March 1948 - Baltimore, Maryland
The house on Elmwood Avenue was small—two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen barely large enough for a table. But it was theirs. Clean title, no questions asked, far enough from Washington that nobody knew Rick Forsyth's name or cared about Congressional hearings or recanted testimony.
Rick stood in the empty living room while the moving truck unloaded their few possessions. Helen directed the movers with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before, who'd learned to pack up a life and start over. Tommy clung to her leg, overwhelmed by the strange house and strange men carrying furniture.
"What do you think?" Helen asked, coming to stand beside Rick.
"I think it's perfect."
"You're a terrible liar." But she smiled when she said it. "It's small. The neighborhood's rough. The schools aren't great. But it's ours. Nobody from your past. Nobody asking questions."
"That's what makes it perfect."
Helen looked at him for a long moment, searching his face for signs of the obsession that had nearly destroyed them. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she nodded and returned to directing the movers.
Rick had promised. Really promised this time. No more investigations. No more risks. No more choosing abstract principles over concrete family. Baltimore was a fresh start—accountant job at a small firm, quiet neighborhood, normal life.
He could do this. He would do this.
Even if part of him felt like he was betraying Morrison with every ordinary day.
The accounting firm of Winters & Associates occupied the third floor of a building that smelled perpetually of coffee and old paper. Rick's office was barely larger than a closet—desk, filing cabinet, window overlooking an alley. Nothing like the War Department offices where David had worked, nothing like the factory floor at Packard where he'd spent three years as John Martin.
Nothing that mattered. That was the point.
His boss, Harold Winters, was a man in his sixties who'd built a successful practice serving small businesses and individual clients. He asked few questions during the interview, seemed more interested in Rick's accounting skills than his background.
"Says here you worked at Packard during the war," Winters noted, reviewing Rick's resume. "Quality inspection?"
"Yes, sir."
"And before that?"
"Naval intelligence. Until my father died in 1941."
Winters nodded, made a note. "I don't care about politics or past troubles. You show up on time, do accurate work, don't steal from clients—we'll get along fine. Understood?"
"Understood."
Rick started the following Monday. The work was exactly as mind-numbing as he'd hoped—tax returns, bookkeeping, audit preparation for clients who ran hardware stores and small manufacturers. Nothing classified. Nothing dangerous. Nothing that required risking anything more than a paper cut.
He was good at it. The same attention to detail that had served him in intelligence work served him in accounting. He caught discrepancies others missed, found deductions others overlooked, organized chaos into neat columns of numbers that balanced perfectly.
His colleagues were pleasant but distant. They'd eat lunch together, talk about baseball and weather, then return to their separate offices. Nobody asked about Rick's past. Nobody seemed interested in anything beyond whether their invoices were accurate and their clients happy.
It was exactly what Rick needed. Anonymity. Routine. The blessed numbness of work that didn't matter.
Helen found work too—part-time at a dress shop three blocks from their house. It gave her something to do while Tommy was at the neighbor's, brought in extra money, let her talk to women who cared about hem lengths and fabric patterns instead of government conspiracies.
She seemed lighter in Baltimore. The tension that had lived in her shoulders for two years began to ease. She laughed more. Slept better. Stopped flinching every time a car slowed in front of their house.
"I like it here," she said one evening in May. They were sitting on their small back porch, watching Tommy play in the yard with a neighbor's dog. "It feels... normal. Like we're just regular people living regular lives."
"We are regular people."
"You know what I mean." She took his hand. "No FBI watching. No late-night phone calls. No mysterious documents. Just you going to work, me going to work, Tommy growing up normal. This is what I wanted. What I always wanted."
"I know."
"Do you miss it? The investigation. The... whatever you call what you were doing."
Rick thought about the files in the Baltimore bank vault. About David's letter. About the promise to pass everything to Tommy when he was twenty-one. About Korea planning documents sitting unused while CIA implemented Phase 2 exactly as predicted.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "But not as much as I'd miss this if I lost it."
Helen squeezed his hand. "Good answer."
They sat in comfortable silence while the spring evening darkened around them. Tommy chased the dog in circles, his laughter carrying across the small yard. Normal. Regular. Safe.
Rick tried to convince himself it was enough.
June 1948
Tommy's third birthday was a small affair—just family and two neighbor kids. Helen made a cake. Rick hung decorations. Tommy tore into presents with the unselfconscious joy of a child who didn't yet understand that the world was complicated and dangerous.
Rick watched his son play with a toy truck and thought about David's son—the one David had never had, would never have. About Morrison, who'd died at thirty-four without children. About his own father, who'd died when Rick was twenty, leaving him with nothing but warnings and evidence of conspiracy.
Three generations of Forsyths. All of them dying for truth that nobody wanted to hear.
Rick was determined to break that pattern. Tommy would grow up normal. Would play with trucks and go to school and someday have a job that didn't involve classified documents or fake identities or Congressional testimony. Would live the life Rick had given up his credibility to secure.
"What are you thinking about?" Helen asked, finding him alone in the kitchen.
"Just watching Tommy. Thinking about how lucky we are."
"We are lucky. We have a good life here, Rick. A safe life." She wrapped her arms around him from behind. "Thank you for choosing us. I know it wasn't easy."
"It was the easiest choice I've ever made."
That was a lie, but it was the lie they both needed to believe.
September 1948
Webb died in Philadelphia on a Tuesday.
The telegram arrived at Rick's office: Thomas Reed found deceased, September 14. Liver failure. No known next of kin. Please contact regarding effects.
Rick sat with the telegram for a long time. Webb—drunk, bitter, self-destructive Webb—had finally drunk himself to death. Just like everyone had known he would. Just like he'd known he would himself.
Rick took a half-day, drove to Philadelphia. The city morgue was as grim as expected. Webb's body was in the basement, waiting to be claimed or buried as a pauper. He looked smaller in death, diminished. The man who'd photographed war profiteering, who'd tracked financial corruption, who'd helped plan the CIA infiltration—reduced to a corpse in a morgue drawer.
"You his family?" the attendant asked.
"Friend."
"He leave instructions for burial?"
"I don't know."
Rick arranged for cremation, paid from his own pocket. There was no service. No mourners except Rick himself. Webb had died alone in his apartment, surrounded by empty bottles, discovered only when neighbors complained about the smell.
Rick collected Webb's effects—a box containing clothing, a few books, and one folder marked "Prometheus Protocol - Final Notes." Inside: scattered observations from the past two years. Nothing organized, nothing useful. Just the drunken ramblings of a man who'd seen too much and couldn't forget.
The last entry was dated September 10th, four days before Webb died:
Rick chose family. Catherine chose Paris. Donovan chose career. David chose martyrdom. I choose oblivion. Different paths to same destination—giving up. At least I'm honest about it. At least I'm not pretending survival is victory.
Rick burned the notes in a trash barrel behind the morgue. Let Webb rest without his bitter final testament preserved for posterity.
On the drive back to Baltimore, Rick stopped at a payphone and called Donovan at CIA.
"Webb's dead," Rick said when Donovan answered.
Silence. Then: "How?"
"Liver failure. Drank himself to death."
"Christ." Pause. "Are you—"
"I'm fine. Just thought you should know. You're the only one left who'd care."
"What about Catherine?"
"I'll write to her. But she's in Paris trying to forget. This will just remind her of everything she's trying to escape."
Another pause. "Rick, I'm sorry. About Webb. About... everything."
"Yeah. Me too."
Rick hung up before Donovan could say anything else. Drove back to Baltimore. Went home to Helen and Tommy and the normal life he'd chosen over the fight that had killed everyone else.
That night, he added Webb's death certificate to the files in the vault. Another casualty of Prometheus Protocol. Another man who'd known the truth and died with it.
Four down. Only Rick, Catherine, and Donovan left.
And Rick was the only one still pretending that survival without resistance was acceptable.