Brad Meltzer - The Inner Circle

“I told you before-of all the people we’ve spoken to, he’s still the one who first cracked the invisible ink. Without him, we’d still be thumbing through the dictionary.”

“That’s not true. He didn’t crack anything. Your guy at the Archives… in Preservation…”

“The Diamond.”

“Exactly. The Diamond,” she says. “The Diamond’s the one who cracked it.”

“Only after Nico pointed out it was there. And yes, Nico’s loopy, but he’s also the only one who’s handed us something that’s panned out right.”

“So now Tot’s not right? C’mon, Beecher. You’ve got a dozen other people in the Archives who specialize in Revolutionary War stuff. You’ve got the Diamond and all his expertise about how the Founding Fathers used to secretly hide stuff. But instead of going to the trained professionals, you go to the paranoid schizo and the girl you first kissed in high school? Tell me what you’re really after. Your office could’ve gotten you in here. Why’d you bring me with you?”

As I follow her into the elevator and press the button for the third floor, I look at her, feeling absolutely confused. “Why wouldn’t I bring you? You were in that room when we found that dictionary. Your face is on that videotape just as much as mine is. And I’m telling you right now, Khazei knows who you are, Clementine. Do you really think all I care about is trying to protect myself? This is our problem. And if you think I haven’t thought that from moment one, you really don’t know me at all. Plus… can’t you tell I like you?”

As the elevator doors roll shut, Clementine takes a half-step back, still silent. Between her missing dad, her dead mom, and the evil grandmother, she’s spent a lifetime alone. She doesn’t know what to do with together .

But I think she likes it.

“By the way,” I add, standing next to her so we’re nearly shoulder to shoulder. “Some of us like country music.”

Clementine surprises me by blushing. As the elevator rises, she grips the railing behind her. “You were supposed to say that two minutes ago, genius-back when I said I liked elevator music.”

“I know. I was panicking. Just give me credit for eventually getting there, okay?” Within seconds, as the elevator slows to a stop, I reach down and gently pry her fingers from the railing, taking her hand in my own.

It’s a soaking, clammy mess. It’s caked in cold sweat.

And it fits perfectly in mine.

For an instant, we stand there, both leaning on the back railing, both entombed in that frozen moment after the elevator bobs to a stop, but before the doors…

With a shudder, the doors part company. A short black woman dressed in a yellow blouse is bouncing a thick ring of keys in her open palm and clearly waiting to take us the rest of the way. Clementine prepared me for this: To help the patients feel more at ease, the staff doesn’t wear uniforms. The silver nametag on her shirt says FPT, which is the mental hospital equivalent of an orderly. Behind the woman is another metal door, just like the ones downstairs.

“You’re the ones seeing Nico Hadrian?” she asks, giving a quick glance to our IDs.

“That’s us,” I say as the woman twists a key in the lock and pushes the door open, revealing dull fluorescent lights, a scuffed, unpolished hall, and the man who’s waiting for us, bouncing excitedly on his heels and standing just past the threshold with an awkward grin and a light in his chocolate brown eyes.

“I told everyone you’d be back,” Nico says in the kind of monotone voice that comes from solid medication. “They never believe me.”

"That your pop or your granpop?” the muscular white kid with the laced-up army boots asked as the barber mowed the clippers up the back of the guy’s head.

“My dad,” Laurent replied, not even looking up at the crisp black-and-white photo of the soldier in full army uniform that was tucked next to the shiny blue bottle of Barbasol. In the photo-posed to look like an official army portrait in front of an American flag-his father was turned to the camera, a mischievous grin lighting his face.

“Those bars on his chest?” the client asked, trying to look up even though his chin was pressed down to his neck.

Laurent had heard the question plenty of times before-from people who wanted to know what medal his dad was wearing on his uniform.

The amazing part was, despite the photo, the barber rarely thought of his father as a soldier. As a strict Seventh-day Adventist, his dad was a pacifist, so committed to his faith that he refused to have anything to do with military service. But three days after Pearl Harbor, when the country was reeling and his prayers weren’t bringing the answers he needed, his father walked into the recruitment office and enlisted.

He told his sergeants he wouldn’t carry a weapon or dig ditches on Sabbath. They made him a cook, and of course let him cut hair too. Years later, after he returned home, Laurent’s father remained just as committed to his faith. But the lesson was there-the one lesson he forever tried to drill into his children: Sometimes there’s a greater good.

“He was actually a kitchen man,” the barber said to his client, pointing the clippers back at the photo. “The medal’s a joke from his first sergeant for being the first one to catch a lobster when they were stationed in San Juan.”

The client laughed… and quickly rolled up his sleeve to reveal a crisp tattoo of a cartoony Marine Corps bulldog that was flexing his biceps like a bodybuilder and showing off his own tattoo, which read Always Faithful across his bulging dog arm.

The barber felt a lump in his throat, surprised by the swell of emotion that overtook him as he read the tattoo. No question about it, there was a real power that came with being faithful.

But.

He looked up and stole a quick glance at the photo of his father. At the miniature lobster that was pinned to his chest. And at the mischievous grin on his dad’s young face.

There was also something to be said about the greater good.

Leading us past the nurses’ station, past the TV alcove, past the section of small square tables covered by checkers sets, Nico keeps his chin up as he purposefully strides to what is clearly our destination: the only round table in the entire day room-and the only one with a green laminated card with the words Don’t Sit on it.

“I made the card. So people don’t sit here,” Nico says.

“We appreciate that,” I say, noticing that Clementine still hasn’t said a word. It hasn’t gotten any easier for her to be here. But the way Nico is staring more at me instead of her, I realize he still doesn’t know she’s his daughter. No question, that’s better for all of us.

We all sit down. There are three of us at the table-and four seats. But as Nico’s attention turns to the empty one, I have no doubt that, in his head, that empty seat is filled.

“It’ll be quiet back here. That’s why I like the round table,” Nico says. Like every other table in the room, it’s got a Plexiglas top. Makes it easier for the nurses to see what we’re doing. Back by the nurses’ station, the escort who walked us in is sitting at a computer, pretending not to stare at us. Pointing across the room to a set of swinging doors, Nico adds, “My room’s back there.”

There’s a loud kuh-kunk . I follow the sound over my shoulder, where a soda machine- kuh-kunk- spits out a Diet Dr Pepper that’s retrieved by a male patient with curly black hair.

“I can get us apple and orange juice for free. They make us pay for soda,” Nico explains.