She sniffed and arched an eyebrow. “Don’t go about thinking I don’t notice you trying to switch subjects on me, young man. But it’s not my business.” She sighed. “I suppose I’m feeling as good as these eighty-six-year-old bones should be feeling. It’s this eight-six-year-old mind that troubles me. With having to fuss over remembering to deliver that thing to you, I plumb forgot to bring my special flask for Warren.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Oh, I’ll be all right. Warren will understand.” The wizened old woman flashed her yellow-toothed smile, patted his cheek, then turned and hobbled over to her husband’s gravesite.

Nate scanned the area, searching for signs of any watchers in the vicinity. Other than Mrs. Jacobsen and the bored-looking driver who was reading a magazine, there was nobody else within visual range.

Nate looked down at the thumb drive in his hand. Beneath the plastic endcap was a fingerprint reader.

He glanced at the old woman fifty yards away and shook his head. Who the hell would give a crazy old woman a biometrically encrypted storage device?

Nate panned his gaze across the cemetery, his senses on high alert.

Whoever sent this has access to my biometric data and has been watching my movements.

###

As the last of the intelligence team assembled, Nate attached his laptop to the projector cable and pulled up his PowerPoint presentation. One of the agents flipped a switch on the wall, and the windows turned opaque.

Jeff kicked things off. “This morning, an encrypted storage device, with information on the operation we’ve been investigating, was delivered to Agent Carrington via an uninvolved third party. That device was keyed to be accessible only with Nate’s fingerprint. Only someone with access to our HR records could have done that.”

“You’re thinking this was someone in the IC? Someone with high-level access?” asked Deputy Director Sheila Franks. She was the number two at the FBI, just behind the director himself. She had a reputation for being brilliant, intense, and no-nonsense.

Jeff nodded. “It has to be. But it also seems to be a black op. I’ve been searching for whoever’s running it for months, and I’ve hit dead ends at every turn.”

“Did you check with the Firm?” she asked.

“British intelligence has nothing on any of this. We’ve collected some data through our leak to INTERPOL, but so far, nothing panned out. Until today. Thanks to the files given to Agent Carrington, we now have a lot more to work with. But I’ll let Carrington take it from here.”

Jeff sat down, and Nate cleared his throat. He felt the deputy director staring intensely at him.

He projected the first page of his presentation. “The records on the device have enabled us to assemble a basic history of the operation, which was given a compartment code of DRWN.