"The 500"

Written by Matthew Quirk | 06 June 2012

It was a beautiful May morning in the nation’s capital, with a sky like blue porcelain. The blood that had soaked through my shirt was drying, stiff and scratchy. My left foot dragged on the asphalt. My knee had swollen to the size of a rugby ball. I tried to concentrate on the knee, to keep my mind off the injury to my chest, because if I thought about that – not the pain so much as the sheer creepiness of it – I was sure I was going to pass out.

As I approached, the office looked as classy as ever: a four-story Federal mansion set back in the woods of Kalorama, among the embassies and chanceries. It was home to the Davies Group, Washington DC’s most well-respected strategic consulting and government affairs firm, where I guess technically I may have still been employed. I fished my keys from my pocket and waved them in front of a grey pad beside the door lock. No go.

But Davies was expecting me. I looked up at the closed-circuit camera. The lock buzzed.

Inside the foyer, I greeted the head of security, and noted the baby Glock he’d pulled from its holster and was holding tight near his thigh. Then I turned to Marcus, my boss, and nodded by way of hello. He stood on the other side of the metal detector, waved me through, then frisked me neck to ankle. He was checking for weapons, and for wires. Marcus had made a nice long career with those hands, killing.

“Strip,” Marcus said. I obliged, shirt and pants. Even Marcus winced when he saw the skin of my chest, puckering around the staples. He took a quick look inside my drawers, then seemed satisfied I wasn’t bugged. I suited back up.

“Envelope,” he said, and gestured to the manila one I was carrying.

“Not until we have a deal,” I said. The envelope was the only thing keeping me alive, so I was a little reluctant to let it go. “This will go wide if I disappear.”

Marcus nodded. That kind of insurance was standard industry practice. He’d taught me so himself. He led me upstairs to Davies’ office, and waited guard by the door as I stepped inside.

There, standing by the windows, looking out over downtown DC, was the one thing I was worried about, the option that seemed much worse than getting carved up by Rad: it was Davies, with a grandfather’s smile.

It’s good to see you, Mike. I’m glad you decided to come back to us.”

He wanted a deal. He wanted to feel like he owned me again. And that’s what I was afraid of more than anything else, that I would say yes.

“I don’t know how things got this bad,” he said. “Your father… I’m sorry.”

Dead, as of last night. Marcus’s handiwork.

“I want you to know we had nothing to do with that.”

I said nothing.

“You might want to ask your Serbian friends about it. We can protect you Mike, we can protect the people you love.” He moved a little closer. “Just say it and all this is over. Come back to us, Mike. It only takes one word: yes.”

And so begins the Prologue of Matthew Quirk’s first novel, The 500, an accomplished political thriller that starts at the end and segues back to the beginning. It is the story of an up by the bootstraps young man named Mike Ford who, against all odds, is chosen over much more connected classmates at Harvard Law to join the Davies Group, the crème de la crème of Washington consulting firms that acted more as a secret society or shadow government wielding influence over the influential. Mike, it turns out, has a gift for applying the kind of subtle pressure needed in order to accomplish what turn out to be the nefarious goals of the Davies Group, and he is well paid for his skills. But what he soon comes to learn is that he has made a deal with the devil and there may be no turning back.

Neely: Nice to meet you. Your publicist at Little Brown sent me a prepublication copy of your first novel, The 500 and I loved it. It’s a real page turner. You have sort of come out of thin air.

Matthew: I’ve gotten a crazy reception for this book. I’ve been really really fortunate. This is the only book I’ve ever done.

Neely: The 500 is very reminiscent of Grisham’s breakout The Firm in that it concerns a young man who gets in way above his head and pay grade who’s drowning in a world of big deals and even bigger whales. It’s a combination of “Be careful what you wish for” and “If it seems too good to be true, it is.”