The Inner Circle

120

One week from now

Chatham, Ontario

"Would you like to order, ma’am-or are you waiting for one more?” the waiter asked, leaning in to avoid embarrassment.

“I’m by myself,” the woman in the stylish chocolate brown overcoat replied as she again scanned the entrance to the outdoor cafe, which was overdecorated to look like an old Tudor-style shop from an English village square. Just outside the metal railing, as it’d been for the past twenty minutes, the only people around were the lunchtime pedestrians passing along King Street. Next to her table, the heating lamp was on full blast. It was January. In Canada. Far too cold for anyone to be sitting outside.

But for the woman in the chocolate brown overcoat, that was the point.

She could’ve come somewhere private.

A nearby hotel.

St. Andrew’s Church.

Instead, she came to the cafe.

Outside. In public. Where everyone could see her.

“How’re the fish cakes?” she asked, making prolonged eye contact with the waiter just to see if he’d recognize her.

He didn’t.

Of course he didn’t.

Her hair was long now. And blonde. But to anyone who knew her, there was no mistaking that grin.

Just like her father’s.

“Unless you have something even better than that,” Clementine Kaye said, pulling a breadstick from the basket and turning her head just enough so the pedestrians could see her.

“I think you’ll like the fish cakes,” the waiter replied, scribbling down the order.

As another wave of locals strolled past the cafe, Clementine threw a quick smile to a five-year-old girl who was walking with her mom.

Even in a week, it had gotten easier. Sure, her leg still hurt from the shooting, and her wanted-for-questioning photo was still posted across the Internet, but it was still the Internet. The world was already moving on.

Which meant she could get back to what really mattered.

Lifting her menu off the table and handing it back to the waiter, Clementine looked down at the thick manila envelope. As the waiter left, she pulled out a water-stained file folder with a familiar name typed in the upper corner. Wallace, Orson.

This was it: the unprocessed file that Beecher had tracked to the cave’s underground storage area-the original records from the night twenty-six years ago when they brought Eightball into the hospital, and the future President of the United States was treated for his broken finger. As best as Clementine could figure, this was the only proof that the future President was there that night.

But it paled next to the one priceless detail that Clementine never anticipated finding. Indeed, even with what she now knew about the Plumbers, none of it compared to the two-hundred-year-old spy network that’d been operating since the birth of the United States:

The Culper Ring.

Clementine knew all about the Culper Ring.

Including at least one person who was in it.

Above her, the heat lamp sizzled with a fresh burst of warmth. Clementine barely noticed as she looked out at the Chatham police car that pulled up along King Street.

At the traffic light, the car slowed down. The officer in the passenger seat didn’t look at her. Didn’t even see her.

But as the light blinked green and the car took off, Clementine reminded herself that there were hazards in rushing blindly.

Sure, she could go public now. She could put Tot and the Culper Ring on the front page of every newspaper and website, and then sit back and watch the world take President Wallace and Tot and toss them all in the shredder.

But that wouldn’t get Clementine what she was really after.

For so long now, she had told herself this was about her father. And it was. It always was.

But it was also about her.

And so, after nearly three decades of wondering, years of searching, six months of planning, and the next few months of healing, Clementine Kaye sat back in her seat and-in a small town in Canada, under a baking heat lamp-started thinking exactly how she’d finally get the answers she wanted.

Beecher had taught her the benefits of patience.

The Culper Ring had taught her the benefits of secrecy.

But from here on in, it was no different than when she grabbed that jump rope and leapt onto Vincent Paglinni’s back in the schoolyard all those years ago.

Even the hardest fights in life become easy when you have the element of surprise.