I would have pulled the firm’s retainer structure, traced the payment vehicle, walked the shells back through three jurisdictions, and had a name inside seventy-two hours.

I am good at it. It is, arguably, the thing I am best at. And it would have been a felony committed by a general officer against a represented defendant in an active proceeding.

I called Diane Kessler and asked her one question — who do I hand this to — and she gave me a name, and I did not open a laptop.

Special Agent Priya Nandakumar, FBI, counterintelligence division, fourteen years in. We met in a conference room with Kessler present, which Nandakumar found funny and I did not.

I gave her what I had, which was two things.

The first was the arithmetic of a K Street retainer against a hotel janitor’s wages.