The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer Read Free Book Online Page B

proper investigation. Or Roman Numeral Two: Wallace does know about this book, in which case he’s going to want this book back, in which case handing him a videotape with our faces on it is going to do nothing but make the President of the United States declare war… on us.”
    “Now you’re being overdramatic.”
    “Overdramatic? What happened to the CIA grabbing us and putting the black Ziplocs over our heads?” Orlando challenges.
    “That doesn’t mean the President’s declaring war.”
    “Really? I thought you knew your history.”
    “I do know my history.”
    “Then name me one person—Valerie Plame… Monica Lewinsky… I don’t care who they are or how right they were—name me one person ever who went up against a sitting President and walked away the same way they walked in.”
    “Mark Felt,” I tell him.
    “Mark Felt?”
    “Deep Throat. The guy who told the truth about Nixon.”
    “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