Chapter 11: The Wiretap on the Wrong Phone

The call came through on Horatio's personal cell at 11:22 in the morning, which was the first thing wrong with it.

Horatio was in the Dirksen building, third floor, running a policy memo through the fellowship supervisor's tracked-changes process, and the number that appeared on his screen was the direct line for the Senate Legal Counsel's office — a number he had dialed twice in three years of fellowship work and had never once received a call from. He let it ring a second time before picking up, the way you pause before opening a door you didn't knock on.

The woman on the other end identified herself as Patricia Soo, deputy counsel, and told him this was a routine administrative matter. She had a pleasant, procedural voice. She said his office extension had been flagged in a systems audit as a terminal covered under a broad-scope monitoring authorization — she wanted him to be aware this was a technical designation, not a personal investigation, and that the designation had been in place for eleven days. She was calling as a courtesy, she said, because the authorization's classification tier entitled affected parties to notification. She asked if he had questions.