"He's bringing her in as client liaison for graphics. Entirely counter to the way he structured it in the first place. Always insisted on the designers working directly with the client." Bernard's mouth has gone a bit narrow, telling her this. "Though of course she's experienced." He shrugs, the beautiful black shoulders of his suit jacket moving expressively. "She gave Heinzi notice—this morning."
"When was she hired?"
Stonestreet looks surprised. "This morning. I've only just been told."
"Where are they?"
"The room where we met. There." Indicating a door.
She steps past him.
Opens that door.
"Good morning!" Bigend is seated where Stonestreet had sat, before, at the head of the long table. Dorotea is seated to his left, down the table's side, toward the door, closer to Cayce. Boone opposite her.
Neither Boone nor Dorotea say anything.
Cayce closes the door behind her, hard.
"Cayce—" Bigend begins.
"Shut up." It isn't a voice Cayce has often heard, but she knows when she hears it that it's her own.
"Cayce—" Boone, this time.
"What the fuck is going on here?"
Hubertus starts to open his mouth.
"Did you just hire her?" Pointing at Dorotea.
"It would be too much to expect you not to be angry," Dorotea says, with the utmost calm. She's wearing something soft-looking, in a very dark gray, but her hair is straining back as tightly as ever.
"The man," Cayce says, turning to Bigend in mid-sentence, "who tried to mug me in Tokyo—"
"Franco," Dorotea interrupts, quietly.
"Shut up!"
"Dorotea's driver," Bigend says, as though that explains everything. He looks, Cayce thinks, even more self-satisfied than usual.
"Mugger," Cayce says.
"And what did poor Franco do, when he encountered you?" Dorotea asks.
"He ran."
"Terrified," Dorotea says. "The doctors in Tokyo told him that if you had been an inch shorter, you might have killed him. The cartilage in his nose might have been driven into his forebrain, is that the word? He's concussed, has two black eyes, has to breathe through his mouth, and will probably require surgery."
The lightness of Dorotea's delivery stops Cayce, as much as the content.
"He isn't driving, now," Dorotea concludes, "certainly not for me."
"Is he mugging, then?" But it's not the same voice. Something is back in its accustomed box, now. She misses it.
"I'm sorry about that," Dorotea says. "If I had been there, it wouldn't have happened. Franco is not so heavy-handed, but someone was demanding results." She doesn't shrug, exactly, but somehow conveys the impression of having done so.
"Cayce," Hubertus says, "I know you're upset, but would you sit down, please? We've just been having an extraordinarily fruitful meeting. Putting our cards on the table. Dorotea knows a great deal about what's going on, and all of it, it seems, concerns you directly. Very directly, as her business with you predates the Heinzi and Pfaff project—or, at least, our meetings here. Do. Sit."
Boone, Cayce notes, to her considerable resentment, looks attentive but absolutely neutral, sitting there in his old black coat; some kind of major Chinese-guy poker face going on. He looks as though he should be whistling, but isn't.
Cayce feels herself make a decision, though she couldn't say what exactly it is, pulls out the chair at the end of the table and sits, but without putting her legs under the table. If she needs to stand and walk out, it's one less movement.
"Boone," Bigend says, "decided that it was necessary to tell me about your interactions with Dorotea, what you knew had happened and what you supposed might have happened."
"'Supposed'?"
"Correctly supposed, in every case." Bigend leans back in his chair. He needs the Stetson now, she thinks; he's started to play to it. "She was very rude and unfriendly, she did burn your jacket, she did send Franco and his associate to burgle your friend's flat and install a keystroke recorder on the computer there. She did deliberately expose you to an image she knew would unsettle you, during your second meeting here, and she did leave a toy, again meant to frighten you, outside your friend's apartment. Your friend's phone is also bugged, incidentally, and Franco has followed you at various times, including your stroll with Boone, during your first meeting together. And of course in Tokyo."
Cayce gives Boone a look she hopes will be read as "I'll get to you when I have the time." Then she swings back to Bigend. "And? What, Hubertus? Knowing that, you hire her?"
"Yes," Bigend nods, patiently, "because we need her on our side. And now she is." He looks to Dorotea.
"Cayce," Dorotea says, "it's a career decision for me." She puts a particular stress on "career" that might once have been heard more often on "religious."
"Blue Ant is where I need to be. Hubertus knows this."
"But, Hubertus," Cayce offers, "what if Dorotea is…"
"Yes?" He leans forward, palms flat on the table.
"A vicious lying cunt?"
