Episodul 239 · Before I Answer

That evening the agency phone lay face up on Krista’s table, between the salt and her notebook.

Maxim read the message twice. Soles had read it more times than that, on the roadside outside the Annex and twice in the van. The man in gray had never needed many words.

— Vatra. Mountains. Cold, small, everybody knows your business.

— You’ve been?

— Delivered a fridge there once. They knew my business before I’d parked.

Tesa read it over his shoulder.

— Attached to its cleaners. The same lot who stood around and watched.

Soles thought of the bench along the training-hall wall, and the two men in the office doorway who had waited to see what happened next.

— Some of them. The man who sent this was standing in the doorway.

— And you want to go.

— I’m going either way. It’s an order.

He moved his cup an inch to one side.

— I don’t want to go alone. Not among them.

That was the whole of it. It had taken him all day to be able to say it in one breath. He had walked to the end of Krista’s street and back twice that afternoon, practicing, and both times the sentence had come out with a reason in front of it.

Krista had her pen in her hand.

— It says attached, she said. It doesn’t say attached as what.

— Meaning? Maxim asked.

— Meaning he could arrive with people of his own.

— Us, Tesa said.

— Us as what? I’ve got a van and a ladder.

— You’ve got a phone that works underground, Krista said, and you find places nobody gives directions to.

She tapped the cover of her notebook.

— Their surveyors write down what a place looks like. Their cleaners go in later and find it changed. Nobody stands in the middle keeping track. I’ve been doing that for months for free.

— And me? Tesa asked.

— You hit what needs hitting, Maxim said. In the right order.

— He means you fight better than I do, Soles said.

— I know what he means.

Soles had spent the day collecting reasons to keep them out of it: the doorway, the laughter along the bench, three names with no signature beneath them. Every one of them was a reason not to ask. Every one was also the reason he had.

— If they say yes, he said, they’ll own part of what you do. Whatever you find goes into their reports.

— Part of what we write, Krista said. Not all of us.

— I’m in, Maxim said. I’ve got the runs covered.

Tesa leaned back.

— I’m not going for the state.

— I know.

— Last time you went, we found out afterward.

She let that sit.

— I’m in. I’ve finished what I was doing here.

Soles knew what she had finished. He didn’t make her say it. Her brother’s name was on a stone now, in pencil, where the rain would take it. She had done that herself.

— I gave the exhibition away, Krista said. Apparently I’m free. I’m in.

She said it lightly. Her hand had not moved from the notebook.

Three answers, and none of them his to give. He found the number the message had come from and switched the phone to speaker. His right ear would have made a mess of it anyway. Three months on, the ringing had faded to something he only heard in quiet rooms. Krista’s kitchen was a quiet room.

The man in gray answered on the second ring.

— Soles.

— I’ve received the order. Before I acknowledge it, I want to put something to you. Send me with three people who’ve already worked inside a breach with me. One reads what your surveyors find and keeps the record while we’re in there. One fights better than I do. One gets us in and out and keeps us talking to the surface. You’d have the observations and the intervention in the same team, reporting the same day.

— You’re asking me to open two branches to civilians.

— To what Vatra needs. Nothing else.

— And if I say no?

— Then I report in fourteen days. Alone.

Tesa wrote on the corner of a paper napkin and pushed it across to him.

IN WRITING. BEFORE.

— And we’d want the terms in writing before we go in, Soles said. Including what happens afterward.

Paper turned at the other end.

— A pilot. Vatra only. Pay and lodging for four. Access through the detachment to whatever the mission requires. Closed files stay closed. Every report complete, every finding in it. Training in stages, starting with the basics. Nobody gets a qualification for turning up.

A pilot. Like a machine they’ve built and don’t trust yet.

— And afterward?

— The breach closed. Or, if it can’t be closed, an explanation my people can verify. Meet that, and we discuss making it permanent.

A short pause.

— One more thing. Her notes. Whatever she writes while attached goes into the reports. And I want copies of what she already has.

Krista’s pen stopped. Her other hand lay flat on the bent cover of her notebook. Somewhere further in were three names with space left beneath each one.

It wasn’t his to give either. He waited. So did the man at the other end.

— Copies, Krista said.

— Copies, the man in gray agreed. You’ll have the terms tonight. Fourteen days.

A small pause, as if he were turning a page.

— And next time you want a log, Mr. Soles, ask me. My front desk worries.

The call ended without a goodbye. Lucky decided the meeting had been about food and put his chin on Maxim’s knee.

— So, Maxim said. We’re employed.

— You’re employed, Tesa said. We’re on trial.

— Same as every job I’ve ever had.

Tesa took the napkin back, folded it once and put it in her pocket, as if it might be needed as evidence.

Krista turned to a clean page and smoothed it flat with her palm. She wrote the date at the top, fourteen days below it, and drew a line between them.

Fourteen days. He looked at the line between the two dates and found it shorter than three months, and much easier to agree to, because this time he had not agreed alone.

Soles typed the acknowledgment again. This time he turned the screen toward them before he sent it.