Chapter 11 — The Ping

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."She stepped into the flat. She closed the door behind her.She looked at the apartment — temporary, clearly borrowed, the minimum of someone else's life around the edges. A laptop, open. A phone — his phone, the one that had been pinging. A printer. Papers."You've been working," she said."Yes.""The data packets from the phone — you've been building the case from here.""I had material they didn't know about," he said. "Things I found after I disappeared. I couldn't send them through any normal channel so I broke them into packets and transmitted them through the phone's diagnostic pings. Rohan would see the pattern.""He did," she said."Good." He looked at her. "Did you send the package?""Yes. Last night. Simultaneously to five recipients. The journalists have it, the lawyers have it, my unit has it, Interpol has it."Something changed in his face. Something that had been held very tightly for twenty-three days released."Then it's done," he said. "It's out. They can't suppress it.""It's out," she confirmed.He sat down on the edge of a chair. Not dramatically — the specific sitting down of someone whose legs have decided that the standing was no longer strictly necessary.She sat across from him.They looked at each other across the borrowed apartment in Geneva at three-thirty in the morning."I have to ask you something," she said."Ask.""Eight years," she said. "You were NOC for RAW. Embedded at CipherNet. Running an operation." She looked at him. "Did I know you at all?"He looked at her for a long moment."You knew everything that mattered," he said. "The work — the CipherNet part — I couldn't share that. It's the only thing I kept separate." He paused. "Everything else. Naina, everything else was real. The Sunday rajma. The way I feel about filter coffee. Fighting about whose turn it was to call the landlord." He looked at his hands. "The only lie was this. And I kept it because—" He stopped. "Because if I had told you, you would have been in danger from the beginning. And I could not—" He stopped again. "I could not put you in the position of knowing and not being able to act. You're a detective. You would have acted. You would have been a target before the case was complete."She sat with this."I acted anyway," she said. "You made me the third piece. You always knew I'd be involved.""Yes," he said. "But on your terms. Not on theirs. By the time you were involved, the case was complete. You were building toward a conclusion, not into an ongoing operation." He paused. "There's a difference.""There's a difference," she agreed.She was quiet for a moment."Thomas Webb," she said.His face changed."Yes," he said."He died because of a crash that was meant for you.""Yes." His voice was flat. The specific flatness of a person who had been living with a specific thing for twenty-three days. "He died because Hayworth commanded his car into the barrier. Because they were trying to kill me and they chose a method that killed someone else instead." He paused. "I have been — I have not been comfortable, these three weeks. That specific thing has not been comfortable.""No," she said."His name is in the case file," he said. "His death is the most concrete criminal charge against Hayworth. He will be the centre of the prosecution." He looked at his hands. "It's not enough. But it's what I can do.""It's what we can do," she said.He looked at her.She looked back.