo of the White House under construction. “Imagine the Culper Ring-our group, the true Culper Ring-as this giant outer ring that circles and has been protecting the Presidency for over two hundred years,” he says, using his pointer-finger to draw a huge circle around the entire photograph. “And then imagine a guy like Nixon, who rides into power, and looks at that big wide outer ring and says to himself, ‘Huh. I should have something like that around me.’ ”

“Like an inner ring.”

“Like an inner ring,” Dallas agrees, drawing a miniature little circle just around one of the White House windows. “Welcome to the speed bump. So he calls in a few friends that he knows he can trust-G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and the rest of the crew-and voila, Nixon has an inner ring that reports just to him. They call themselves the Plumbers. The rest, as they say, is you-know-what.”

I stare at his imaginary circle around the White House window. At the Archives, we’ve got the original blueprints to the White House. Dallas didn’t pick a random window. He picked the one on the second-floor Residence that I know President Wallace uses as his private office. “So you think-with the dictionary-you think that’s what Wallace is doing right now? You think he’s talking to his own personal Plumbers.”

“You don’t see the problem there?” Dallas asks.

“I guess I do, but… He’s the President. Isn’t he entitled to talk to whoever he wants, as secretively as he wants?”

“He absolutely is. But that doesn’t mean he-or one of his group-is allowed to murder anyone they think is an accidental witness.”

Orlando. Of course he’s talking about Orlando. But for him to use that word. Murder.

“It wasn’t a heart attack, was it?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

Once again, Dallas stays quiet. But unlike last time, he doesn’t look away.

“Dallas, if you can confirm it, I need you to tell me,” I demand. “I know the autopsy was today. If you have the results…”

“You don’t need me to tell you anything,” Dallas says with an emptiness in his voice that echoes like a battering ram against my chest. “They’ll release the first round of tox reports in the next day or so, but you know what those results are. Just like you know nothing at this level is ever just an accident.”

As the full weight of the battering ram hits, I nearly fall backward.

“Just remember, Beecher, when Nixon’s Plumbers first started, they were on the side of the angels too, helping the White House protect classified documents.” Like a woodpecker, Dallas taps his finger against the small window in the photo of the White House. “Absolute power doesn’t corrupt absolutely-but it will make you do what you swore you’d never do, especially when you’re trying to hold on to it.”

I nod to myself, knowing he’s right, but…“That still doesn’t explain why you need me.”

“You’re joking, right? Haven’t you seen the schedule?”

“What schedule?”

“Tomorrow. He’s coming back for another reading visit.” Eyeing the confusion on my face, Dallas explains, “The White House asked for you personally. You’re his man, Beecher. When President Wallace comes back to the Archives tomorrow-when he’s standing there inside that SCIF-they want you to be the one staffing him.”