Chapter 8: The Patience of Not Being Recognized

He had a system.

It was not new — the system was, in its essential architecture, the same one he had deployed in Lisbon and Reykjavik and a dozen postings before that, refined by a century of application into something very close to art. The principles were simple: answer questions asked, do not invite questions unasked, withdraw before the texture of a conversation changes from professional to personal. Be useful. Be precise. Be forgettable.

The difficulty was that Sera Voss had, in the twenty-three years since Astoria, become someone who asked questions for a living.