He was waiting on one of the low cement walls when I came down the ramp from the Mall side. Before I even reached him, he was up and walking—and when I did come alongside, he started briefing me without so much as a hello. I knew Ned well enough to understand when I should just shut up and listen.

Apparently, the Bureau had already secured an administrative subpoena to get a look at Tony Nicholson’s overseas bank records. They’d gotten a whole list of deposits, originating accounts, and names attached to those accounts, through something called the Swift program.

Swift stood for the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It’s a global cooperative based in Belgium that tracks something on the order of six trillion transactions every day. The database doesn’t include routine banking—they don’t necessarily know when I go to the ATM—but just about everything else is in there. The program was under all kinds of legal scrutiny, since it had come out that the US government was using it to track terror cells, post 9/11. Whatever the obstacles, though, someone at the Bureau had gotten around them.

“If this were my case, which it isn’t, I’d follow the numbers,” Mahoney said, still peppering me with information. “I would start with the biggest depositors into Nicholson’s account and work my way down from there. I don’t know how much time you’ll have, though, Alex. This thing is unbelievably hot. Something is not right here, in a big way.”

“Isn’t the Bureau already on it? They have to be, right?”

It was the first question I’d asked in five minutes of nonstop talk. Ned was as manic as I’d ever seen him, which is saying a lot, since he’s usually a buzz saw on Red Bull.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. He shoved his hands into his pockets, and we started another lap around the sunken garden.

“Something’s sure up, Alex. Here’s an example. I don’t understand it, but the whole case has been moved out to the Charlottesville Resident Agency, which is a satellite. They’ll work with Richmond, I guess.”

“Moved? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would they do that?”

I knew from past experience that the Bureau didn’t swap cases around midstream on a whim. It almost never happened. They might cobble a task force between offices to cover a wider area, but nothing like this.

“Word came down from the deputy director’s office yesterday—and they transferred the files overnight. I don’t know who the new SAC is, or if there even is one. Nobody’ll talk to me about this case. As far as they’re all concerned, I’m just a guy running a lot of field agents. I shouldn’t even be on this anymore. I definitely shouldn’t be here.”

“Maybe they’re trying to tell you something,” I said, but he ignored the joke. It was pretty lame, anyway. I just wanted to calm Ned down a little if I could. I wanted him to speak slowly enough that I could follow.