Page 66 of The Dangerous Dance

"Costello." He says the name with the flat precision of a target designation. "The Irish situation is becoming counterproductive. The Connolly operation is at risk of exposure — I've had a flag on the Antwerp shell that suggests someone pulled on it recently, which means we may have a short window before the Irish identify the asset."

I keep my face exactly where it is.

"If the Irish identify Connolly and Connolly is removed from his position, the internal fracture that's been driving the Irish toward instability closes. They stabilize. The alliance with the Italians strengthens." He looks at me. "Costello is the person who would make those decisions. Costello is therefore the point of intervention."

"You want him neutralized," I say.

"I want him removed from the decision-making process for a period sufficient to prevent the stabilization." He pauses. "Not permanently. We don't need a martyr. We need an incapacitation."

"How."

He slides something across the table. A small case. The kind that looks like it contains contact lenses and which contains instead two glass capsules the size of my thumbnail, filled with something clear. "Tasteless. Odorless. Produces symptoms consistent with a serious but non-fatal cardiac event within forty-eight hours of administration. He'll be in hospital for three to four weeks, which is sufficient." He meets my eyes. "You have the access. You have the opportunity. The next time you're with him."

I look at the case.

I pick it up.

"The next time I'm with him," I say.

"Yes." He stands. "And Nadia. The Antwerp flag. If you hear anything about it from Costello's side⁠—"

"I'll tell you immediately," I say.

He leaves.

I sit in the coffee shop for four minutes after he goes. The case is in my hand. I look at it.

Two capsules. Tasteless. Odorless. Three to four weeks in hospital.

I think about a man who checks the circulation twice. Who left the window unlatched. Who said you matter in the specific register of someone who means it and doesn't say things they don't mean. Who will, if I walk back through the door of the safehouse, believe I'm there because I chose to be.

I think about Dara.

Because that's the part I haven't named yet and the part that Viktor has been managing without naming it either. Dara is in Astoria keeping the light on, and Dara is on Viktor's roster, and if I decline this assignment Viktor will give me a different one and the different one will involve Dara in the field in a building she's not ready to be in, and the outcome of that has a probability distribution I've already calculated and don't want to look at directly.

My father declined an assignment.

He died at forty-four.

I look at the case.

I look at it for a long time.

Then I put it in my pocket and I stand and I leave the coffee shop and I walk out into the morning and the city continues not caring that I'm in it, which is one of the things I've come to rely on.

Dara is awake when I get back to the apartment. She is in the kitchen with her coffee and her plant care book and the careful expression she has when she's been awake for longer than she should have been and is pretending she hasn't.

She looks at me.

I sit down across from her.

"How bad," she says.

I put the case on the table between us.

She looks at it. She looks at me. "Liam Costello," she says.

"Yes."