Nia let the silence hold for only a moment before she moved away from the wall.
There was one question that mattered now, and Kadir had already given them the beginning of the answer: the voice he remembered belonged to someone inside headquarters, and he believed that someone was Dunn.
Dunn looked at her before he looked at Kadir.
“That proves nothing,” he said.
Nia noticed the change immediately. A minute earlier, the lieutenant had controlled the interrogation. He had asked the questions, interrupted the answers, and decided which details deserved attention. Now he was defending himself before anyone had accused him of anything.
Kadir remained seated.
Nia stepped closer to the table.
“You said you heard the lieutenant before the raid.”
“Yes.”
“And you heard him say, ‘Let the convoy through.’”
“Yes.”
Dunn planted both hands on the table.
“He heard a voice over a radio. That is all.”
Kadir finally turned toward Nia.
“He gave more than one order.”
Dunn straightened.
Nia saw it.
So did Kadir.
“What other order?” she asked.
Dunn spoke before the prisoner could answer.
“This interrogation is over.”
Nia did not move.
Dunn stared at her. “Captain.”
The rank was a warning now.
Nia had served long enough to recognize the difference between an officer ending an unproductive interrogation and an officer trying to stop a particular answer. Dunn was no longer impatient with Kadir. He was afraid of what Kadir might remember next.
She turned back to the prisoner.
“Answer the question.”
Kadir studied Dunn again, almost as if he needed the lieutenant’s face to bring the memory into focus.
“He told them not to challenge the lead vehicle.”
Nia felt the room tighten around those words.
Dunn gave a short, humorless laugh.
“And now he remembers that?”
Kadir’s expression did not change.
“You spoke quickly. You were angry because someone kept asking you to repeat yourself.”
Dunn’s jaw tightened.
That detail bothered Nia more than the accusation itself.
Kadir had recognized Dunn first by his voice and impatient tone. Now he was describing the behavior that went with it.
Nia walked to the door and opened it.
The guard outside looked toward her.
“Get Major Ellis.”
Dunn moved around the table.
“No.”
Nia looked back at him.
For the first time since the interrogation began, neither of them pretended this was still about Kadir.
Dunn lowered his voice.
“You have a prisoner trying to divide officers inside a command post. Think about what you’re doing.”
“I am.”
“You have no recording.”
“I didn’t say I did.”
“No call sign. No confirmed channel. No witness except him.”
Nia watched Dunn list the weaknesses in Kadir’s statement with remarkable speed.
Every point was reasonable.
That was what made the situation dangerous.
Kadir’s recognition could be wrong. A voice heard over a radio before a raid was not enough to establish betrayal. But Dunn’s attempt to stop the questioning was not something Nia could ignore either.
She closed the door again, leaving the guard to find Ellis.
Then she returned to Kadir.
“Start from the beginning of what you heard. Nothing else.”
Kadir nodded.
He described waiting before the raid while radio traffic moved between men preparing for the convoy. He did not claim to know where Dunn had been. He did not claim to understand why the order had been given. He only repeated what he remembered hearing.
The voice had instructed someone to allow the convoy to continue.
Later, the same voice had warned against challenging the lead vehicle.
Then the transmission had ended.
Nia kept her questions narrow.
“Did the speaker identify himself?”
“No.”
“Did anyone use his name?”
“No.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
Dunn folded his arms.
“There. You have your answer.”
Nia ignored him.
“How certain are you that this is the same voice?”
Kadir looked directly at Dunn.
“I listened to him argue with me for twenty minutes today.”
Dunn took a step toward the table.
Nia moved between them.
“Enough.”
This time she was speaking to Dunn.
The door opened behind her. Major Ellis entered, took in the positions of all three people, and immediately understood that the interrogation had changed direction.
“What happened?”
Nia gave him the shortest version possible.
“Kadir says he heard Lieutenant Dunn on enemy radio traffic before the raid.”
Ellis looked at Dunn.
Dunn shook his head. “He says he heard a voice.”
“He identified the voice as yours.”
“After hearing me in this room.”
“That’s correct.”
Ellis turned to Kadir.
“What exactly did the voice say?”
Kadir repeated the two orders.
Ellis did not react immediately.
Then he looked at Nia.
“Outside.”
Dunn started to follow.
Ellis stopped him with one raised hand.
“Stay here.”
That was the first moment Nia saw genuine alarm break through Dunn’s composure.
In the corridor, Ellis waited until the door closed.
“You believe the prisoner?”
“I believe he recognized something. I don’t know what it means yet.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“I know.”
Ellis glanced toward the interrogation room.
Nia continued before he could dismiss it.
“Dunn tried to end the interview the moment Kadir started giving details.”
“That still isn’t proof.”
“No. But it is a reason to verify what can be verified.”
Ellis considered that.
“What do you want?”
“The headquarters communications log from before the raid.”
Ellis looked at her for several seconds.
Then he nodded once.
“Come with me.”
They left Dunn with the guard and Kadir inside the room.
The communications station was quieter at that hour. A duty operator looked up when Ellis entered, then stood when he recognized him.
Ellis asked for the records covering the period before the raid.
The operator hesitated.
“Which traffic, sir?”
“All outgoing traffic from headquarters.”
The hesitation lasted a fraction too long.
Nia noticed.
Ellis did too.
“What?” he asked.
The operator swallowed.
“There was an irregular entry that night.”
Nia felt the first real shift in the investigation.
“What kind of irregular entry?”
“A transmission was logged from an internal set, but the authorization field was incomplete.”
“Why wasn’t that reported?” Ellis asked.
“It was flagged.”
“To whom?”
The operator turned to the terminal.
He searched the records, then stopped.
Nia watched his expression change.
“What is it?”
“The flag was cleared.”
“By whom?”
The operator did not answer immediately.
Ellis stepped closer.
“Sergeant.”
The man pointed at the screen.
“The clearance used Lieutenant Dunn’s credentials.”
Nia said nothing.
Neither did Ellis.
It was not proof that Dunn had spoken to the enemy. Credentials could establish access without establishing who had actually used them. But the coincidence was no longer confined to Kadir’s memory.
There had been an irregular transmission.
Someone had noticed it.
And the record had later been cleared under Dunn’s authority.
Ellis ordered the operator not to alter anything else.
Then he and Nia returned to the interrogation room.
Dunn was standing near the wall when they entered.
He looked at Ellis first.
“What did you find?”
Nia noticed the wording.
Not: What were you checking?
What did you find?
Ellis closed the door.
“An irregular transmission was logged before the raid.”
Dunn’s face remained controlled.
“And?”
“The flag was cleared with your credentials.”
For the first time, Kadir stopped watching Dunn and looked at Nia instead.
Dunn exhaled slowly.
“That still doesn’t make me the voice.”
“No,” Nia said. “It doesn’t.”
Dunn seemed almost surprised that she agreed.
She continued.
“So tell us why your credentials were used.”
“I clear communications flags all the time.”
“Do you remember this one?”
“No.”
“Then why did you try to stop Kadir before he finished describing it?”
Dunn’s eyes hardened.
“Because prisoners lie.”
Kadir leaned forward.
“You knew the road.”
Dunn turned toward him.
Nia caught the movement.
“What road?” she asked.
Kadir answered carefully.
“The convoy route. The voice said the lead vehicle would not stop at the eastern checkpoint.”
Ellis looked sharply at Dunn.
Nia felt the implication before anyone spoke it aloud.
That was no longer a general instruction to let a convoy pass. It concerned a specific point on the route.
Dunn shook his head.
“Anyone involved in the operation could have known that.”
“How many?” Nia asked.
Dunn did not answer.
Ellis did.
“Not many.”
Nia turned to him.
“How many had the final route?”
Ellis’s silence was enough to change the room again.
Finally he said, “The route was revised shortly before departure.”
Kadir looked between them.
Nia asked the next question slowly.
“Who received the revision?”
Ellis named a small group of command personnel.
Dunn was among them.
Still, Nia refused to jump ahead of what they knew.
Access was not guilt.
Credentials were not a voice.
A prisoner’s memory was not a recording.
But separate facts were beginning to point toward the same narrow space.
Dunn understood that too.
“You’re building a case out of coincidences,” he said.
“No,” Nia replied. “We’re checking whether they are coincidences.”
Ellis ordered Dunn to surrender his radio and remain inside headquarters until the communications review was complete.
Dunn stared at him.
“You’re restricting an officer based on the word of a prisoner?”
“Based on an unexplained transmission connected to your credentials,” Ellis said.
Dunn slowly removed the radio from his belt and placed it on the table.
Kadir’s eyes dropped to it.
Then he frowned.
Nia noticed.
“What?”
Kadir did not answer immediately.
He leaned closer, staring at the radio rather than Dunn.
“That sound.”
“What sound?”
“The alert.”
Nia looked at the device. A short tone had sounded when Dunn set it down, triggered by an incoming status notification.
Kadir’s expression had changed completely.
“I heard that before the voice spoke.”
Dunn snapped, “Half the radios in this building make tones.”
Kadir looked up.
“Not that one.”
Ellis picked up the radio.
Nia stopped him from drawing a conclusion.
“We verify it.”
They took the device back to communications.
The operator confirmed that the tone belonged to the radio’s configured alert profile, but he also warned that settings could be copied or changed. Once again, the new fact narrowed the possibilities without closing them.
Nia was beginning to see the shape of the problem.
Every discovery made Dunn harder to dismiss as irrelevant, but none of them alone proved what Kadir believed.
Then the operator found something else.
The internal set used for the irregular transmission had not been assigned to Dunn.
Nia stared at the screen.
For a moment, the entire case seemed to swing away from him.
“Whose set was it?” Ellis asked.
The operator gave them the equipment number.
Ellis recognized it.
“So do I,” Nia said.
It belonged to the operations room.
A shared radio.
Anyone with access to that room could have used it.
Dunn’s credentials had cleared the flag later, but the transmission itself had come from equipment that did not identify a single speaker.
When they returned, Dunn saw the uncertainty on their faces.
“You found it wasn’t my radio.”
Nia stopped.
She had not told him that.
Ellis had not told him that.
Kadir looked from Dunn to Nia.
No one spoke.
Dunn seemed to realize what he had done.
Nia stepped closer.
“How did you know what we found?”
Dunn recovered quickly.
“You took my radio with you. You came back without accusing me. It wasn’t difficult to guess.”
It was possible.
Nia hated that it was possible.
She had no intention of turning suspicion into certainty simply because Dunn made her uneasy.
So she changed direction.
“Then help us clear it.”
Dunn said nothing.
“Who was in the operations room before the raid?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You cleared a flag connected to a transmission from that room.”
“I clear dozens of flags.”
“This one involved an unauthorized transmission shortly before a convoy was allowed through.”
Dunn’s expression tightened again.
Nia watched him carefully.
“You don’t remember the flag. You don’t remember who was in the room. But when Kadir repeated the order, you immediately wanted the interrogation stopped.”
Dunn looked at Ellis.
“You’re going to let her do this?”
Ellis answered quietly.
“I’m waiting for your explanation.”
For several seconds, Dunn gave none.
Then he sat down.
The movement changed him more than any confession could have. The officer who had entered the room demanding answers was now in the chair opposite Kadir.
“I cleared the flag,” Dunn said.
Nia waited.
“I knew about the transmission.”
Kadir’s eyes stayed fixed on him.
“Were you the speaker?” Nia asked.
Dunn looked at the table.
“No.”
“Then who was?”
Dunn did not answer.
Ellis stepped forward.
“Lieutenant.”
Dunn finally looked up.
“The convoy was supposed to get through.”
Nia felt the words land differently this time.
Not because they proved treason.
Because Dunn was no longer denying knowledge of the order.
“Why?” she asked.
Dunn rubbed one hand across his face.
“I was told not to interfere.”
“By whom?”
He hesitated.
Nia understood then why the interrogation had frightened him.
Kadir had not simply recognized Dunn’s voice. He had touched a decision that Dunn had been trying to keep buried inside normal command traffic.
“Who told you?” Ellis repeated.
Dunn looked toward Kadir.
“He’s wrong about one thing.”
Kadir’s expression remained steady.
Dunn continued.
“He heard me on the radio. But I wasn’t talking to his people.”
Nia leaned forward.
“Then who were you talking to?”
Dunn swallowed.
“Our checkpoint.”
The room went still again.
Dunn explained only what he could no longer avoid. He had transmitted the instruction from the operations room. He had told their own checkpoint personnel to let the convoy pass and not challenge the lead vehicle. Later, when the irregular transmission was flagged, he had cleared it using his credentials.
Kadir had heard the transmission because his side had been monitoring the traffic.
That explained the voice without making Kadir’s memory false.
It also created a larger question.
Nia looked at Dunn.
“You gave the order.”
“Yes.”
“And then you concealed the irregular log entry.”
“I cleared it.”
“You knew what it was.”
Dunn did not deny that.
Ellis’s voice was colder now.
“Who authorized you to let that convoy through?”
Dunn looked at him for a long time.
When he finally answered, his voice had lost the impatience Kadir recognized.
“No one you can question in this room.”
Nia did not accept the evasion.
“Name the person.”
Dunn shook his head.
“You think this started with me because he recognized my voice. It didn’t.”
Kadir leaned back in his chair.
For the first time since the interrogation turned, he looked less like the prisoner at the center of the mystery and more like the witness who had accidentally opened it.
Ellis ordered the guard inside.
Dunn stood without being told.
His radio remained on the table between them.
Nia picked it up only after he had been escorted to a separate room.
The interrogation had begun with Dunn demanding answers from Kadir. It ended with Dunn separated from his command duties, his transmission under review, and his own explanation pointing beyond himself.
Kadir had recognized a voice.
The records had established that an irregular transmission existed. Dunn’s credentials had cleared the flag. Dunn had finally admitted giving the order that Kadir remembered.
But the most important question had changed.
It was no longer whether a voice from headquarters had reached enemy ears.
They knew that it had.
It was no longer whether Dunn had said to let the convoy through.
He had admitted that too.
Now Nia needed to know who had given Dunn an order important enough for him to conceal afterward.
She looked through the small window in the interrogation-room door as the lieutenant disappeared down the corridor under guard.
Then she turned back to Kadir.
“One last question.”
Kadir waited.
“When you heard Dunn that night, did anyone answer him?”
Kadir’s face tightened as he searched his memory.
Then he nodded.
Nia pulled the chair out and sat across from him.
“What did the other voice say?”
Kadir looked toward the closed door Dunn had just passed through.
“He said the convoy had already been expected.”
Nia stopped moving.
The order had not created the opening.
Someone had prepared the opening before Dunn ever spoke.
She reached for the communications log again.
This time, she was no longer looking for the lieutenant’s voice.
