Chapter Thirty-Three — Wade
The San Francisco engagement ran fourteen weeks.
Nora came home every Thursday evening and left every Monday morning and in between she was at the compound and at the table and on the south step and running the valley roads in the early light, and the compound absorbed the rhythm of it the way it absorbed everything, without comment and without performance, just as the way things were.
During the weeks she was in the city I had her presence in specific ways that were different from having her in the building but weren't nothing.
The phone calls in the morning and the evening.
The texts that came through during the day when she found something and needed to say it to someone and I was the someone.
The monitoring protocol running clean every week, the green indicators on Darren's dashboard telling me without words that she was keeping her end of the thing she'd built here even from three and a half hours away.
Cole said, on a Thursday in the third week of her absence: She's in the system.
I said: What do you mean.
He said: The protocol. She runs it from San Francisco every Monday morning. Darren checks it Tuesday. The results are in the weekly intelligence summary.
I said: I know.
He said: I'm saying she built herself into the compound's operational structure. That's not accidental.
I said: No. It's not.
He looked at the fence line. She knew what she was doing when she proposed that protocol.
I said: She follows numbers to where they lead. She knew where that one led.
He nodded. Good, he said. And walked the rest of the perimeter in silence.
Kale called me to his office on a Wednesday afternoon in December.
He sat with his legal pad and said: The Howell sentencing is scheduled for February. The prosecutor has requested Nora as a witness to the investigative findings.
I said: She knows.
He said: She told me. He wrote something. She'll need to be in federal court in February. That may conflict with the San Francisco engagement timeline.
I said: She'll manage it.
He nodded. He wrote something else. I want to talk about something else.
I waited.
He said: You've been running the eastern approach sector with Cole for two months now. Cole tells me you're ahead of schedule. He tells me the sector notes are complete and current and your read on the approaches is independent. Not derived from his. Yours.
I said: Cole built a good system. It's not hard to run well if you understand it.
Kale said: Understanding a system and having an independent read are different things. He looked at me. Cole's recommendation is that you carry the sector independently starting in January. He moves to oversight. You run the day-to-day.
I held that.
He said: That's a real role. Not a rotation. A responsibility.
I said: I understand what it is.
He said: Do you want it.
I said: Yes.
He wrote something. Then he said: There's something else.
I waited.
He said: The compound has been thinking about the Nora situation. Not you and Nora specifically. The structural question of what it means for the compound when one of our people is partnered with someone who does independent federal work.
I said: She's not federal. She's independent.
He said: She works with federal bodies. She consults on federal cases. She's going to testify in a federal sentencing in February. He looked at me. That's a real consideration for the compound. I want to say it directly.
I said: Is it a problem.
He said: It's a consideration. Not a problem. The difference matters. He looked at his legal pad. Her work has benefited the compound. The record says so. The federal contact relationship we have is stronger because of how the task force case resolved. Those are real outcomes.
I said: But going forward.
He said: Going forward the question is whether the pattern continues. Whether her work stays clean the way it's been clean. Whether the compound's connection to her work is consistently an asset.
I said: Her work is always going to be clean. That's not a guess. That's who she is.
He held my eyes. I believe that, he said. I want you to know I've thought about it and I believe that.
I said: What are you actually asking.
He said: I'm not asking anything. I'm telling you I've thought about it and my conclusion is that she's good for the compound and the compound is good for her and that's the right configuration.
He looked at his legal pad. I'm telling you that so you know the compound has thought about it and come to a conclusion.
I said: And the conclusion is yes.
He said: The conclusion is yes.
He went back to his legal pad. I went back to the afternoon.
That Thursday Nora came home at seven and I was at the gate and she came through and said: Tell me what Kale said.
I looked at her.
She said: He always tells you things before he tells me. He told you something this week. I can see it.
I said: He told me the compound thought about the structural question of what it means for a compound member to be partnered with someone who does independent federal work.
She held my eyes. And.
I said: And the conclusion is yes.
She was quiet for a moment. What does that mean specifically.
I said: It means the compound considered the question and decided you're good for the compound and the compound is good for you.
She said: He used those words.
I said: Yes.
She looked at the compound over my shoulder. The main building lit from inside, the workshop dark, the secondary building where her room was with the light on because she'd left it on when she left Monday morning.
She said: He considered whether I was good for the compound.
I said: And concluded yes.
She said: That's a significant thing to be told.
I said: Yes.
She said: Did you know he was going to do that.
I said: No. I knew he thought about things fully before he decided them. I didn't know the timeline.
She was quiet for another moment. Then she said: I should thank him.
I said: He won't know what to do with that.
She said: I know. I'm going to do it anyway.
We went inside and she found Kale at the kitchen table and she said: Thank you. For thinking about it and telling Wade.
Kale looked up from his legal pad. He said: It was the right conclusion. He looked back at the legal pad.
That was it. She came to the kitchen table and sat down and Garrett put food in front of her and Rook put his chin on her knee and the compound went about its evening.
She looked at me across the table.
I looked back.
She said: The conclusion is yes.
I said: Yeah.
She picked up her fork. Good, she said.