Chapter 10: Raymond Park's Surveillance Net

The brief arrived at 6:14 AM, which was when it always arrived.

Raymond Park had long ago calibrated his mornings around this fact the way other men calibrated them around sunrise or a first cup of coffee. The brief was the day's initial condition. Everything that followed was derivative. He collected it from the secure terminal in his home office before his wife stirred, before the dog needed walking, before the particular quality of Washington morning light had resolved itself into anything committal. He read it standing up, because sitting down encouraged a kind of settling he preferred to defer until he understood the shape of the day.

The home office was small and deliberate. A desk, a chair, a terminal, a window facing east. No photographs. His wife had suggested photographs once, early in his tenure, and he had explained, not unkindly, that photographs were a form of legibility he'd rather not provide. She had not suggested it again. She was, among her other qualities, a fast learner.