Three days before the ship vanished from the face of the earth.

After extracting the human resources file, Kali had prowled online for information about the parent corporation. While the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 did not quite prohibit companies from operating namelessly in the United States, it did require their owners to provide their names, birth dates, addresses and other documents to the Treasury Department.

Its public database quickly revealed that the parent was co-owned by a husband and wife, Deng Yannan and Deng Jing. Yannan, the husband, was also sole owner of a business called Jinggu Technologies. Both were born and bred residents of the People’s Republic of China. Furthermore, Yannan was a government insider. The brother-in-law of the Chinese president and an international trade representative for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

“I’ll tell you what bothers me,” Carmody said. “This group comes aboard the ship. They aren’t really hired by Seven Winds. They don’t have résumés in its HR system. They all work for the no-name and just show up at the dock one day as kitchen help. What’s that about?”

“We don’t know, Michael.”

“Right. But it’s the timing. And the guy who owns the no-name. Yannan has some serious political connections.” He paused. “Morse thinks China’s keeping secrets and may even be behind what happened. According to her, so does the president. Both of them are suspicious of the dozen boarders. But if they really were up to no good, I can’t believe we’d find anything on file that ties them to the Chinese.”

“Yet we did.”

“Right. It was easy, like you said in the first place. Except the Chinese are too smart and too good to leave a trail of bread crumbs. Which is why I think something else might be going on here.”

“Unless the boarders were just kitchen help,” Kali said. “You’ve built your premise that they weren’t on a suspicion. But a company’s owner having close government ties proves nothing. And what you say about the Chinese being skilled at espionage undercuts your own theory.”

He looked at her. “That’s just it. The whole thing makes more sense if someone wants us to point a finger at China.”

“Michael—”

“Hold on. I’m not assuming anything. I just want to reason this out,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether those kitchen workers were good, bad or neutral. Somebody on the Stalwart’s crew had to sign off on bringing them aboard. They’d have to show ID. There would be paperwork. Everyone on the ship has to be documented and legal. You agree?”

Kali thought a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“So my question is who checked their documents?” Carmody said. “Whose job would it have been? Because if that person smells funny, we might just have a whole new trail of crumbs to follow.”

Silence.