The President's Shadow (24 page)

E
zra 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.”

“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.”

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
l
iked her, but they all respected her service, which explained why every trip to D.C.
b
rought 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, hi
s
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
.

As a young Civil War hero, Lieutenant General Nelson Miles had risen to the top command of the U.S. Army. But when he criticized our policy in the Philippines, he earned the anger of President Teddy Roosevelt, who, when Miles retired, wouldn’t even send him the standard congratulatory note. From that alone, A.J. was well aware
why Wallace had picked this place. As with any U.S. President, everything came with a messag
e
.

In the end, Miles had lived out the remainder of his life as a nobody. At the age of eighty-five, on a trip to the circus with his grandchildren, as the band began playing the national anthem, Miles stood at attention, saluted the flag, and dropped dead of a heart attack. The new President, Calvin Coolidge, made amends by offering a first-class burial.

Nearly a century later, A.J. stepped across the damp dirt, toward Miles’s reward. Planks of rotted wood covered each of the mausoleum’s windows and clanked in the wind. A squirrel skittered up one of the building’s carved columns, then raced down again as A.J. approached.

Weaving his way among nearby graves, A.J. never took his eyes off the dark mausoleum. There were no lights on inside. No nearby cameras—and most oddly, knowing the Service’s protocols for any presidential visit—no guards either. For the first time, A.J. wondered if the mausoleum led to someplace farther underground. Getting closer to the meatball shrubs and the front door, he didn’t know whether to knock or just—

Rrrrrrrrr.

The metal door swung open, scraping against the stone floor. A familiar face poked out from the shadows.

“Don’t worry, there’re no ghosts,” Francy O’Connor called out.

“Is he—? He’s in
there
?” A.J. asked, referring to the only
he
who ever mattered.

Looking over A.J.’s shoulder, Francy made sure they were alone. “He’s not happy about it either. Now c’mon. Before we let all the heat out.”

A.J. strode toward the open door just as a light went on in the mausoleum.

I
t’s nearly midnight as we pull up to the locked chain-link gate. Outside, a gangly, middle-aged man in a cheap sport jacket and no winter coat squints into our headlights, undoing the single padlock. Not much of a security system.

I lean out the passenger window. “We’re here to see—”

“Mr. Mulligan is waiting for you,” the man says, pointing a long elegant finger toward our destination: the wide airplane hangar on our right.

“Mr. Mulligan?” Mina asks, shooting me a look as she hits the gas and pulls forward.

I nod, knowing it’s a fake name. Mr. Mulligan is Hercules Mulligan, an Irish tailor who, two hundred years ago, had the single greatest name in the Revolutionary War, and also saved George Washington’s life (twice!) by passing British plans to the Culper Ring. Mulligan wasn’t an official Ring member, but he was there when they needed him. Like the man waiting for us now.

“I didn’t even know there was an airport out here,” Mina says as we pull into a canopied parking spot that keeps us hidden from prying eyes.

That’s the whole point of coming out to Manassas, Virginia. If we fly out of Reagan or Dulles, even on a private charter, we’re subject to an array of camera surveillance. But out here, Manassas Airport allows the wealthiest people to fly in and out of our nation’s capital without ever being seen.

“You’re Beecher,” a Southern voice insists, more Kentucky aggressive than Virginia calm. Tall and fit in a black, no-nonsense pea coat, he has short cropped hair dyed blond to offset his seventy years. His belt buckle and shirt buttons form a perfect line. No question, former military. Mac said he works for one of the big government contractors; she wouldn’t say which.

“Mr. Mulligan,” I reply, extending a handshake.

Mulligan doesn’t take it. His right hand stuffed in his pocket, he motions for us to follow him to the back of the hangar. “You’re younger than the last one,” he says over his shoulder.

Last one?
Tot told me it’d been years since they asked anyone to join the Ring.

“Tell Mac if my wife dies, Mac’s still the first one I’m calling,” he adds, making sure to always stay a few steps in front of us.

He stops at the back of the hangar, giving us our first good look at what we’re really here for. Mac gave me three things for the trip. This is the first: a private jet with two thin black stripes running along the side. Most companies prefer a low profile and won’t put their logo on their private planes—though they sometimes hide it in the plane’s tail number. This one reads
N619LM
. LM. Lockheed Martin. Uncle Sam’s top contractor. “Do me a favor,” Mr. Mulligan adds as the pilot sticks his head out. “Don’t wreck my plane.”

T
he crypt was warm inside—they had a heater and a light.

Following behind Francy, A.J. scanned the mausoleum as he stepped inside. There were bodies all around him, hidden behind ancient marble slabs, each one marked by an engraved nameplate draped with spiderwebs. Along the back wall stood a round iron table that held a vase of dried flowers and two goblets that hadn’t been touched in decades.

“Dinner for none,” Francy joked, her steps scratching against the floor’s dried dirt and mortar.

As the heavy door shut behind them, A.J. cocked an eyebrow. Still no guards, no cameras, and no hidden staircase that led to an underground bomb shelter.

“The President isn’t here, is he?” A.J. asked.

Francy sat on the edge of the wrought iron table, arms flat at her sides.

“So the reason you brought me here…” A.J. began. He thought about it a moment. “This was a test. You were checking my loyalty.”

“We needed to know who you were talking to.”

“Then ask me; I’ll tell you! You know I’m not with the Knights!”

“What about Beecher?” Francy challenged. “We know you let him go, A.J. Truthfully, I’m okay with that. We need Beecher and the Ring in this one. But when things like that happen…and you don’t tell us…we need to know who you’re really playing for. And who else you’re talking to.”

“Are you high? I haven’t called
anyone
!
Not even my dad!
Tap my phone! Run my phone records
right now
!”

Francy rubbed her middle finger against her thumb, severing a nearby spiderweb. “Already did.”

“What?”

“Your phone. We tapped it hours ago.” She spread her five fingers wide, like a magician finishing a trick. “You passed, A.J. You could’ve called anyone and told them we were here. You didn’t.”

A.J. stood there, now burning from the heat. “You really think that little of me?”

“Don’t sulk. You know what’s at stake here. You saw how close the Knights got. Answer me honestly: If you were me, and Wallace asked you to double-check
everyone
—including swiping
his daughter’s
phone to see if they were tracing us through that—you’re telling me you would’ve done anything different?”

Now A.J. was the one who was silent.

“Exactly,” Francy said. “By the way, want to tell me what Beecher knows about Wallace’s past, because last I checked, sitting Presidents shouldn’t be spending this much time thinking about lowly archivists, even Culper Ring ones?”

“If Wallace wants to tell you, he’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough,” Francy said. “Now you ready to help me find where Beecher and Ezra are really headed to?”

A small grin took A.J.’s face. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question.”

D
id it work?
” Marshall whispered in his sleep.

“Did what work?” Clementine asked.

Blinking awake, Marshall squinted up at the fluorescent light. Fluorescent lights meant hospital rooms and operations. This wasn’t a hospital, though. The smell was wrong. It smelled of black tea. And cats.

Marshall was flat on his back. A thin polyester blanket, like from a cheap motel, covered his chest. Clementine sat at the edge of his pulldown bed, watching over him. Her cheek was scraped raw, though a scab was forming. The room was moving back and forth.

“We’re on a train?” Marshall asked, trying to sit up as a deep pain in his armpit argued otherwise. Now he remembered. He’d been shot. Ezra had used an antique, retrofitted revolver, probably to make some awful historical parallel that only Beecher would appreciate. This was why he hated—

“Did
what
work?” Clementine repeated. She was feeding a piece of cheese to a skinny white cat in her lap.

Marshall didn’t like cats. He felt like they knew the truth about him. “You took their cat?”

“It needed a new owner. But what you said: You asked if it worked,” Clementine explained. “What were you talking about?”

Marshall stared back at her and the cat. “No idea.” Looking around, he saw that his shirt was off. Strips of white medical tape covered his wound. Now he remembered the black tea. Clementine had grabbed boxes of gauze from the dentist’s office. Marshall had her soak the gauze in black tea, then wring it out. The real pain came when she had to shove the gauze
into
the wound at his armpit. He’d passed out from the pain, but the tannins in the tea had helped shrink the blood vessels and encourage clotting. No doubt, it’s what’d saved Marshall’s life.

“Why’re we on a train?” Marshall asked.

“You think I could’ve gotten you through an airport? You couldn’t speak, much less stand. The auto-train left before dark. The porter helped me get you into a wheelchair. I told him you had a tough day of chemo, so if you see the guy, pretend you have my cancer.”

Marshall lifted his arm, gauging the pain in his armpit. Clementine had dug out the musket ball with tweezers. The throbbing would be there for a while. He’d been through worse. Marshall’s breathing was still heavy, though. Harder than it should be. Through the oblong window, the sky was dark. It was the middle of the night.

“You need sleep,” Clementine said.

Marshall nodded. Wedged against the headboard of his bed was the stub from the train ticket. Destination: Florida. “What’s in Florida?”

“The one person who can help us,” Clementine said. “We’re going to see my father.”