Dr. Victor Corvo did not flinch when the distant alarm horns blared across the archive.
The veteran deputy coroner stood beside the stainless-steel examination table, his silver-headed cane hooked over his left forearm.
“Doctor, we have to move,” Mac urged, his prosthetic hand tightening on his heavy steel pry-bar. “Kray is spinning up the hydraulic drives right now.”
“A competent pathologist does not run into an ambush without reading the cause of death, Mr. Cole,” Corvo replied smoothly.
“The five-minute microfilming recess just expired,” Elena warned, her fingers resting lightly on her trauma kit.
“Let Kray rattle his filing cabinets for two minutes,” Corvo said, adjusting his round wire-rim spectacles. “These three index cards hold the entire structural blueprint of our thirty-year nightmare.”
Julian stepped beside the table, keeping his Contradiction Ledger open on the stainless steel. “What did your loupe find on the first card, Doctor?”
“Look at the chemical discoloration along the upper margin of card number one,” Corvo instructed, pointing with the tip of his bone-forceps.
