No Corner to Hide (The Max Masterson Series Book 2) (11 page)

They both laughed heartily.
“I went through that rebel stage,” Luke continued, “fighting with Nixon supporters, and believing that love could conquer all. But while my friends were getting messed over in Viet Nam, I was student-deferred, and that’s when I met your Dad. We were friends from then until the day he died. He had greatness in him from the start.”
Max sat patiently, waiting for Postlewaite to finish supplying him with the wisdom that had been dispensed to him thousands of times over the course of his instruction from the age of sixteen. It didn’t matter that Max was now the President-Elect of the United States or that the world now clamored for his time incessantly. There was always time for Luke’s wisdom.
“But enough of that. I’m here for an important piece of unfinished business,” he concluded, shoving his memories back where they had been stored. “Your father, God rest his soul, made me swear that I would never tell you about this until you became president, and it has been my temptation to reveal it to you every time I came to visit. It just wasn’t the time for it.”
Max’s intrigue was sharpening with every word. Still, he waited. He knew from experience that he would bear the wrath of Luke Postlewaite for interrupting before the old man finished his thoughts, and he still had the mental scars of past tongue-lashings.
Abruptly, Luke lifted his feet from the hearth and plopped them into his shoes in one motion. Without bothering to tie the laces, he turned to Max and exclaimed, “Come on!” His enthusiasm was contagious, and Max jumped to his feet as Postlewaite shuffled toward the door.

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CHAPTER 30

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he entry to the basement of the Masterson estate was inconspicuously placed in the center of the house, adjacent to Senator John Masterson’s ornate den, where he spent most of the last days of his life. To occasional visitors, the door looked

like it might be a broom closet, and Max had rarely been allowed to enter as a child. He hadn’t opened the door for years. An old key was needed to enter, and Max had never been told where it was hidden.

Postlewaite reached behind a landscape of Monticello that had been commissioned by Thomas Jefferson in his early White House days, and he removed the key that hung from a nail on the back of the frame. The painting had previously hung in the White House adjacent to Jefferson’s bedroom, but it mysteriously disappeared after Clinton left office. Historians assumed that Bill Clinton had removed it along with the other items when his administration vacated the presidential residence, but this time their suspicions were unfounded.

Still, the explanation of how the painting had come to Fairlane had never been made, and Max had lacked the interest or desire to research its origins. He just assumed it had always been there, along with the other artifacts that his home contained since his childhood.

Postlewaite turned the key and descended quickly down the oak stairs. Max was close behind, pausing only to flip the light switch, which bathed the stone walls of the basement with a yellow glow.

“This place was built on the foundation of a plantation house,” Postlewaite explained. “They used to hide runaway slaves down here before the Civil War, but Union troops burned it to the ground as they retreated to Washington after the Battle of Bull Run. Your dad bought the land after it laid vacant for a hundred and twenty years, and he rebuilt the house on the same foundation. The stones must have come from brooks that flowed out of the mountains, and they mortared these walls sometime in the early 1700’s.”

Max looked at the old walls with a new fascination. “Here’s what I brought you down here to see…” Luke raised his hand to the stone wall and pushed. Balanced on a central fulcrum, it spun open with minimal effort, a credit to the craftsmanship of Freemasons who had constructed it in secret, centuries before he was born. There was a room, more like a primitive apartment, with bunks that lined the walls on three sides. It was uncomfortable quarters for slaves waiting to escape by train to the Northeast states, but it had served its purpose at the time. Senator Masterson had left it in the same condition he had found it, and other than an occasional cleaning, the room was intact.
On the far side was a large, brass embossed door that was adorned with reliefs of African-Americans working in the fields, with a large house in the background. The green tarnish concealed the details, but Max could make out figures in the foreground that appeared to be running. It was a visual picture of their lives, pounded into the metal by the people who had been given refuge there.
Postlewaite strode to the door and used the same key to unlock the latch. Max pulled on an enormous metal ring, and it opened with a loud creak. When it had opened fully, the lights came on automatically, and Max could see that it extended in the distance for hundreds of yards before it curved to the right. “Max, this is your private entrance to the White House,” proclaimed Luke.
“How? Why? My father never told me…” Max was astounded by the sight, and excited by the possibilities that could come from it. “All my life, from the time I was a little boy until now, there was a massive secret beneath my feet…” He choked up, unable to express his feelings or to fully comprehend what this discovery could mean.
He did know that he was free of the geographical constraints of the presidency, and this was his escape. He could come home whenever he wanted, and nobody would know. If this was an underground passage from his home to the White House, he was free to sleep in his own bed, in familiar surroundings, and he had a buffer between his identity as president and the private person that treasured time alone.
“Back long before the civil war,” Luke explained, “when Thomas Jefferson took office in 1800, he commissioned the tunnel to shelter members of Congress, the president and his family, and occupants of the White House in the event of an attack from the British. He was worried that the Brits would retaliate for our support of the French in their long-standing war in Europe. He was right, but Britain didn’t retaliate until after he left office. They were rightfully pissed for our burning of York, which the Canadians renamed Toronto.”
Max was preoccupied with the sight of an electric vehicle, not much larger than a golf cart, and two well-preserved mountain bikes that were parked at a rack near the tunnel entrance. They were all covered with a patina of dust, but they all appeared to be in operable condition. The vehicle was hooked up to a charger, which he assumed was connected elsewhere to a power source of some kind.
“Is this how we get around? Where does it go from here,” he inquired.
“Until right after the British burned the White House in the War of 1812, the Masons continued construction of a tunnel as an escape from the Capitol. From the time of the burning in 1814 until its completion in 1834, a crew of stone masons worked on Washington’s buildings by day, and at night they dug deep below ground with hand tools, lining the passageway with limestone diverted from the surface. When they began the stage that passed below the Potomac River, they added an aqueduct that diverted water from the river to the tidal basin. It all looked like part of a big reconstruction project for the Capitol, and the tunnel’s existence was kept secret from all but a select few.”
Max sat in the electric vehicle and realized that it was a golf cart, customized to resemble a convertible presidential limousine from the early 1960s, but on a smaller scale. He turned the key and noticed that the mechanical gauge indicated that it was fully charged. He noticed an electrical cord that ran from a wall socket and a plug that attached to the vehicle, and he disconnected it. He wondered whether his father had sneaked down to do the maintenance work himself or if he trusted someone else with his closely-guarded secret. Luke joined him in the passenger seat and continued his lecture. He wasn’t to the point of slurring his words yet, but they had taken on a more rounded tone.
“Andrew Jackson was an insomniac, and stumbled upon the secret entrance in the basement of the White House late one night while investigating noises. He thought he was hearing ghosts, but it was really just the sound of small charges the tunnel builders had placed to progress through granite that was blocking their forward progress. Realizing the importance of the tunnel, he pushed for completion at an accelerated rate. He traveled by horse through the tunnel and dined here without anyone knowing the wiser. He had more than a few meals in the old house’s kitchen in those days, I have heard. He was rumored to have been so pleased by this secret escape that he would travel without an escort, something that presidents throughout history have only dreamed about doing.” Luke puffed with exertion. His age and sedentary lifestyle had made even the most minimal activity an effort.
Max took the pause to speak. He knew that his elderly muse detested interruptions, and after more than a few episodes of being chastised for speaking when he should have been listening, he learned to time his words. “The White House is across the Potomac, ten miles away. Do you mean to tell me that this tunnel is ten miles long, and goes beneath the river?” He was incredulous at the size of the project that had taken the Capitol’s stone masons twenty years to complete. He wanted to hop on a bike and pedal as far as he could see in the distance where the tunnel curved ahead, but out of respect for Luke, he waited in the electric vehicle.
Luke caught his breath, and with a gleam in his eye, he continued. “Your dad and I used to get liquored up late at night, back in the days when he was a senator.” His breathing was labored, and his sentences became abbreviated, allowing Max to get a word in edgewise during the longer pauses. Luke laughed at the memory. “One night, we were feeling our oats, right after Clinton left office, in that gap between the election and before he moved out of the White House—”
“You mean, like I’m waiting in right now? How long does it take Blythe’s people to move out? I heard that he’s still in rehab, and that nobody has laid eyes on him since the election.”
“Nevermind old Blythe. You kicked his ass pretty good, and he won’t be showing his face in public anytime soon. He managed to get his slush money hidden in a few banks in the Caymans, and…”
Luke paused to inhale, but Max knew from the look on his grizzled face that he would not be allowed to change the subject of the conversation—more of a lecture—until the old man had finished his story.
“So,” Luke continued, “we got in the car and drove under the river to the White House in the middle of the night. The Clintons were off in New York for some damn fool reason, and the White House had a lot of security to keep people from coming in everywhere except from our little Hidey Hole in the basement. There was nobody around, so we snuck in…”
Max shook his head and smiled. He remembered his father’s legendary reputation for adventure, irreverence, and his impish affection for practical jokes. He could imagine it all; the drunken underground drive to the White House, the laughing and whispering, and the nighttime burglary. He admired their brash disregard for the consequences of breaking into the most secure residence in the world.
“When we got there, we had to use this key to unlock the door. It opens into a closet near the kitchen…” Luke gasped for air and continued. “John, your dad, tripped over the hose of some floorcleaning machine, and he fell face first on the floor of the kitchen. We spent about ten minutes laughing hysterically, and going, shhh… shhhhh….The thing is, we had both been to the White House for dinner and had taken the tour, and we knew the layout of the place.
When we got up to the first floor, a lot of the furniture and paintings were packed up to be moved. I guess the Clintons were in the middle of taking their share of the antiques before they left town. Your Dad saw a painting of Monticello he loved. Jefferson had it commissioned while he was president, and it used to hang in the hallway outside of his bedroom. It looked like it was headed out the door, so we snatched it on our way out.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. We took it.”
“The one that hangs in my hallway? You stole it from the White House?”
“No, we took it back…It’s all perspective, Mr. President.” Luke chuckled.
“Well, let’s go.”
“Really? You want to sneak into the White House? In the middle of the night? Cool,” said Luke, his gray ponytail poking out of his collar. He was way beyond caring about his public persona, and the thought of reliving an excitement of his younger days had him raring to go.
Max put his foot on the accelerator and pushed lightly. The vehicle moved forward silently. The speed startled him, and he backed off the accelerator. It stopped so abruptly that they nearly tumbled over the hood. With no windshield and no seat belts, the possibility of tumbling out was a good one.
“Get this thing going, my boy, we have an unannounced White House visit to make!”
This time, he eased into the driving, and soon they were traveling southeast at the peak speed of 25 miles an hour. In the confines of the tunnel, it seemed like they were flying.

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he quiet electric motor allowed for talking, but the wonder of the moment kept both passengers silent as they made their way toward the White House. The tunnel curved at times, and Max could only see ahead for a few hundred yards. At

regular intervals they encountered large spider webs in the darkness that spanned the width of the passage, and after having to wipe the sticky silk off of their faces a few times, they learned to duck.

The nearly 30 minute trip landed them at another metal door, and Luke jumped out with key in hand. “Come on,” he whispered, excited at the idea that they were reprising one of his life’s biggest adventures. It was not lost on him that this time, he was helping the president-elect break into his own house. The irony of it all was that Max would have been arrested the moment his presence was detected,
and now what could they do, charge the president with trespassing?
He smiled at the thought.

They encountered a large floor-polishing machine in the closet that effectively blocked their way. They pulled the polisher into the tunnel and stepped inside the closet. The door to the tunnel closed automatically, and they stood in the darkness. Luke slowly turned the doorknob and whispered, “Don’t want to scare the shit out of the kitchen help.” He chuckled.