Auntie peered over her glasses. “That’s not what you’re seeing here? So what am I missing?”

“It’s the inventory,” answered Circe. “We have two clear JPEGS of nuclear devices and several other ‘damaged’ image files. That gives us the type of device and establishes that they are already in place. We have field notes from an operative with a Geiger counter. Not a tape or digital recording of the counter, but personal observation notes that look like they were transferred from a phone text message. We have a list of targets, which is naturally compelling but also weirdly precise, considering that Rasouli has no verifiable ‘source’ for any of this. There’s more, but that’s my first impression.”

“Wow,” said Rudy. “You got all that by looking at this for twenty minutes? You always impress me, my dear.”

“No,” interrupted Circe, “that’s just it, this is too fast. Too easy. It’s like we’re being handed too much too soon.” Again, Bug was nodding along with everything she said.

Rudy frowned. “Isn’t that was Rasouli was trying to do?”

“Yes,” conceded Circe, “and I might have been less suspicious if the drive was intact. What troubles me is the fact that the drive was damaged and yet there are a lot of very key pieces here.”

“Exactamundo,” agreed Bug.

“It doesn’t make sense, though” Circe said, then quickly corrected herself. “No—it does make sense, but only if the person placing those files on the drive knew that the drive would be damaged.”

“Yup.”

“No, that’s wrong, too,” murmured Aunt Sallie. “Damage from moisture is random. Does this mean that the files were added after the flash drive was removed during the autopsy?”

“I don’t think so,” said Bug. “In fact I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.”

Rudy asked, “Admittedly I don’t know what I’m talking about, so forgive me if this is a foolish question, but … we can’t actually be certain that the drive was really swallowed by Rasouli’s agent, can we? So, could the moisture damage have been deliberate?”

Bug grinned so hard his face looked ready to explode. “Bingo!”

“Okay, boy genius,” said Aunt Sallie, “tell us.”

“I could do it,” said Bug. “In fact I’m really, really, really sure that someone else who is almost as smart as me did exactly that.”

“Almost as smart?”

Bug sniffed. “If I did it, no one would ever have figured it out.”

“Arrogance is a serious personality flaw,” said Rudy, but he was smiling.