September 12, 1944 - 0400 Hours
Rick woke in darkness, his hand already reaching for the pistol under his pillow before his mind fully registered where he was.
Not Mrs. Kaminski's boarding house. Not John Martin's room.
A motel outside Richmond, Virginia. Three hours from the estate. The last place Rick Forsyth would sleep before either vindicating his father's death or joining him.
He checked his watch by the moonlight through thin curtains. Four AM. The summit was scheduled to begin at nine. They needed to be at the estate by seven—catering staff arriving early to set up.
Rick dressed in the dark. Simple clothes, nothing distinctive. The kind of outfit a dishwasher would wear. He checked the bag one final time: forged identification, minimal cash, his father's photograph, the Colt .45.
Seven rounds. He hadn't fired the pistol since his father died. Hadn't needed to. But today might be different.
He sealed the letters he'd written—to Helen, to Mrs. Kaminski, to Danny Patterson—in an envelope marked "To be mailed if I don't return by September 15." Left it at the motel's front desk with five dollars and instructions.
Then he walked out into the Virginia pre-dawn, where Catherine was already waiting by the catering van.
She looked different. Not Marie Chevalier's careful elegance, but the plain efficiency of a woman who'd worked service jobs. Hair pulled back. No makeup. Cheap dress and comfortable shoes.
"You sleep?" she asked.
"No. You?"
"No." Catherine lit a cigarette with shaking hands. "Webb's inside getting coffee. David's at the communications point, three miles north. Donovan left DC at midnight, should arrive at the estate around eight-thirty."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then we abort. No Donovan, no recording, no point in being there." She took a drag. "But he'll be there. He's committed now. Has been since he found Morrison's files."
Webb emerged from the motel office carrying three paper cups of bad coffee. He looked different too—sober, sharp, clear-eyed. The tremor in his hands was barely noticeable.
"Van's loaded," he said, handing out the coffee. "Catering supplies, legitimate inventory in case anyone checks. The recording equipment is hidden in the bottom of the supply crates. If we need to extract Donovan's wire recorder, we'll have backup recording capability."
Rick sipped the bitter coffee and felt his mind sharpen. "The plan."
Catherine pulled out a map one last time, though they'd all memorized it days ago. "Catering company arrives at seven. Security checkpoint at the gate—they'll verify our credentials against the approved vendor list. We're on it, courtesy of the strings I pulled."
"Second checkpoint at the house entrance," Webb continued. "They'll search the van, but casually. Looking for weapons, suspicious items. The catering supplies will pass."
"Once inside," Catherine said, "I'm assigned to the main dining area on the first floor. Rick, you're in the kitchen, also first floor. Webb, you stay with the van until called for supply runs. We'll have limited mobility, but we'll be positioned close to the second-floor library where the meeting is."
"Donovan arrives at eight-thirty," Rick said. "OSS representative, official attendee. He'll have the wire recorder in his briefing binder. If he gets through security without being searched, he activates it when the meeting starts at nine."
"Recording runs for two hours," Webb added. "The agenda shows key discussions from nine to eleven—Phase 1 assessment, post-war planning, Phase 2 Korea timeline. If he can record that, we have everything we need."
"At eleven, there's a break," Catherine said. "Light lunch served in the dining room. That's when Donovan extracts himself. Says he has urgent OSS business, needs to return to Washington. He takes the recording, leaves the estate, drives to the rally point where David is waiting."
"Meanwhile, we finish our shifts as catering staff, leave at three PM with the rest of the crew. Normal departure, no suspicion." Rick looked at both of them. "That's if everything goes right."
"And if it goes wrong?" Webb asked.
Catherine stubbed out her cigarette. "If Donovan's caught, he'll signal—two coughs. We abort immediately. Leave separately, meet at the alternate rally points. If he can't signal but we see him being taken into custody, same protocol. If the recording device is discovered but Donovan isn't immediately arrested, he'll try to bluff—say it's a dictation device for taking notes. Might buy us time."
"If security locks down the estate," Webb said, "we hide in the service areas until we can slip out. Reeves has extraction vehicles positioned at three points around the perimeter. We contact him through David's radio, he guides us to the nearest vehicle."
"And if none of that works?" Rick asked.
Silence. Then Catherine said, "Then we do whatever it takes to get the recording out. Even if not all of us make it."
The weight of that settled over them. Three years of investigation, of living false lives, of gathering evidence piece by piece. All coming down to the next twelve hours.
"Dead man's switches are activated," Catherine said. "If none of us check in by midnight tonight, Eleanor Walsh receives the evidence packages. Sarah Brennan mails her backup. Crawford goes public with his testimony. The story gets out, with or without us."
Rick thought about Eleanor Walsh, the journalist he'd never met. About Sarah Brennan, who'd lost her brother at Guadalcanal. About Crawford, the general who'd risk court-martial to testify.
They had allies. More than they'd started with. People who'd seen the pattern, who couldn't act officially but were willing to help covertly.
Maybe that was enough.
Or maybe they'd all be dead by sunset, and the allies would be left to finish what they'd started.
"Time to go," Webb said, checking his watch. "It's six-fifteen. We need to be at the estate by seven."
They loaded into the catering van—Catherine and Rick in the back with the supplies, Webb driving. The Virginia countryside was just beginning to lighten, false dawn painting the horizon grey.
Rick watched the landscape roll past through the van's small windows. Farms, forests, the rural beauty of a state that had seen civil war eighty years ago. Another war fought over the soul of America.
Now they were fighting a different kind of war. Not on battlefields but in shadows. Not with armies but with evidence. Not for territory but for truth.
The van hummed along empty roads. Nobody spoke. Each lost in their own thoughts, their own fears, their own reasons for being here.
Rick thought about his father. About the warning before Pearl Harbor that nobody heeded. About how his father had tried to work within the system, believing institutions would respond to truth.
They hadn't. The system was the problem. The institutions were compromised.
So Rick was doing it differently. Breaking every rule. Committing treason against a government that had been hijacked by the people it was supposed to serve.
His father would have understood. Eventually.