“He’d let me, but he wouldn’t like it. That’s why I didn’t ask.”
“What’s in it?” I asked.
He looked down at the laptop.
“Three things. The first is a person. The second is a place, and the third is a date.”
I waited.
“The person is a man named Dietrich Köhler. He was born in Germany and became a naturalized citizen in 2014. He runs a private-security consultancy out of a co-working space in Stamford. On paper, he does executive protection for tech executives. In practice, his name is on the contracting paperwork for two of the Onyx Bay shell entities. His is the only specific name that appears on more than one of them.”
“Have you met him?”
“Once. We were both at a charity event in New York eighteen months ago. He was polite. I remembered the accent, barely there, but present if you’re listening.”
Wiley wasn’t done.
“The place is a property in northern Vermont. It’s a defunct ski lodge, bought in 2019 through an LLC I discovered almost a year ago. It has the Onyx Bay fingerprints, contracts for renovation with more than one of the shell companies.”
“And you’ve been there?”
“I drove past it once, last April. From the road, you can see a gate, a generator shed, and a satellite dish.”
“You didn’t get out.”
“No, Samuel was in the car, and I said it was a scenic detour on a weekend getaway.”
“And the date?”
“Eleven days from now.”
“The wedding date. What do you know, Wiley?”
“Nothing specific. It’s a date that has been appearing in monitored channels for at least a year. I shared that information with Patterson.”
I stood. “I’ll be right back. This requires a refill.”
I returned with the full pot of tea and set it on the coffee table between us. Wiley topped off his mug, and I filled mine.
“Last question for now,” I said.
He sipped.
“What did Samuel say last night?”
Wiley exhaled.
“He asked me what time it was where I was. I told him. He said the radiator in the front hall is making the noise again, the one I told him not to worry about in October. The guy he called is coming on Thursday. He told me he had soup for dinner and read for an hour and went to bed early. He asked me if I was somewhere I could sleep. I said yes. He saidgood, then sleep,and hung up.”
A pause.
“Five minutes. He told me that he loved me. He didn’t ask anything else.”
“Why?”
“Because if he’d asked anything else, I’d have answered him. And he didn’t want to make me lie.”
I saw the shape of Samuel and why Wiley protected him. I’d never had anything so valuable in my life.