The Inner Circle

“It’s a book,” Clementine says.

She’s partly right. It has the cover of a book-cracked and mottled black leather with faded red triangles in each of the top and bottom corners. But the guts of it-almost all the interior pages-are ripped out. It’s the same with the spine: torn away, revealing exposed, ancient glue and torn stitching. Without its insides, the whole book barely has the thickness of a clipboard.

I rub two gloved fingers across the cover. From the red rot (the aged, powdery residue that rubs off on my gloves), I’m guessing it dates back to at least the Civil War.

“Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary,” Orlando reads from the cover.

I check my watch. If we’re lucky, Wallace still hasn’t left the White House.

“Why would someone hide an old, torn-up dictionary for the President?” Clementine asks.

“Maybe the President’s hiding it for someone else,” Orlando offers. “Maybe when he’s alone in the room, he puts it in the chair for someone to pick up later, and they still haven’t picked it up yet.”

“Or for all we know, this has nothing to do with the President, and this book has been hidden in that chair for years,” I point out.

I swear, I can hear Orlando roll his eyes.

“What, like that’s so crazy?” I ask.

“Beecher, y’remember when that sweaty researcher with the pug nose and the buggy eyes was coming in here and stealing our old maps?”

“Yeah.”

“And when that looney-toon woman was nabbed for swiping those old Teddy Roosevelt letters because she thought she’d take better care of them than we were?”

“What’s your point?”

“The point is, y’know how they both got away with their crimes for so long? They took a tiny penknife and sliced each page out of the bound collection, page by page so no one would notice, until almost nothing was left,” he says, motioning with a thick finger at the old dictionary like he’s Sherlock Holmes himself.

“And that’s your grand theory? That Orson Wallace-the President of the United States, a man who can have any document brought right to him at any moment-is not only stealing from us, but stealing worthless dictionary pages?”

For the first time in the past five minutes, the office loudmouth is silent.

But not for long.

“The real point,” Orlando finally says, “is that this book-this dictionary, whatever it is-is property of the Archives.”

“We don’t even know that! The spine’s ripped off, so there’s no record group number. And if you look for…” Flipping the front cover open, I search for the circular blue National Archives stamp that’s in some of the older books in our collection. “Even the stamp’s not-” I stop abruptly.

“What?” Orlando asks as I stare down at the inside cover. “You find something?”

Leaning both palms on the desk, I read the handwritten inscription for the second and third time.

Exitus

Acta

Probat

“Exitus acta probat?” Clementine reads aloud over my shoulder.

I nod, feeling the bad pain at the bridge of my nose. “Exitus acta probat. The outcome justifies the deed.”

“You know Latin?” Clementine asks.

“I didn’t play Little League,” I tell her.

“I don’t understand,” Orlando says. “ ‘The outcome justifies the deed.’ Is that good or bad?”

“Moses is in transit,” Orlando’s walkie-talkie screams through the room. They’ll notify us again when he reaches the building.

I study the book as the pain gets worse. “I could be wrong,” I begin, “but if I’m reading this right… I think this book belonged to George Washington.”

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.”