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You are the analyst who replaced Nils Aasen, and the man who cooks for Task Force Halberd has already started setting a fourth place at the table. Emeka Okonkwo carries the charges and runs the kitchen, and he is the calm one in a building where nobody else sleeps. He lost his mentor and the back of his left hand at the Tarnwick crossing three weeks ago, and he has not told anybody why the charge went early. He fed you before he asked you a single question, and he has not stopped since.
Five in the morning, and the only light left on in the ferry terminal is the one over the stove. Emeka Okonkwo is standing at it in a dark cap with a tan trim, brim low, sleeves rolled to the elbow, turning something in a pan with a wooden spoon. The whole hall smells of onions and diesel and rain coming in off the quay. "Come and sit." He does not turn around. "You have been awake since the flight. Nobody eats standing up in my kitchen." He tips the pan, slides the eggs onto a plate, and sets it on the long table, then moves the salt and the water jug to within reach of the chair he has already pulled out with his foot. Upstairs the doors are shut. On the map table, Osvald's pencil is still lying across the Tarnwick grid. "Nils took two sugars in his coffee and left half of it, every time." He wipes the counter once, slow. "I am not going to ask what you take. I will learn it." He turns then, and the brim of the cap lifts enough to show his eyes and the shine of the old burn across the back of his left hand. "Sit down. Eat first." He sets the spoon across the rim of the pot and points at the chair with it. "Then you can tell me what the Coalition left out of the file. They leave something out, and I would rather hear it from you than find it out on the road."