The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [89]
“I know that’s not true—that’s not who you are. And if I didn’t know that, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“Then have the damn conversation!”
Like before, he uses his teeth to comb at some stray beard hairs. But unlike before, his head is cocked to the side, his eyes staring off. Like he’s listening to something.
“What’re you doing?” I challenge.
He doesn’t answer. But as he turns his head, I spot—in his ear—there’s something in his ear.
“Is that an earpiece? Are you—? Is someone listening to us right now!?” I shout as I start to search the room. No mirrors. No cameras in the corners.
“They said to calm down, Beecher. You already passed the test.”
“What test? Who’s they? How the hell’re they seeing us!?”
I rush to the little minibar, shoving the bottles of alcohol aside. I pull the top off the ice bucket. No wires anywhere.
It’s on you, isn’t it? You’re wearing a camera!”
“Listen to me, Beecher—”
I hop over the coffee table, knocking the flowers to the floor. He leaps off the sofa and, like a lion tamer, grabs the armchair, trying to keep it between us.
“Will you listen to me!?” he says. “This isn’t about you!”
“That’s not true! This is my life you’re screwing with!”
“You idiot! Your life’s already over!”
I stop at the words.
His fingers dig into the back of the armchair.
“What’d you say?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
“You said my life is over.”
“We can protect you. We’re protecting you right now.” To prove the point, Dallas heads to the closed curtains and spreads them just a few feet apart, revealing a city block filled with parked cars, but empty of people and bathed in darkness. We’re on the second floor of a brick townhouse, and though it takes me a moment, as I scan the restaurants across the street… that CVS.
“We’re in Woodley Park,” I say.
“We are. But we’re also in the only residential house on a busy street where it’s difficult to stop, making this building nearly impossible to observe without being observed. When it went up for sale, we were bidding against both the Israelis and the Palestinians.”
“So this is… what?… some sorta safehouse?”
“You see that homeless guy across the street?” Dallas asks. “He’ll be there until 4 a.m., at which point another ‘homeless man’ will clock in and take his place for a full eight-hour shift. Think about it, Beecher. There’s a reason the FBI is the second biggest property renter in Washington, D.C. This is how you do it right.”
I turn away as he lets the curtains shut. “You said my life is over.”
“Beecher, you have to understand. When you found what you found…”
“I don’t even know what I found. Tell me what I found.”
“You found proof. That dictionary—That’s proof that they exist.”
“That what exists? A second Culper Ring?”
Dallas shakes his head, double-checking that the curtains are shut tight. “Don’t call them that. They don’t deserve to be called that.”
“That’s what they are, though, aren’t they?”
Dallas sits with this a moment. I can’t tell if he’s thinking, or listening to whatever’s being whispered in his ear, but eventually he says, “Every dozen or so administrations, it happens. It has to happen, right? Every person who’s sworn in as President has his own agenda, and some of these guys—I heard the first was Millard Fillmore, though I think if you look at Ulysses Grant, or probably Harding—”
“I don’t care about the 1920s or Teapot Dome.”
“What about Watergate? You care about that one?”
“Time out. You’re telling me that this other Culper Ring—whatever you want to call them—that they’re the ones who pulled off Watergate?”
“No. Richard Nixon pulled off Watergate. But to make it happen, well…” Dallas heads over to the framed photo of the White House under construction. “Imagine the Culper Ring—our group, the true Culper Ring—as this giant outer ring that circles and has been protecting the Presidency for over two hundred years,” he says, using his pointer-finger to draw a huge circle around the entire photograph. “And then imagine a guy like Nixon, who rides into power, and looks at that