The primary operation had not appeared.
That was the specific quality of the night on Day 37 — the particular non-event of a threat that had been flagged and positioned and was making decisions that no one on our side could read yet. Caleb was running the formal watch below. The three-layer defense was in its nighttime configuration. The outer layer's advance scouts were reporting clear on all monitored corridors. Clear was not reassuring.
I went to the north balcony at eleven because I could not sleep and because the perimeter watch from the north balcony had the specific value of a view that covered the most exposed corridor and required sustained attention that was different from desk-attention. Different muscles. Desk-attention was my natural register and it had been running for sixt
