Chapter 24 - Peter Laird’s Story
Peter agreed to meet us at a church parking lot outside Richmond. He said he would speak only with the inspector general present. My father arrived with Eleanor. Ethan and I stayed in the car until the investigator asked us to join.
Peter looked exhausted. He was in his early sixties, with a worn coat and a face that seemed to have aged sharply since my father last saw him.
“I didn’t leak the document,” he said. “I did access the file. I was ordered to.”
“By whom?” the investigator asked.
Peter looked at Arthur. “You know who had authority over the review.”
“My name is on the amendment,” Arthur replied. “I know who asked me to sign it. I don’t know who ordered the first change.”
“Voss didn’t have final authority,” Peter said. “He handled the contractor side. Sloane handled the review. But neither of them wanted to move without an instruction from the oversight office.”
“Whose instruction?” I asked.
“Deputy Director Harlan. He was in charge of the emergency review board.”
The name was new to me. The investigator checked her notes. Harlan had retired years earlier and had recently died.
“Why did you access the file?” she asked.
“Because I was told the amended transfer paperwork needed to be moved out of the active record system. I didn’t know Nadia was alive. I thought the change protected the operation and an allied source.”
“Did you see the original signature?”
“No. I saw the form after it had been processed.”
“Did you contact the press?”
“No. I contacted a friend at a legal office because I thought someone might be using the old documents to blackmail Arthur.”
My father’s expression darkened. “You could have called me.”
“I was ashamed. I helped hide the file.”
The admission did not excuse him, but it gave the investigator a path to follow. Peter explained that Harlan had run a small review group after Kunar. Sloane reported directly to him. Voss’s company provided the medical transport.
“Do you have records from that review?” the investigator asked.
“I kept one box when I retired. I thought I might need it if someone blamed me.”
“Where is it?”
“Under my daughter’s name in a storage facility near Ashland.”
The investigator arranged a search order. At the storage unit, Peter opened a box containing old correspondence, invoices, and a yellow envelope marked HARBOR REVIEW.
Nadia stood nearby, rigid and silent, while the papers were examined.
The first page was a memo from Harlan instructing the group to remove Nadia’s name from the official record. It described her as an “unverified operational liability” and ordered the transfer to be classified as a security disposition.
“That’s the order,” the investigator said.
But the memo contained a handwritten note in the margin: Keep Claire Whitaker out of review. She was too close to the extraction.
I stared at the words. “They knew I would ask questions.”
Peter lowered his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why wasn’t I told Nadia survived?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe they thought you’d reopen the whole operation. Maybe they thought they were protecting you.”
Nadia’s laugh was sharp. “Everyone says they were protecting someone.”
A second folder contained a list of payments to Grayline and a line item for a “witness relocation,” paid months after Nadia’s supposed death.
“Who was relocated?” the investigator asked.
Peter shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Nadia pointed to the initials beside the payment: R.C.
“Ruth Calder,” she said. “They paid to move her.”
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Ruth had told us she stayed in her home because of threats to her daughter. Now the records suggested someone had paid her to leave.
When we called her, she didn’t answer.
