Chapter 18 #2
Margot has been watching the entire exchange from her chair without speaking.
She looks at me then at the whiteboard behind Nadia’s console, where the access log pattern is mapped across eight compromised windows.
“Can I ask something?” Margot’s voice is calm.
Everyone turns. She points to the whiteboard behind Nadia’s console.
“Why does Kolya’s security console keep appearing near every leak, and no one at this table is willing to question him? ”
The room is uncomfortably silent in response to the question nobody wanted to ask because the answer might require action they’re not ready to take.
Kolya turns to Margot. His expression is calm, professional, and entirely undefended as he gives her a more in-depth explanation of the same justification he gave Nathan moments ago. “Because my access is required for every protected movement.”
His voice carries no offense, no defensiveness, and no urgency.
“Every security sweep, every cleared schedule, and every protected movement in this building routes through my console. If you map my access against any operational activity, compromised or not, you’ll find the same overlap.
My presence near the leak is indistinguishable from my presence near every other operational function, because my job requires me to be near all of them. ”
The explanation is operationally sound. It’s also the perfect answer from a man whose job makes him impossible to separate from the system he protects.
Margot nods once and looks back at her hands on the table.
Kolya absorbed the question, answered it correctly, and moved on. I’m surprised by how calmly he responded.
It’s time to move on. “Nobody moves without my direct approval. Nobody accesses operational files outside their standard function without clearing it through Nadia. Nobody runs back-channel payments, automated or otherwise, without documentation. That applies to everyone at this table.”
Josef stands. He leaves without acknowledging the instruction. Nathan stays seated. Kolya picks up his briefing folder and walks out, also without speaking.
Mama follows Josef. At the door, she pauses and looks back at Margot. The look carries recognition, respect, and a warning I can’t translate but Margot seems to understand.
The room empties. Nadia begins saving the access logs.
Zavid crosses to me and lowers his voice. “Margot asked the only clean question during the meeting. Everyone else was protecting their position or attacking someone else’s. She looked at the pattern and pointed at the gap.”
Kolya walks down the corridor, unhurried, with the briefing folder tucked under his arm. He disappears from view, but he maintained his usual composure in every meeting where his name appears on an access list.
I don’t like how little Margot’s question surprised him or how perfect his answer was.
I don’t like how long it took for someone to ask what needed asking, and that it was Margot, a woman I abducted from a motel months ago while the men I’ve trusted for years kept looking everywhere except at each other.
Zavid watches me for a moment. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“Perhaps. I need more evidence before I’m willing to act on what I’m thinking.”
“Then let the false-schedule results come in.” Zavid closes his legal pad. “Seventy-two hours. If Kolya’s version is the one that reaches Kirill, the evidence stops being circumstantial.”
I nod. Seventy-two hours. Three days between suspicion and proof. Everyone in the test has already received a uniquely marked schedule, so it’s too late to remove the identifiers now. We just have to wait.
Margot is still in her chair. She hasn’t stood. She’s looking at the whiteboard.
“You saw it too.” I cross to her. “The way he answered.”
She looks up at me. “He answered without needing a second to think. Like he’d been preparing for it.”
“He’s the security chief. He prepares for everything.”
“I know.” She stands and pushes her chair in. “That’s exactly what makes it hard to tell the difference.”
She walks out of the strategy room without looking back. I watch her go and think about Mama saying Papa refused to question the people closest to him because questioning them meant questioning his own judgment. He was too arrogant to second-guess himself, and it was a fatal flaw.
I can’t afford to do that.
Kolya has been closest to the system for eleven years.
He built half the security protocols. He designed the console access structure.
He defined the parameters for what counts as a standard sweep and what counts as a deviation.
If Kolya is the leak, the system I’ve been using to find the leak is the system he designed, and every search I’ve run has been running on his terms.
Margot asked why Kolya keeps appearing near every leak. The answer Kolya gave was that his position requires it, but what he really meant is his position makes him untouchable.
The false-schedule results will tell me whether the man I’ve trusted for eleven years has been selling us from inside the system he designed. I’d rather it be him than Nathan, and I’d rather it be Josef than either of them. I can’t let what I want blind me to the truth when it comes, though.