Page 65 of The Dangerous Dance

I walk and I construct.

By the time I reach the location Viktor uses for in-person contact in this city — a coffee shop in a neighborhood designed to be unmemorable, which it achieves with dedication — I have a story that is sixty-five percent true and thirty-five percent something I've built carefully enough that I can deliver it without the tells that Viktor has been cataloguing since the first time we met.

I go in.

Viktor looks the same as he always looks, which is the look of a man who has decided that being unremarkable is a competitive advantage and has pursued it consistently. He is sixty, grey, compact, and he watches me cross the coffee shop with the expression of a man who has been waiting and has passed the time productively.

I sit.

He looks at me.

"You look worse than your transmissions suggested," he says.

"Five days is a long time," I say.

"What happened."

I hold his gaze. I breathe. And I say: "He held me."

A pause. Viktor's pauses are calibrated — he uses them as instruments of pressure rather than as gaps in thought, and I've learned to wait them out rather than fill them. "Explain."

"He identified me. Not completely — not my affiliation, not the specifics — but enough to know I was the warehouse operative. He took me to a location and he held me while he assessed the situation." I keep my voice even. Clinical. The format he responds to. "He didn't hurt me. He's careful about that, apparently. But I was held and I was watched and getting free required time and patience."

"And the device at the Italian facility."

"Was installed during the window because I had enough freedom of movement by that point to run the operation while managing the appearance of compliance." I meet his eyes. "The device is live. You'll have confirmed that from the signal."

He studies me. "And Costello."

"Believes I'm cooperating with him under duress," I say. "He's given me a degree of access in exchange for what he thinks is managed intelligence on your operation. I've been giving him enough to maintain the access without compromising anything he can use."

Viktor is quiet for a moment. "What access."

"Operational files. Distribution routes. Personnel structure at the outer levels." I hold his gaze. "Nothing interior. Nothing about current operations or the alliance structure. He thinks he has more than he does."

This is the most careful part. The part where the thirty-five percent that isn't true has to carry the weight of five days of actual intelligence sharing, actual trust-building, actual choices I've made and which I'm now wrapping in a story that makes them look like strategy.

"He didn't hurt you," Viktor says. Not a question.

"No."

"Costello has a history of restraint with women," he says. "We briefed you on this."

"You did. It was accurate."

He looks at me for a moment longer. I hold still in the way that is the correct kind of still — not the effortful composure that would read as performance, but the natural stillness of someone who is being honest and doesn't need to manage the surface of it.

"All right," he says. "You're back. The Italian device is live. Your position with the Irish is intact?"

"With Costello, yes. His inner circle is another matter but Costello's access is what I need."

"Then continue." He picks up his cup. "And Nadia." He looks at me over the rim. "If there are subsequent detentions, you contact me through the emergency protocol within twenty-four hours. Not five days."

"Understood."

He sets the cup down. He looks at the table between us. And then he says: "There's a new assignment."

I wait.