Page 94 of The Dangerous Dance

I look at the tablet.

Six photographs. Taken from a distance — a long lens, professional or close to it. The first is outside the compound, Nadia and me at the gate on the evening she first came here officially. The second is the farmers market — she's at the bread table and I'm beside her and the angle catches us in profile, too close for the context of two people who are not what we were performing that morning. The third is outside the ballet studio, which means the photographer was there on a day I walked by the studio for no logged operational reason that I've given Conor. The fourth and fifth are compound exterior shots — her arriving, her leaving, the timestamps showing a pattern across multiple days that reads, to anyone looking at it with the right frame, as exactly what it is.

The sixth is the worst. It's through the compound window — the study window, the one that faces the courtyard, the one I've been leaving cracked in the evenings because the room gets warm with the heating and I haven't thought carefully enough about the angle. It's blurred at the edges from the glass but clear enough in the center, and the center shows two people at a desk in a posture that is not professional.

I look at it for three seconds.

I set the tablet down.

"When," I say.

"The images were distributed overnight," Conor says. "To Viktor's network. I have a contact at the edge of that network who flagged it this morning as soon as it reached him." He pauses. "The distribution was specific — not broad, not public. Targeted. To the people in Viktor's operation who would know what they were looking at and what it means."

"So Viktor didn't take the photos," I say.

"Possibly not," Conor says. "Or he did and wanted plausible distance from the distribution. Either way, they're out."

I look at the tablet. "How wide."

"Thirty contacts, approximately. High-level. The kind of people who make decisions about assets and operations." He pauses. "The kind of people who would look at these and conclude that Nadia Volkov has been compromised."

Compromised. The word that ends operations. The word that, in the world Nadia came from, ends more than operations.

"Does she know," I say.

"I called Ailish. Ailish is with her."

I stand. "The crew. Who's seen them here."

"I've contained it. Three people — me, Roise, and one other I've since asked to take a different assignment for the next week." He meets my eyes. "Declan hasn't seen them."

"He will."

"Yes," Conor says. "He will."

"The Italians."

"Not yet. But the distribution pattern will reach them eventually. Marco has eyes I don't fully know about." He pauses. "A day. Maybe two."

I look at the window. The study window, the one with the angle. The one I've been leaving cracked. "All right," I say. "Get me everything you have on the photographer. Lens type, probable position, sightlines from outside the compound. Someone's been watching this building with a long lens for at least—" I look at the dates on the images. "Two weeks."

"I'm already running it," Conor says.

"And Conor." I meet his eyes. "I know what you're thinking."

He is very carefully not performing any particular expression. "What am I thinking."

"That I've created a vulnerability in this operation through a personal decision and that the vulnerability has now produced exactly the kind of exposure that professional judgment should have prevented." I hold his gaze. "You're right. Say it."

He looks at the desk. Then back at me. "You're the best operational mind I've worked for in twenty years," he says. "Which is why I know that you made the decision you made with your eyes open, which means the reasons for it are reasons I don't have full access to." He pauses. "So I'm not going to tell you you were wrong. I'm going to tell you that it's produced a problem that needs solving and that I'm here to help you solve it."

I look at him.

"That's all," he says.

"Thank you," I say.

He nods once and goes.