Arena went back to her room and dove into tutorials about recovering agents. There was a knock on her door. When she opened it, George was there.
“The agents from Langley are here,” he said quietly, his face passive. “They want to see you.”
Arena nodded. She walked with him toward the common area. She really didn’t know what to say to George, since she had never had a conversation with him before.
“Wait, agents? There’s more than one?”
“Two,” he said. “But I think you’ll recognize both of them.” He cleared his throat. “I sent Anita home and Sterling is asleep,” he said. “But I thought we needed all the help we could get, so Harriet is working on tracing Lorna and Nate. I will be doing the same while you brief the other agents.”
He led her to the conference room and nothing could have prepared her to see not only Sophia, but Justin Yates. Sophia rushed over and hugged Arena.
“I’m so glad you are okay!” She noticed the bandage on Arena’s neck, and frowned. “I hope that’s not too serious.”
“No, I’m alright,” Arena said.
Yates walked toward her and held out his hand. She cautiously accepted it. “I hope you don’t mind that I came along. It seems that I have a vested interest in what has happened with Celeste. This is one of the highest level breaches we’ve had in recent years.” Arena was still very skeptical. “George, if you would bring Bertha in here, too? I think we could use your advice as well. Let Harriet keep working on finding Celeste’s group.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
George nodded at him, but there were flickers of suspicion in his eyes as well. They could hardly ignore him as a direct supervisor. Yates whispered something to George, then handed him something.
When they gathered in the room, Arena recounted what had happened. When she had finished, she sat down. Yates said, “I think I have more information to add.” He paused, drawing his mouth into a thin line. “I’ve been gathering intel for some time that there’s a rogue black ops group operating within the CIA, and I believe there’s someone at least as high as me directing it. I think they know I am getting close, and have been setting me up for a fall.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out a handful of flash drives. “This is all the intel I have collected.” He gave them each a flash drive. Arena plugged hers into her netbook, and information began to scroll across the screen, mostly of financial data. Much of it was above her head, but she could see it was extensive and carefully researched, with footnotes for footnotes.
“Recently, I began to find larger amounts of money being diverted through a number of accounts,” Yates said. “When I traced them, there were subtle signs that they directed back to my accounts.” He grimaced. “I couldn’t trace them after that. Whoever is doing this has done a very good job of it.” He sat on one of the tables and folded his arms. “There’s not many people who I could trust, and especially not many with the ability to track the information farther. There was only one that came to mind, in fact.” And he is not going to be very happy about this, Arena thought. “So I am here, and though I wish that I didn’t have to involve you all further, I’m fairly certain you are the only group I can trust right now.”
The atmosphere around the room was grim as they studied the information. Arena pulled up a chart of the organization of the CIA, and she studied the names. She was sure Yates, Sterling, and George knew who the top candidates were, but it was probably something she should know already. There were about five people directly above Yates, and around a dozen with the same level of authority. Some did not deal with operations, and she moved those to the bottom of the list as less likely candidates. The list of top candidates included Assistant Deputy Director Fieldhaven and Marilyn Gregor, who was the Director of Foreign Intelligence. She didn’t recognize the other names.
