Chapter3
Two contacts from the Philadelphia branch were arrested an hour before the operation.
The news reached me at two in the morning. I sat up in bed, made four phone calls, and within ten minutes, I had confirmed the basics: two people, simultaneously, different locations, with a time difference of no more than three minutes.
Not an accident. Not an infiltration. Someone knew the operation time and the contacts' locations in advance.
I hung up the last call and sat in the dark thinking for about two minutes.
Then, I began the investigation.
Five days.
I did a complete sweep of everyone who had touched the Philadelphia operation intel over the past six weeks. Source channels, access times, clearance levels—I walked down every single thread individually, cross-referencing, looking for anomalies in the flow of information at that specific time node.
Lucas's name appeared in the access logs.
Not once, but twice. The first time was forty-eight hours before the operation plan was finalized. He pulled the Philadelphia branch's contact list under the pretext of channel integration. This request had Victoria's authorization slip. Proper format, compliant procedure. The second time was thirty-six hours before the op. He had an informal, offline meeting with an external contact in Manhattan. Duration: about forty minutes. That external contact's official identity was a business consultant, but in my records, this man had indirect ties to two intelligence channels on the East Coast.
The timeline matched perfectly.
I compiled these two threads into a separate report, attached the raw logs, and brought it into that internal meeting.
There were seven people in the conference room. Victoria was at the head of the table; Lucas sat in the far-right corner.
I finished presenting the report, put down the file, and waited for Victoria to speak.
"Are you saying you suspect Lucas?"
She wasn't asking for confirmation. She was setting the narrative.
"I'm saying these two timeframes need to be investigated," I said. "Anyone who had access to the relevant intel within this window falls under the scope of the investigation."
Victoria closed the file.
"I brought Lucas in."
I said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
"I will have someone re-verify your report. But until the results are out, I don't want this kind of suspicion circulating within the organization."
Verify, but don't circulate.
"You've been in this organization for fourteen years," she said. "You should know what it means to undermine internal unity."
I sat in my chair, turning those few words—undermine internal unity—over in my head.
Two contacts arrested. The Philadelphia line temporarily dead. The full extent of the damage not yet calculated. And at a time like this, she was talking to me about undermining internal unity.
I looked at Lucas.
He sat in the corner, his expression calm, hands resting on the table. No anxiety, no tension, no urge to explain himself. He just sat there, like a bystander completely unrelated to the matter.
He knew how this meeting would end.
He knew before he even walked in.
I filed that assessment away and turned back to Victoria. "Fine. We wait for the results."
I stood up, took the folder, and walked out of the room.
I sat in my apartment until the early hours of the morning that night.
Not out of anger. I had already dealt with the anger; I processed it while I was sitting in that conference room.
It was because I needed to think through my next few moves clearly.
Victoria's words weren't just protecting Lucas—or rather, they weren't only protecting him. She was telling me that on this issue, she had already chosen her side.
If the report was right, she was protecting a compromised man at the cost of abandoning an investigation that could stop the bleeding.
If the report was wrong, she was humoring an executive elder whose judgment had been clouded by emotion, at the cost of letting me know exactly where I stood in her system of trust.
Either way, the result was the same for me.
I dug out that old address book.
I placed it on the table without opening it, first running through the logic of my next moves in my head.
If I contacted Chicago now, it meant I had concluded this couldn't be resolved internally. It meant I no longer viewed my situation as a problem that could be fixed within the existing framework.
Was this judgment correct?
I sat in the dark and went over every detail of the past seven weeks from the very beginning. That distracted briefing. That dinner eaten alone. "You don't need to be so sensitive." The CC'd email from Boston. Lucas's name listed as the facilitator. That split second Marcos naturally brought up Lucas before his report. Philadelphia. Two contacts. Within three minutes at 2:00 AM. "Undermine internal unity."
Enough.
I opened the address book, found the Chicago number, and dialed.
Two rings. Connected.
The other end was silent, waiting for me to speak.
"It's me," I said. "There's something I need to discuss with you."
"I know," the voice replied. "I've been waiting for you for a long time."
I held the phone in my hand, looking out at the night.
This was the last phone call I would ever make within the Moretti family.
I didn't know it at the time, but looking back now, everything after that exact moment was already set in stone; it just wasn't time for it to unfold yet.
I hung up and put the address book back in the drawer.
Turned off the lights. Went to sleep.
There was still work to do tomorrow. And until a certain event officially happened, I intended to do my job just as flawlessly as I always had.
Not for anyone to see. But because that is how I have always done things.
