“I know you’re aware of the breach we had here, and I also know one of the guys who reports to you came down here and talked to one of our execs, so I thought, you might have as much interest in this as I do. But I need a favor.”

“You’ve got my attention,” Jeff said. “Tell me what you need.”

“Well, I don’t have subpoena power anymore, so I need you to go look into a former employee of ours. I’ll e-mail you the details of why I think he’s dirty, and I’d like you to follow the trail wherever it leads. I did a little digging myself, but it’s beyond my abilities in the private sector. There’s a CIA connection involved.”

“How the hell can you know that?” Jeff asked.

Nate wondered the same thing.

“Don’t bullshit me, Jeff. If I figured out there’s a connection, I know you know it as well. And if we both know it, then anyone associated with this guy is a suspect. This smells worse than a poorly dug latrine. I figured you’d be the right person to nudge. Am I right?”

Jeff leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping on the ends of his armrests. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m on this, Chief.”

“Word of warning. If you find that we’ve got members of the IC having gone bad, whatever you put onto the high side, that’ll be something they can see as well.”

It seemed this guy shared Nate’s suspicions that there were folks in the intelligence community involved in whatever this was. And given that, if someone put records on the “high side,” or in other words, higher classification servers, they wouldn’t be safe. Just like when the files he’d put into evidence had disappeared.

“I just emailed an encrypted package to your private email address. It has everything I’ve got on our guy, including a psychological workup of him and his suspected associates.” He shared the password to unlock the file.

Jeff checked his smartphone. “Roger that. Received. I won’t even ask how in the world you know my private e-mail address.”

“It’s not all that difficult. Listen to me, Jeff. I strongly suggest that you keep this and all of your related communications off the high side or any other government e-mail services. I’ll bet you they’re compromised by someone on the inside. All e-mails on this subject should be encrypted—different passwords for each transmission, and use scrambled phones when telling the recipient the password. That’ll at least slow down whoever’s watching.”

“Okay, I’ll get right on this. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Don’t trust anyone. You and whoever you assign to this, just watch your sixes. You got me?”

“Got you, Chief.”

“It’s been good talking. Say hi to Margaret for me.”