Chapter 13: Nathan's Version
Nathan's version began with the word technically.
"Technically, an administrative field can be revised without altering scientific data."
We sat in a smaller conference room with the audit chair, Rhea, the outside custodian, and Nathan's newly retained personal attorney. At the committee's request, each named executive would give a preliminary account before seeing the recovered backups.
Nathan had insisted on going first.
"Did you revise the field?" the audit chair asked.
"No."
"Did you instruct anyone to revise it?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Did your department control the service account?"
"The account was assigned to a cross-functional administrative group."
Every answer created distance between him and a verb.
I watched his hands. He kept the left one on the table and the right around a pen he never used. He had done the same thing while negotiating our wedding venue, refusing to call a cancellation fee nonrefundable until he had read three definitions.
The audit chair displayed the archive custody entry.
"Why did you check out the complete license file?"
"Legal was preparing for a potential investigation."
"Why was it never returned?"
"I cannot confirm that it was not. The database may be incomplete."
"Did you know the annexes were absent from the current corporate copy?"
"I knew the operational copy did not include them."
Rhea leaned forward. "When did you learn that?"
His attorney objected to the breadth.
Nathan narrowed it himself. "I cannot identify a precise date."
He was helping the questioner less than he appeared to. A person who truly learned something yesterday usually said yesterday.
"Did you tell the board the operational copy was incomplete?" Rhea asked.
"I did not characterize it as incomplete."
"What did you call it?"
"The agreement in active use."
"A version missing seventeen pages."
"A version reflecting the company's operative understanding."
There it was. Not a missing contract. An understanding. Nathan had always been talented at giving a decision a softer noun after it was made.
The audit chair moved to the 2:17 entry.
"Did you know Dr. Sterling's initials had been placed in the approval field after her access ended?"
"I did not make that change."
"That was not my question."
"I did not direct it."
"Also not my question."
His attorney requested a break.
Nathan shook his head.
"I became aware during incident reconciliation that an administrator had completed missing record fields. I was told the entries reflected earlier approvals."
My throat tightened, but my voice stayed level.
"Who told you I approved it?"
"The science team provided the underlying facts."
"Name one person."
"I am not going to reconstruct a five-year-old conversation without records."
"But you were willing to reconstruct my approval without one."
His gaze met mine.
For a moment, the conference room fell away. I saw the man who had brought my coat to the lobby while my badge flashed red. He had known there were later entries. Perhaps not every detail. Enough to ask.
He chose not to.
His attorney placed a hand over Nathan's unused pen.
"Do not answer questions about personal history."
"I asked about a scientific approval," I said.
Nathan pulled the pen free. "The committee relied on information from multiple departments."
"And you signed its report."
"As legal reviewer, not scientific author."
"You certified the process, not the truth?"
He did not answer.
The custodian handed the audit chair an automated-notification log recovered that morning. It showed that the service account sent completion notices to designated administrators after manual revisions.
One notice went out at 2:21 a.m.
Recipient: Office of General Counsel.
Named administrator: Nathan Cole.
The audit chair slid the page toward him.
"You received this four minutes after the change."
Nathan read it.
"Did you open the notice?" the audit chair asked.
"I do not recall."
The recovered mail gateway showed it marked read at 6:12 the next morning, thirty-one minutes before Nathan met me in the lobby and said no records had changed.
He looked at that timestamp longer than he had looked at me.
Then he made the mistake he had avoided all morning.
"That notice did not identify who made the change."
No one had asked whether it did.