“Are you absolutely sure about this. Is there any possibility you could be wrong?”

“None.”

“Do you know what this means? What it means for the FBI? For my field office, for my agents?”

“Holly, listen to me. Harv and I aren’t going to do anything that would compromise or embarrass the FBI. We aren’t whistle-blowers. You have our word.”

“Nathan, I—”

“Just listen for a sec. We’ve been thinking about this, working it out. Strictly speaking, what Lansing and Ortega did wasn’t illegal. It may be a terrible lapse in good judgment, but it wasn’t illegal, we all need to understand that. But it raises some other questions. What exactly were the Bridgestones doing prior to dealing in Semtex?”

She sat up a little. “Where are you going with this?”

“Stay with me here. Think back. What did the Bridgestones initially do to get the attention of the FBI?”

“I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure I got a call from Director Lansing to begin surveillance up there.”

“Is that normally how things work? A call from Lansing?”

“No. My boss is in the Los Angeles field office, he’s an assistant director. The call should’ve come from him.”

“Right, but it didn’t, it came from Lansing himself. It would be like a brigadier general giving an order to a battalion commander, bypassing the regiment commander. He bypassed the chain of command, left your assistant director out of the loop. Do you remember what he said?”

“Vaguely. Something about a new militia-type group he wanted to watch.”

“Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“No, I honestly don’t.”

Nathan looked at Harv, then back to Holly. “We read the file on the Bridgestones operation. Frank Ortega gave it to us prior to the raid. Freedom’s Echo was tiny, way under the radar compared to other militia groups in Montana, Idaho, Ohio, you name it. Those big groups have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of members. The Bridgestones were small potatoes. They dealt mostly in small-arms conversions, semiautomatic to full auto, that kind of thing. It wasn’t until the last few months that they started dealing in bigger things.” Nathan watched understanding take Holly’s face.

“You’re saying James Ortega wasn’t just undercover, he was their contact for the Semtex.”