“I stayed here late last night trying to find a match for the Fake Gelfland photo. Got conditional permission from the CIA and Twenty-Six Fed to access their classified databases. A couple other agencies too. I ran a full dragnet.”

Leo grunted. Twenty-Six Federal Plaza was the location of the FBI’s New York field office, where he had been Ki’s direct superior once upon a time. Apparently, his former ASAC still had a gift for jumping over the procedural bogs that could normally stall investigations for weeks.

“Any luck?” he said.

“Yeah. Well, in a different way than you’d think. It’s weird. The searches were all busts. Until I wound up getting a hit. Sort of. On Mirror Image.”

“Our database?”

“Yessir. That’s the weird part.”

Leo straightened slightly out of his tired slouch.

“OK,” he said. “How about the sort of part?”

“I can’t pull the image for a look at it.”

Harris frowned.

“Why not?”

“It’s locked up tight. Priority A status. Only the person who assigned it can open the file.”

“You know who that person is?”

“Yessir. It was right on my screen.”

“Then, how about you stop fucking around and tell me?”

Ki told him.

He sat there looking surprised.

“Carol? It’s Leo.”

“Hi, I just walked in. What’s up?”

Which was exactly what Leo had asked five minutes ago, and one link back on the lengthening telephone chain Ki had started.

He held the receiver in his hand, his eyes straying to his watch. It was just after nine thirty.

“You ever hear of something called Pinnacle?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Carol?”

“I’m here.”

“No shit,” he said. “What’s Pinnacle, Carol?”

She didn’t answer.

Leo Harris was an experienced investigator. But he didn’t need to be one to know that if you asked somebody the same question twice and got silence both times, chances were that person was holding back on you.

“Listen,” he said. “There’s a locked file in Mirror Image. And I think something’s in it about that guy on the Stalwart. Fake Gelfland.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. But only because I can’t open the file.”

“Who locked it?”

He told her, then listened to more dead air.

“I have to call Alex,” she said after ten long seconds. “Stay tuned.”

“Hello, you’ve reached the voice mail of Alex Michaels. I’m away from my desk right now. But if you’ll leave your name, number and a brief message, I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”

Morse hesitated with her fingers tight around her phone.

“Alex, it’s Carol Morse,” she said. “Call me ASAP. It’s urgent.”

She hung up and glanced impatiently at her watch.

It was a quarter to ten.