Drake spun back to the telephone. A minute later he’d been patched through to Hall’s line and had explained the situation to his superior.

DID’s silence was sharp as a hammer’s rap. “Impossible. He cannot be in country.”

It didn’t sound like an accusation of lying. Just like denial. Drake eased down onto the hard wooden chair by the telephone table. “It was him on the line, Admiral. I recognized his voice. He couldn’t have called from anywhere else, could he?”

“No. Blast.” Something hit something else in the background. “Someone has missed something. Rest assured, I shall find out who and what. And we’ll determine from where that call was placed and through what switchboards it went. In the meantime, I’ll gather anything I can find on Jaeger. Perhaps there will be a clue somewhere in his history that could help us locate him now.”

“Perhaps.” He turned to face the window again, though from his seat, he could see nothing but the windows of the building across the street. “Do you think . . . What if he comes after my sister, Admiral?”

Another beat of silence, this one not quite so sharp. “For now, Lieutenant, comfort yourself in the likelihood that those other calls were him, and that it was only you with whom he wanted to engage. That suggests he will only target you, and perhaps your work—since it was his work, not his person, with which you interfered. I find it highly unlikely that he would react to your having foiled a sugar shipment by attacking your family. That would be too emotional a response for a man who is clearly a professional in matters of espionage.”

The band around Drake’s chest loosened. “Excellent point, sir. Thank you.”

“While I have you here and we are speaking of sugar—have you found anything yet to corroborate Margot’s suspicions about her mother?”

Drake glanced at the second stack of papers he’d been plodding through, which contained every mention they could find over the last year of anthrax or sugar or grain. “Nothing, sir. Only about the shipment in Spain, and more in South America. I trust you’ve already seen to those?”

“We are investigating, though the German agent in South Am is as slippery as they come. But nothing that mentions us here?”

“No. Not yet.” He’d been through most of the material already, somehow both hoping and dreading that he’d find something. “Though there’s a bit of a difference in tracking tons versus a few ounces of the stuff.”

“But if it were truly an attack on us here, then an agent would have had to either enter our borders or contact someone already here. That would leave a trail.”