“We don’t. What little’s classified is classified at a low level. The truth is that you could dig most of it up from Wikipedia and old magazine articles.”

“If it wasn’t particularly critical information, why do you look so worried?”

“It’s not what the person was after, it’s how they did it. Whoever they were, they have a lot of clearance and a lot of brains.”

“But not so much of either that you didn’t discover them.”

He didn’t respond, looking even more concerned.

“Marcus?”

“The only reason I caught it is because I was running an unannounced diagnostic when the query came in,” he blurted. “I’m sorry, Dr. Kennedy. But it was just dumb luck. If I hadn’t been running it at that exact moment, they would have had pretty much full access to all our databases, and I would have never known anything about it. I’m really sor—”

She held up a hand, silencing him. In a way, Dumond was one of the most trustworthy people she worked with. He was brilliant, obsessive, and driven by motivations that were easy to decipher. Despite his history of draining corporate bank accounts that didn’t belong to him, he genuinely wanted to please her and do the right thing.

“If you wouldn’t have caught it, I’m confident no one else would have, either. Now, tell me this. Did this person get the information they were after?”

He shook his head. “All the files were off-line because of the diagnostic.”

“And I assume they still are?”

“Very off-line. I actually disconnected some hardware. You’d have to have a wrench and physical access to the server to get to them.”

“Now that we know what’s happening, can we track this person if they try again?”

“I doubt it,” he said uncomfortably. “The way the system’s designed—”

Again, she silenced him with a wave of the hand. What she didn’t need was an hours-long explanation of circuit boards and encryption algorithms.

“So, no.”

“That’s correct, ma’am. I can set things up so we know if there are any more attacks, but the way they’re being done makes it impossible to trace back to the person behind the keyboard.”

“You’re saying our system is just wide open to this person for the foreseeable future? That’s not acceptable.”

“No, ma’am. I can reprogram the system to shut them out, but it’s not going to be a smooth transition. Everyone at the Agency will get locked out and have to redo their log-ins.”

“Can I assume that our perpetrator will know we’re onto him or her if we do that?”

“Definitely.”