The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [131]
92
You have no idea how hard this is,” the man with the razor says as he sits directly behind me in the backseat of the car.
“Listen,” I plead. “There’s no reason to—”
“Beecher, I’ve asked you two times now. Please put your phone down.”
“It’s down… I put it down,” I say, though I don’t tell him that I haven’t hung up. If I’m lucky, Dallas can hear every word we’re saying. “Just please… can you lower the razor?”
In the rearview, the man barely reacts, though the razor does disappear behind my headrest. Still, the way he manically keeps shifting in his seat—sitting up so close I hear him breathing through his nose—he’s panicking, still making his decision.
“I’m sorry you found him,” the man says, sounding genuine as he stares down at his lap. “That’s why you were running just now—all out of breath. You saw him, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was here picking up a notebook—”
“Please don’t do that to me. I was being honest with you,” he says, sounding wounded, his head still down. I feel a slight nudge in my lower back. From his knees. His feet tap furiously against the floor, making the whole car shake. Whatever he’s about to do, it’s weighing on him. “I know it’s over, Beecher. I know you saw Griffin.”
“If you think I’m the one doing this… with the blackmail… It’s not me,” I tell him. “I swear to you—Clementine’s—”
“They know the roles. They know who’s done this. And when it comes to the fight you’ve picked… the poor girl’s as dead as you are.”
It’s the second time in two days someone’s mentioned my death as if it’s inevitable. It’s starting to piss me off.
Behind me, the man with the razor continues to lean forward, elbows resting on his still bouncing knees. He again takes a heavy breath through his nose. It’s not getting any easier for him. “You’re a history guy, right, Beecher?” Before I can answer, he asks, “Y’ever hear of a guy named Tsutomu Yamaguchi?”
I shake my head, searching the parking lot and scanning the grounds for a guard… for an orderly… for anyone to help. There’s no one in sight.
“You never heard of him? Tsutomu Yamaguchi?” he repeats as I finally place his accent. Flat and midwestern. Just like the President’s. “In 1945, this man Yamaguchi was in the shipbuilding business. In Japan. Y’know what happened in 1945 in Japan?”
“Please… this—whatever this is about. You can let me go. No one’ll ever know. You can say I—”
“Hiroshima. Can you imagine? Of all the towns that this guy’s shipbuilding business sends him to, on August 6, 1945, Yamaguchi was visiting Hiroshima at the exact moment one of our B-29s dropped the atomic bomb,” he continues as if I’m not even there. “But ready for the twist? Yamaguchi actually survives. He suffers bad burns, spends the night in the city, and then quickly races to his hometown, which is guess where?”
I don’t answer.
“Nagasaki—which gets hit with the second bomb three days later. And God bless him, Yamaguchi survives that too! Blessed by God, right? A hundred and forty thousand are killed in Hiroshima. Seventy thousand die in Nagasaki. But to this day, this one man is the only person certified by the Japanese government to have survived both blasts. Two atomic bombs,” he says, shaking his head as he continues to stare down at the blade in his lap. “It may be on a smaller scale, but I can tell you, Beecher. In this life, there are days like that. For all of us.”
I nod politely, hoping it’ll keep him talking. On my phone, it says my call has been connected for four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. If Dallas and his Culper Ring are as good as I think they are, it won’t be long until the cavalry comes running.
In the small of my back, the man’s knees stop shaking.
“Mine was that night in the rain,” he adds as his voice picks up speed. “I knew it the instant they brought him in. Forget the blood and the bits of bone that they