Page 18 of The ARC Unit: Breach

I compared the screen with the notes I’d made on the plane. The summary had reduced more than a week of surveillance into a paragraph, which was exactly the sort of compression that made analysts accidentally treat an official decision as the beginning of an event.

“When does the warehouse start clearing?”

Raven pointed several spaces earlier. The difference looked worse on the complete timeline. Partial vehicle movement began late Tuesday and personnel inside the warehouse changed Wednesday afternoon, with two men leaving and never returning. The request for ARC support was approved early Thursday morning. By the time Wolf received the operation, Cerberus had already been reducing whatever presence it had there for more than a day.

I leaned closer to the screen. “Who knew they were being watched Tuesday?”

“Romanian service, obviously. Local surveillance team. A liaison in Bucharest. Depending on which report you believe, somebody in border intelligence had part of it.”

“How many people?”

“More than Wolf would like.”

“That’s not difficult.”

Raven smiled. “Fair.”

I went through the source chain again. “Was anyone from ARC included?”

“No.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody.”

“And Wolf sees the target for the first time Thursday?”

“Yes.”

I circled Tuesday on the printed timeline. “Then Romania can’t be evidence that the warning originated here.”

“It can still be part of the same problem.”

“Sure, but that’s different.”

Raven looked toward me.

I turned the page.

“If someone inside ARC is leaking operations, that would explain Cerberus knowing where you’re going after ARC has the target. But Romania started moving before ARC was even involved. That’s a different problem, and we shouldn’t assume they’re connected until we can prove it.”

Raven nodded slowly, then brought Prague onto the next screen.

“Go on.”

Prague took longer.

The reporting had come through different services whose officers appeared to have a personal disagreement with standardized time zones. Raven and I spent nearly twenty minutes converting entries and rebuilding the sequence before the pattern became visible.

The target was a courier who had been staying at the same hotel for almost two weeks. An allied service identified him, surveillance went up, and ARC became involved later when investigators connected the man to one of Kade’s suspected financial channels. The only problem was that the courier changed hotels before ARC was ever tasked with going there.

I tapped the screen. “Earlier again.”

“By about fourteen hours.”

“Who knew ARC was coming fourteen hours before ARC knew ARC was coming?”

Raven leaned back in his chair. “Unless Wolf’s psychic, not Wolf.”