Chapter 28
Owen belonged here.
The realization hit Gabe halfway through his first cup of coffee the next morning at the pre-conference buffet.
Owen occupied the center table, holding court over an unapologetically American breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast stacked like lumber.
Two Danish historians argued cheerfully with him about grain ledgers. Owen looked delighted.
Which, Gabe supposed, was fair. Most people spent their lives looking for a room where they belonged. The history professor had apparently found his.
Across from him, Skye worked her way through a bowl of pickled herring with the contentment of a woman who'd finally arrived somewhere the food made sense.
Wade stood at the windows, munching on a pastry while he soaked in the room.
Sophie had reached the buffet ten minutes ago and somehow become involved in three separate conversations without losing track of any of them.
David drifted the edges of the room carrying a camera, a press badge, and an expression of harmless curiosity that fooled exactly the people it was supposed to fool.
A gaggle of academics in wool sweaters and conference lanyards filled the rest of the space.
Any one of them could be working for Neptune. Probably more than one of them.
The walk over had rearranged Gabe's sense of the place. The cold scrubbed his lungs clean and made his back teeth ache. The air tasted of stone and seawater with a faint thread of coal smoke underneath. Everywhere he looked he found the same problem.
Light.
Not sunlight exactly. Presence. The sky glowed from every direction at once, washing shadows out of existence. No concealment under parked snowmobiles. No concealment between buildings. No concealment in alleyways.
His protection brain kept writing the same note. Nobody could approach Owen unseen. Unfortunately, the same applied to them. Getting the drop on their enemies would be equally difficult when the time came.
Inside, the breakfast room smelled of coffee and smoked fish and cardamom pastry and wet wool. Four languages overlapped continuously, agreeing about nothing.
"Radio check," Tom said in his ear.
One by one the team counted off.
Cara came last. "Guesthouse is up."
Three words. Level. Warm. He hadn't realized he was listening for them.
The flight in had been exceedingly cordial, each of them retreating into a tired silence as they soaked in the rarified private jet atmosphere.
They still hadn't talked about the truck.
Apparently they were handling that by being aggressively professional.
Gabe took a sip of coffee and pretended that worked.
The guesthouse channel kept a low argument running beneath the operation.
Not about whether or not they should unlock the witness list. Everybody agreed on that. The question was what happened after. How did they make the list useless for Neptune, but keep the people on it protected?
“We hand it to the US Marshals,” Reagan said. “Immediately.”
Cara disagreed just as fast. “Which Marshals? The ones in Neptune’s pocket?”
The channel went quiet for a beat.
Reagan exhaled. “Okay, that’s fair. Federal Witness Security then.”
“Same deal. We don’t know who’s compromised,” Cara said. “The whole reason we’re here is because Neptune keeps showing up in places they shouldn’t.”
Tom dove in. “We don’t need to release the names to any agency,” he said. “What if we send alerts? Threat assessments? Something anonymous.”
A few seconds of silence followed.
“Never mind,” he said. “That falls apart in at least four different ways.”
Just like all their other ideas. Somewhere on the other side of Owen’s cipher sat a list of people who’d spent years staying alive by remaining invisible. Ray Harney had been protecting them with his life.
If they unlocked it, they’d have to decide who to trust with it. Gabe wasn’t sure that answer existed yet.
Meanwhile, the press unit worked. Sophie appeared beside Gabe carrying coffee and a notebook full of names.
"How many people have you talked to?" he asked.
"Twenty-seven."
Gabe stared. "We’ve only been here half an hour."
“Forty-five minutes,” she corrected, looking genuinely surprised by the question. "I know how to move an interview along."
Across the room David raised his camera to his eye and tripped the shutter.
“Got ‘em,” Tom responded immediately. “Putting them through facial recog now.”
By nine o'clock Tom possessed a face-and-name roster of the Nordhavn Colloquium with highly specific details about every attendee David photographed. Gabe’s only qualm was that his baby bro was enjoying this way too much.
Skye appeared at his elbow during the midmorning coffee break carrying a pastry she clearly hated. "Tweed," she said. "At the coffee station. Three refills. Hasn't drunk any of them."
Gabe waited thirty seconds before finding the reflection in the mirror behind the coffee urns. Male. Mid-thirties. Fit beneath the conference tweed.
Boots too new for laces that worn.
DR. JERRY FELD.
The badge said academic. Not likely.
"He's not listening to anything," Skye said. "He's herding." She sounded almost nostalgic. "Watch. Owen moves, he adjusts. I used to know men like him."
She said it the way other people said I used to live there.
It was Wade who found the second fake. "It’s the knitter."
Gabe nearly laughed.
The knitter looked like somebody's favorite aunt. Late fifties. Quilted jacket. Reading glasses on a chain. Canvas yarn bag at her feet.
HELEN CARTWRIGHT, her badge announced. INDEPENDENT RESEARCHER.
Gabe inched closer. She was telling a dean from Edinburgh a story about a flooded archive in Coventry and had the man laughing hard enough to wipe tears from his eyes.
“I’m telling you, she’s live,” Wade insisted over the comlink. “She already knows the names and backstories of the coffee steward, the clerk at the registration desk and that little dude restocking the napkins at the buffet.”
Gabe pretended to study a poster advertising an arctic photography voyage beginning after the conference while he watched her out of the corner of his eye.
Everybody liked her within five minutes. That, more than anything else, bothered him.
Real charm was useful. Professional charm could be deadly.
"The woman verifies too clean," Tom added.
"Meaning?"
"Nobody’s background verification snaps back that fast," the IT guru responded.
The channel fell quiet.
“Are they both Neptune?” Reagan asked. “Or is one, or both of them, watching the watchers?”
"Or they’re ordinary peeps," Sophie suggested.
Skye snorted. “Yeah. That never happens.”
"No attributions," Tom cautioned. "Yet."
Across the hall, a hotel worker opened the doors to the conference room. Coffee in hand, attendees funneled inside.
Owen gathered his notebook and headed in, still talking to the Danes.
Jerry Feld detached from the coffee station and drifted after him. Helen Cartwright wound her yarn, smiled her way past the dean, and followed them both.
Gabe watched them disappear down the corridor. One of them was probably hunting Owen.
The other might be hunting the hunter.
Neither had yet made a move.
That was the part Gabe trusted least.