Chapter 29 : Dinner With The Enemy
The restaurant had the particular quality of a place that had been chosen to communicate something.
Not just expensive — expensive communicated nothing on its own in midtown Manhattan, where expensive was the ambient register. This was the specific variety of expensive that said I eat here regularly and the staff knows my order and I chose this because it is mine in a way that it will not be yours. The kind of table positioning where one seat faced the room and one seat faced a wall, and Devon Banks was, obviously, already in the room-facing seat when Albert arrived.
Albert sat in the wall-facing seat. He put his coat over the back of the chair.
Devon was studying the wine list with the focused appreciation of a man who had already decided and was consulting the list as a courtesy to the process. He looked up when Albert sat. "Albert. Thank you for making time."
"Of course."
The waiter arrived. Devon ordered without consulting Albert, which was a communication in itself: a bottle rather than glasses, white, specific year, and then his food — Dover sole — with the practiced brevity of a man who had never needed to deliberate in a restaurant. He set the menu down.
Albert picked up his menu. He noted the Dover sole's position and price and set the menu down without ordering yet.
"How's the writing room going?" Devon said, with the warmth of a man asking a question he already knew the answer to.
"Good. Productive."
"The TGS numbers have been interesting this season." Devon turned his water glass by the stem — a fidget so controlled it didn't look like one. "Up from last year's equivalent period. Which is unusual."
"Good material helps."
"It does." Devon studied him. "You've been here — what, three months? Came up through the page program."
"Yes."
"And you were in advertising before."
"Consulting work. Adjacent."
"Which firm?"
Albert named AAT Solutions with the flat delivery of someone answering a routine question rather than deploying a prepared response.
Devon wrote nothing. He didn't have a notebook. He had the kind of memory that didn't require one. "AAT Solutions dissolved last year," he said pleasantly.
"It did. Small firm, principal retired. It happens."
The waiter returned. Devon looked at Albert with a gesture that indicated the order was his.
Albert ordered the Dover sole.
Devon's expression shifted slightly — recognition of the move, and then genuine amusement at it, the kind that was harder to perform than hostility. "Good choice," he said.
The meal ran at the pace Devon set, which was unhurried. The probing happened throughout rather than in sequence — questions distributed across the conversation at intervals that looked casual and weren't. The community college came up framed as interest: CUNY, wasn't it? The advertising period: How long was the consulting work, exactly? The Queens to Manhattan move: You relocated recently?
Each question had the architecture of a question that had been researched and was now being confirmed. Devon already knew the answers. The dinner wasn't information gathering. It was watching Albert deliver the answers.
"You seem to have appeared fully formed," Devon said, between courses. No preamble — the sentence arriving at its own moment. "Most people I encounter in talent development have a trail. Connections, academic networks, prior colleagues who show up at appropriate intervals." He cut the sole with the precision of someone who did most things precisely. "You don't have that trail. You have fragments."
"I'm not particularly social," Albert said.
"No. You're not." Devon set down his fork for a moment. "But that's not the same as what I'm describing. You're not unsocial. You're careful." He picked up the fork again. "That's a different thing. It suggests prior practice."
Albert ate his sole. It was good — the restaurant had been chosen correctly from that standpoint as well.
"I find you interesting," Devon said. He said it the way people said things they considered significant enough to state plainly. "Jack finds you useful. Those are different relationships and they're not incompatible." He looked at his plate. "The documentation you submitted to HR is complete. Technically complete. I reviewed it this morning."
Albert processed the timeline. The submission had gone in last night. Devon had reviewed it by morning. Which meant Devon had either been monitoring the HR portal for the submission or had a contact inside HR who flagged it for him immediately.
"I hope it resolves the inquiry," Albert said.
"That depends on what the inquiry was actually about." Devon looked at him. "You're either exactly what you appear to be — a pattern-recognition talent with an unremarkable background and unusual instincts — or you're something more interesting. Either way I'd like to understand which."
"That's a very transparent way to frame a conversation."
"I find transparency saves time. I have very limited time." Devon refilled his own glass, gestured toward Albert's. Albert let him fill it. "Jack will protect you for as long as you're useful to his TGS operation. Beyond that, his protection has limits. I don't work that way." He set down the bottle. "If I understand something, I'm not threatened by it. If I don't understand it, I will continue trying until I do."
"What would understanding me look like?"
Devon considered this the way someone considered a math problem they found genuinely enjoyable. "You'd tell me something true. Not necessarily everything true — just one thing that explained the gap between what your file says and what you actually are." He picked up his glass. "Think of it as an opening bid."
Albert ate the last of the sole. "I'll think about it."
Devon smiled — the first fully unguarded expression of the dinner. "That's exactly what I'd say in your position."
He paid the check without looking at it, with the automatic ease of a man for whom this was a rounding error. He stood, collected his coat. "I'll be in touch, Albert. One way or another."
He walked out at the same measured pace he'd walked in.
Albert finished his water and sat with the restaurant's ambient noise for a moment. Devon's documentation review had happened by this morning, which meant Devon had known the package was complete before the dinner. He hadn't mentioned the inquiry during the meal except as a side note. The dinner wasn't about the documentation.
The dinner was Devon deciding whether Albert was worth more as an adversary or an asset.
Albert wasn't sure Devon had reached a conclusion.
His BlackBerry had a message from Kenneth: Mr. Donaghy's assistant called twice this afternoon. Wanted to know where you were. I said you were on an errand. I hope that was right.
It was not going to be right for long.
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