I sat at the gate three rows behind him and watched the back of his head as he texted — telling Dagny, no doubt, how close he was, how soon — and I felt none of the things I might have expected.

No urge to march over.

Just a steady, almost surgical attention, and beneath it the odd calm of a decision already made.

The hard part, the deciding, was behind me.

All that remained was to walk onto the plane at the right moment and let the truth arrive on its own two feet.

I had done one more thing that week, quietly, that Vaughan didn’t know about, and it was not in the folder because it was already in motion somewhere else, in an office on the other side of the city.