Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO DIED TWICE
Catherine Pike had two funerals.
The first belonged to the woman my family knew.
The second belonged to the identity she created afterward.
Neither contained her body.
When I was fourteen, Catherine Pike was one of my mother’s closest friends.
She brought lemon cake to birthdays.
She helped Vanessa with piano lessons.
She gave me my first sailing compass.
Then one winter night, Gerald called our house and said Catherine’s car had gone off an icy bridge.
Her body was never recovered.
We mourned her.
Gerald remarried eventually.
Life moved forward.
Except Catherine hadn’t died.
She had disappeared.
Gerald confessed from a hospital bed.
“I helped her.”
My father looked ready to kill him.
“You let us believe she was dead?”
“She told me people were hunting her.”
“She was the one hunting us!”
“Not then.”
I stood near the window.
“Start at the beginning.”
Gerald cried.
Catherine Soren was Viktor Soren’s daughter.
She entered the United States using her mother’s surname and eventually met Gerald.
At first, Gerald claimed she wanted nothing to do with her father’s network.
Then she learned Samuel Keene had hidden the final Night Lantern prototype.
“She believed your grandfather sabotaged the Celestine and escaped with the real system,” Gerald explained.
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I swear.”
“You knew my grandfather.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
Gerald looked at Dad.
“Since I was nineteen.”
My father turned away.
“Samuel hired me.”
“To do what?”
“Help track Soren’s buyers.”
My mother stared.
“My father recruited you?”
“Yes.”
“So all those years you were Richard’s friend—”
“I became his friend.”
“But that wasn’t why you entered his life.”
“No.”
Dad punched the wall.
Mercer intervened.
“Richard.”
“I gave this man thirty years.”
Gerald closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“And my daughters.”
Gerald looked toward me.
“I tried to protect them.”
“By stealing my commissioning orders?”
His eyes opened.
“I didn’t steal them.”
“Then who did?”
“Catherine.”
Silence.
“She was still alive?”
“Yes.”
My mother began to cry.
Gerald continued.
“She wanted to know whether Evelyn had entered any program connected to Samuel.”
“So she monitored me.”
“For years.”
“Why didn’t she kill me?”
“Because she thought Samuel had left you something.”
The gold anchor.
Except Grandpa had given it to Mom.
Catherine had spent decades looking in the wrong place.
“What happened during Night Lantern?”
Gerald’s face tightened.
“She discovered your task force was getting close.”
“To her operation.”
“Yes.”
“And she gave away our location.”
He looked at me.
“I think so.”
Think.
Six graves rested inside that word.
I stepped away before anger made decisions for me.
Daniel followed.
Outside the hospital room, he said, “You need air.”
“I need Catherine.”
“We’ll get her.”
“She killed my people.”
“Yes.”
“She took my sister.”
“Yes.”
“She spent half my life watching me.”
“Yes.”
I turned on him.
“Stop agreeing with me.”
“Would you prefer interpretive dance?”
I stared.
He shrugged.
“I’m trying to keep you from punching a federal hospital wall.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
One breath.
That was enough.
Mercer joined us.
“We found something.”
Satellite records showed a vessel leaving the Chesapeake region six hours before Vanessa’s kidnapping.
Registered to a shell company tied to Catherine.
Destination unknown.
But maritime traffic analysis suggested it was heading toward the coordinates inside the anchor.
The Celestine’s last position.
“She has another copy,” I said.
“Probably.”
“How?”
“Lane photographed the insert before the operation.”
“So she’s going there.”
Mercer nodded.
“What’s at the coordinates?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Twelve hours later, a Navy vessel moved east through rough Atlantic water.
I was not officially part of the boarding team.
Mercer made that extremely clear.
I was onboard as an intelligence consultant.
Daniel found this hilarious.
“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” I said.
“Watching you follow orders from somebody else is refreshing.”
“I follow orders.”
“When convenient.”
We reached the search area near dawn.
Sonar detected metal beneath the seabed.
Not a shipwreck.
A structure.
A sealed subsea storage unit connected to an old research buoy foundation.
My grandfather had hidden something beneath the Atlantic for forty years.
Divers recovered a watertight cylinder.
Inside were three things.
A prototype navigation core.
Microfilm records.
And a handwritten letter.
Addressed:
TO MY FAMILY, IF SOREN EVER RETURNS.
My hands shook as I unfolded it.
Samuel Keene’s handwriting was neat.
My mother recognized it immediately.
The letter explained everything.
Samuel discovered Viktor Soren bribing officials to obtain Night Lantern.
Knowing the program had been compromised, Samuel created false technical documents and moved the real prototype aboard the Celestine.
But someone sabotaged the vessel.
Samuel survived the sinking with four others.
They secretly reached shore.
To prevent Soren from realizing the prototype remained intact, the survivors allowed the world to believe all aboard had died.
Samuel later returned under his own identity, claiming he had never been aboard because the passenger manifest had been altered.
The government buried the truth to protect the surviving witnesses.
He hid the prototype.
He kept the anchor key.
And he wrote one final warning.
SOREN’S GREATEST WEAPON IS NOT TECHNOLOGY.
IT IS PATIENCE.
HE WILL ENTER FAMILIES, COMPANIES, AND INSTITUTIONS.
HE WILL WAIT UNTIL TRUST DOES THE WORK THAT VIOLENCE CANNOT.
I read the sentence twice.
Then an alarm sounded.
Daniel ran inside.
“We’ve got company.”
Radar showed a fast civilian vessel approaching from the east.
No identification.
Mercer ordered defensive stations.
The vessel stopped two miles away.
A radio transmission came through.
A woman’s voice.
Calm.
Educated.
Familiar.
“Evelyn Harrington.”
I recognized it from childhood.
A woman reading bedtime stories while my parents attended company dinners.
Catherine Pike.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
My skin crawled.
Mercer signaled me not to respond.
Catherine continued.
“I know you found your grandfather’s letter.”
No one moved.
“I also know you found the prototype.”
Mercer whispered, “How?”
Then we saw it.
A tracking transmitter inside the recovered cylinder.
Daniel ripped it free.
Too late.
Catherine laughed through the radio.
“Samuel always was sentimental.”
I keyed the microphone.
“You murdered six members of my team.”
“No, Evelyn.”
“You compromised Night Lantern.”
“Yes.”
“Then you killed them.”
“I gave information to people who were supposed to frighten you away.”
“They launched explosives.”
“A regrettable escalation.”
I felt Daniel tense.
I remained calm.
“You kidnapped Vanessa.”
“She was useful.”
“You’re going to prison.”
“Perhaps.”
She sounded almost amused.
“But first you should ask Admiral Mercer why he never told you that one of the Night Lantern survivors is still alive.”
I looked at Mercer.
He went still.
Catherine continued.
“And why that survivor has been signing your promotion recommendations for fifteen years.”
Every eye turned toward the admiral.
I lowered the microphone.
“Sir?”
Mercer’s face had changed.
Not guilt.
May you like
Grief.
“My father was on the Celestine.”
