"He doesn't know who he's helping," Alistair said. "He thinks he's working for a private client on a corporate due diligence matter. He's careful and he's good."
Tav found his face. "You've been working this angle."
"I've been working several angles," Alistair said. He met Tav's eyes with the honesty of offering a limited disclosure. "Voss is real. But Voss is a thread that leads to the bigger structure." "I was trying to find the structure before I brought you in."
"That's the second time you've withheld operational information in the interest of managing my involvement," Tav said.
Alistair held the look. "Yes. I'm aware."
"We discussed this."
"We discussed it once," Alistair said. "I'm still recalibrating." He studied the screen. "I'll send the investigator the registration data tonight. We should have the ownership structure by Thursday."
Tav studied him.
He thought about the notebook. About the catalogue. About the decision he'd made in his room and had not yet enacted in any explicit way but was enacting, he was becoming aware, simply by continuing to sit in this library at four in the afternoon and discuss financial architecture with the person who made the coffee better than required.
"All right," Tav said.
"All right?" Alistair said.
"The investigator. Thursday." "Next time: when you have a lead, I know at the same time."
Alistair looked at him. Something in his expression acknowledged the repetition of this particular correction without defensiveness.
"Yes," he said.
They worked.
For two hours, side by side at the terminal, the focused quiet of two people who were good at the same kind of work and had found, over the preceding weeks, that working alongside each other was a different quality from working alone. Not better — different. The second intelligence operating in parallel, catching things the first missed, assembling a picture from two angles simultaneously. At 6:12, Alistair closed his laptop.
"Coffee?" he said.
"The library doesn't allow—"
"There's a café on the east side of the precinct that does good work," Alistair said.
Tav held his gaze.
"You've been here before," he said.
"Several times." He held the look. "With and without operational relevance."
"And the café is worth it?"
"The café is consistently good."
Tav considered.
"All right," he said.
They packed their things and left the library. They walked through the autumn university precinct toward the east side cafe. Neither of them said anything significant the whole way there.
• • •
CHAPTER TEN
The apartment was quiet in the early morning.
