3. Dane #2
Wiley worked his jaw.
Eamon turned back to the room.
“Onyx Bay,” he said, “is not a business. They’re a domestic extremist group in the process of forming. Wiley has been tracking them for two years. Until recently, they’ve taken no action. They’ve done nothing you could put in front of a federal prosecutor.”
Cabot frowned. “Then how do you know they exist?”
“Pattern recognition. They show up in the right channels, use the right vocabulary, and organize the way other distributed extremist projects organize. They’re a shape Wiley recognized.”
“So, no actions until now?” Cabot asked.
“Four weeks ago their chatter shifted. The vocabulary tightened. The coordination got specific. Symbolic event started showing up across their channels. As you know, two weeks ago the Harcourt letters started arriving.”
Wiley exhaled slowly. “Operational planning.”
“Yes.”
“Why the Harcourts?” Cabot asked.
“That’s the question we don’t have a complete answer to yet.”
“What kind of operation?”
Eamon held his eyes for a beat. “We don’t know that yet either. Symbolic often means destructive.”
“Violent,” Cabot said.
Wiley turned to face Cabot. “How many of the Harcourt houses have you been inside this year?”
“Three.”
“Including the place on Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re the family friend who shows up at Christmas and Easter. You connect at symphony galas and museum events.”
“Yes. That’s the assignment.”
“Do you know who staffs the kitchens at the houses?”
Cabot swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple move.
“I know the names of the kitchen staff,” he said, “because I think they’re more interesting than the people they cook for. I’m not compiling a—“
“I didn’t think you were,” Wiley’s voice softened, “that’s the problem. You just remember and assemble the information when needed.”
Cabot tugged on his sleeve. “So you’re saying Onyx Bay—“
“They need what you know,” Wiley said. “They’ve been preparing for two years, and they have the people, the discipline, and the will. I assume what they don’t have is the inside picture of the family they’ve decided to attack. You have that.”
“I never published —“
“It doesn’t matter what you published. It matters what you’ve seen and remember. You’re the access map they’ve been missing.”
Cabot turned toward Eamon. “Tell me he’s wrong.”
“He isn’t wrong.”
Eamon looked at each face in turn.
“Separately,” he said, “neither of you is the problem you’ve become together. Wiley has been watching them assemble. He’s the one person who can recognize what they are and figure out when they move. Cabot is the one person who has the inside view of the target family.”
He folded his hands on the closed folder. They remained steady.
“Together, the two of you are a danger to Onyx Bay. You can stop them before they execute. They can’t allow that.”
“So they’d rather we didn’t exist?” Wiley asked.
“They’d rather you not speak to each other.”
Wiley swallowed. “Then why are you putting us in the same room?”
“Because they are counting on us recognizing the danger and deciding to keep you apart. We don’t give them what they’re counting on.”
That was the flashing red light.
“From now on,” Eamon said, “your movement happens after approval. Your public exposure will be minimal. We need twenty-four hour notice, minimum, of any planned travel. Longer if it’s outside the metro area.
That means no coffee with a source because they texted you twenty minutes ago.
We assume both your phones are dirty until we’ve cleared them. Same for personal email.”
Wiley shook his head. “Not happening.”
“It’s happening.”
“I can’t work on a leash.”
Eamon’s jaw clenched. “You can’t work from a hospital bed either.”
“You don’t understand how I work—“
“I understand. You meet people who don’t want to be seen meeting you, in places they choose, on no notice, and you go alone because anything else spooks them. I know. That’s the part we have to change.”
“If you take that out, I’m no longer a reporter. I’m funneling press releases.”
Farrow leaned forward and spoke. “Or we work it the other way.”
He drew the attention of everyone in the room.
“If you lock him down, he runs. They both will. He’ll meet a guy in the back room of a Vietnamese place in Fields Corner, and he won’t tell you because that’s the way he’s been working for fifteen years.
It’s the only way the source will talk. You’ll find out about it three days later when somebody asks questions. ”
Wiley and Cabot said nothing.
“They don’t move without coverage,” I said.
“They move.” Farrow didn’t raise his voice. “That’s what they do. You move with them, or you watch them go.”
I gripped my chair with one hand, but my voice remained calm. “You’re wanting to run this as improvisation.”
“I’m suggesting we be honest.”
Eamon watched the exchange. He was silent for one more beat, and then he closed us down.
“You’re both right. Dane builds a structure that keeps a principal safe when events go south. That’s why he’s a Guardian. You, Farrow, immerse yourself and read the threats before the rest of us. No firm can control that. It’s why you work alone.”
The corner of Farrow’s mouth turned up briefly.
“In this case, we don’t have to pick one,” Eamon said. “We’ll run both with joint coordination. Neither detail runs separately. If you can’t work it that way, tell me now and I’ll find another arrangement.”
“I can work it that way,” Farrow said. “Wiley stays alive. That’s my priority.”
Wiley leaned back and addressed the ceiling. “Wonderful.”
Cabot nodded. “Understood.”
The meeting broke up with no specific announcement. Eamon stood. His phone was already in his hand, and he turned toward the window. Wiley pushed up out of his chair. Cabot sat for another beat.
I stood and arrived at the door at the same moment as Farrow. He didn’t crowd me, but he moved close.
“We need to talk,” he said, meant only for me.
“Not here.”
He looked past me as Wiley stepped forward and spoke louder. “You and me are going to be trouble, Fletcher.”
It wasn’t a warning. He said it loudly enough for everyone to hear. He held the door for me on his way through.
Out past the conference-room glass, the harbor had gone a deeper grey and the tanker that had been clearing the channel when we walked in was only a smudge against East Boston now.
Cabot came up to my shoulder, bag settled, jaw set. “Where to?” he asked.
I put a hand on the small of his back. “Down. Time to move.”
The SUV was waiting for us. I put Cabot in the back seat and closed the door. I walked around to the other side and got in beside him.
The car pulled out onto Atlantic. Traffic was as sluggish as it had been on the way in. The driver took the route I’d given him.
Cabot was quiet for the first block. He looked out the window and folded his hands in his lap. We crossed State.
“Dane.”
It was the first time he’d used my name.
“Yes.”
He didn’t turn his head. “The kitchen staff at the Brookline house, Maria and her son who comes in on weekends, and the woman from Quincy who does the prep on event days.” He paused. “Am I supposed to warn them?”
I didn’t answer.
He waited the length of a block, then spoke again, more quietly. “Because if I know who they are, then someone else does too. And if I’m the reason someone else knows—“
“Cabot.”
“I’m asking you a question.”
I looked at him. He was still facing the window. The hands in his lap had not moved.
“I don’t know,” I said.