CHAPTER 8
Elias
◆
Six forty-five and the granite was cold under his boot.
He stood on the covered patio off the kitchen and drank the coffee black.
Reyn stood at his right shoulder because Reyn always stood at his right shoulder.
The overcast sat high and flat across the ridge north.
There was no wind. Day six of the still band. He did not like it.
Still weather made him move his own men every three hours whether the ground gave him a reason or not.
Still weather also carried sound off the ridge and let a rotor a mile out land in the ear like a rotor at four hundred meters.
It cut both ways. He preferred wind. Wind he could plan around.
Stillness only rewarded whoever was quieter.
He measured the terrace from where he stood.
The west approach ran clear to the scrub-oak line at four hundred meters.
Past the scrub oak the ground fell in three benches down to the fire road; anything walking up that ground would show its head twice before it showed its shoulders.
The east cut over the helipad was clean; the Bell 407 sat under her cover with the tie-downs he had checked at first light.
The south drop had nothing a man could walk.
The scrub-oak break north of the patio was a hundred and twenty meters out and made a gap in his sightlines that had been there for six years.
He had never cut it. He had thought about cutting it, and every time he had thought about it he had decided that a break he knew was cheaper than a fresh line he had to relearn. He would keep it. Cover was cover.
He rolled the right shoulder once, slow, and felt the ribs pull under the tape. He put the pull down.
Reyn had his tablet in his left hand and coffee in his right and a bad sleep behind his eyes. Reyn had bad sleep behind his eyes most Sundays and Elias had learned a long time ago not to ask about it. What he needed from Reyn was the report.
“Two lawyers on the Nyx retainer chartered from Reno to Vegas at supper, boss. Not a legal move. That’s a courier move.”
Elias watched the ridge and held a beat before he spoke.
He let the sentence sit. Two lawyers going by charter after five on a Saturday night, at their own weight in dollars, was two lawyers moving a thing that could not go on a wire and could not go in a bag someone else could touch.
Halberd’s own jet had not moved. That was the tell.
Halberd’s jet moved when Halberd was making a filing.
This was Nyx moving through counsel, in the dark, on someone else’s tail number, because a filing was not what this was.
“Tail numbers, weight on both cases, and who signed the paperwork.”
“Both civilian tail numbers. One case each, under fifty pounds. Signed by a paralegal I do not know yet.”
Reyn tapped the tablet twice and kept going.
“She sat the desk at their Reno satellite until eight and then she went home. Havlin has her at home now, on her personal phone, for nine minutes since supper. Two of those minutes were to a number I like.”
“You like it because?”
“Because it dials into Cross’s outside counsel by way of three redials. The last hop is a coffee shop landline. That’s a hand-off, not a call.”
A legal move used the Halberd jet and moved four boxes.
This was two men carrying a thing that fit in a hand.
This was corporate discovery going out of the building on a Saturday night by way of a paralegal who did not know the coffee shop was a rendezvous.
He set that down where he could pick it up.
Havlin came onto the patio at seven-ten with her tablet up and the French braid off her shoulder. She stopped at Reyn’s left, gave Elias one nod, and read.
“Six on the west line since dawn — Nyx traffic is up thirty percent since noon yesterday. Two civilian charters filed at seventeen forty-four.”
She was in her register. Numbers first, the picture around them. It was the register in which he trusted her. She lost nothing on the way from her ear to her mouth.
“Pattern and peaks, Havlin.”
“Consistent with a preemptive corporate move against a filing. The counsel is moving without the client. Cross is quiet. Peaks at noon yesterday and nineteen hundred last night.”
She flicked the tablet once.
“Both peaks sit off the corporate calendar. Both peaks sit on his outside counsel’s calendar. The counsel is doing two things at once and neither of them is billed to Nyx.”
Cross being quiet was Cross moving. Cross letting his outside counsel run a two-node courier route on a Saturday night, with a paralegal’s home phone as the switch, was Cross moving in a way he did not want Nyx books to record.
“Full sig-int on Nyx counsel. Name by supper.”
“Copy, sir.”
“Bracket both windows and cross-cut the phone records against Cross’s last known calendar. I want the man he is calling on the third line.”
“You’ll have it before supper.”
He nodded her off. She went. The patio was quieter for her going, though the still air did not so much as move at the door.
He drank the last of his coffee. He set the mug on the rail. The ridge north held.
Reyn drank the last of his own coffee and watched Elias’s shoulder.
“Boss. Ribs. You are rolling that shoulder again.”
“I am walking.”
Reyn looked at him. The silver front tooth caught what little light there was.
“Same answer as yesterday.”
Elias let a beat go by. Reyn had the right to say it.
Reyn had watched him take the rifle butt to the side and had put him back on his feet inside eight seconds, and had not made a joke about the color of him for a full hour afterward, which for Reyn was a bereavement.
Reyn had earned the right to look at his shoulder.
“Get me the Reno end pilot by nine, and the names off the manifest even if he’ll only give initials.”
Reyn stepped away with the phone against his thigh. Elias stayed with the ridge.
He worked the picture in his head while he waited.
Reno-Nyx counsel to Vegas courier to Cross’s calendar to whatever paper of Mara’s Cross was chasing.
The paper was the seven terabytes, in the vault, two floors under his boot.
The paper was what Cross had come to collect on day one and had not collected since.
The vault had not been opened since Wednesday.
He knew because he had opened it. He knew because the biometric log was on his tablet and the tablet was in his hand.
If Cross was working through a paralegal at a coffee shop in Vegas, Cross was not planning a filing.
Cross was planning an errand. Errands could be legal or they could be otherwise.
He would know by supper whether the paralegal’s contact was other counsel or a courier out of country.
He would know either way what to walk his men to.
Eight-forty. The overcast had not moved. He went into the kitchen and topped his mug. The granite island was cold under his palm. He brushed the SIG grip with two fingers when he stood, then stepped back out onto the patio.
Eight forty-four. A door opened at the west end of the terrace.
Mara stepped down onto the stone by rocking off her right foot to spare the left.
She had her tablet in her left hand and her mug in her right.
She was in his sweatshirt because the morning was cold and the sweatshirt was warm and she had not asked.
Her braid was fresh at the nape of her neck, ash-toned and neat, the loose end resting on the shoulder of the sweatshirt.
Nathan’s Seiko sat on her left wrist. The titanium band sat on her left ring finger.
She did not look at him first. She looked at the ridge.
“Morning.”
“Coffee’s fresh.”
She crossed the terrace toward the kitchen door without a limp.
He watched her cross. He watched the way she carried the tablet because the left hand was steady under its weight and did not tremble.
He watched the step she made off the low stone lip where the terrace turned in toward the kitchen.
Right foot down first. He watched her braid move once against the collar of the sweatshirt he had thrown on a chair the night before and never noticed until now.
Somewhere in the middle of an order he had been shaping in his head about Cross’s calendar, his eye stayed on her.
The want was there in daylight and it was plain.
It was not a metaphor. It was his eye tracking a woman across his terrace and staying with her because it wanted to stay.
It was the sweatshirt on her. It was the fresh braid and the steadiness of the left hand.
It was the fact that she had not asked for the sweatshirt and she had not apologized for taking it.
It was that she stepped off the low stone lip with the right foot to protect the left, and she did it once every morning now, and she did not tell him that she did it.
She counted the ankle without saying that she counted it.
He counted the ankle for her. He liked that they were counting the same thing.
He did not act.
He shelved it in the middle of the order.
He set it down where he set every want he had ever set down, and he put his mind back on Cross’s counsel and the two men flying to Vegas with cases the weight of a courier’s load.
He had shelved things heavier than this.
He would shelve this. He rolled the shoulder without meaning to and felt the ribs and put that down too.
Mara stopped at the granite kitchen island and refilled the mug from the pot. She slid the tablet aside on the granite and used both hands on the pot the way a person did when she was awake and paying attention to her hands. She capped it. She lifted the mug. She turned.
On the way back she took the same step off the stone lip, right foot down first. She passed him at three feet.
“I know.”
She held his eye. One beat. One beat longer than a stranger would have held it. It was not a look he could read and he did not try. What he could read was that she had not looked away first and she had not looked past him. What he could read was that she had known he was watching her cross.
Then she was past him and moved to the west end of the terrace with the tablet under her arm, and she sat and opened the tablet, and it began to draw its ladder.
Elias took a breath. The ribs answered.
Reyn came back to his shoulder with the phone at his side.
“Pilot on the Reno end says he flew two men and two cases to a private strip north of Vegas at supper. Says he does not know the cases. Says he does not want to know the cases.”
“Initials off the manifest. Send them to Havlin for the cross-cut against the retainer roster.”
“Two initials, no last names. She already has them running against the retainer.”
Reyn was quiet a beat. Then he said, low —
“Boss, you remember the callsign we used on that Kwan — ”
Elias’s right shoulder stiffened once. He did not turn his head.
Reyn stopped mid-word. The K sat between them in the still air and did not go on to anything. Reyn had the sense, God bless him, to stop before the second sound could form. He had said the K and he had stopped. There was no callsign on the patio. There was a K between them and nothing else.
“Not this morning, Reyn.”
Level, not sharp.
“Copy.”
Reyn stepped back a half step. He did not apologize.
Elias did not want an apology. The callsign was on Reyn’s tongue and Reyn had swallowed it and Elias had let him swallow it.
That was the whole transaction. Elias put his hand on the rail.
He looked at the west approach. He counted the scrub-oak line at four hundred meters and he counted the break in the sightlines he had known for six years and had never done anything about, and he did not think about the callsign and he did not think about the man on whose behalf it had been spoken.
He counted the bench line down to the fire road.
He counted the seconds a rifle would need to walk from the road up to the scrub oak.
He put a number on it. The number was the same number it had been six years ago. He kept the number.
He rolled the right shoulder once more. The ribs held.
At the west end of the terrace Mara worked at the tablet. Once she flexed the left ankle. Once she pushed a piece of hair off her face with her wrist. She did not look over at him. The ladder on her screen drew and drew.
He watched Reyn out of the corner of his eye.
Reyn worked the phone with his head down.
Reyn had understood the K and he was working the phone with his head down and he would not raise the shape of that sound again this morning.
That was enough. Reyn had earned his grace and Elias had spent it in the cheapest way he could, and the true sentence stayed on the patio unspoken by either of them.
He would not snap at Reyn today. Today was not the day the callsign came out.
Today was the day the courier route went from Reno to Vegas to a coffee shop landline and back to Cross’s calendar.
He put his mind there. Cross was moving paper.
Elias was going to have the name of the man on the third line by supper.
He would have the initials on both cases by nine.
He would have the vault log open on his tablet before the day turned over.
He was going to walk into supper knowing more than he had walked into breakfast knowing, and that was the shape of a Sunday he could hold.
Nine-twelve.
She capped her mug and closed the tablet.
She stood the way she stood when the ankle was tolerating her — careful weight, right foot first. She walked back across the terrace and past him and she did not hold his eye this time.
She walked to the door of the kitchen. She stepped up over the stone lip on her right foot.
She opened the door with the tablet-hand tucked under her elbow.
He watched her cross into the kitchen, and he did not look at the ridge for a full minute after the door closed behind her.