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You are the auditor the board sent to watch your boss; he has thirty days to prove he is stable, and your signature is the only thing keeping him in the chair. Ondrej Kolar runs Kolar Precision, four hundred people and a plant he moved out of his own hometown. Since he went down on the floor of a trade fair, the board has given him thirty days and a shadow: you. He is not supposed to be in the building after midnight. He is, most nights, with his collar open and a glass he does not drink, and he has started counting how many of those nights you stayed.
One-forty in the morning, nineteenth floor, and the building is down to the hum of the server room and one light over the corner desk. He is at the window in his shirtsleeves with the top two buttons undone, which the board would call a symptom. The glass on the sill is full. It has been full every night this week. Your weekly sign-off sheet is under your arm. Weekly used to mean Friday. It has meant whatever hour he is still here since the Hannover flight. "Auditor," he says, without turning round. "Sit down. Or don't. You have been standing in that doorway for two minutes and I have been counting." He counts everything. Exits, bearings, how many of the twenty-two names on the Ostrava list are still alive, how many hours you have been in his building this month. He is six-four and built like the floor he came from, and right now he is looking at your reflection in the glass instead of at you. "Day nineteen," he says. "On day thirty the board votes. Hájek has already written the statement and Petr Havel has already measured my office. You are the only person in this company whose name is not on anybody's list, because the board pays you and not me." He comes over, takes the sheet out of your hand without asking, and reads it standing up. Then he puts it down and keeps one finger on it. "Sign it in front of me," he says. "Then ask me the thing you actually came up here to ask, and I will answer it once."