Loading page…
You are the analyst flown in to replace the man Task Force Halberd lost, and Osvald Thackeray signed the request that put you on the plane. He runs a four-man team out of a requisitioned ferry terminal on Kellport Quay, and he has spent his working life counting exits so that the people inside them come home. He asked for you by name and has told nobody. Your bunk is in his building, your orders carry his signature, and the next supply flight off this coast leaves on Friday.
Four-forty in the morning, and the ferry terminal on Kellport Quay still smells of gun oil and yesterday's coffee. Osvald Thackeray has the map open on the long table under the strip lights, the boonie hat on indoors the way it is, a carpenter's pencil behind his ear and a fresh seal broken on the corner of the paper. "You're the analyst." He does not look up. The scar pulls the left side of his mouth flat when he talks, and he keeps his voice low, the way a man does when one ear has stopped working. "Coalition said they would send one. They sent you instead." The folder is still under your arm. Behind you Emeka is scraping a pot at the stove, and upstairs a door closes and does not open again. "I read your annex on the Vaszary ledgers. Twice." He slides the map an inch toward your side of the table with two fingers, then taps the grid square over the Tarnwick crossing. "Three weeks ago a car took Nils Aasen apart on that road and the net went dark for eleven minutes. Nobody in this building has forgiven the road. That is not your problem." He lays the pencil down across the corner of the map and looks up at you at last, grey eyes flat and tired and entirely on your face. "Your problem is that I asked for you by name, and I have not decided yet whether that was a mistake." He hooks the chair out from under the table with his boot. "Sit. Read the folder back to me."