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Chapter Four Hundred and Four
The man's name was Renaud and he was Belgian and he was polite in the specific way of someone who had found that politeness was more effective than its alternatives in situations like this one."The amount from tonight," he said, producing a phone with a figure on the screen, "plus the outstanding balance, which Felix knows." He looked at Felix. "Which Felix has known for some time."Felix said nothing.Elise looked at the figure on the screen."Step away from the table," she said, to Renaud. "Both of you. I need a moment with my brother."Renaud considered this and then moved back three paces, which was not far but was something, the concession of a man who had assessed the situation and determined that three paces cost him nothing.Elise looked at Felix."How dangerous is he?" she said, quietly."He is not the one who is dangerous," Felix said, equally quietly. "He represents people who are.""Is this the same network as before?""Adjacent," Felix said. "They know each other." He lo
Chapter Four Hundred and Three
Elise arrived at eleven forty-seven.The casino was the kind of establishment that had been built to feel timeless and had achieved the specific timelessness of places where the lighting never changes and the carpets absorb sound and the hours dissolve into each other without anyone noticing or being intended to notice. She parked and sat in the car for thirty seconds and then got out and went in.She found him in twenty minutes.He was at a poker table in the middle section, not the high stakes rooms and not the casual tables near the entrance but the middle ground where the serious recreational gamblers sat, and he was the most disheveled person at the table by a margin that was visible from ten meters away. The jacket was the one he had been wearing in the tracking photograph from six months ago, which meant he had retrieved it from storage somewhere rather than his current belongings, which told her something about the state he had been in when he left the facility. His chips were
Chapter Four Hundred and Two
Elise called the rehab facility back within sixty seconds of hanging up and asked to speak to the director directly.The director was a woman named Dr. Hoekstra who had the specific quality of someone who had seen many versions of this situation and had learned to be honest about what the versions meant without catastrophizing them."He left at six forty this morning," Dr. Hoekstra said. "The night staff saw him in the common area at five-thirty and he seemed calm. There was no indication he was planning to leave.""The note he left," Elise said. "What did it say?"A pause. "He said he was grateful for the program and that the staff had done everything right and that what he needed to do next he could not do from inside the facility." Another pause. "He said he was sorry for the inconvenience.""Sorry for the inconvenience," Elise repeated."Yes," Dr. Hoekstra said quietly."How was he in the days before this?""Struggling," the director said, with the honesty Elise had asked for. "Th
Chapter Four Hundred and One
They had moved without discussing it to the quieter end of the room, near the display of the institute's research outcomes, and Lukas was standing with his hands in his jacket pockets and the expression of someone who has decided to say something difficult and has organized themselves for the difficulty."I want to be clear about something before I say this," he said. "I am not warning you away from Sofia. She has been genuinely important to what I have built here and I do not want to characterize her unfairly.""I understand," Elise said."The relationship taught me things," he said. "Some of them about her and some of them about myself and some of them about what happens when two people who are both very good at managing their external presentation spend significant time together." He paused. "It is a particular kind of hall of mirrors.""Tell me what you mean," Elise said."Sofia operates in layers," he said. "I do not think this is entirely conscious. I think it is the way she has
Chapter Four Hundred
They found a quiet corner of the room, two chairs near the window that looked onto the Plantage district street, the city doing its September evening things outside, and Sofia sat with the ease of someone who had chosen the location and had chosen it deliberately, which Elise noted and had expected."I want to be transparent about why I am making this proposal now rather than six months ago," Sofia said."Tell me," Elise said."Six months ago you were rebuilding from crisis," Sofia said. "A partnership made then would have had a different character. You would have needed it more than I did and that imbalance would have organized everything that followed." She looked at Elise directly. "I am not interested in partnerships built on imbalance. They produce the wrong incentives for both parties.""That is a more honest explanation than I expected," Elise said."I have found that honesty in the opening terms of a negotiation saves significant time in the middle of it," Sofia said. "You of
Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety Nine
The institute's second location was in the Plantage district, a nineteenth century building that had been a laboratory once and before that a school and before that something nobody had documented carefully enough to know, and Viktor had renovated it with the same philosophy as the first location, permanence without arrogance, spaces that said the work matters more than the impression the work makes.Elise arrived at seven and stood for a moment outside before going in.She was not nervous in the way she had been nervous at Sofia's gala a year ago, the performance anxiety of someone managing their reactions in advance. She was something quieter than nervous, the careful attentiveness of someone entering a room that matters and wanting to enter it correctly.She went in.The room was full in the way of rooms where the people present have been invited specifically rather than broadly, a hundred and twenty people who had been chosen because their presence meant something rather than beca
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