Chapter 3 - Someone Reopened Winter Lantern First
The package contained seventeen photographs.
Rebecca had studied them on the flight.
She had assumed they documented current misconduct.
Mark arguing with junior soldiers.
Restricted personnel folders photographed on a desk.
A storage room opened after hours.
A civilian vehicle entering the installation through a service gate.
Now she looked again.
The photographs were not accusations.
They were breadcrumbs.
Mark appeared because he had been following the same trail.
Rebecca looked at him.
“What have you been investigating?”
“Nothing.”
She slid a photograph across the table.
“You entered records storage at 11:42 p.m.”
“I was authorized.”
“By who?”
Mark hesitated.
Mercer said, “Answer her.”
Mark exhaled.
“Major Ellis.”
Rebecca knew the name.
Major Thomas Ellis worked in historical operations and casualty records.
“Why?”
Mark looked at the pendant.
“Because six months ago, my mother received another envelope.”
Rebecca went still.
Mark showed them a photograph.
Inside was a photocopy of Daniel Reagan’s death certificate.
Across it someone had written:
ASK WHY THERE WAS NO BODY.
Rebecca’s pulse rose.
“Postmark?”
“Local.”
Mercer frowned.
“From this installation?”
“The sorting code suggests it.”
Mark said he contacted casualty records.
His request disappeared.
He submitted another.
That request was denied because the underlying Winter Lantern files remained classified.
So he approached Major Ellis.
Ellis quietly gave him after-hours access to archived indexes.
“What did you find?” Rebecca asked.
“A transportation manifest.”
“From the mission?”
“From three days after.”
Mark placed a photograph on the table.
Five unidentified detainees had been transferred from a temporary field hospital to an allied intelligence site.
One was described as:
MALE, U.S., APPROX. 27, COMMUNICATIONS INJURY, NO IDENTIFICATION.
Rebecca stopped breathing.
Daniel had been twenty-seven.
He had sustained a communications blast injury before disappearing.
“Where was the site?”
Mark shook his head.
“Redacted.”
“What happened to Ellis?”
Mark looked at Mercer.
“He disappeared two weeks ago.”
Mercer stiffened.
“What?”
“His office says he took emergency leave.”
“He did.”
“Did anyone verify where he went?”
Mercer’s expression changed.
No one had.
Rebecca asked Mark why he had attacked her in the cafeteria.
His face hardened.
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“That explains ignorance, not behavior.”
He looked ashamed for the first time.
“I thought you were the civilian from the photographs.”
“What civilian?”
Mark pulled up a grainy image.
An older silver-haired woman entered the records annex three nights earlier.
From behind, she resembled Rebecca.
Rebecca studied the coat.
The posture.
Then the hand.
A large ring was visible.
Rebecca knew that ring.
“General Voss.”
Mercer looked at her.
“General Arthur Voss?”
“His widow.”
Elaine Voss.
Arthur Voss had been the intelligence commander who approved Winter Lantern.
He died twelve years ago.
Elaine had spent decades protecting his legacy.
Rebecca asked, “Why would his widow be in casualty records?”
Mark answered.
“That’s what I was trying to find out.”
The package contained another photograph.
Elaine Voss speaking with Major Ellis in a parking lot.
Date: three weeks earlier.
Then another.
Ellis handing Elaine a folder.
Rebecca’s stomach tightened.
Mercer called security.
Elaine’s visitor logs showed she had entered the installation four times in two months using a retired-family credential.
Her sponsor was Major Ellis.
Then they found something worse.
Ellis’s emergency-leave request had not been submitted by Ellis.
It had been entered using his credentials after his last known appearance.
Rebecca looked at Mark.
“When did you last speak to him?”
“Sixteen days ago.”
“What did he say?”
Mark swallowed.
“He told me my father may have lived for years after Winter Lantern.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
“How many?”
“He didn’t know.”
“What else?”
“He said the Army didn’t lose Daniel Reagan.”
Mark’s voice cracked.
“He said somebody moved him.”
Mercer whispered, “Moved him where?”
Mark looked at Rebecca.
“To a place called Station Grey.”
Rebecca had never heard the name.
But Mercer had.
His face went pale.
Rebecca turned.
“You know it.”
Mercer stared at the table.
“Only from an old briefing.”
“What was it?”
“An off-books debriefing site.”
“For prisoners?”
Mercer shook his head.
“For compromised personnel.”
Rebecca’s stomach dropped.
Daniel had not necessarily been treated as a casualty.
He may have been treated as a security problem.
Then Mercer’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“Where?”
He listened.
Then slowly lowered the phone.
“Major Ellis’s car was just found.”
Mark stood.
“Where?”
“Thirty miles north.”
“Is he there?”
Mercer looked at him.
“No.”
Rebecca asked the question nobody wanted answered.
“What did they find inside?”
Mercer swallowed.
“Blood.”
May you like
Then he added:
“And a silver compass pendant identical to Mark’s.”
