The Inner Circle

“I know who he is, Beecher. But the only reason Mark Felt walked away was because no one knew who he was!” Orlando insists, waving the videotape in my face. “Don’t you get it? As long as we have this video, we get to be Deep Throat and I get to do my investigation. We lose this video, and I promise you, if this book is something bad-and c’mon, you know it’s something bad-we’re gonna be racing head-on against a man who is so stupidly powerful, wherever he goes, they fly bags of his own blood with him. Trust me here. You wanted smart. This is us being smart.”

“What about you?” I ask Orlando. “When you buzzed us in… when you called downstairs to that guy Khazei… Your name’s already in the records.”

“One disaster at a time. Besides, if we’re lucky, this tape may even have who snuck in the book in the first place,” he says as he tucks the videotape in the front waistband of his pants. “Now tell me about the Latin: Ex act probe it?”

“Exitus acta probat. It’s the motto on Washington’s personal bookplate,” I explain as he shuts the lockbox. “It’s from his family’s coat of arms-and on the inside cover of all of George Washington’s books.”

“And this is what it looked like?” Orlando asks, already heading for the door. “Three words scribbled on a page?”

“No… the coat of arms is a work of art: There’s a picture of an eagle, two red-and-white stripes, plus three stars. But when Washington designed his coat of arms, he personally added the words Exitus acta probat,” I say as Clementine motions me to follow Orlando and leave the room. We need to get out of here. But just as I move, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Caller ID reads NPRC, but it’s the 314 St. Louis area code that reminds me why we’re standing in this room in the first place.

Next to me, Clementine eyes the phone in my hand. She doesn’t freak, doesn’t tense up. But as her lips close tight, I get a second glimpse of the side of her she can’t hide. The real Clementine. The scared Clementine. Twenty-nine years of not knowing who your father is? Whatever we stepped in with the President, it has to wait.

“Please tell me you’ve got good news,” I say as I pick up.

“I can bring you information. Good and bad are the subjective clothes you decide to dress it in,” archivist Carrie Storch says without a hint of irony, reminding me that around here, the better you are with books, the worse you are with social skills.

“Carrie, did you find our guy or not?”

“Your girlfriend’s father? In that year, in that county of Wisconsin, he was the only Nicholas to enlist on December 10th. Of course I found him.”

“You did? That’s fantastic!”

“Again, I leave the distinctions to you,” she says, adding a short huff that I think counts as a laugh. Carrie never laughs.

“Carrie, what are you not saying?”

“I just bring you the information,” she says. “But wait till you hear who the father is.”

She says the words, pauses, then says them again, knowing I can’t believe it.

The President of the United States should be here any minute. But right now, I wonder if that’s the least of our problems.

“Clementine,” I say, grabbing her hand and heading to the door, “we need to get you out of here.”

8

St. Elizabeths Hospital

Washington, D.C.

They don’t call them mental patients anymore.

Now they’re called consumers.

Such a turd idea, orderly Rupert Baird thought as he pushed the juice cart down the pale sterile hallway. Almost as bad as when they started calling it KFC instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was the same with the patients. If you’re fried, you’re fried.

Heh.

That was funny, Rupert thought.

But still a damn turd idea.

“Hey there, Jerome,” he called out as he rolled the juice cart into Room 710. “I got apple and orange. What’s your pick?”

Cross-legged on his bed, Jerome just sat there, refusing to look up from the newspaper advertising supplements, the only section of the paper he ever read.

“Apple or orange?” Rupert asked again.

No response.

“Any good coupons for Best Buy?” Rupert added.

No response. Same as ever.

Rupert knew not to take it personally-this was Ward 5 of the John Howard Pavilion, home to the NGIs. Not Guilty by reason of Insanity.

As he pivoted the juice cart into a three-point turn and headed for Room 711 across the hall, he knew that the next patient-no, the next consumer-would be far easier to deal with.

It wasn’t always that way. When Patient 711 first arrived ten years ago, he wasn’t allowed visitors, mail privileges, sharp objects, or shoelaces. And he certainly wasn’t allowed the juice cart. In fact, according to Karyn Palumbo, who’d been here longer than anyone, during his second year on the ward, 711 was caught filing his middle fingernail to a razor point, hoping to carve a bloody cross into the neck of one of the girls from the salon school who used to come and give free haircuts.

Of course, they quickly called the Secret Service.

Whenever 711 was involved, they had to call the Secret Service.

That’s what happens when a man tries to put a bullet into the President of the United States.

But after ten years of therapy and drugs-so much therapy and drugs-711 was a brand-new man. A better man.

A cured man, Rupert and most of the doctors thought.

“Hey there, Nico,” Rupert called out as he entered the sparsely furnished room. There was a single bed, a wooden nightstand, and a painted dresser that held just Nico’s Bible, his red glass rosary, and the newest Washington Redskins giveaway calendar.

“Apple or orange?” Rupert asked.

Nico looked up from the book he was reading, revealing his salt-and-pepper buzzed hair and his chocolate brown eyes, set close together. Ten years ago, in the middle of the President’s visit to a NASCAR race, Nico nearly murdered the most powerful man in the world. The video was played time and again, still showing up every year on the anniversary.

As the screaming began, a swarm of Secret Service agents tore at Nico from behind, ripping the gun from his hands.

These days, though, Nico was smart.

He knew better than to talk of those times.

He knew he should’ve never let the world see him like that.

But the one thing that Nicholas “Nico” Hadrian didn’t know back then, as he was tugged and clawed so viciously to the ground, was that he had a young daughter.

“C’mon, Nico-apple or orange?” Rupert called out.

Nico’s lips parted, offering a warm smile. “Whatever you have more of,” he replied. “You know I’m easy.”