Nora’s eyes were blazing. “They are just starting to go through all this stuff. Nothing’s been taken out yet.”

Eph said, “This one thing was.”

“This is a secure site, Eph. That thing was what, about eight by four by three? It weighed a few hundred pounds. Would have taken four men to carry it.”

“Exactly. So somebody knows where it is.”

They went to the duty officer manning the hangar door, the keeper of the site log. The young man consulted his master list, a time log of everyone’s and everything’s entrances and exits. “Nothing here,” he said.

Eph sensed Nora’s objection rising and spoke before she could. “How long have you been here—standing right here?”

“Since about twelve, sir.”

“No break?” said Eph. “What about during the eclipse?”

“I stood right out here.” He pointed to a spot a few yards away from the door. “No one went by me.”

Eph looked back at Nora.

Nora said, “What in the hell is going on?” She looked at the duty officer. “Who else might have seen a great big coffin?”

Eph frowned at the word “coffin.” He looked back into the hangar, and then up at the security cameras in the rafters.

He pointed. “They did.”

Eph, Nora, and the Port Authority site log duty officer walked up the long, steel staircase to the control office overlooking the maintenance hangar. Below, mechanics were removing the aircraft’s nose for a look at the internals.

Four drone cameras ran constantly inside the hangar: one at the door leading to the office stairs; one trained on the hangar doors; one up in the rafters—the one Eph had pointed to—and one in the room they were standing in now. All displayed on a four-square screen.

Eph asked the maintenance foreman, “Why the camera in this room?”

The foreman shrugged. “Prolly ’cause this is where the petty cash is.”

He took his seat, a battered office chair whose armrests were striped with duct tape, and worked the keyboard beneath the monitor, expanding the rafter view to full screen. He scanned back through the security recording. The unit was digital, but a few years old, and too distorted to make out anything clearly during the rewind.

He stopped it. On the screen, the cabinet lay exactly where it had, on the edge of the off-loaded cargo.

“There it is,” said Eph.

The duty officer nodded. “Okay. So let’s see where it went.”

The foreman punched it forward. It ran more slowly than the rewind, but was still pretty fast. The light in the hangar darkened with the occultation, and when it brightened again, the cabinet was gone.

“Stop, stop,” said Eph. “Back it up.”

The foreman backed up a little, pressed play again. The time code on the bottom showed the image playing more slowly than before.

The hangar dimmed and at once the cabinet was again gone.

“What the—?” said the foreman, hitting pause.

Eph said, “Go back just a bit.”

The foreman did, then let it play through in real time.