For a while longer, Rob let the evening remain social.
That was when Joseph began to understand that there was indeed something underneath it. Not because Rob became grave. He did not. If anything, he was almost too good at remaining relaxed. But Joseph had spent his career watching adults circle the true subject while pretending the circling itself was conversation. There was always a shift. The questions became cleaner. The pauses acquired structure. The room did not change, exactly, but the air inside the exchange did.
Joseph set down his glass.
“All right,” he said.
Rob looked at him.
“‘All right’ what?”
“You had something to run by me.”
“I did.”
“And unless Stamford has become so stimulating that you’ve forgotten it, I assume we have now arrived at that portion of dinner.”
Rob’s expression changed slightly. Amusement first. Then something else.
“Yes,” he said. “We have.”
Joseph leaned back.
“I am listening.”
Rob did not begin at once. He looked down at the table for a moment, then back at Joseph.
“There is a family on your Moscow schedule,” he said. “I need to request something for one of them.”
Joseph’s hand remained on the stem of his glass.
“How, exactly,” he said, “do you know they are meeting with me?”
“Because we know their movements.”
“That is meant to reassure me?”
“No,” Rob said. “It is meant to be precise.”
“Precision is not always reassuring.”
“No. But for what it’s worth, your life is not nearly interesting enough to monitor at that level.”
“A devastating assessment.”
“Professionally, perhaps. Personally, I remain fond.”
Joseph looked at him for a moment.
“Does this family know you are asking?”
“No.”
“Do I know them?”
“Only professionally, as far as I know.”
“As far as you know.”
“Yes.”
“Do you intend to tell me the name?”
“Not unless you agree to hear the request first.”
That stopped him.
It ought not to have. It was, after all, the minimum decency one adult owed another when approaching the edge of someone else’s professional obligations. But the fact that Rob had seen the edge clearly enough to stop at it was both reassuring and manipulative, and Joseph hated him a little for managing to make the two things indistinguishable.
“How principled of you,” Joseph said.
“No. Careful.”
Joseph looked at him.
Rob did not smile.
“I’m not going to put a family name in your head and then pretend that’s neutral,” Rob said. “Your files mean something to you. The names in them mean something. I understand that.”
“You understand it well enough to use the fact.”
“Yes.”
The honesty was unwelcome.