I should be focused on those files. Should be analyzing every detail to identify Adrian’s mole. Instead, all I can think about is the way Sasha felt in my arms last night. The sounds she made when she came on my...
“Tony,” Dmitri prompts. “You with us?”
“Yeah.” I pull the top folder toward me. “What are we looking at?”
Boris spreads out several documents. “Three suspects with access to the information that’s been leaking to Adrian. Ivan from accounting, Sergei from operations, and Mikhail from security.”
I force myself to concentrate on the records. Numbers and dates that should tell a story if I can just focus long enough to read them.
“Ivan handles all wire transfers,” Boris continues. “He’d have direct access to the Geneva accounts we fabricated.”
“Sergei coordinates shipments,” Dmitri adds. “He knows our supply chains and distribution networks.”
“And Mikhail oversees compound security, but only over the last year. He was just an enforcer before that.” Boris taps a photograph clipped to one file. “He’d know guard rotations and surveillance blind spots.”
I review the financial records, looking for patterns. Unusual transactions. Timing that correlates with Adrian’s intelligence requests.
But my mind keeps drifting back to the hotel room. To Sasha asking about my uncle. About what made him patient. Nobody’s asked me questions like that in years. Personal questions that have nothing to do with missions or operations or what I can do for them.
She wanted to know about the man who raised me. About where I learned to wait for things that matter.
“Tony,” Dmitri says again, snapping his fingers. “Focus.”
I shake my head and lean over the documents. “Sorry. Give me Ivan’s records first.”
Boris slides a thick folder across the table. I flip it open and start reviewing transaction histories. Dates, amounts, and account numbers. Looking for anything that doesn’t fit the pattern.
“Check for anything that correlates with your reports to Adrian,” Dmitri explains. “If Ivan’s our leak, he’d be accessing files shortly after you feed Adrian false information. Then that same information would appear in Adrian’s follow-up questions or actions.”
I pull out my phone and check the dates of my last three calls with Adrian. Then I cross-reference them with Ivan’s access logs.
There. Three days after I mentioned the Geneva contacts, Ivan accessed those exact files.
“Ivan pulled the Geneva files on the eighteenth,” I note. “That’s seventy-two hours after I fed Adrian that information.”
“Could be routine,” Boris points out. “He handles those accounts.”
“What about the Cyprus information?” I flip through more records. “I mentioned that to Adrian on the twenty-third.”
Dmitri leans forward. “And?”
“Ivan accessed those files on the twenty-fifth. Same pattern.”
Dmitri frowns. “I don’t know. Ivan’s competent at his job, but he’s not sophisticated. He’s a numbers man. Keeps his head down. I can’t see him having the connections or the nerve to approach someone like Adrian.”
“Maybe Adrian approached him,” I suggest.
“Even so.” Dmitri shakes his head. “Ivan’s not worldly enough to navigate that kind of arrangement. He panics when wire transfers are delayed by a day. You think he could handle being a double agent?”
Boris pulls out Sergei’s records. “Let’s check the others before we jump to conclusions.”
We spend the next hour going through files. Sergei’s access logs don’t correlate with my Adrian calls at all. Mikhail’s show some overlap, but nothing as consistent as Ivan’s pattern.
“Three suspects,” Boris summarizes. “No smoking gun.”
“Ivan has the strongest correlation,” I point out. “But Dmitri’s right—he accesses these files as part of his regular duties. We can’t distinguish between legitimate work and leaking.”
“Mikhail’s activity is sporadic,” Dmitri adds. “Could be suspicious or could be nothing.”
