Chapter 5: The Name Nobody Was Supposed to Remember
Dad stepped into the hallway with Captain Reeves.
Director Marsh stayed at the table.
She poured two cups of water from a jug near the cooler and pushed one toward me without asking.
"How long have you known?" I asked.
"That your father was alive and well in Millbrook?
About six years.
We found him through a property tax record.
We made a decision not to approach him." She looked at her cup.
"He'd earned the right to his pancakes."
"Then why now?"
"Because Victor Hale's records, if they fall into the wrong hands, don't just expose your father.
They expose every person your father ever protected.
Safe houses.
Informants.
Families who were relocated.
People who have been living quietly for thirty years under the assumption that their names were gone."
I thought about that.
"How many people?"
"Forty-three families.
Roughly two hundred individuals."
The door opened and Dad came back in.
He sat down.
He didn't look at either of us right away.
"I reached someone," he said finally.
"Who?" Director Marsh asked.
"Someone who still owes me a favor from 1988." He set his phone on the table.
"Victor isn't missing.
He went to ground on his own.
He's in Pittsburgh.
He has the documents with him."
Director Marsh straightened.
"How do you know that?"
"Because the person I called is the one who drove him there."
"Thomas—"
"His name is Ray Kowalski.
He was a courier for the program.
Semi-retired.
Victor called him before he called you, because Victor trusted him more." Dad looked at her steadily.
"That should tell you something."
A beat of silence.
"He doesn't trust us," Director Marsh said.
"He doesn't trust whoever has been asking questions about him for the past six months.
He doesn't know if that's you or someone else using your channels." Dad leaned forward slightly.
"Someone has been running searches on program personnel names through federal databases.
Quiet searches.
The kind that don't trigger alerts unless you know what to look for."
"We've seen the same anomaly.
We haven't identified the source."
"Victor has a theory."
"What theory?"
Dad picked up the photograph of Victor Hale again.
He turned it over.
On the back, someone had written four words in blue ink.
He held it up so Director Marsh could read it.
Her face went still.
"Where did you get that?" she asked.
"It was in the folder you brought in.
On the back of the photograph." He set it down.
"You didn't write it."
"No."
"Then someone put it there before you walked into this room."
Director Marsh stood up.
She went to the door, opened it, and spoke quietly to someone outside.
When she came back, her expression was controlled but her hands were not entirely steady.
"I need to know what those four words mean to you," she said to Dad.
"They're a name," he said.
"A code name.
From the program.
Someone who was never supposed to exist in any file."
"Whose code name?"
Dad was quiet for a moment.
"Mine," he said.
"My operational name.
The one even the other operatives didn't know."
I looked at the photograph on the table.
I couldn't read the handwriting from where I sat.
"What does it say?" I asked.
Dad looked at me.
"It says: *The Shepherd is here.*"
Director Marsh sat back down slowly.
"Someone in this building," she said, "knows your father is in this airport.
And they wanted us to know they know."
The water cooler hummed.
May you like
Dad picked up his cane and set it across his knees.
"Then we don't have much time," he said.
