Musil wasn’t either. As a huge corporation, CloudCable paid an army of in-house and outsourced public relations people. The missing ship cost two hundred million dollars. The subsea cable on board additional hundreds of millions. And its contract with the CIA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Olympia was worth billions. There were investors and brokers and politicians staking their fortunes and reputations on the cable deal. The company did not want to appear uncooperative, even while being so. It could not afford to have a storm of negative news headlines flying around it amid the mounting crisis.

Thus, its HR department had complied with Musil’s request for a set of crew records, made after he returned from New Hampshire the day before. It was a smart move. The documents were obtainable from other sources, anyway. The US Customs Office for one. Probably the Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration. Also, the project’s insurance underwriters. Insurers had entire subdivisions specializing in cybertechnology. A project of the scope CloudCable had undertaken required that it be indemnified for a small fortune. Besides the ship itself, and all the expensive machinery and high technology aboard, there were divers, machinists and other crew members with inherently hazardous jobs. The company needed to limit its liability.

“OK,” Harris said. “You got anything so far? And what the hell are you looking at?”

Musil realized he’d been staring at the bow tie. Some of the turtles appeared to be walking. Others, swimming. Others just seemed to be placidly looking around. He thought them all lively and cheerful and wondered if he should mention it to Harris. But then he decided better of it and opened his folder.

Inside it were four or five sheets of paper that had been clipped together after his printer kicked them out, the text on each divided into columns. He had highlighted several blocks of information beginning midway down the first page in yellow or green marker...which by chance were the same colors as the turtles.

“A few things, sir,” he said, and held up the printout for Harris. “As you can see, the crew names are in the left column. Their positions aboard the ship are in the middle. The right column shows the date each person was employed by CloudCable. In most cases.”

Harris grunted. “What about in the other cases?”

“I’ll explain in a moment,” Musil said. He pointed to the upper half of the first page, highlighted in green. “This listing is for the permanent crew. As it says at the top. That would be the captain, mates, watch leaders, and chief and second engineers. Also the head cook and doctor...just under twenty names total.”

“And the rest?”