“Yeah,” he said. “In the Navy, the person in charge is called a boarding officer. On a civilian ship, a boarding agent. Same difference,” he said. “Everything flows through him. He’ll run his checks ahead of time to make sure there’s nothing peculiar. He sees they transferred from a Chinese company just two days before Stalwart hauled in, then sees they have no résumés, he’ll red-flag them on the spot. And make sure to notify his boss.”

“CloudCable.”

“Right.”

Morse said, “So if the agent didn’t flag them, we need to know why not. And if he did, and CloudCable approved them, we need to know why.”

Carmody nodded.

“The project’s managing director in New Hampshire, Olsen, could have given us that information,” Kali said. “But he chose otherwise.”

Morse looked at her, then at Carmody, then at both of them.

“Suppose I tell you Agent Musil’s been looking into some odd circumstances surrounding a Stalwart crew member named Stephen Gelfland, who, it so happens, turns out to be the boarding agent,” she said. “Then suppose I tell you one of our analysts ran a photo of him—or someone claiming to be him—through our face-rec database. And things got even odder.”

Carmody bent forward with his arms across his knees. Morse thought again that he didn’t seem especially comfortable. With him on it, the chair almost looked like it came from a child’s room.

“Odder how?” he asked.

“The impostor’s photo drew a hit,” she said. “But we haven’t been able to access the file. It’s sealed.”

“By?”

“Alex Michaels,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him.”

He digested that, his eyes on her face. “How long were you going to wait to tell us about this?”

“Never mind. I’m telling you now,” she said. “There’s a project. Classified, not ours. Russian. It’s called Pinnacle. I can’t say I know everything about it...”

She let the sentence hang there. Kali had suddenly caught her attention by moving away from the door and deeper into the room. She glanced around, saw a chair against the wall and pulled it up alongside Carmody.

“I can,” she said.

“All right, big question.” Ki leaned forward over his plate, speaking in a hushed voice. “What’s Pinnacle?”

“I don’t know,” Musil said.

“You have any idea?”

“No,” Musil said. “Do you?”

Ki shook his head, forking some creamed, pungently seasoned spinach into his mouth. It was a quarter past noon, and they were at one of the small tables along the wall at Share Punjabi, their plates heaped with food, two tall mango lassis on the table between them.

“Man, this is great.” Ki smacked his lips. “Spicy, but great.”

Musil smiled. “Enjoy.”

Ki reached for his lassi, wanting to calm his overheated taste buds before he dug back into his buffet selections.