Translator's block...sorry. Anyway, yeah, here we are with a new, wonderful chapter! Humor me here: as the author, I have to advertise my...whatever it is! I was talking about...nothing...well, maybe I've run out of it, so...thank you for feedback and please, let me know what do you think, especially if you think I should take up knitting!

As usual, I own all of them, even though nobody will ever know. Keep it under your hat, please!

Looking around, I noticed the nightclub still almost empty. Probably too early, for rush hour. In spite of the recent bombardments, I knew that as one of the most popular places in the city, as soon as curfew descended on the grip of frost of new 1943. That, and Lady Henderson's theater.

1900 EST

HARM'S APARTMENT

NORTH OF UNION STATION

The clock on the desk was whistling the seventh trill, when the light blow on the the door scolded him again. Harm quickly put on a t-shirt and, bare-footed, went down the few steps leading to the "living room". The large space was suffused with light and jazz music, and the last corpses of the weekly evening work – takeaway pizza, frozen Pekinese food and a collection of fifty years old Supreme Court's sentences – had thoroughly disappeared. Checked the last points of his mental list, the commander finally approached the threshold, where the knocking was getting quite insistent.

"I'm coming!"

"Open this door! I'm here!"

"I always know where you are" he warmly answered, half-opening the door.

"By chance you always know where my ombrella is, too, don't you? It's pouring" Mac spoke ironically, getting rid of her raincoat with a shiver "We aren't keeping to the schedule, are we?" she asked, after a quick glance, sliding in the room.

"Uh...I wouldn't say that...why?"

"I'm undecided: wet hair or you not wearing those oven gloves...what were they? Crabs?"

"Lobsters"

"Well...anyway, it smells nice, I grant you"

"Thank you. It must be the aftershave" Harm said, careless.

"The food, I mean. Asparagus and..." trying and catching a glimpse of the oven beyond his shoulder "salmon?"

"You eat junk food, but surely can acknowledge a good dish!"

"Yeah. But give up all hope. You won't talk me into helping you with a scrap of nouvelle cuisine"

"Well, as for it, I was relying on my own unique charm..."

"Aren't we a little confident here, this night?"

"...and on your curiosity" Harm ended. Mac put her raincoat, which she had been fiddling with, on a chair and joined him near the stove.

"If you want some water, there is a bottle in the fridge. By now, it should be cool enough" he offered, while checking the fish browning.

"You don't need such a deployment. A pizza would do it"

"I haven't made a promise I can't keep, yet. Anyway, how do you know it isn't Pierre's, the new, true D.C. French takeaway?"

"Uh...interesting...I'll ponder over it, counselor"

"Yeah, but afterwards. Dinner is ready"

When only memoires, of the dutiful salmon, had remained "Very good. I admit I'll have to revalue fish..." talk reached the first subject of the meeting "...but before you launch into the umpteenth healthy food lesson, why don't you tell me what you are going to do?"

"What am I going to do?"

"Yes. About the mole. At this point, I wouldn't recognize you, if you haven't found out a trail...or an inspiration, as you call it"

"Aahh...that. To begin" he said, standing up and heading for the stove, where the coffee was now happily singing "do you think we sholud tell the admiral?"

"Now, I really don't recognize you!" Mac went on, following him, and grabbed two mugs from the top shelf of a cupboard "I don't know. Probably he's got his hands tied, but I can quite picture him: folded harms, knife between his teeth "That's my damn office, damn it. And if there is a damn sneak ransacking my damn baskets..."

"...I want know about it, damn"

Mac, after Harm's imitation, almost chocked on the coffee, but two adjusted slaps brought her among the living, still giggling "Some damn less, but that is the idea...by the way..."

"Checked. After Gunny's outburst, the classified records basket has always been kept under surveillance, in Tiner's office. This way hypothesis number one blows up"

"Tell me there is a number two, please"

"You underestimate me, colonel"

"So?"

"Do you mind if we move this to a more comfortable place?" then Harm asked, taking their cups that, after the little respiratory fit, were pausing onto the counter, and headed for the couch.

"You won't hear me complain" Mac answered, unlacing her shoes and squatting down, with confidence born of use, at the right end of the couch, whereas the partner sat down nearby, stretching out his legs over the coffee table. On synchrony, the two of them brought their cups to the lips and sipped the warm liquid a few moments, in companionable silence. No use blowing its surface – that Mac had checked every day of her life, well, adult life – even if it had been really hot, it was a disastrous device. Whatever forcefulness she had applied to the blast, whatever inclination she had calculated, coffee had scalded her anyway, and her taste buds had lost functionality until the next day. Maybe it was because of this, that she drank so strong black coffee. To her, it was hardly aromatic...

"Outsider"

Snatched from her moka-elaborations, Mac only could gurgle, "What?", surprised.

"The only hypothesis I can stand. Our mole is an outsider. A borrowed officer, a part-time clerk from some office who took the opportunity and rounded out his income"

"Impossible" "Why?"

"Succeeding in gaining access to information and passwords would take too long, before the end of a time contract"

"Well, we have just run out of nice explanations"

"He has to be an insider"

"But who? And where?"

"I can't make myself think about it. It's...It's awful"

"Tomorrow we'll ask Bud for a personnel list. We need to know life, death and miracles of any cleaner in JAG HQ. Even better, I'm calling him now" the commander resolutely exclaimed, springing to his feet, and grasped the cordless resting on the table.

"Harm, but...they aren't classified information, are they?"

"Bud will have some tricks...here he is" he gestured to her to fall silent, as soon as he heard the drowsy voice at the other end of the line "Bud, hello! Sorry about the time, I know AJ is keeping you awake at night...yes...I understand...no, nothing serious...well, we were wondering...yes, the colonel is here with me...could you do us a favour? It's quite urgent...by tomorrow morning...we need a list of personnel at JAG HQ in the last..." he inquiringly turned his eyes to Mac, looking for confirmation "six months? Yes. Every personal file? Bud, you're a mindreader! So, can we count on you? Thank you again...say hello to Harriet and little AJ...see you tomorrow"