The afternoon was unremarkable in the way that days were unremarkable when large things were being held carefully below their surface. He signed the Hartfield amendments. He sat through a call with Frankfurt that required forty minutes of his attention and received it. He reviewed the supplementary note from Marcus twice more, each time arriving at the same conclusion about the name attached to the holding company — that it required more before he could do anything useful with it — and each time setting it aside with the same disciplined patience that had always been his most reliable professional instrument.
At four o'clock Elena brought him a revised version of the Mercer contract addendum, which he had asked for that morning. She set it on his desk. He looked at it rather than her, whi
