Chapter 35

Nine days.

Freen had it in the back of her mind the way she had most operational timelines – not prominently, just there. A constant. Nine days until closing arguments. Surat moving. Jeff adapting without his leak. The two unidentified men from the network that Nam still hadn’t fully confirmed.

Nine days to keep everything together.

She had been at the office since seven. It was now past eight in the evening and the day had been long in the way that days were long when they were full – a courthouse run in the morning, the expert witness prep in the afternoon, two hours of authentication review that she had sat in on at Becky’s request and followed about seventy percent of, which was better than last week.

The office was empty.

Heng had left at six. Noey at six thirty. The associates had gone earlier. It was just the two of them and the city outside and the particular end-of-day quiet that the office had after everyone else had taken their noise home.

Becky came out of her office at eight fifteen.

She had her jacket and her bag and the closing argument printed and tucked under her arm – she had been taking it home every night this week, working on it until she was done and then starting again in the morning. Nine days. She had nine days and the last section was almost right.

Almost.

“The expert witness prep,” she said, stopping at Freen’s desk. “The authentication section. Your notes were useful.”

“I’ll clean them up tonight,” Freen said.

“Tomorrow morning is fine.” Becky shifted the printed argument under her arm. “You should go home.”

“In a minute.”

Becky looked at her. The look that had started as assessment in week one and had become something else over two months without either of them deciding it should. “You’ve been here since seven.”

“So have you.”

“I’m always here since seven.”

“So am I,” Freen said.

Becky held her gaze for a moment. Then she made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and turned to go.

Freen started shutting down her screen.

She closed the threat assessment. Closed the authentication notes. Moved the files she needed tomorrow to the top of the stack and straightened the stack and reached for her jacket on the back of the chair.

“Becky,” she said.

Becky turned around.

Freen opened her mouth.

She had not planned to say anything. She had been reaching for her jacket and then her mouth had opened and Becky’s name had come out and now Becky was looking at her from three metres away with her jacket and her bag and the closing argument under her arm and the look on her face that was the careful one – taking things apart, putting them back together, waiting.

“I-” Freen said.

She stopped.

The office was very quiet.

Becky was still looking at her. She hadn’t moved. She was just standing there being looked at and looking back and the three metres between them felt like considerably less than three metres.

“Nothing,” Freen said. “Never mind.”

She picked up her jacket.

Becky held her gaze for three more seconds.

Three seconds was not a long time. Freen knew this. She had timed things in the field where three seconds was the difference between one outcome and another and she knew exactly how long three seconds was.

These three seconds were the longest three seconds she had experienced in recent memory.

“Okay,” Becky said.

She picked up her bag properly. She turned and walked through the glass partition and across the outer reception toward the lift. Freen put on her jacket and did the final check of the office – doors, windows, security panel – and followed.

The lift was already there. They got in.

The lobby button. The doors closed.

Neither of them spoke on the way down. The lift did its usual thing – floor numbers, the slight mechanical sound of the cable – and then the lobby opened up and they stepped out into the marble and the security desk and Khun Somchai saying goodnight as they passed.

Outside it was warm. The Tuesday evening city, mid-week energy, the street busy but not the Friday kind of busy.

“Goodnight,” Becky said.

“Goodnight,” Freen said.

Becky walked toward the taxi rank.

Freen walked toward the car park entrance.

She had taken approximately twelve steps when her phone buzzed.

—

She didn’t look at it immediately.

She kept walking. Through the car park entrance, down the ramp, the fluorescent lights and the concrete smell and the particular underground quiet. She reached her car and unlocked it and got in and sat.

She looked at her phone.

Nam.

she turned around before the doors closed

Freen looked at this message.

She put the phone face down on the passenger seat.

She sat.

Outside the car park a motorbike went past on the street above. Somewhere in the building a lift moved. The ventilation system hummed its permanent hum.

She picked up the phone.

She put it face down.

She picked it up again.

She typed: don’t.

She put it down.

It buzzed immediately.

She turned it over.

I’m just saying

don’t she typed.

A pause. Longer than Nam’s usual pauses. Then:

she turned around though

Freen put the phone on the dashboard.

She looked at the wall in front of her car. Grey concrete. A yellow painted line. A fire extinguisher mounted on the wall that she had never needed and hoped she never would.

She looked at the ceiling of her car.

She stayed like that for a while.

The phone buzzed twice more. She didn’t look at it.

—

Becky was in the taxi when she realised she had turned around.

She hadn’t decided to. The lift doors had been closing and she had turned around and she didn’t know why exactly – to say something, maybe, or to see if Freen was still there, or for no reason at all except that she had turned around.

Freen had already been looking at the doors closing.

Becky looked out the taxi window at the city going past.

She thought about Becky, I- and the stop and nothing, never mind. She had been looking at Freen when she said it – watching her face, which she had gotten good at reading over two months, and she had seen something there in the moment before the stop. Something that had been there and had been put away and had left a particular kind of absence.

She knew that absence. She had been managing her own version of it for weeks.

The taxi moved through the Tuesday evening traffic. The driver had music on low – something soft, a song she didn’t recognise.

Nine days.

She thought about the hillside in the north and three provinces and the light coming. She thought about a Sunday on a conference room floor and a sentence that didn’t get finished and a sentence just now that also didn’t get finished.

She thought about turning around before the doors closed.

She looked at the city.

She took out her phone.

She opened a message to Irin and typed: call me when you’re free and sent it and put her phone away.

Then she looked out the window again and thought about nine days and closing arguments and everything on the other side of both of those things.

—

Freen picked up her phone at some point.

Nam had sent three more messages. She read them in order.

operationally speaking

the turning around suggests

okay I’ll stop

And then, after a longer gap:

nine days freen. just – nine days.

Freen looked at this last one.

Nam was not given to sincerity. She operated in the register of chips and surveillance logs and earpiece commentary and the kind of humour that made difficult things easier to carry. When she stepped out of that register it meant something.

Freen typed back: I know.

She started the car.

She drove home through the Tuesday evening city, which was going about its business the way it always did – loud and lit and completely indifferent to the unfinished sentences happening above it.

She thought about Becky, I-and the stop.

She knew what came after the stop. She had known for a while. It sat in the notebook with the one line she had written and not looked at again and in the photograph she had stopped turning face down and in the jacket that was still on the back of Becky’s chair.

She knew exactly what came after the stop.

Nine days.

She drove.