23 The Navy Captain Blamed Me For A Disaster In Front Of The Whole Crew — He Didn't Know My Chief Still Had The Original Recording

The transcript had a digital signature.

It took Maya and Ben two days to find it. They did not have access to the squadron's intelligence files — Sloane had seen to that within an hour of the briefing — but they had access to the Dunmore's network, and the ship's intelligence element kept copies of its own outbound traffic for ninety days.

The copy of the transcript in the ship's system was signed with Maya's digital certificate. But the file's internal metadata — the timestamp of the last edit — was 02:14 on the morning of the briefing.

Maya had gone to bed at 22:00 the night before.

"Somebody edited this at two in the morning," she said, looking at the screen. "From a machine on the squadron network. Using my certificate."

"Can they do that?" Ben asked.

"If they have access to my certificate file, yes. The Navy's certificate system is good but it's not magic. If you have access to the machine I log in from, you can pull my certificate and impersonate me." Maya scrolled down. "Or if you have admin credentials on the squadron network, you can do it from anywhere."

"Who has admin credentials on the squadron network?"

"About forty people."

"Who has admin credentials and would want to edit a transcript?"

Maya looked up.

"Paul Hargrove," she said.

Lieutenant Commander Paul Hargrove was Sloane's senior intelligence officer. He was forty-two years old, he was careful, he was competent, and he had been in the room at the briefing, standing two feet to Sloane's left, and Maya had watched his face when the recording played.

He had looked at Sloane before he looked at the recorder. Just for half a second. Just enough for Maya to see it.

"Why Hargrove?" Ben asked.

"Because he signs off on every intelligence document that goes out of the squadron. Including the ones that go to the commodore." Maya tapped the screen. "If the transcript was edited, it either went through him or he did it himself. And if he did it himself, Sloane ordered it."

"Can you prove that?"

"Not yet." Maya sat back. "But Hargrove has a database problem."

"What kind of database problem?"

"He's been trying to get out of the Navy for six months. He put in for an early retirement. It was denied in March. He appealed. The appeal was denied in May. He's stuck here for another two years." Maya looked at Ben. "That's the kind of man who does what he's told by a commodore who can make his life easy or make his life miserable."

Ben nodded slowly.

"So we need to talk to Hargrove."

"We need to talk to Hargrove carefully," Maya said. "If we spook him, he goes to Sloane, and Sloane goes to the admiral, and the admiral goes to the chief of staff, and we're done."

"Then how do we talk to him?"

Maya thought about it.

"Does the ship have a chaplain?"

"Of course."

"Can a chaplain be subpoenaed?"

"No. Confidentiality."

"Exactly." Maya smiled. "Hargrove is Catholic. The Dunmore chaplain is Catholic. If Hargrove wants to talk to a priest, he can talk to a priest, and the priest can't testify about what he hears."

Ben looked at her for a long moment.

"Chen," he said. "You're going to make a very good officer someday."