“I shouldn’t have come here tonight.”

He turned and walked back toward the stairs.

The heavy steel door groaned as he pushed it open.

The cold night air from the street above drifted down into the basement.

I stood in the silence of the archive room, the red light still flashing on the wall.

I shut down the laptop and slid it into my leather bag.

I checked the hallway through the small wired-glass window of the door.

The corridor was empty, smelling of damp concrete and old floor wax.

I slipped out into the darkness.

The drive to the military records annex took twenty minutes through the rain.

The streets of Washington were slick and black under the streetlights.

I parked three blocks away, near a shuttered diner.

The Annex was an old brick building, squat and windowless, squeezed between two glass office towers.

A single light burned above the basement entrance.

I pulled my collar up against the wind and walked down the concrete steps.

The green paint on the metal door was peeling.

I knocked three times, then twice more.