He sent the image to Samuel. The reply came almost immediately: Don’t go alone.
Thomas answered: I won’t.
For once, the past had offered more than a shadow. It had offered a direction.
The bus terminal stood in a coastal town four hours from the city, wedged between a fish market and a row of inexpensive hotels. Thomas and Samuel arrived in the afternoon. They did not bring Elena; she stayed behind to protect the documents and continue the investigation. They agreed that if Thomas found anything credible, he would contact her through a secure channel they had arranged in person.
The photograph’s timestamp was too blurred to identify the day. The terminal clerk remembered little about individual passengers, but a woman who sold coffee from a kiosk recognized the description.
“He came here a few times,” she said. “Quiet man. Always bought black coffee. He had a limp, but not a bad one. Like he was trying not to show it.”
“Did he say where he was going?” Samuel asked.
“No. He asked whether the buses still stopped at North Point. I told him the morning service had been canceled months ago.”
North Point was a fishing village beyond the coastal highway. Thomas remembered Daniel talking about it during a leave years earlier. They had planned to visit after their next deployment, promising each other they would eat fresh fish and spend a day without radios or orders.
They never made it.
Thomas and Samuel drove toward the village. The road followed the coastline, climbing above gray water and descending through clusters of houses. North Point was small enough that strangers were noticed but not so small that every question reached the same ears. They asked at a café, a hardware shop, and a boardinghouse. At the third place, an elderly owner paused when Thomas showed him the photograph.
“I don’t know that man,” he said.
His answer came too quickly.
Thomas placed the photograph on the counter. “I’m not here to cause trouble. He’s an old friend.”
The owner looked at Samuel, then back at Thomas. “He rented a room under another name. Paid cash. Stayed only two nights. Left a book behind.”
“What book?”
The owner disappeared into the back room and returned with a battered paperback about maritime navigation. A folded paper had been tucked inside. Thomas opened it carefully.
There was no greeting, only a set of coordinates and a sentence: “The module is not the proof. The names are.”
Samuel read over his shoulder. “He wants us to find something else.”
The coordinates pointed to a small lighthouse on a headland north of the village. The lighthouse had been decommissioned and its grounds were now maintained by a local historical society. They waited until evening, then approached along the public path.
The wind was sharp, and the sea below struck the rocks with a steady boom. Inside the old keeper’s shed, they found a loose floorboard beneath a rusted cabinet. A waterproof pouch lay beneath it. Inside were photocopied pages, a small storage device, and a letter written in Daniel’s hand.
Thomas opened the letter with unsteady fingers.
“Tom,” it began. “If you found this, then the people who changed the route have finally decided you are worth worrying about. I’m sorry I let you believe I was dead. I had no way to know who was watching the hospital, and I could not risk leading them to you. The module contains the raw communications record, but it does not tell the whole story. The names in the ledger show who paid for the route and who profited afterward. One of them is not a contractor. One of them sits inside the system that was supposed to investigate us.”
The letter did not name the person. It ended with a warning: “Do not trust anyone who insists the truth must be released all at once. Some people will use a partial truth to bury the rest.”
Thomas read it twice, then pressed the paper against the table to keep the wind from lifting it.
Samuel looked at the storage device. “We need a secure copy before we open this.”
Thomas nodded. “And we need to know whether Daniel is still alive.”
A noise sounded outside the shed. A car door closed.
They switched off their lights. Through a gap in the boards, Thomas saw two figures moving toward the lighthouse. One carried a flashlight; the other held a long object at his side. Neither moved like a tourist.
Samuel whispered, “We should leave.”
Thomas slipped the pouch inside his jacket. “Agreed.”
They exited through the rear door and descended the rocky path, staying below the line of the headland. The two figures reached the shed just as Thomas and Samuel reached the road. An engine started behind them.
They drove without headlights for the first hundred meters, then joined the coastal highway. The vehicle followed for several miles before turning toward the village.
Samuel kept looking in the mirror. “They knew where to find the pouch.”
“Maybe they were watching the boardinghouse.”
“Or someone told them we were coming.”
Thomas thought of Weller, Elena, the archive clerk, Dmitri, Preston, and every person who had helped them. The circle of trust was shrinking, but it was not empty.