Harris nodded his agreement and sat quietly a moment.

“I think you should check out the short-termers,” he said. “What’d you call them?”

“The voyage crew, sir.”

“Right,” Harris said. “Could be nothing there. Probably isn’t. But you never know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d also like to find out if those advisers really are spooks.” Harris tugged his ear. “I’ll handle that one myself.”

“Yes, sir.” Musil gave him a look. No question about it, he had not seen his boss look so engaged since he’d nearly gotten blown to pieces by a car bomb last August.

“What is it?” Harris said.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Then, why in hell are you smiling at me?”

“I didn’t realize I was, sir.”

Which was the truth. They sat there for a long moment.

“OK,” Harris said. And peeked at his watch again. “I’ve gotta run.”

Musil nodded, gave him another look, and returned his printout to the file folder. Then he went to the door, opened it, and glanced back over his shoulder at Harris.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?”

Musil held the door half open and beamed him another smile. His teeth white, his eyes full of sincerity.

“Many blessings to you! Whatever the event!” he said.

And flew out into the hall like a bullet.

Thirty minutes later, Musil was at his workstation in the small second-floor office he shared with his partner Jimmy Fahey, who was out getting his tooth either drilled or root-canaled or perhaps simply yanked from his tormented mouth. Musil couldn’t recall which, but Fahey had complained about his toothache for weeks before finally acquiescing to a dental visit. And even then, Musil had needed to refer him to his brother-in-law Harjinder’s practice out in his home borough of Queens, not far from that Romanian restaurant they once canvassed to ultimately break open the New York cyberattack investigation. In fact, Musil had gone a step or two further than a referral, making the appointment with Harjinder himself, and then coaxing Fahey into keeping it.

At any rate, Musil had the whole office to himself this morning as he methodically fed Stalwart’s crew list—the names of the four advisers included—into LATTICE, the Force’s still-under-construction portal to a wide pool of law-enforcement, military and criminal justice system databases. LATTICE was a deep dish of records and would be the deepest in the intelligence community once it was fully up and running.