My blood froze.
"Find him," Harris snarled.
I didn't wait. I scrambled to my feet, intending to sprint toward the maintenance door I had picked open.
But as I rose from behind the bier, a large, heavy hand clamped violently onto the back of my neck.
I was violently spun around and slammed backward against the solid oak wall. The impact knocked the wind out of my fragile lungs.
I gasped for air, blinking away the dark spots in my vision.
Standing directly in front of me, flanked by two armed mercenaries, was General Marcus Sterling.
He was older now, his hair completely white, but his eyes still held that same cold, calculating malice I remembered from the desert thirty years ago.
He was holding a suppressed pistol, and he pressed the cold steel barrel directly into my ribs.
"You always were too sentimental for your own good, Arthur," Sterling whispered, a cruel smile twisting his lips. "I knew you wouldn't be able to stay away."
The cold steel of the suppressed pistol dug painfully through my faded coat. I stared into Marcus Sterling’s eyes, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear.
"It's been a long time, Marcus," I rasped, struggling to catch my breath after the impact against the wall. "You're looking older. Selling out your own men must age a man quickly."
Sterling’s cruel smile faded into a hard, flat line. He pressed the gun harder into my side.
"I'm looking at a four-star rank, Arthur," Sterling replied softly. "I'm looking at the Pentagon. And you? You're looking at a trespassing charge, followed by a tragic, fatal heart attack in police custody."
He gestured with his free hand. Captain Harris stepped forward, roughly patting down my coat pockets. Harris pulled out my lockpicks and the rusted iron key.
Harris held the key up. Sterling glanced at it, his eyes narrowing slightly at the scratched '114', before he dismissed it.
"Keep it," Sterling ordered Harris. "Get the box from the casket."
Harris moved to Richard's casket and threw open the heavy lead-lined lid. He didn't hesitate. He grabbed the small steel box clutched in Richard's rigid hands and yanked violently.
There was a sickening sound of bone snapping as Harris broke Richard's stiff fingers to free the box.
A surge of blind rage hit me. I lunged forward, but Sterling’s mercenaries instantly slammed their rifle butts into my shoulders, driving me back against the oak wall. Searing pain exploded through my collarbone.
"Have some respect for the dead, you son of a bitch," I spat at Sterling.
Sterling casually took the locked steel box from Harris. He weighed it in his hands, looking incredibly satisfied.
"Respect is for winners, Arthur," Sterling said calmly. "Richard thought he was so clever. He spent thirty years digging through classified archives, trying to prove that I sold those schematics to the highest bidder."
"So you admit it," I said, my voice shaking with anger.
"Of course I do," Sterling whispered, stepping closer so only I could hear. "I made six million dollars on that deal. It funded my entire political rise. You were just the convenient idiot standing in the blast radius. But Richard... Richard wouldn't let it go. He finally found the offshore bank ledgers linking me to the buyers."
Sterling tapped the locked box in his hands.
"He called me three days ago," Sterling continued, his eyes gleaming with dark triumph. "He told me he had the ledgers. He told me he was going to expose me. But he made a mistake. He told me he locked the evidence away, intending to give it to you. So, I paid him a visit. A little potassium stops a bleeding heart very quickly."
My stomach churned. The reality of Richard's murder was horrifying, but as I looked at the steel box in Sterling's hands, my tactical mind began to race.
My core belief had been completely wrong. I had spent thirty years hating Richard, believing he had abandoned me. But Richard had sacrificed the peace of his retirement to secretly investigate Sterling, all to clear my name. He had died for me.
And now, looking closely at the small steel box, I realized something else.
Sterling hadn't opened it yet. He assumed the ledgers were inside.
But I knew Richard better than Sterling did. Richard was a master tactician. If he knew Sterling was going to kill him, he would never put the real evidence inside his own casket where Sterling could easily find it.
The box was a decoy.
"Take this old fool down to the maintenance crypts," Sterling ordered Harris, stepping back and slipping the steel box into his own heavy dress coat. "Make it quiet. Leave his body in the incinerator room. I need to go deliver a eulogy about my dear, departed friend."
Sterling turned and walked out through the main doors, leaving me with Captain Harris and one heavily armed mercenary.
Harris smiled, pulling a combat knife from his tactical vest. "Move, old man."
The mercenary grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the rear service door.