The President's Shadow Read online

  Mac and I both freeze, trading a glance. I have one sister who lives in Wisconsin and takes care of our mom. The other moved to Philadelphia and hasn’t visited me a single time since I’ve been in D.C.

  Whoever’s in there with Tot isn’t my sister.

  Racing for the sliding glass door of Room 355, I yank it open.

  The lights are dimmed. Tot’s in his usual spot, head tipped sideways, mouth sagging open, palms facing up like he’s pleading for death. In the corner, in a wood-and-vinyl hospital recliner, sits a tall woman with olive skin and honeycomb-colored hair.

  The Archivist from the Secret Service. My pal Mina.

  “Y’know, Beecher, for a smart guy,” Mina offers, “you don’t always do the smart thing.”

  69

  How many places can you can hide a U.S. President?

  Surprisingly, a lot, A.J. had learned during his first few months on White House detail. In Washington, D.C., there were hiding spots all across the city: in obvious places like bomb shelters below buildings, but also in basements of hotels, in underground mechanical rooms that connected to national monuments, even in the basketball court of the FBI building, a steel-lined room in the Library of Congress, and a docked submarine by the Vice President’s house.

  Still, all those were short-term spots, in case the President had to be hidden fast. If nothing was nearby, the Service could create one in an instant: In every city the President visits, massive C-17 cargo planes arrive the day before—always at 1 p.m.—delivering ready-to-build octagonal saferooms to the hotel. In the President’s room, the Service shoves all the couches and chairs against one wall, builds the saferoom panel by panel, then rolls in wide pieces of ballistic glass to cover each window.

  If the President has to be moved, helicopters stand ready at Andrews Air Force Base to take him to more long-term facilities, like the White House bomb shelter. If the shelter’s compromised, he’ll go to Camp David. If that’s compromised… The list goes on and on.

  Yet as A.J.’s car elbowed through the late traffic on Route 50 and rolled slowly past the Iwo Jima Memorial, he knew that every one of those hiding spots was no longer an option.

  Turning up the radio, A.J. tried to lose himself in an old Red Hot Chili Peppers song that reminded him of when he graduated college and moved to D.C. He could smell his first apartment with the carpeting that reeked of perfume and dog pee. But the song wasn’t having the calming effect it used to.

  Whoever was now leading the Knights, they’d already been inside the White House. The buried arm at Camp David had panicked the Secret Service even more. So if A.J. was guessing about where the President was currently being hidden, he assumed it’d be somewhere like Mount Weather, the self-contained city out in Maryland. Every year, as the President delivered the State of the Union address to the assembled power players in Congress, the Supreme Court, and the full Cabinet, Mount Weather was where they’d hide the one member of the Cabinet who was forced to stay behind in case a terrorist group set off a bomb at the speech and slaughtered the rest of our government.

  A decade ago, when too many reporters found out about Mount Weather, it was taken off the list of presidential safehouses. But after 9/11, Homeland Security secretly rebuilt it to serve as the base for the rest of the government in case of terrorist attack. The President had an underground bunker below Building 409. And to this day, directions to the facility were on the back of the IDs for top White House staff. No doubt, it was a reliable choice.

  But according to Francy, a predictable one.

  Indeed, as A.J. pulled off at the exit from George Washington Memorial Parkway, he still wasn’t sure he was headed to the right place. But according to Francy, this was it.

  At the end of the ramp, A.J. made a left at the multiple stop signs. No surprise, the wide street was empty, blocked off by yellow metal barricades with signs that read Gate Closes At 7 p.m. The street was also cobbled, so cars were forced to slow down. No strangers out here. And no speeding.

  In the distance, there was no missing the curved memorial with its tall neoclassical archway. But what made A.J. turn down the radio and kill the Chili Peppers bass solo was the sight of the two guards just in front of the barricade.

  They were dressed in fluorescent orange vests to make them look like standard late-night security, but A.J. saw the earpieces they were wearing. Secret Service.

  For the average visitor, this was a place to find dead Presidents—not a live one.

  The sign read Arlington National Cemetery. As A.J. lowered his window, the guard said, “You must be A.J.”

  70

  What’re you doing!? Get away from him!” I demand, rushing into Tot’s room, past his hospital bed.

  “Beecher, I’m not here to hurt anyone,” Mina insists. “I just want to talk to you.”

  “Then do what everyone else does. Call me! Pick up a phone! Or do what your boss does and track my car!”

  To her credit, she doesn’t take the bait. She sits there evenly, legs crossed. My mother fights like that. It drives me just as crazy.

  I turn to check on Tot and it’s the first time I realize Mac is gone. She never even came in the room. I don’t blame her. The reason she’s so good at her job is that, for decades now, she’s made sure people like Mina don’t know she exists.

  “Who was the old lady?” Mina asks, eyeing the sliding glass door.

  “Fellow archivist,” I insist.

  Mina shifts her weight. She doesn’t believe it, but she lets it go.

  “Why didn’t you just call me?” I challenge.

  “Would you’ve come?”

  I don’t answer. “How’d you know I’d come here?”

  “Gina from your Legislative Affairs office. We got our masters in library science together. She says you come here every day anyway. I just needed you a little faster.”

  I don’t say a word. The red blinking life-support machines offer their usual chorus of beeps and hisses.

  “So this is Tot. The one you always talk about. He means a lot to you, huh?” she adds.

  I stare at her, staying quiet.

  “Beecher, I get it. There’s not a single good reason for you to talk to me, so let me share this: If Director Riestra really did track your car, this is the very first I’m hearing about it. And if you think that’s a lie too, well…if this were all some Riestra ploy, do you think you’d be talking to me right now…or would you be sitting here talking to him?”

  Rolling the question through my own head, I turn back to Tot, instinctively pulling the edge of his covers over his feet. He’s wearing blue anti-embolism socks to make sure he doesn’t get blood clots from being bedridden for so long.

  “Listen,” Mina says, “I didn’t come here to intrude. I’ll get out of your way, but before I do…” She opens her purse. “That coin you asked me about, with the owl on it,” she says, pulling out a folded sheet of paper. “I figured out what the HL-1024 means. They’re coordinates. They point to a place on a map.”

  She holds out the paper, waiting for me to take it.

  “Why’re you doing this?” I ask. “Because I let your brother sneak a photo?”

  “You really don’t see it, do you? James was buried with that photo. It’s in his coffin. His request,” she says, her voice catching on the words. “You’re a good person, Beecher. If you’re chasing something, I know you wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

  I take the paper from her, still not unfolding it. “I appreciate that.”

  She stares over at Tot, picking him apart with an archivist’s eye. “Is that why he’s here? Something with that penny?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Beecher, when you needed help, you called me and I came running. More important, you wouldn’t have made that call unless you trusted me. So please don’t treat me like I’m some newbie pushing the book cart in the reference room. Whatever you’re after, it’s clear it goes back to that jeweled Secret Service pin you asked me about. And sin
ce the owner of that pin died three weeks ago, and is somehow tied to President Reagan being shot—and for some reason, my boss, Director Riestra, apparently cares enough to track your car, well, as my Nana used to say, when you’re knee-high in manure, you can roll up your trousers or roll up your sleeves.”

  “I’m not sure sleeve-rolling is the real solution here.”

  “Then let me tell you what is: You can either tell me what’s really going on, or you can wait for my bosses to track you down and you can tell them. Personally, I think I’m the far safer option. And one who’s already proven herself to you.”

  Another hollow hiss echoes through Tot’s breathing tube. I look at his hands to see if they’re moving. Nothing’s changed. Not for weeks.

  “How’d your brother get injured?” I finally ask.

  “What’s that have t—?”

  “I spent three hours with him. We made small talk about baseball, old documents, and even how the oxygen tube kept giving him nosebleeds. But he never told me how he got hurt.”

  She pauses, but not for long. “It was years ago.”

  “Afghanistan?”

  “Iraq. I wish I could say we were super-close, but James was almost a decade older than me. It was me, him, and our mom, who was always working, always doing for us. James didn’t get the best grades, but he was the one who cooked dinner and made sure the laundry was done. He joined the army because he thought it’d be a cheap way to train doing vehicle maintenance, then he’d send money home so that I’d be able to have more options than he did. Pretty amazing for a loudmouth Red Sox fan.”

  “So he was injured while serving?”

  “Everyone thinks soldiers die by jumping on grenades, but it’s rarely that cinematic. James was at the front gate of the base when a red car pulled up driven by a sixteen-year-old kid who leaned out and asked for directions. By the time James got close enough to talk to him, he spotted a yellow jug in the kid’s lap, packed with plastic explosives. Boom, that was it. By some miracle, James survived, but the shrapnel shredded his lungs, bit into his spine, and even jammed a thin sliver into his brain. Even after years of surgeries and therapy, he was never the same. You saw: He fought to put full sentences together, and when he did, it was to tell you how much he hated the wheelchair and the colostomy bag, or how a Red Sox lineup from five years ago might pull it out today. That’s why I wanted just one good day for him. When he started repeating himself and rooting for those old teams, the doctors told me he was having mini-strokes in his brain. They said this might be it. They were right,” she says, leaning forward in her chair and staring through me as she replays the memory.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I appreciate your instinctive need to console me. But if James’s loss taught me anything,” she says, motioning over my shoulder, back toward Tot, “it’s that when you don’t get the father you want, you find the father you need.”

  I stare down at the man who took me into his life from my very first day at the Archives. A raspy hollow hiss echoes through Tot’s breathing tube. I already lost one dad in my life. I don’t want to lose two.

  “That’s not awful advice,” I eventually admit.

  She laughs at that. “Thanks for setting the bar so low. It really helps tamp down my pesky self-esteem.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. Just like I know this is about more than a flattened old penny with the Lord’s Prayer on it. This isn’t just some work project, is it? It’s cutting pretty deep with you.”

  I keep staring at the bits of blood on Tot’s feeding tube, still holding the folded paper with the map coordinates. If Riestra knew she was here, he’d never let her hand those over. Better yet, Mina knows her boss is tracking me. By offering to help, she’s risking her job, risking her life. Tot would tell me never trust anyone. But Tot’s not really here. Mina is. And no question, to dig out of manure, sometimes you need an extra hand.

  “It’s where my father’s unit was stationed,” I say.

  She looks at me, eyebrows crinkled and confused.

  “The coordinates you found. On the penny. It’s where my dad was—and where I think he died.”

  “So I was right. This is family,” she says, nodding over and over, like she’s reliving her own battle. “You won’t regret this, Beecher.”

  “Sure I will. You will too. I’ll tell you the rest on the way. Are the coordinates far?”

  “Depends,” Mina offers. “You got a plane?”

  “I actually do.” Sliding open the glass door, I peek out into the hospital hallway. Empty. Mac is long gone. I take out my phone to call her. The screen’s already lit up. Call in progress. “Mac? That you?” I ask into the phone.

  “Don’t do what you’re about to do,” Mac warns.

  I stop where I am, pointing Mina ahead of me, toward the elevator. For this, I need privacy. “You turned my phone on?” I hiss at Mac. “You’ve been listening the whole time?”

  “And I need you to listen to me, Beecher. This woman’s being far too helpful for a Secret Service agent, especially when we’re worried that the only way White Eyelashes pulled this off is because he was working with a Secret Service agent.”

  “She’s not an agent. She’s an archivist. And a friend.”

  “You have no idea where she’s taking you.”

  “Sure I do—and y’know what else I know? That when it comes to my father, she’s the only person who’s brought me a single answer—and she put herself at risk to do it.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s on your side.”

  “If she wasn’t on my side, you really think Riestra wouldn’t be here right now?”

  Even Mac can’t rebut that. Back in the Rose Garden, there was a reason the Plankholders penny was being clutched in the buried hand. That penny was a message. And now a location. Finally, we’re about to find out where it’s pointing—and most important, who sent it. “She’s taking me to where my father died,” I explain as I start running toward the elevators. Mina’s already holding one open. “Now can you get us a plane or not?”

  71

  Ezra was leaning toward the bathroom mirror, so close he could see the pores in his nose, as his phone began to ring. He didn’t pick it up; he couldn’t. He held a threaded needle in one hand; his other pinched the skin on his cheek, clamping the two layers shut.

  The bullet wound looked worse than it was, a fleshy charred line that burrowed diagonally across his cheek. Of course it’d been Clementine. From the moment he first decided to approach her, he’d known she was an animal, no different from her father. But Ezra had thought her self-interest would get him closer to his goal.

  Gritting his teeth, Ezra pressed the needle to his face. A sharp stab sent it into his skin, then he looped it around, pulling the thread tight as his skin cinched shut. Truth was, he didn’t mind the pain. Great movements required great sacrifice.

  Ezra’s phone rang again. He still didn’t pick it up.

  He’d learned from some extreme nature show on cable that you needed to braid five strands of thread for homemade stitches. A local CVS supplied the rest: needles, beige thread, and an alcohol-smelling bathroom where he could lock the door and find privacy for the past twenty minutes.

  With another pierce, another loop, and another tug on the thread, the stitches pulled tight and the wound squeezed shut. For a final touch, Ezra added a dab of Krazy Glue to hold the knot in place, still thinking how much easier this would be if he hadn’t done what he did to the doctor and the nurse at the herbal shop. He didn’t regret it; he had no choice. They knew him too well, and for the Knights to finish their mission, everything had to be—

  Ezra’s phone had just stopped ringing. Now it was ringing again. Whoever it was, they were calling back.

  “Talk,” Ezra said, picking it up.

  “Sorry, I was— This is Jocelyn. Nurse Jocelyn. From the hospital. You said…uh…you said you’d pay a reward if we saw something in Tot Westman’s room.”

&n
bsp; “Depends what you saw.”

  “The guy you asked about. Beecher. He was here, at the hospital.”

  “He still there now?”

  “That depends if you’ve still got that thousand dollars you offered. I know for sure Beecher’s headed to an airport. You give me what you promised, I’ll give you where he’s going.” When Ezra didn’t reply, she added, “Listen, I got a daughter in Special Olympics who wants to go to the national games. She ain’t getting there unless I find the funds. Now, you want to know where Beecher went or not?”

  Ezra glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, feeling the pull of the stitches as a smile took his face. “Nurse Jocelyn, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  72

  A.J. had been to the cemetery before.

  His great-great-aunt—an army nurse in World War II—was buried here. Nobody in the family liked her, but they all respected her service, which explained why every trip to D.C. brought them to Arlington National Cemetery.

  A.J. had seen the perfectly arranged headstones. He’d seen JFK’s eternal flame, and the graves his father liked even more: those of Joe Louis and Lee Marvin. And of course he’d seen the sentinel who stood guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and who was there right now, in the darkness with his polished M14 rifle on his shoulder. The sentinel didn’t turn, didn’t move, as A.J. followed the twisting path past the tomb.

  Heading up the hill and following the moonlight and Francy’s directions to Section 3, A.J. reached into his pocket, feeling for his phone. He was still tempted to call Beecher. He couldn’t explain why. The President was inviting A.J. back into the family, trusting him enough to bring him here. But the more A.J. climbed the hill, the more headstones he passed, and the more his thumb kept prying open his flip phone and then letting it snap shut.

  Up ahead, his destination stood out, even in the darkness. Of over three hundred thousand graves at Arlington National Cemetery, there were only two mausoleums. One was this, a white marble house with a pointed roof and two meatball shrubs in front. Above a tarnished metal door was the engraved name Miles.