Too late.
“I didn’t do anything!” Clementine adds, her feet slip-sliding along the checkerboard tile.
“Really? So waiting in the Rotunda-strolling there for nearly twenty minutes without taking a single look at the gasper documents,” he shouts back, referring to the Constitution and the other documents that make tourists gasp. “You’re telling me that you weren’t waiting there for Beecher to sneak you over?”
“It’s a public area! I can stroll there all I want!” she yells.
Khazei pulls her close, squeezing her arm even tighter. “You think I didn’t look you up when you signed in this morning and last night? We’ve got cameras outside! I saw him drop you off on the damn corner!”
A puddle of sweat soaks the small of my back. The only reason I tried to sneak her in was so Clementine-and her dad-would avoid getting linked to everything with Orlando and the President. So much for that. Still, Clementine doesn’t seem to care. She’s got far more pressing problems to deal with.
“I swear to God, if you don’t let go…!” she threatens, still thrashing to get free.
“Clemmi, calm down,” I tell her.
“She can’t, can she?” Khazei challenges. “Got too much family blood in her.”
“Get your hands off me!” she explodes, the intensity catching me off guard. A flick of spit leaves her lips as she roars the words. Her eyes have volcanoes in them. This isn’t anger. Or rage. This is her father.
Khazei doesn’t care. He grips Clementine by the back of her neck, hoping it’ll take the fight out of her.
He doesn’t know her at all. And the way she continues to boil, her whole body shaking as she fights to break free of his grip, I start thinking that maybe I don’t know her either.
She twists fast, trying to knee him in the nuts. He turns just in time to make sure she misses.
“Clemmi, please… It’s enough,” I beg.
“Stop fighting and I’ll let you go,” Khazei warns her.
“Get… off… me!” she snarls as a silver spit bubble forms at her lips.
“You hear what I said?” Khazei asks.
Clementine refuses to answer. Still trying to escape, she punches at his hands. Her body trembles. She’s determined to break away. Khazei grits his teeth, pinching her neck even tighter.
“Let her go…!” I shout, shoving Khazei’s shoulder.
“You listening?” he asks her again, like I’m not even there.
Her trembling gets worse. The spit bubble in her mouth slowly expands. She’ll never give up. It has nothing to do with Khazei. Clementine just met her father for the first time in her life. She had to sit there and listen as he told us that our lives and our choices are predetermined. Then Khazei jumped in and basically accused her of the same.
Clementine looks over at me, her face flushed red. She’s trying so hard to prove them wrong, to prove to the entire world-and especially to herself-who she really is. But as the volcanoes in her eyes are about to blow, that’s exactly her problem. No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.
“Eff. You!” she explodes, spinning hard and sending Khazei off balance, lost in his own momentum. Before he realizes what’s happened, Clementine twists to the left and grabs the antenna of his walkie-talkie, yanking it from his belt and wielding it upside down, like a miniature baseball bat. It’s not much of a weapon. It’ll probably shatter on impact. But the way she’s gripping it-the way she’s eyeing his face-it’s gonna leave a hell of a scar.
I rush forward, trying to leap between them.
“What in the holy hell you think you’re doing?” a voice calls out behind us.
I spin around just as he turns the corner. Clementine lowers the walkie-talkie to her side. He’s far down the hallway, but there’s no mistaking the wispy white beard… the bolo tie… the one man who’s been here longer than me and Khazei combined.
“Y’heard me,” Tot says, honing in on me and readjusting the thick file he’s got tucked under his arm. “Y’know how long I’ve been waiting, Beecher? You missed our meeting. Where the heck you been?”
I know it’s an act. But I have no idea what I’m supposed to say.
“I… I…” I glance over at Khazei.
“He’s been talking with me,” Khazei says, his voice serene, making peace rather than war. He’s definitely smarter than I thought. Khazei’s been here a few years. Tot’s outlasted eleven Presidents and every Archivist of the United States since LBJ. It’s the first rule of office politics: Never pick a fight you can’t win.
“So no problem then? They’re free to go?” Tot challenges, lumping in Clementine and leaning in so Khazei gets a good look at his milky blind eye. “I mean, I thought I heard yelling, but I’m old and creaky,” he adds. “Maybe I was just imagining it, eh?”
Khazei studies the old man. I can feel the anger rising off him. But as the two men share a far too long, far too intense look, I can’t help but think that there’s something else that’s going unsaid in their little standoff.
Khazei puffs out his chest, all set to explode, and then…
He shakes his head, annoyed. “Just get them out of my face,” he blurts, turning back to his office.
As Tot continues to hit him with the evil eye, I can’t tell if I’ve underestimated the power of seniority, or the power of Tot. But either way, we’re free to go.
“Clementine…” Tot calls out, pretending to know her.
“Yeah.”
“Give the man his walkie-talkie back.”
She hands it to Khazei. “Sorry. That’s not who I usually am.”
To my surprise, Khazei doesn’t say a thing. He grabs the walkie, slotting it back into his belt.
I go to step around him, and he stabs me with a final dark glare. “I saw you sitting at Orlando’s desk,” he says. “Got something needling at your conscience?”
“Why should I? Everyone’s saying it was a heart attack,” I shoot back. “Unless you suddenly know something different.”
“I know you were in that SCIF with him, Beecher. It’s just a matter of time until that video proves it, and when that happens, guess who everyone’ll be looking at?”
I tell myself that if it all comes out, I can point a finger at the President-but that’s when Orlando’s words replay louder than ever. No matter who you are or how right you are, no one walks away the same way from that battle.
“Beecher, if you help me with this, I promise you-I can help you.”
It almost sounds like he’s doing me a favor. But there’s still plenty of threat in his voice. Before I take him up on anything, I need to know what’s really going on.
“You want help? You should talk to Rina,” I tell him. “Y’know she called Orlando ten times on the morning he died?”
He barely moves, once again making me wonder what he’s really chasing: Orlando’s killer, or the George Washington book?
Without a word, he turns back to his office. I race to catch up to Tot and Clementine, reaching them just as they turn the corner. Before I can say anything, Tot shoots me a look to stay quiet, then motions down to the real reason he came looking for me: the thick accordion file that’s tucked under his arm. The flap says:
Gyrich, Dustin
The man who’s been checking out documents for over a hundred and fifty years.
38
"How’s my car?” Tot asks.
“How’d you get Khazei to back down like that?” I challenge.
“How’s my car?”
“Tot…”
He refuses to turn around, shuffling as he leads us past dusty bookshelf after dusty bookshelf on the eighteenth floor of the stacks. He’s not fast, but he knows where he’s going. And right now, as the automatic lights flick on as we pass, he’s got me and Clementine following. “Khazei doesn’t want a fight,” he explains. “He wants what you found in the SCIF.”
“I agree, but… how do you know?”
“Why didn’t he push back? If Orlando’s death is really his top concern, why hasn’t Khazei thrown you to the FBI, who’re really in charge of this investigation… or even to the Secret Service, who by the way, have been picking apart the SCIF all morning and afternoon? You’ve got every acronym working quietly on this case, but for some reason, Khazei’s not handing over the best pieces of dynamite, namely the two of you,” Tot says as another spotlight flicks on. I search the corner of the ceiling. The stacks of the Archives are too vast to have cameras in every aisle. But near as I can tell, Tot has us weaving so perfectly, we haven’t passed a single one. “Now tell me how my car is,” he says.