I’ve made calls. Don Bruns knows about the case, of course. A few others. We’re…handling things…

The efforts were completely illegal, of course, but they were also proceeding well. The Smoke dissipated a bit more. He asked Ruth to summon Spencer Boston. He then read encrypted texts regarding the efforts to derail the investigation.

Boston arrived a few minutes later. He was wearing a suit and tie, as he always did. It was as if the old-school intelligence community had a dress code. The distinguished man instinctively swung the door shut. Metzger saw Ruth’s eyes gazing into the office for a moment before the heavy oak panel closed with a snap.

“What do you have?” Metzger asked.

Spencer Boston sat, removed a fleck of lint from his slacks that turned out to be a pill of cloth. He stopped pulling before a run appeared. Boston didn’t seem to have had much sleep, which, for someone in his sixties, made him seem haggard. And what the hell do I look like? Metzger wondered, brushing his chin to see if he’d remembered to shave. He had.

Despite Metzger’s reputation, Boston never hesitated to give him bad news. Running assets in Central America gives you a fortitude that won’t be scuffed by a younger bureaucrat, however ill-tempered. He said evenly, “Nothing, Shreve. Nothing. I’ve checked every log-in for the kill order files. And all the outgoing email and FTP and upload servers, had our IT security people see if they could find anything. And the security folks at Homestead. Nobody downloaded it except those on the list. That means somebody probably snagged it off a desk here, Washington or in Florida, smuggled it out and copied it or scanned it at home or a Kinko’s.”

At NIOS and its affiliated organizations, all photocopying and logging on were automatically recorded.

“Kinko’s. Jesus.”

The administrations director continued, “And I went back and looked over the vetting assessments here. Not a hint that anybody’d have a problem with STO missions. Hell, most of our people knew what we were up to before they joined.”

NIOS was created after 9/11 largely for the purpose of targeted remedies, along with other extreme operational activities, like kidnappings, bribery and other dirty tricks. Most of the office’s specialists had a history of military service and had taken lives in the course of their careers before joining NIOS. It seemed inconceivable that any of them would have a change of heart and try to bring down his operation. As for the other staff, Boston was right, most applicants knew what the organization was up to before they signed on.

Unless, of course, that was why they joined in the first place. Moles. Despicable.

Metzger: “We’ll have to keep looking. And for God’s sake, there can’t be any more leaks. He already knows too much.”

Wizardly.