“There has to be an image of our Fake Gelfland, origin unknown, inside that file,” he said and drank. “Maybe more than one.”

“Probably,” Musil said. “And if it’s restricted access, I think it holds something apart from just photos.”

“Information about our mystery man.”

“And possibly other things connected to him.”

Ki nodded his agreement.

“I can’t figure it, though,” he said. “Michaels could have cloaked the file from the search engine. Instead, he locks it up tight but leaves it out there for somebody like me to find. Seems like a contradiction.”

Musil spooned some chutney onto a piece of flatbread.

“Not really,” he said. “It’s obvious he isn’t interested in hiding its existence from us. He just wants to personally authorize who opens it.”

“OK,” Ki said. “Why?”

“Why leave it in plain sight? Or why keep it locked?”

“Both.”

“In plain sight because he thinks it might become important in an investigation. Locked because it contains sensitive material he’s trying to prevent from circulating.”

“Politically sensitive?”

“That’s usually the reason. But there could be another reason. Or several. We were in the FBI long enough to know how it works.”

They ate. Musil watched a bearded guy in a knitted white skullcap enter the restaurant, approach a group of men at a table in the center aisle, exchange familiar greetings and toss his jacket onto a vacant chair. Then he went to the niche in back, took off his shoes, and knelt on the prayer rug.

“When will you find out what Michaels has to say about the file?” Ki asked. “Assuming the bigwigs share that with you.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Soon, I hope.”

Ki nodded, eyed the mound of tandoori chicken on his plate and picked up a drumstick.

“On another note, how are you doing?” Musil asked.

“Right at this moment?”

Musil watched him gnaw with relish on his drumstick. “I know what eating does for your state of mind,” he said. “But in general.”

Ki took longer than he needed to chew and swallow.

“I’m up and down,” he said after a minute. “Mark and I were always together. There’ll be a part of a song, a TV ad we hated, and I’ll remember us groaning about it. Something dumb like that. Or I’ll pass the couch on the way into the kitchen and think I see him out the corner of my eye. And then, pow, it hits me that he’s gone.”

“What do you do when that happens?”

“God’s honest truth?”

“Yes.”

“I sink into a deep hole. It takes me a while to pull myself out.”

Musil set his fork down onto his plate. “I’d like you to try something for me, Ki-Man.”

“From the buffet?”

Musil didn’t smile. “Seriously. Would you?”

Ki looked at him over a tandoori wing.