The Inner Circle

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.

“Carrie, what are you not saying?”

“I just bring you the information,” she says. “But wait till you hear who the father is.”

She says the words, pauses, then says them again, knowing I can’t believe it.

The President of the United States should be here any minute. But right now, I wonder if that’s the least of our problems.

“Clementine,” I say, grabbing her hand and heading to the door, “we need to get you out of here.”