There were no filing cabinets in the room. No bureau within which documents might be stored. The files they were about to read must have come from a repository elsewhere in the building, probably from TDF’s intelligence division. That was fine. What she wanted was access to the drive on that laptop.

What she got, for the moment, was an offer of more coffee and cake. McCutcheon confessed to a weakness for cake in the morning, a legacy, he said, of a German grandmother. Caitlin turned down both offers, but Musso surprised her by volunteering for a second breakfast.

‘Well, I like cake,’ he said, in response to her quizzical look.

‘I wouldn’t trust a man who didn’t, Tusk,’ said McCutcheon, who was making himself very comfortable again with everyone’s first names. ‘So, I’ll let you read up on the doings and the goings-on over in Florida. And then we can talk through any questions you might have. I imagine you’ll also want to expedite the rendition of the prisoners to Seattle, so that NIA and Defense Intelligence can have a piece of them.’

‘I imagine you’re correct,’ Musso replied.

For a second she thought McCutcheon might be about to leave them alone in his office while he tended to cake and coffee orders. Not that she would’ve been so foolish as to attempt to crack open his lappy and take a peak while he was doing that. McCutcheon didn’t make such a rookie error, or attempt such an obvious entrapment. Instead he simply used the phone to order up the refreshments.

‘Bathroom’s through there if and when you need it,’ he told them both, jerking his thumb over towards the far side of the room, where a door opened up onto a small kitchenette, and beyond that into a washroom.

‘I think I might, if you don’t mind,’ said Musso heading in that direction. ‘Too much damn coffee.’

Blackstone’s aide waited until the general had left before speaking again.

‘I’m sorry things haven’t worked out so well between us and Seattle, Kate,’ he said, while working through the same elaborate procedure as before for unlocking the briefcase. ‘The old man, you know, he was fairly cut up about what happened back there after the Wave. Particularly Kipper’s role. He thought they’d worked together pretty well to pull that city through, so it was a bit of a shock to turn around and find he’d been stabbed in the back like that. You can understand the man would have difficulties working with the President again.’