There’s really only one useful thing I can do from the plane. After a few swipes of my Visa and some haggling with directory assistance, I’m speaking to the operator at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, who transfers me to the offices of the Investigative Support Unit. The ISU has more impressive digs than it once did, but Daniel Baxter, the chief of the unit, likes the bunker atmosphere of the old days, the era before Hollywood overexposure turned his unit into a myth that draws eager young college grads by the thousands. Baxter must be fifty now, but he’s a lean and hungry fifty, with a combat soldier’s eyes. That’s what I thought when I first saw him. A guy from the ranks who found himself an officer by default, the result of a battlefield promotion. But no one will ever question that promotion. His record of success is legendary in a war where victories are few and the defeats almost unbearable. To wit, my sister and her ten sisters in purgatory. Baxter’s unit scored a big zero on that one. But the grim fact is, when a certain kind of shit hits the fan, there’s no one else to call.

“Baxter,” says a sharp baritone voice.

“This is Jordan Glass,” I tell him, trying to hide the slur in my voice and not doing well at all. “Do you remember me?”

“You’re hard to forget, Ms. Glass.”

I take a quick swallow of scotch. “A little over an hour ago, I saw my sister in Hong Kong.”

There’s a brief silence. “Are you drinking, Ms. Glass?”

“Absolutely. But I know what I saw.”

“You saw your sister.”

“In Hong Kong. And now I’m in a 747, bound for New York.”

“You’re saying you saw your sister alive?”

“No.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

I give Baxter as lucid a summary as I can manage of my experiences at the museum, then wait for his response. I expect some expression of astonishment – maybe not a Gomer Pyle “Shazam,” but something – but I should have known better.

“Did you recognize any other New Orleans victims?” he asks.