Kowalski arrived at one twenty-three.
I knew this because I heard the car on the gravel and checked my watch with the automatic precision of a man who had been tracking time since this morning with the specific, forward-leaning attention of someone who had a sequence of things to get through and was moving through them in order. The balcony. The call to Liam. The conversation with Dane. The meeting with my father that still needed to happen before the day was done. And now Kowalski, which meant the Federnaz intelligence, which meant the part of today that was purely operational and required everything I had that was not personal and not familial and not the hand on my chest on the balcony in the morning light.
I went down to meet him.
Kowalski was a small man who looked like an accounta
