She went through the roster herself. She looked for three things: competence, which was visible in the quality of their previous audit reports; independence, which was visible in whether their career advancement had followed normal merit patterns or had included the specific irregular jumps that indicated patronage; and nerve, which was harder to assess from paperwork but which she could sometimes read in the way a person had documented uncomfortable findings in past audits — whether they had softened them, buried them in qualifications, or written them plainly.
She found four people who had all three.
She called them in and spoke to them directly, which was also not standard procedure, and she explained exactly what they were going to find in the Verdan corridor garrison and exactly what she needed documented and exactly what the chain of reporting they were following led to and why that chain needed to be followed all the way to its end regardless of where the end was.
