The Son Returns

Sixty years after John Washington III walked into a private meeting with French President Antoine Beaumont at a chateau, history still does not agree on what happened. Staff accounts contradict each other, the study showed no sign of a struggle, and only one man walked out to the black Citroën - witnesses cannot agree which man it was. Beaumont returned to Paris visibly shaken, cancelled appearances for a month, sold the chateau, and the council never met in full again. In Montmartre, Claire Bennett waited with their two-week-old son Johnny; no body, grave, or confirmed death for John was ever found. The narrative is told by that son, John Washington IV, now sixty-two, recording his testimony in a dark room with his father's box of tapes, photographs, Ruth's list, Claire's notebook, and forty pages of handwritten testimony. Claire raised him in Paris on the full story, published the Hale investigation, and wrote a memoir ending with the line that his father said no when no one else would. Dutch, Marcus, Ruth, and Pryce kept the network alive for decades before it passed to the son, who still hunts a reformed council and a redacted minute page marked B and J.W. Book 10 of The Authorization series by John Washington III.