Brad Meltzer - The Inner Circle

“The point is, he was right. One of our guys-he works at the Supreme Court of all things-he said Nico’s story checked out: Washington apparently used to write these long rambling letters that seemed to go nowhere… until you read just the first letter, or third letter, or whatever letter of every word. When we tried that here, it’s like he said: NC and WU became…”

“N and W. North and West,” I say, repeating what Nico told me, and I told Dallas a half hour ago when I said to meet us here.

As I head up the main path, I understand why no one wants to take Nico at his word, but even I have to admit, it was amazing to watch. Once Nico had the N and W, he played with the decimals and the message became a bit more familiar: Write back: N 38? 54.819 W 77? 3.427- a GPS address that converts to the same latitude and longitude system that’s been in place since Ptolemy put them in the first world atlas nearly two thousand years ago. That’s why we were stuck for so long. We were looking for book coordinates. These were map coordinates. “Where are you anyway?” I ask.

“Just getting to Oak Hill now,” Dallas explains. “I just passed the front gate. Where’re you?”

“I don’t know-where all the headstones and dead people are. Up the hill on the left. There’s…” I glance around, searching for landmarks. “There’s a wide-open field and a huge stone statue of a… she looks like a farm girl, but her face is all flat because the weather’s worn away her nose.”

“Hold on-I think I… I see you,” Dallas says. “I see you and-” He cuts himself off. “Please tell me that’s not Clementine with you.”

“Don’t even start. Y’know I needed her to get into St. Elizabeths.”

“And what about here? Why bring her here? We talked about this, Beecher. No matter what you think, we don’t know this girl.”

I hang up the phone, tired of the argument. It’s no different than what Tot said. But what neither of them understands is, without Clementine, I never would’ve made it all the way here. And like I told her earlier, she was in that SCIF too. I can’t leave her behind.

“ Beecher, hold up! ” a faint voice calls out behind us.

I turn, spotting Dallas just as he comes around the corner, halfway down the crooked path. He’s less than fifty yards away. He’s running fast to catch up.

But not as fast as me.

“Who’s that?” Clementine calls out, clearly freaked out.

“Don’t worry. Just Dallas,” I say.

“Why’d you tell him we were coming here?” Clementine asks, remembering Tot’s advice to not trust anyone.

I don’t answer.

On my cell phone, GPS says we’ve got another 319 feet to go. But I don’t need a snazzy cell phone to see my true destination.

An expansive pie crust of snow covers the ground, and a narrow minefield of footprints burrows straight at a single grave: an eight-foot-tall obelisk that looks like a miniature Washington Monument.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Clementine whispers behind me.

As I sprint from the paved path, my feet are swallowed by the ice. I stick to my left, careful to steer clear of the evidence. The footprints look new-like they were made this morning. There’s also another set of prints that leads back, back, back to the ring of trees that surround the field.

“You think someone’s out there?” Clementine asks, spotting the same prints I do.

I don’t answer. But what catches my eye is what’s sitting at the base of the obelisk: wet leaves… clumps of soil… and a neat little hole in dirty brown snow…

Like something’s buried underneath.

Scrambling forward, I dive for the little rabbit hole, stuff my hand down it, and pat around until…

There.

The beige rock is smooth and flat, perfect for skimming in a lake. Dallas and Clementine both rush to my side. But as I pull the rock out, I know something’s wrong. The weight’s not right.

“It’s plastic,” I say. “I think… I think it’s hollow.”

“Of course it’s hollow. That’s how they hide stuff in it,” Dallas says as if he sees this all the time. “Open it up. See what it is.”

I flip the rock over. Sure enough, the bottom swivels open.

All three of us hunch over it like mother birds over an egg.

And we finally get to see what’s inside.

Tot purposely chose one of the SCIFs on the opposite side of the building.

He picked one that was assigned to the Legislative folks. The head of the Legislative SCIFs was a middle-aged guy who spent his nights playing Adams Morgan clubs with a happy but untalented rocksteady and reggae band. He’d never know the room was being used.

Still, Tot was careful as he came over. He did his usual weaving through the stacks, kept his face off the cameras, and even knew to avoid the elderly volunteers who they’d packed into one of the suites on the eighteenth floor to sort through the recently unearthed Revolutionary War widow pension files.

In fact, to actually get in the room, he was smart enough to avoid using the regular door code.

And smart enough to instead use the security staff’s override code.

And smart enough to pick one of the few SCIFs in the building that didn’t have a single surveillance camera (which is how most Senators and Members preferred it).

But the one thing Tot did that was smartest of all?

He made sure he wasn’t working this alone.

On his right, the quarter-inch vault door clicked and thunked, then opened with a pneumatic pop.

“You’re late,” Tot said.

“You’re wrong,” Khazei said as the door slammed behind him. “I’m right on time.”

"Nothing.”

“No. Can’t be,” Dallas says.

“It can. And it is ,” I say, tipping the hollow rock so he and Clementine can get a good view.

Dallas squints and leans in, examining the small rectangular compartment inside the rock. No question, there’s nothing there, which means…

“Someone already picked up the message,” Clementine says, looking back at the footprints that lead out to the treeline, which curves like a horseshoe around us.

“Or no one’s put one in yet,” I say, trying to stay positive, but unable to shake the feeling that Clementine may be right. I follow her gaze to the treeline in the distance. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. But we all recognize that out-of-body gnawing that comes when you think you’re being watched. “I think we need a place to hide. Someone could still be coming.”

Dallas shakes his head, pointing down at the grave. “If that were the case, where’d these footprints come from?”

“Actually, I was thinking they came from you,” Clementine challenges, motioning at Dallas even as she eyes the ones back to the treeline. “I mean, even with Beecher calling you, that’s a pretty amazing coincidence that you show up at the exact moment we do.”

“Funny, I was thinking the same about you ,” Dallas shoots back. “But I was going to be cordial enough to wait until you left and tell Beecher behind your back.”

“Can you both please stop?” I plead. I’m tempted to tell Clementine what Dallas did last night-how he spotted that person in the taxi… and gave me the video of us in the SCIF, keeping it away from Khazei… and told me the true story about the Culper Ring and the President’s private group of Plumbers. But it doesn’t change the fact that with this rock being empty…“We’re more lost than ever.”

“Not true,” Dallas says, licking flicks of snow from his beard.

“What’re you talking about? This was the one moment where we had the upper hand-we knew the location where the President and his Plumbers were dropping their message, but instead of catching them in the act, we’re standing here freezing our rear ends off.”