Now he took his hands off the controls, reached into a compartment for an electrolyte drink and took a few tiny sips of the sugary fluid through a straw. It sharpened his alertness and gave him a needed physical boost.

He had much to do over the next six hours. With no margin for error.

Grigor was back at the midtown hotel after being out all morning. He had driven Fred Kaplan’s car to a neighborhood lined with abandoned factories, removed the license plates and thrown them into a trash can several blocks away. Then he had called a rideshare to take him back to Meadows Court and his rental vehicle.

A minute or two after entering his room, he got a fresh bottle of water from the little fridge, opened his laptop and launched a Google search for the website of the Woodmere Middle School in Flushing, Queens. A link appeared on his results list and he clicked on the home page, then clicked again on a menu tab that took him to the monthly class calendar. It confirmed that school would end at 3:00 p.m. the next day, with no early dismissals scheduled.

Grigor clicked the Contacts tab. It brought him to an alphabetized list of names and email links for the principal, vice principal, student counselors and teaching staff. Also on that page was a number for the school’s main telephone switchboard.

He committed the number and relevant names to memory and drank some water. His first bit of learning was finished. The second part would be more complex.

Opening a new window, he clicked on the YouTube icon and typed “Musil interview New York cyberattack” into the search bar.

A long column of posts came up. Most were repeats of a single four-minute video clip—a segment of a televised FBI news conference given weeks after the strike.

Grigor clicked to play it. The agent looked awkward on camera.

“Agent Musil, July 27 is a date no one in this country will ever forget. How does it feel when some call you one of its most heroic figures?”

“That’s very kind. But I don’t consider myself a hero.”

“You saved a little boy’s life. And in doing so had to chase a trained assassin, a man who tried to kill the president. Can you appreciate why people are taken with your story?”

“Respectfully, sir, I was doing my job. A child was in danger, and I responded.”

“Agent, as member of the Sikh faith, a group that’s widely misunderstood, is it gratifying to see your actions bring such goodwill toward your community?”

“When you say community... I’m a husband, a father, a devout Sikh, a New Yorker and an American. These are all one. I believe teaching others is part of being alive. If people learned from that terrible day, then perhaps some good came out of it.”