The War Department filing room in the Munitions Building was a monument to bureaucratic tedium. Row after row of metal cabinets, each containing thousands of documents that nobody would ever read again. Requisition forms, supply manifests, personnel transfers, equipment inventories—the paper trail of a nation mobilizing for war.
David Coleman—he still had to consciously remember that wasn't his real name, that Winters was gone, buried with the man whose identity he'd stolen—worked in Section 7, Subsection C, which handled logistics coordination for the Army Air Forces. His job was to file documents, retrieve documents when requested, and maintain the cross-reference indices that theoretically made the filing system navigable.
In practice, it was perfect cover for a spy.
He'd been here for three months now, hired through a combination of Catherine's forged references and the desperate need for clerical staff as young men were drafted. The pay was terrible, the work mind-numbing, but the access was extraordinary.
Every piece of paper that moved through Army Air Forces logistics crossed his desk eventually. Shipping manifests for aircraft parts. Fuel allocation schedules. Training facility assignments. And buried among the routine paperwork—if you knew how to look—were the irregular orders. The shipments that went to bases that didn't exist. The fuel allocations for squadrons that weren't on any official roster.
The fingerprints of Prometheus Protocol.
Winters—David, goddammit, David—sat at his desk sorting through a stack of manifest copies, looking for the patterns Rick had taught him to recognize. Anomalous destinations. Classified routing codes. Quantities that didn't match standard procurement procedures.
"Coleman? You got that Anderson file?"
David looked up. Harrison, one of the senior clerks, stood at his desk holding a requisition slip. Harrison was fifty-something, too old for the draft, with the perpetually irritated expression of a man who'd been filing papers for thirty years and resented every moment of it.
"Anderson file, sir?" David kept his voice carefully neutral, slightly deferential. The role he played was eager but not too bright, competent but not threatening.
"Aircraft modification specs. Should've come through last week. General's office is asking for it."
David pulled open the appropriate cabinet, found the file, handed it over. Harrison flipped through it, frowning.
"This is incomplete. Where's the attachment with the technical specifications?"
"I filed what came through, sir. If there was supposed to be an attachment—"
"There's always supposed to be an attachment." Harrison's frown deepened. "This is the third time this month files have come through incomplete. Someone in Procurement is getting sloppy."
Or someone was deliberately separating technical specifications from their parent files, making them harder to track. David had noticed the pattern two weeks ago—certain types of modifications, certain categories of equipment, their detailed specs were being routed separately from the main orders.
"I can send a query to Procurement, sir. See if they have the attachment on file there."
"Yeah, do that. And Coleman?" Harrison gave him a long look. "You're a good worker. Thorough. Don't think I haven't noticed."
David felt a spike of anxiety. Being noticed was dangerous. "Just trying to do my part, sir."
"Well, keep it up. We need reliable men." Harrison walked away, leaving David with the uncomfortable awareness that his competence was making him visible.
He'd have to make some mistakes. Deliberate ones. Small enough not to get fired, big enough to seem human.
The filing room door opened and Captain Reeves walked in—Air Forces liaison officer, early thirties, walking with a slight limp from what David had heard was a training accident that had grounded him. Reeves came by twice a week to review classified logistics.
"Coleman, I need everything you've got on the Patterson Field fuel allocations. Last three months."
"Yes sir. Give me ten minutes."
David pulled the files while Reeves waited, smoking a cigarette and staring at nothing. The captain had that look David recognized—the frustration of a pilot stuck behind a desk while the war happened without him.
"Here you are, sir." David handed over the stack of folders.
Reeves flipped through them quickly, his expression darkening. "This can't be right. Patterson Field is showing fuel usage thirty percent higher than their aircraft complement justifies."
David had noticed the same thing. "Could be training operations, sir? Extra flight hours?"
"Not this much extra. This is..." Reeves trailed off, calculating. "This is enough fuel for a whole extra squadron. But Patterson doesn't have a whole extra squadron."
"Should I flag it for audit, sir?"
Reeves looked at him sharply. "You notice a lot, don't you, Coleman?"
David felt his pulse quicken. "Just trying to be thorough, sir."
"Thorough." Reeves studied him for a long moment. "You prior service? You've got that look."
"No sir. 4-F. Heart murmur." The lie came smoothly. Catherine's forged medical records again.
"Shame. We could use men who pay attention to details." Reeves closed the files. "Don't flag this for audit. I'll handle it through my channels."
"Yes sir."
After Reeves left, David sat very still, thinking. The captain had noticed the fuel discrepancy immediately. Had been bothered by it. But had explicitly told David not to flag it for audit.
Was Reeves part of Prometheus Protocol? Or was he investigating it independently? Or was he simply protecting the Air Forces from embarrassment over sloppy accounting?
No way to know. Not yet.
David added Reeves's name to the mental list he was compiling. Everyone who interacted with the anomalous files, everyone who noticed irregularities, everyone who told him not to ask questions.
The list was getting long.
At 5 PM, he clocked out with the other clerks, collected his coat, and walked to the streetcar stop. The evening routine: ride to his boarding house in Foggy Bottom, eat dinner at Mrs. Chen's boarding table with the other residents, retire to his room, read the newspaper, sleep.
The routine was important. Predictable, unremarkable, exactly what David Coleman would do.
But tonight, as he rode the streetcar, he noticed the man three rows back. Grey suit, nondescript face, reading the Evening Star. David had seen him before—two weeks ago, on this same streetcar. And once at a corner drugstore near the boarding house.
Coincidence? Or surveillance?
David forced himself to breathe normally, to show no sign of recognition. At his stop, he got off, walked his usual route, didn't look back.
The man in the grey suit didn't follow. At least, not visibly.
David ate dinner with the other boarders—a machinist from the Navy Yard, two secretaries from the Agriculture Department, an elderly professor who'd lost his university position for pacifist views. Mrs. Chen served chicken and dumplings, watery from rationing, and everyone complained about the quality in the carefully apolitical way that made you forget there was a war on.
"Mr. Coleman, you're very quiet tonight," Mrs. Chen observed. "Something troubling you?"
"Just tired, ma'am. Long day."
"You work too hard. Young man like you should have some fun. Go to the USO dances, meet a nice girl."
The secretaries giggled. David smiled dutifully and said something about not being much of a dancer.
After dinner, he went to his room—small, clean, with a view of the alley—and locked the door. Checked the telltales he'd left: hair across the drawer, thread on the closet door, dust pattern on the windowsill.
All undisturbed. No one had searched his room.
He pulled out his real work from the false bottom of his footlocker. A notebook, encoded in the system Catherine had taught him. Pages of observations, names, dates, file numbers.
Patterson Field fuel discrepancy. Captain Reeves, suspicious reaction. Harrison, noticed David's thoroughness. Man in grey suit, possible surveillance.
And deeper in the notebook, the larger patterns. The network he was mapping from inside the bureaucracy.
James Hartley's name appeared seventeen times. Not directly—Hartley wasn't stupid enough to put his signature on suspicious documents. But his fingerprints were there. Orders that originated from "Deputy Director's Office." Routing codes that traced back to his department. The architecture of Prometheus Protocol, visible only if you knew how to connect the pieces.
Morrison appeared less frequently but more directly. Three times in the past month, David had filed reports that Morrison had personally signed. Not unusual—Morrison was high-ranking in whatever agency he worked for now. But the reports were always classified, always related to "internal security," always just vague enough to be meaningless.
Or to hide something.
David added today's observations to the notebook, then encoded a message for the next dead drop. The dead drop was a loose brick in a wall near Dupont Circle—he'd leave the message there tomorrow, Catherine would retrieve it whenever she was in Washington.
The system was slow, inefficient, but secure. As long as they stayed disciplined.
A knock at his door made him close the notebook instantly, slide it into the footlocker. "Yes?"
"Mr. Coleman?" Mrs. Chen's voice. "There's a gentleman here to see you. Says he's from your draft board."
David's blood went cold. The draft board. Just like Rick had reported last week.
"I'll be right down."
He checked his reflection in the small mirror. David Coleman's face—younger than his real one, more open, less haunted. He'd grown his hair differently, wore glasses he didn't need, adopted a slight stoop that made him seem less military.
Would it be enough?
The man waiting in Mrs. Chen's parlor wasn't from the draft board. David knew that immediately. Wrong bearing, wrong clothes, wrong everything.
"Mr. Coleman? David Coleman?" The man was forty-something, balding, wearing a suit that was slightly too nice for a draft board clerk.
"That's me."
"I'm Inspector Wallace, Office of Civil Defense. I'm conducting routine background checks on all government employees with access to classified materials." He pulled out credentials. They looked official, but David couldn't verify them.
"I don't have access to classified materials, sir. I'm just a filing clerk."
"You work in the War Department. You file classified documents. That constitutes access." Wallace consulted a small notebook. "I need to ask you some questions. Won't take long."
They sat in Mrs. Chen's parlor. She hovered nervously in the doorway until Wallace asked for privacy. Then they were alone.
"How long have you been in Washington, Mr. Coleman?"
"Four months, sir. Since December."
"And before that?"
"Cleveland. I was working in a factory there. Came to Washington when I heard the government was hiring."
"Which factory?"
David named one from his cover story. Catherine had prepared documentation, placed calls to create a paper trail. It would hold up to casual verification.
"And you're 4-F. Heart murmur."
"Yes sir."
"That must be frustrating. Wanting to serve but unable to."
"I serve how I can, sir. Filing papers isn't glamorous, but it's necessary."
Wallace made notes. "You live alone? No family?"
"Parents passed when I was young. No siblings."
"Friends in Washington?"
"Just the folks at my boarding house. I keep to myself mostly."
"Do you know anyone named Richard Forsyth?"
David's heart stopped, but he kept his expression puzzled. "No sir. Should I?"
"How about Catherine Dupré?"
"No sir."
"Thomas Reed? James Webb?"
All the names. All of them. Wallace was reading from a list, watching David's face for recognition.
"No sir. I don't know any of those people."
"They were involved in an incident last December. At the Lincoln Memorial. All killed resisting arrest." Wallace leaned forward slightly. "But there are some inconsistencies in the reports. Some evidence suggesting that not all of them died."
David forced himself to breathe normally. "I'm sorry, sir, but I don't know anything about that. I wasn't even in Washington in December. I was still in Cleveland."
"Right. Cleveland." Wallace made another note. "Mr. Coleman, has anyone approached you recently? Asked you unusual questions, requested access to files, anything like that?"
"No sir."
"If anyone does—anyone at all—I need you to report it immediately. To me personally." Wallace handed over a card with a phone number. "This is a matter of national security."
"Of course, sir."
Wallace stood, buttoning his coat. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Coleman. I'm sure everything will check out fine. We're just being thorough in wartime."
After he left, David sat very still in the parlor, the business card burning in his pocket.
They knew. Maybe not everything, but enough to be looking. Enough to be running background checks on government employees, looking for anomalies, for the dead who might not be dead.
He climbed back to his room and pulled out the notebook. Encoded a new message, more urgent:
SURVEILLANCE CONFIRMED. WALLACE, CIVIL DEFENSE (MAYBE). KNOWS ALL NAMES. ASKING QUESTIONS. COVER MAY BE COMPROMISED. ADVISE.
Then he burned the message draft, scattered the ashes, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
Four months of careful work. Four months of building David Coleman's identity, establishing his patterns, becoming invisible.
And now someone was looking. Someone who knew the names of four people who were supposed to be dead.
Winters—David, he had to remember, David Coleman—closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But all he could see was the grey-suited man on the streetcar, and Wallace's too-casual questions, and the web of Prometheus Protocol tightening around them like a noose.
Outside, Washington slept its wartime sleep—blackout curtains drawn, air raid wardens patrolling, the machinery of government grinding forward.
And somewhere in that machinery, James Hartley was still winning.