Wednesday at half past twelve I stepped out of the oak in the park and walked the four blocks to the lobby with one working light, carrying two coffees from the cart on the corner. The cart man remembered my order from three weeks ago.
The lobby had the same four papers on the floor that had been there last week, moved a foot toward the stairs by traffic. The pothos on the window ledge had three new leaves since I'd looked. The clock said twelve twenty-nine.
The eleventh floor had furniture. A green sofa stood against the interior wall across from Evelyn's desk, deep enough to sleep in, and the paper CHAIRMAN sign on my door had been laminated.
Ori had been in the mourning colors since I opened my eyes. She rode up on my shoulder with her hands in her lap and had not said what the day was. I stopped asking about them around year forty.
Evelyn was at the window wall with her sleeves pushed up. The glass had filled in since I'd seen it last. Behind her the harbor sat gray and flat in the noon light, a crane at the far pier. The plants in the corner had doubled since someone started watering them. The office clock read twelve thirty-one.
The org chart had the left half. The right half was mine, tallies and questions in her small precise capitals, and one word alone in the low corner. SEPTEMBER.
"You're early," she said, to the glass.
"I'm always early, and I brought reinforcements." I set her coffee on the desk. "You bought a sofa, by the way. I want it noted that this company owned a sofa before it owned a stapler. That's ambition, and I respect it."
"Clients sit. The sofa was a business decision. The stapler arrives Friday." She capped the marker and turned around. "Thank you for the coffee."
"Thank the cart. How long did the banchan last?"
"Four days. The dried anchovies went first, which surprised me, and I have already written to your mother. On paper. She strikes me as a woman who keeps letters."
"She keeps letters, she remembers everything, and she'll keep you. Fair warning, answering that letter means galbi at Christmas whether you plan it or not. And how goes the war with the radiator? Still complaining in triplicate?"
"Three an hour. It remains the most professional thing in the building." She drank some of her coffee standing up.
"Did you make it back to the pastrami place, or are you still rationing it?"
"Twice. I've established a schedule. It annoys me that the schedule was necessary." She set the cup down.
"A pastrami schedule is a sign of good character. I mean that."
"Before the window," she said. "There's a matter downstairs."
"A matter with a name?"
"Rodion Lagunov. When I ran freight and a port went quiet, he was the phone call. Certain kinds of quiet, he was the only phone call. The security column needs a person before it needs a company, and he is the person, if you approve him. I've asked him to come up at one. I wanted you to hear the name from me first."
"Then I've heard it. Bring him up."
She went to the intercom by the door and pressed it. I moved to the middle of the room and waited on my feet.
The office runs long: hall door at the east end, fifteen feet from the desk, sofa against the south wall nine feet out, window light crossing the floor in four bars west to east. Evelyn took the window wall, marker still in her hand. I stood in the open floor between the door and the desk.
The elevator let him out and his footsteps came down the hall even and unhurried.
Rodion Lagunov was fifty-some and not tall, built through the chest and neck, gray hair clipped short, in a dark suit cut loose enough to work in. He came through the door, found Evelyn first, nodded once, and crossed toward me with his hand already lifting.
My screen had its read before his second step.
[ IDENTIFY ]
RODION LAGUNOV — HUMAN
Level 12 · Threat to user: none
Thirty years of practice. Intends the handshake.
Level twelve. The highest number I'd read on a human since I landed. I offered him my hand.
"Rodion Lagunov," he said.
"Sol Sauvage."
His grip closed and turned. His thumb rolled over the back of my hand, his left hand came up for my elbow, and his weight dropped toward my center, all of it in one motion, fast.
I went with the wrist. I took his lapel in my right hand and his belt in my left, lifted him off the floor, and set him down on the sofa nine feet away, seated upright, facing the room.
His big pistol left his jacket somewhere in the middle of that. So did the second one at his waistband, and the small revolver on his ankle. His shoes never touched the floor between the handshake and the cushion.
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He did the correct thing for a man in his trade. His hand went flat inside his jacket. Then to his waistband. Then down to the ankle. Three empty holsters, and on the third one his head came up.
It was already done. I stood at the desk with my hands folded in front of me.
Both pistols lay in their pieces on the blotter, slide, barrel, spring, frame, twice over, and the revolver's five rounds stood upright at the end of the row. His hands were still on the third holster when the last piece touched the felt.
"Are we done?"
He didn't answer.
He pressed his back into the sofa and his hands came up, open, palms toward me, and he said two words in Russian, low, to nobody.
Sweat stood at his hairline. His chest worked.
At the window, Evelyn had gone still. The marker stayed in her hand and nothing went on the glass.
I stood where I was and gave him the time.
"This one could not have told you what that man was," Ori said, from my collar. "On the other side this one would have had him before he cleared the door. Here this one waited on your screen like everyone else in the room."
He brought his breathing down first. Then he took his hands out of the air and set them flat on his knees.
The fear was still in his face when he spoke. He didn't try to hide it.
"That is not possible." His voice came out even. His hands stayed on his knees. "Four meters. Three weapons off my body. Stripped to pins while my hand was still finding the first empty holster. I have watched the fastest men alive work, Mr. Sauvage. What I am describing is not fast. It does not exist."
"Go on."
"So I am sitting where you put me, asking myself what shook my hand."
"You're asking the right question, and I'm not answering it today. Everything this company builds is aimed at keeping people alive. Nothing I am has ever been pointed at the people who work for me, and it never will be. You carried three guns and a knife in here, Rodion, and the knife is still on your left forearm. That should tell you where I stand."
His eyes went to his forearm, and stayed there a moment, and came back to me.
"May I stand?"
"Please."
He stood slowly, hands where I could see them, and crossed to the desk. He looked at the row of parts on the blotter.
"May I?"
A man asking permission to touch his own guns. I nodded.
He gathered the pieces, and the big pistol went back together under his fingers without him looking down at it. By the third part his hands were steady. He holstered all three where they lived and buttoned the jacket over them.
"You told me the principal was young," he said to Evelyn.
"I told you what I could verify," Evelyn said.
He looked at the desk, and at me.
"What is the job?"
"Right now, the job is whatever Evelyn hires you for. Land, permits, ports, people, done clean in places where clean takes a specialist. Later there's a second half, and you'll hear it when I decide you should. Take her call Friday, Rodion. The work is real, the money is boring, and a day is coming when you'll be glad you signed on early."
At the door he stopped.
"The handshake. I apologize. It is how I learn who I work for."
"It worked," I said.
His footsteps went back down the hall as even as they'd come. Then the door to the stairs opened and closed, and he walked down eleven floors rather than stand and wait for the elevator.
Ori came out from under my collar and stood on the corner of the desk where the parts had been.
"This one is asking again. This one is aware of the answer and is asking regardless."
Her hands were flat on her knees.
"That one is about to stand at that window and decide what you are, and she is not going to leave the room. This one will ask a third time when she does not."
Evelyn hadn't moved from the window.
She stood with the marker in her hand and looked at me for a long time.
"Under two seconds," she said. "From his grip closing to the last piece touching your desk. I tried to count and lost the middle. Losing count is not a thing that happens to me."
She crossed to the desk, turned her coffee cup a quarter turn, and left it there.
"I knew he would test you. He tested me in Rotterdam nine years ago, a different way, and I've watched him audition two principals since. I didn't warn you, because I wanted to see what he would learn. Plainly is our arrangement."
"I read the test on him before his hand closed. You got your look."
"No." She said it evenly. "Hear the next part, because I'll only manage it once. I have watched the fastest, strongest people alive do their jobs up close. What you did at one o'clock is not the far end of that scale. It is not on the scale. Four meters, three weapons, two field strips, inside the time a trained man needed to pat three holsters. People cannot do that. I don't mean trained people or gifted people. I mean the species."
Ori had gone still on the corner of the desk and stayed that way.
She looked at the window wall.
"So the glass just changed. Every question up there was a question about a businessman. As of one o'clock they are all one question, and it is not about business."
I nodded at the wall. "Get your notebook and come stand where you think best. On the porch I told you the count starts coming down. It starts now."
She got the notebook and came to the glass. She held the marker and didn't uncap it.
Her right half of the window had everything on it. Eleven tally marks in a block. HOW DOES HE TRAVEL. WHERE DOES HE SLEEP. THE KEY CARD. WHAT DO THE CIRCLES SHARE.
And low in the corner, small, alone. SEPTEMBER.
"What you watched at one o'clock is the first honest thing I've done in front of you since the coffee shop," I said. "Every decline and every circle and every mile on that wall runs back to one answer, and the word in the corner is where it starts. It's long. We'll take it in pieces, foundations first."
"You're telling me to pick."
"Any question on this glass. Today it comes off the window."
"How much of the answer will I believe?"
"By tonight, all of it. You watched a stranger test my hand, and you stood there and counted, because that's who you are. Keep counting all afternoon. The answer holds up."
She looked at the tallies. She looked at HOW DOES HE TRAVEL for a long moment and left it. Then she looked at SEPTEMBER and left that where it was.
Then she reached up and put two fingers flat on the empty glass below all of it, where nothing was written.
"Charlene gave me the town's version of you over pie," she said. "Good student, good family, no noise. I've checked every line of it I could check, and every line holds, and the man in that account is not the man I watched at one o'clock. So the account stops matching you somewhere. That's my question, Chairman. Not how, not what. When. When does Charlene's version of you stop being true?"
The afternoon light came through the old glass low and gold, the harbor below going copper at the edges. She stood with two fingers on the empty part of the window, waiting.
"This September," I said. "It was a Tuesday."