Chapter 11 — The Ping

Geneva. November 26th. 3:17 AM.Her phone woke her.Not a call — a ping. The specific vibration of a location notification from the Find My app she had kept active on Arjun's number.She looked at the screen.The pin had appeared in Geneva.Not downtown. Not the hotel district. A neighborhood fifteen minutes east. A specific building. An apartment block on a residential street.She was dressed in three minutes.She was in the building's lobby in twenty.The concierge was asleep — a small building, private, the kind that had a human at the desk rather than a security system, which was its own security choice. She rang the bell. He appeared. She showed the High Commission ID and used the word "emergency" and "family" in the same sentence, which was true.He gave her the flat number.Floor four. The pin was pulsing.She took the stairs.She knocked.The door opened.Arjun Mehta, 34, cybersecurity analyst, NOC officer, allegedly deceased since November 3rd, stood in the doorway of a Geneva apartment in what appeared to be someone else's clothes — slightly too large, the specific quality of a person who had been living from borrowed resources — and looked at his wife.He looked like himself. He looked terrible. He had lost weight in three weeks and he had the eyes of someone who had not slept well and who had been carrying something very heavy and was looking at the person he wanted to put it down in front of.He said: "Naina."She said: "Don't."He was quiet.She looked at him for a long time. The specific taking-stock of a person who had been told something was destroyed and is looking at the something and determining the extent of the damage."You're alive," she said."Yes.""You faked your death.""I staged a disappearance," he said. "Using a crash they were planning anyway.""You let me believe—""I sent you the message," he said. "Don't come home yet. I couldn't say more — not on any channel they might have access to. I didn't know if they had your phone. I didn't know how quickly you'd find the spreadsheet." He paused. "I knew you'd find the spreadsheet.""Four days," she said. "I thought you were dead for four days."