The Inner Circle

69

I’m waiting for it.

And watching.

And standing there, swaying in place as my hands fiddle in the pockets of my blue lab coat, pretending to fish for nothing at all.

The President’s been here barely two minutes. He’s sitting at the long research table, eyeing the various boxes and documents that are stacked in neat piles on the rolling cart.

“Do you need help, sir?” I ask.

He barely shakes his head, reaching for a file on the second shelf of the cart: a single-page document encased in a clear Mylar sleeve. I saw the request list. It’s a handwritten letter by Abraham Lincoln-back when he was a regular citizen-requesting that better roads be built by the government. There’s another on the cart from Andrew Jackson, petitioning for money well before he was elected. From what I’d heard, Wallace loves these records: all of them written by our greatest leaders long before they were our greatest leaders-and proof positive that life exists before and after the White House.

But today, as Wallace squints down at Lincoln’s scratchy, wide script, I can’t help but think that he’s after something far bigger than life advice from his predecessors.

If Dallas and his contacts in the Culper Ring are to be believed-and that’s a big if-they think Wallace is here to talk. With me.

I eye the blond Secret Service agent who’s still standing in the opposite corner. He stares right back, unafraid of the eye contact. At the table, the President leans forward in his chair, both elbows on the desk as he hovers over the document. I watch him, picking apart his every movement like a mall cop studying a group of loud kids with skateboards.

The SCIF isn’t very big. With three of us in here, the room temperature inches up just enough that I’m feeling it.

But that’s not what’s causing the heat that’s swallowed my palms and is now plotting to take over the rest of my body.

At the table, Orson Wallace is calm as ever-ridiculously calm-like he’s reading the Sunday paper.

For ten minutes, I stand there, my lab coat making me feel like a baked potato in tinfoil. The only movement I allow myself is licking the salty sweat mustache that’s staked a claim on my upper lip.

Ten feet away, the President gives me nothing.

At twenty minutes, my back starts to ache from the lack of movement, and the sweat mustache doesn’t even taste that salty anymore.

Still nothing from the President.

At the half-hour mark, he pulls a pencil-usually only archivists and researchers use pencils-from his jacket pocket and then flips to another set of presidential letters.

But otherwise, more nothing. And more nothing. Until…

Diagonally across the room, the blond agent puts a pointer-finger to his ear. Something’s being said in his earpiece.

Without a word, the agent heads for the door and twists the metal latch. The President’s used to people moving around him. He doesn’t look up, even as our ears pop.

Sticking his head out the door, the blond agent listens to something being whispered by the agent outside. Something’s definitely up. And the way the agent keeps looking back at me, then back to his boss, I can tell-clearance or no clearance, secure room or unsecure room-there’s no way they’re leaving me alone with the President.

“I need two minutes,” the agent calls to me. He steps outside.

Before I can react, there’s a sharp sucking sound as the door shuts and the vacuum again takes hold.

I look over at the rosy-cheeked President, who’s still lost in his reading. But like before, all I see are the ghosts that float behind him: Orlando and Clementine… the spilled coffee… then the chair crashing to the floor. If it weren’t for this room… and what we found… and what Orlando was fast enough to…

I almost forgot. What Orlando grabbed.

I glance up at the corner of the ceiling. The videocamera is right where it’s always been. Watching us.

The sweat mustache puddles in the dimple of my lip.

That’s why the President hasn’t said a word. That’s why he hasn’t moved as he leans over the old documents. And that’s why Dallas said Wallace created his so-called Plumbers in the first place.

He knows he’s being watched. He’s always being watched.

If he’s sending a message, it has to be a subtle one.

That’s fine.

I’m an archivist. I know how to wait.

Sticking to my corner and tightening the microscope, I study him sitting there-the way he favors his right arm, putting more weight on it as he leans on the desk.

I notice that he never touches the documents, always being respectful of their value.

I even observe the way he keeps both his feet flat on the floor. But beyond that…

Still nothing.

I wait some more.

More nothing.

He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t make eye contact. Doesn’t ask any questions-just another five minutes of…

Nothing.

The door to the room unpuckers on my right as the blond Secret Service agent rejoins us. But he doesn’t take his spot in the back corner.

“Sir, we really should get going,” he says, staying by the door, which he holds open with his hand.

The President nods, tapping the eraser of the pencil against his chin. Still trying to get the last few seconds of reading done, he’s quickly out of his seat, twisting himself so that it looks like his body is leaving the room even as his head is still reading.

“You have a good one now,” the blond agent says to me.

As the President heads for the door-and toward me-it’s the only other time the President’s heavy gray eyes make contact with me.

“Thanks for helping us out,” the leader of the free world offers as I crane my neck up to take in his six-foot-one frame. “Just amazing what you have here.”

Then he’s gone.

Poof.

He doesn’t offer a handshake or a pat on my shoulder. No physical contact at all. All I get, as he cuts past me, is that he smells like talcum powder and Listerine.

As the silence sets in, I look over my shoulder, searching the room. The chair… the cart… everything’s in place. Even the Mylar-encased document he was reading is still sitting there, untouched, on the desk. I rush over to it to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

There’s nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And then I see it.

Something.