Chapter 65 - The Vault of the Living Dead
The rain had returned to River Road, drumming against the tall library windows in a frantic, ceaseless barrage.
I did not blink[cite: 1]. I did not drop my phone.
On Maya’s terminal, the surveillance still from the federal records facility in Suitland burned like white-hot phosphorus.
David Keller stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a ghost.
The man beside him looked eighty, perhaps older, his silver hair cropped close, his posture straight with the severe, unyielding discipline of a career naval bureaucrat. He wore a charcoal wool overcoat and a dark silk tie, holding an unsealed manila archival folder beneath his left arm.
Edward Larkin.
The man who had supposedly died of cardiac arrest in a naval hospice in nineteen-ninety-six.
"Marcus," I said into the receiver, my voice stripped of every tremor, every ounce of shock, locking into that deep, lethal cadence of a military prosecutor ready for trial[cite: 1]. "Where was this image captured?"
"The National Personnel Records Center Annex in Suitland, Maryland," Marcus Vance answered over the encrypted line, background traffic and radio static hissing through his microphone. "Forty-eight hours ago. Larkin presented a vintage laminated Department of the Navy civilian executive credential, an unexpired blue diplomatic passport, and a sealed court order signed by a senior federal judge in the District of Columbia."
"Who was the judge, Marcus?" Eleanor Price asked, leaning across the mahogany table until her pen touched the speaker.
"Judge Harrison Croft," Marcus replied grimly. "A senior status judge appointed during the Gulf War. An old friend of your grandfather's."
"Croft sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during the nineteen-nineties," Maya said, her fingers already flying across her database. "If Croft signed an in-camera unsealing order, Larkin didn't just walk into a records vault. He accessed a national security compartment."
Elizabeth sat rigid beside me, her knuckles white where she gripped the edge of the desk.
"Why would my mother write that, Amelia?" Elizabeth whispered, staring at the handwritten inscription beneath the image: CAPTAIN CARTER MUST NEVER SEE THE ORIGINAL 1994 BENEFICIARY LIST. "Why would Mother order anyone to keep you away from a list of sailors?"
"Because Margaret Carter knew that list wasn't just names of retired crewmen, Elizabeth," Eleanor said softly, adjusting her glasses.
"It's a ledger of payoffs," I said, the ugly, jagged truth piercing through thirty years of smoke.
"Amelia," Marcus continued, "Larkin's attorney delivered a formal proffer notice to the U.S. Attorney's office sixty minutes ago. He has invoked the Federal Whistleblower Protection Act. He is offering full transactional immunity cooperation regarding the forty-eight million dollars in Geneva."
"Under what terms?" I asked.
"A private deposition. Tomorrow morning at nine. The fourth-floor conference room of the Department of Labor's Maritime Administration offices in downtown Richmond. Just him, his counsel, you, Elizabeth, and your attorneys."
"No federal agents?" Maya asked, looking up sharply.
"Larkin's counsel specified that if the Department of Justice or NCIS enters the room before the deposition concludes, the underlying physical instruments will be destroyed under an emergency national security escrow provision," Marcus admitted, his voice tight with frustration. "He’s using Croft's seal as a shield."
"He thinks he's setting a perimeter," I replied, staring out into the rain-soaked gardens of River Road[cite: 2].
"Amelia, it's a trap," Elizabeth pleaded, reaching out to touch my arm. "Lawrence Carter tried to frame our father as a traitor. Helena tried to buy our silence. Now an actual dead man is asking you to sit across a table from him?"
"Lawrence and Helena were operating on greed, Ellie," I said, turning to look into my sister's terrified eyes. "Greed is messy. Greed leaves forged signatures and bad corporate filings in Delaware. But Larkin isn't chasing sixty million dollars. He’s running an intelligence architecture."
I looked down at the image of David Keller standing beside him.
David had looked me in the eye and claimed he was trying to protect me. He had handed me the Project Meridian source code while quietly steering an undead director through federal archives.
"Tell Larkin we accept," I told Marcus.
"Amelia—" Marcus warned.
May you like
"Accept the terms, Marcus," I repeated, cold steel ringing in my voice[cite: 1]. "Tell him Captain Carter will be at the table at nine o'clock. And tell him that if he brings thirty-year-old lies into that room, I will make him wish he had stayed in that grave in San Diego."
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