The Packard plant ran three shifts now, churning out aircraft engines for the war effort. John Martin—he was getting better at thinking of himself by that name—clocked in at 6 AM with two hundred other men, their lunch pails identical, their faces grey with exhaustion and resignation.
Five months since Pearl Harbor. Four months since Rick Forsyth had ceased to exist.
The transformation hadn't been easy. Catherine had procured the documents—a birth certificate from a small town in Ohio that had burned its records in 1923, a Social Security card, a draft classification (4-F, hearing loss in left ear, the medical examiner she'd bribed had been thorough). The backstory was simple: John Martin, orphan, factory worker, drifter who'd landed in Detroit when the war jobs opened up. Unremarkable. Forgettable.
Exactly what Rick needed to be.
He worked as a quality inspector on the engine assembly line, a job that gave him access to production records and shipping manifests without requiring the technical expertise he didn't have. The real inspectors tolerated him—he bought rounds at the corner bar on Fridays, kept his head down, didn't complain about the long hours.
What they didn't know was that John Martin spent his lunch breaks in the records office, memorizing contract numbers and delivery schedules. Or that he'd befriended Dolores in accounting, a nervous woman in her fifties who talked too much when she was anxious, which was always.
"The government contracts are keeping us alive," Dolores had told him last week, over coffee in the cafeteria. "But some of them don't make sense. Like this one—" She'd shown him a requisition form, her hands shaking slightly. "Ten thousand engine modifications, specifications classified, delivery address classified. Just a DOD code number. Don't you think that's strange?"
Rick had agreed it was strange. Had asked, casually, if there were more like it.
There were. Dozens. All coded, all classified, all with the same bureaucratic opacity that suggested something more than routine war production.
He'd started a ledger—nothing that could incriminate him if found, just a small notebook with dates and code numbers, the kind of thing any diligent inspector might keep. But the pattern was there, if you knew how to look.
Money was flowing through Packard for projects that weren't on any official manifest. Modifications that required specifications beyond normal military standards. Rush orders with premium payments that came from accounts Dolores couldn't quite trace.
It smelled like Prometheus Protocol.
Rick was copying down another contract number when he heard the voice behind him.
"Hey, Martin! You coming to the union meeting tonight?"
He turned, careful to keep his expression neutral. Frank Kozlowski, a line foreman, broad-shouldered and perpetually suspicious of everyone. Rick had been avoiding him for weeks.
"Can't tonight, Frank. Got a thing."
"What thing? You got no family, no girl. What else you got to do?"
Rick shrugged, playing up the lonely bachelor routine. "Poker game. Wednesday nights."
Kozlowski studied him for a moment longer than comfortable. "You're an odd duck, Martin. Quiet. Too quiet, maybe. You one of those Reds they're always warning us about?"
The accusation was half-joking, but only half. The war had made everyone paranoid. Rick forced a laugh. "Do I look like a communist to you? I just want to do my job and stay out of trouble."
"Yeah, well. Trouble's got a way of finding people in wartime." Kozlowski clapped him on the shoulder—too hard, a little too aggressive. "You watch yourself."
Rick watched him walk away, his heart rate elevated despite his calm exterior. That was the second time this week someone had commented on his "quietness." He was being too careful, too withdrawn. Standing out by trying not to stand out.
He'd need to adjust. Be more social. Complain about rationing like everyone else. Maybe actually go to that poker game.
Anything to avoid questions.
That evening, in his boarding house room on Grand River Avenue, Rick sat by the window and watched the street. The room was small—a bed, a desk, a hotplate, a shared bathroom down the hall. His landlady, Mrs. Kaminski, was a Polish widow who asked too many questions but made excellent pierogi. She thought John Martin was a nice young man who should find a nice girl and settle down.
She had no idea that John Martin spent his evenings reconstructing the architecture of a conspiracy.
Rick opened his notebook—the real one, hidden in a false bottom of his suitcase—and added the new contract numbers. Cross-referenced them with the patterns he'd been tracking. Three months of data now, and the picture was getting clearer.
Packard wasn't the only factory with unusual contracts. Briggs Manufacturing had them. Ford's Willow Run plant had them. All over Detroit, war production was being diverted for classified projects that didn't match any known military procurement.
Someone was using the war as cover for something else. And the money trail—what little Rick could trace—led back to the same network of shell corporations and dummy accounts his father had identified in 1941.
Prometheus Protocol was alive and thriving.
A knock at the door made him close the notebook quickly. "Yes?"
"Mr. Martin?" Mrs. Kaminski's voice, nervous. "There's a man here to see you. Says he's from the draft board."
Rick's blood went cold. He touched the Colt—still his father's, still seven rounds, hidden under his mattress. "I'll be right down."
He descended the stairs slowly, his mind racing through contingencies. If this was Morrison's people, if they'd found him—
But the man in Mrs. Kaminski's parlor wasn't Morrison. He was young, maybe twenty-five, in an ill-fitting suit and thick glasses. He held a clipboard and looked apologetic.
"Mr. Martin? John Martin?"
"That's me."
"I'm from the Wayne County Selective Service Board. We're doing a verification check on all 4-F classifications. Just routine, but we need to confirm your medical exemption." He consulted his clipboard. "Says here you have significant hearing loss in your left ear?"
Rick nodded, praying the forged medical records would hold. "That's right. Industrial accident, 1939."
"Can you hear me now?"
"Sorry?"
"I said, can you hear me now?" The young man spoke louder, over-enunciating.
Rick played it up, tilting his head, looking confused. "You'll have to speak up. Left ear's nearly gone."
The young man made a note. "Right. Well, we'd like you to come in for a re-evaluation. Just to make sure everything's still accurate. There's a lot of, uh, patriotic pressure to reconsider exemptions. Men who maybe were on the borderline..."
"I'm not borderline," Rick said firmly. "I can't hear orders in combat. I'd be a liability."
"Still, sir, it's policy. Can you come to the board office tomorrow? Say, 2 PM?"
Rick calculated quickly. Miss work, draw attention, but refusing would draw more. "I'll be there."
The young man left, and Mrs. Kaminski appeared from the kitchen, wringing her hands. "Is everything alright, Mr. Martin? You're not in trouble, are you?"
"No trouble, Mrs. Kaminski. Just bureaucracy."
"Such terrible times," she fretted. "They want to take all the young men. My son, he's in North Africa now. I pray for him every night."
"I'm sure he'll be fine," Rick said, though he knew no such thing. The North Africa campaign was brutal. Rommel was winning more often than losing.
He climbed back to his room and sat on the bed, thinking. The draft board check was probably routine—the government was tightening exemptions as casualties mounted. But it was also exactly the kind of scrutiny he couldn't afford.
He'd need to contact Catherine. Get the medical records reinforced, maybe bribe the examining physician. One more expense, one more risk.
The war had only been going four months, and already his carefully constructed identity was showing cracks.
Rick pulled out a fresh piece of paper and began encoding a message for the next dead drop. Catherine needed to know. They all needed to know.
Staying hidden was going to be harder than they'd thought.