Level Four was not marked on the station blueprints that David had signed for in Oslo.
The stairway continued down past the mechanical rooms, behind a fire damper that had been painted over so many times the seam had disappeared into the lime-wash wall. David had only found the latch because the draft pulling under the threshold was cold enough to frost the tips of his work boots.
The key on the third brass ring turned with a dry, grinding resistance. Inside, the air smelled of vinegar—the unmistakable decomposition of cellulose acetate film stock.
A corridor eighty meters long stretched into the belly of the bedrock. On either side, steel shelving rose from floor to ceiling, stacked with olive-drab canisters, each labeled with stenciled white alphanumeric codes: *ARC-72-B*, *ARC-73-A*, *ARC-73-C*.
David pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves from his coat pocket. He pulled down the canister marked *ARC-74-DELTA*.
The seal had never been broken. The lead wire with the official customs stamp was intact.
He snapped the wire with his pocket shears and unscrewed the wingnuts. Inside, nested in oiled paper, was a spool of half-inch magnetic tape and a handwritten logbook with an embossed blue linen cover.
He opened the book to the first entry.
The handwriting was compact, slanting sharply to the right, executed with an engineer’s drafting pen.
*14 October 1974. Signal acquisition confirmed at 03:14. Coordinates match the trajectory of Cosmos-690. However, the modulation contains human phonetic markers in an unidentified dialect. We have attempted to notify the Admiralty Board. No acknowledgment received. Orders remain: record, seal, shelve.*
David turned the page. The entries continued for five years, night after night, in the exact same pen, in the exact same hand.
The last entry was dated two weeks ago.