Zero Game - Brad Meltzer [134]
“You sure this is the way?” Viv asks, running in front of me even though I’m supposed to be leading.
“Keep going,” I tell her as she follows the hallway to the right, weaving us even deeper through the sand-colored corridors of the concrete basement. Unlike the rest of the Capitol, the halls down here are narrow and cramped, a labyrinth of random turns that’s taken us past garbage rooms, paint storage, HVAC equipment, and every type of repair shop from electrical to plumbing to elevator care. Worst of all, the further we go, the more the ceiling seems to shrink, the headroom eaten up by air ducts, water pipes, and random wiring. When I used to bring Matthew down here, he would bitch because he’d have to duck to get around. Viv and I don’t have that problem.
“You swear this looks familiar?” Viv asks as the ceiling gets lower.
“Absolutely,” I tell her. I don’t blame her for being nervous. In the more heavily trafficked areas, there’re signs on the walls to make sure Members and staff don’t get lost. I glance up at the spider web of cracks along the walls. We haven’t seen a sign for at least three minutes. On top of that, as we go deeper, the hallway seems to fill up with stacks of discarded equipment: broken file cabinets, antique upholstered chairs, industrial-sized spools of cable wire, rolling garbage bins, even a stack of old rusted pipes.
We haven’t seen another human being since we passed the last sign for the elevator. Indeed, the only hint of life is the hum of machinery from the surrounding mechanical rooms. Viv’s still ahead of me, but with a final sharp right, she stops. I hear her shoes skid across the dusty floor. As I turn the corner behind her, the furniture and wiring and pipes are stacked higher than ever. It’s not hard to read her thoughts. Like any other bad neighborhood, the further we go, the less we should be walking alone.
“I really don’t think this is right,” she insists.
“You’re not supposed to.”
She thinks I’m being glib. I’m not.
Rushing forward, I pass half a dozen closed doors on my right and left. Most of them, like ninety percent of the doors throughout the Capitol, have a sign out front that tells you exactly what’s inside. Electrical Substation. Senate Daily Digest. Even one that says Designated Smoking Area. One is unmarked. That’s the one I go for—room ST-56, the nondescript, unlabeled door that’s halfway down the hall on my left.
“This is it?” Viv asks. “It looks like a broom closet.”
“Really?” I ask, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a set of keys. “How many broom closets do you know that have a double set of deadbolts?”
Stabbing the keys into their respective locks, I give the doorknob a sharp twist. The door is heavier than it looks—I have to put my entire shoulder against it to get it open. As it gives way, I jab the light switch with my fist and finally give Viv a good look at what’s inside.
The first thing she notices is the ceiling. Unlike the air-duct limbo stick they force you under in the hall, the ceiling inside rises up at least twenty feet over the long, spacious room. Against the warm burgundy walls, there’s a chocolate brown leather couch, flanked by matching Empire mahogany dressers. Above the couch, a collection of antique toy sailboats is mounted to the wall. Adding to the men’s-club feel, there’s also a twelve-foot fish—I’m guessing a marlin—up on the left-hand wall, a bag of golf clubs just inside the door, and on the right side of the room, an enormous 1898 nautical map of the Atlantic Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to the Jupiter Inlet.
Viv looks at the room for a total of thirty seconds. “Hideaway?” she asks.
I nod and grin.
Some people say there are no more secrets in Washington. It’s a nice, quotable statement. But it clearly comes from someone who doesn’t have a hideaway.
On the