I sat at the head of a twelve-foot reclaimed chestnut drafting table—the table Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer Senior had constructed with his own hands in 1944—wrapped in his twenty-ounce Scottish tweed hacking jacket, sipping a steaming ceramic mug of dark-roast chicory coffee that Marcus Cooper had poured from an insulated field thermos.
Across the table sat Claire.
She had showered and changed into an unadorned cream wool sweater and dark denim; her breathing was deep and untroubled, the atropine and hydrocortisone having completely purged the synthetic toxin from her system. Her face was radiant, free of the watchful, terrified exhaustion that had shadowed her eyes in the alley.
Beside her, sleeping peacefully in a mahogany executive berth, was Leo.
The boy was clutching his restored die-cast red truck against his ribs, his chest rising and falling in rhythmic, untroubled peace, guarded by two armed naval sentries standing at the blast doors.
Beside my chair on the concrete floor, fast asleep with his heavy golden head resting across my boots, was Barnaby—an eighty-pound retired naval working dog, a Belgian Malinois that Admiral Mercer had brought to the bunker four hours ago.
On the table between my forearms…
Resting atop the blue vellum deed to Conduit Ten…
