The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer Read Free Book Online

job , Beecher.”
    “Yeah and two seconds ago you were telling me to put it back.”
    “It’s still my job. I walk the halls, I check IDs—that’s why it’s called Security . Now I’m sorry if I find something in the President’s reading room, but we did. And if he or anyone else is committing a crime or sneaking classified papers in or out of this building, you really think we should just walk away and pretend we didn’t see it?”
    I don’t look up, but on my right, I can see the red-lettered warning poster on the back of the closed steel door. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the disappointed expression on Clementine, who clearly doesn’t deal well with weakness. The way her ginger eyes drill me, she has no idea which way I’m going to vote.
    I wish she knew me better than that.
    I toss the damp folder toward the desk. “Just remember, when the CIA grabs us in the middle of the night and puts the black Ziplocs over our heads, this is the moment where we could’ve avoided it.” The folder hits the table with a ptttt.
    Clementine doesn’t say a word. But as she takes a half-step forward, she cocks her head, like she’s seeing something brand-new on my face. I see the same on hers. I’ve known this girl since seventh grade. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her impressed.
    “Beecher, it’ll take two seconds, then we can leave,” Orlando promises. “You’ll never regret doing the right thing.”
    But as he peels open the folder, as he finally sees what’s hidden inside, I can already tell he’s wrong.
     
    6
    Sweet Christmas,” Orlando mutters.
    “I don’t get it. What is it?” Clementine asks, squeezing in next to me, though careful not to touch anything.
    I have no such concern. From the pockets of my coffee-stained lab coat, I pull out the pair of cotton gloves all archivists carry, put them on, pick up the folder like it’s live dynamite, and open it. Inside, it’s not a top-secret memo, or the whereabouts of bin Laden, or a target list for our spy satellites.
    “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