The Inner Circle

“Just try again.”

“Privacy?”

“That’s top three. You’re Reagan. You’re Obama. You have more power than anyone. What’s even more vital than privacy?”

“Trust.”

“Getting warmer.”

“Someone who cares about you.”

“Getting colder. Think back to George Washington. Why’d he say the Culper Ring helped him win the Revolutionary War?”

“They brought him the best information.”

“Information! There. Bull’s-eye. You see it now, right? That is the most, and I mean the most, vital thing that a President needs to do his job: reliable information. You understand that?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Then understand this: Our bureaucracy is so vast, by the time a piece of information makes its way to the President’s desk, it’s like a chewed-over dog bone. It goes from the guy on the ground, up to a supervisor, up to an analyst, up to a chief of staff, up to a deputy secretary, then up to the real secretary, then through the true honchos who pick through it… and then, if it’s lucky, there it is… dumped on your desk, Mr. President. And now you have to take that drool-covered piece of info and use it to make a military, or environmental, or financial decision that’ll affect millions or maybe billions of lives. You ready to rely on that?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple. It’s always been that simple. And it is-still-the greatest problem facing every President: You’re the one man in charge, and every day you’re making life-and-death decisions based on the work of total strangers with unknown agendas. And that’s why, when you’re sitting there with all those above-top-secret reports about every problem in the world, you can’t help but wonder: What don’t I know? What’d they leave out of these reports? And what’re the motives and biases built in to the info I’m getting?”

“So the Culper Ring works for the President.”

“No. The Culper Ring doesn’t work for the President. It works for the Presidency. It serves the office, just as George Washington designed it-a built-in backstop to be used when it was needed most. Think about it, Beecher-before you drop the bomb on Hiroshima, wouldn’t you want to be absolutely sure the Japanese weren’t already about to surrender? Or before you went to slaughter your brother in Gettysburg, wouldn’t you want to make sure you had the right general in place? Major General Meade was installed just four days before the fighting at Gettysburg began. Pretty good timing by Lincoln, eh?”

My mind swirls through the examples we found in the Archives-the Bay of Pigs… Sputnik… the Lusitania-each one its own critical moment in presidential history. It swirls even more when it reminds me that of all the theories we had, it’s still Nico who was most correct. The President’s definitely communicating through that dictionary. But it doesn’t change the one thing I refuse to lose focus on:

“You said there were two,” I tell Dallas. “Two Rings.”

“And now you’re seeing the problem,” he says with a nod. “Every once in a while, there’s kind of a… speed bump.”

“Define speed bump.”

“Beecher, I’ve already kept you here for too long. If they’re watching-”

“Tell me about the second Ring, Dallas. Tell me, or I swear to you, I’ll type up this crap and you’ll be reading about it in the Washington Post tomorrow!”

“I know that’s not true-that’s not who you are. And if I didn’t know that, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“Then have the damn conversation!”

Like before, he uses his teeth to comb at some stray beard hairs. But unlike before, his head is cocked to the side, his eyes staring off. Like he’s listening to something.

“What’re you doing?” I challenge.

He doesn’t answer. But as he turns his head, I spot-in his ear-there’s something in his ear.

“Is that an earpiece? Are you-? Is someone listening to us right now!?” I shout as I start to search the room. No mirrors. No cameras in the corners.

“They said to calm down, Beecher. You already passed the test.”

“What test? Who’s they? How the hell’re they seeing us!?”

I rush to the little minibar, shoving the bottles of alcohol aside. I pull the top off the ice bucket. No wires anywhere.

It’s on you, isn’t it? You’re wearing a camera!”

“Listen to me, Beecher-”

I hop over the coffee table, knocking the flowers to the floor. He leaps off the sofa and, like a lion tamer, grabs the armchair, trying to keep it between us.

“Will you listen to me!?” he says. “This isn’t about you!”

“That’s not true! This is my life you’re screwing with!”

“You idiot! Your life’s already over!”

I stop at the words.

His fingers dig into the back of the armchair.

“What’d you say?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer.

“You said my life is over.”

“We can protect you. We’re protecting you right now.” To prove the point, Dallas heads to the closed curtains and spreads them just a few feet apart, revealing a city block filled with parked cars, but empty of people and bathed in darkness. We’re on the second floor of a brick townhouse, and though it takes me a moment, as I scan the restaurants across the street… that CVS.

“We’re in Woodley Park,” I say.

“We are. But we’re also in the only residential house on a busy street where it’s difficult to stop, making this building nearly impossible to observe without being observed. When it went up for sale, we were bidding against both the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

“So this is… what?… some sorta safehouse?”

“You see that homeless guy across the street?” Dallas asks. “He’ll be there until 4 a.m., at which point another ‘homeless man’ will clock in and take his place for a full eight-hour shift. Think about it, Beecher. There’s a reason the FBI is the second biggest property renter in Washington, D.C. This is how you do it right.”

I turn away as he lets the curtains shut. “You said my life is over.”

“Beecher, you have to understand. When you found what you found…”

“I don’t even know what I found. Tell me what I found.”

“You found proof. That dictionary-That’s proof that they exist.”

“That what exists? A second Culper Ring?”

Dallas shakes his head, double-checking that the curtains are shut tight. “Don’t call them that. They don’t deserve to be called that.”

“That’s what they are, though, aren’t they?”

Dallas sits with this a moment. I can’t tell if he’s thinking, or listening to whatever’s being whispered in his ear, but eventually he says, “Every dozen or so administrations, it happens. It has to happen, right? Every person who’s sworn in as President has his own agenda, and some of these guys-I heard the first was Millard Fillmore, though I think if you look at Ulysses Grant, or probably Harding-”

“I don’t care about the 1920s or Teapot Dome.”

“What about Watergate? You care about that one?”

“Time out. You’re telling me that this other Culper Ring-whatever you want to call them-that they’re the ones who pulled off Watergate?”

“No. Richard Nixon pulled off Watergate. But to make it happen, well…” Dallas heads over to the framed