She carried her phone over to him. “Do you spend much time in Eastern Europe?” she asked.

He looked at her strangely. “Why do you ask?”

She showed him a washed-out color photograph on her phone, featuring a group of men standing near a Volkswagen with a German license tag before a rainy bridge crossing. The men wore hats and thin neckties. One sign read ALLIED CHECK POINT and featured images of American, French, and British flags. The other sign read, in three languages, YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.

She held it up for him to see, though Blackwood veered back from the smartphone, as one might withdraw from a knife blade or a snarling dog.

“Checkpoint Charlie,” she said. “One of the main crossing points between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War. This photograph is from the FBI archives, taken in 1964.”

She widened her thumb and forefinger on the touch screen, zooming in the image on the men’s faces. Each man was smiling except one. She zoomed in closer, as wide as she could.

Blackwood looked at the face, then looked at her, unfazed.

“That’s you,” she said. She worked her phone back to the email, opening up another attached photograph. “How about Waco, Texas, 1993?”

She showed him a photo of an observation post set up at a roadblock. A group of FBI agents consulted near a man wearing a large pair of binoculars. To the left stood a familiar man wearing a dark suit.

“The Branch Davidian cult?”

She zoomed in on Blackwood’s profile. The man next to him was facing away from the camera, but dark skin was visible beneath a blue ball cap.

“And could that be Agent Solomon?”

Blackwood looked at her, seeing if she was proud of herself. “A friend at the FBI,” she explained. “Did you pose for many portraits back in your day?”

She brought up an Elizabethan-era painting of a man wearing a high collar and robe, standing by a high desk. “This painting was recovered from Nazi pillaging more than a decade ago, and is now in cold storage at the National Portrait Gallery in London.” She held the phone near his face. “A pretty good likeness.”

“Why, thank you,” he said flatly.

“Here’s one I did not see coming. I would never, ever have pegged you as a Disney fan. Mind truly blown.” The photograph showed groups of people gathered festively around a smiling Mickey Mouse face formed out of planted flowers. She zoomed in past some primitive-looking character costumes and a young Ronald Reagan, finding Walt Disney standing behind a microphone stand. One row behind him, not five people away, stood a trim man wearing a dark suit. He wasn’t smiling, but appeared to be the only one in the photograph looking at the camera.

“July seventeenth, 1955. Must have been a tough ticket.”

“You are having fun, aren’t you.”