After two hours Kali got up with a nod of satisfaction, brewed some more tea, poured Carmody a cup and sat quietly sipping beside him on the couch. He didn’t ask how she was doing. He didn’t ask how much longer she might need. He just sat and drank and gave her a chance to relax.

She liked that about him.

After a short while she returned to the computer and studied her targets. All six made good candidates for her spear-phishing expedition. She would compose two emails with embedded links to web-based résumés, one for the men, one for the women. Each résumé would be detailed and realistic and include an expandable profile photo as clickbait. Like the identities of the applicants—one male, one female—the photos would be counterfeits, deepfake images Kali would create using an AI-powered image generator.

Three hours later, she cast her line.

Now she would wait to see who bit.

The Chinese food cart outside the Terminal’s Tenth Avenue entrance was one of Jot Musil’s favorites, and he was about ready for lunch. Harris had applied for an emergency search-and-seizure warrant to gain access to CloudCable’s electronic records, and Musil was optimistic the urgency of the Stalwart situation would speed them along. The information he and Ki Marton had dug up about Fake Gelfland was critical in establishing a probable, imminent threat to national security; hopefully it would convince a judge to expedite the request.

Musil was eager to fly back up to New Hampshire once the warrant returned with a judge’s signature. Assuming there were no delays, he thought that would be soon. In the meantime, he could only wait.

And grab some Chinese, the waiting having made him very hungry.

He left the building on Tenth and turned right on the sidewalk. The cart was at its usual spot on the southwest corner of Fifty-Fifth Street, a half block down from him. There were only three people waiting in line.

Musil stepped up behind them and read the posted menu. At the counter, he ordered sautéed chicken and broccoli, fried rice and an egg roll. As he carried the bag back to the Terminal, his empty stomach rumbled a little. He was thinking the food smelled delightful.

In a crowd across the avenue, Grigor sipped some cola through a straw, watching Musil through his sunglasses. Once the agent reentered the building, he decided to spend a few minutes getting the lay of the neighborhood.

He walked up Tenth Avenue past a short stretch of restaurants, pizzerias and groceries. At Fifty-Ninth Street, where Tenth narrowed to become Amsterdam, Grigor saw a large home-goods chain store and decided to stop in. He found a roll of Gorilla industrial tape in the adhesives section, browsed the aisles for a pack of white men’s handkerchiefs, and paid, slipping the items neatly into his pack.