Mike's mouth twitched. "That's cruel."
"It's efficient."
"It's both." Mike turned back to the screen. "He'll be proud of it. He'll carry it to Dante like a cat with a bird."
"And Dante will believe it, because Luca brought it."
Mike worked through the next hour with his head down. Dimitri stayed on the line and didn't interrupt him. Once Mike swore under his breath at a registry page that wouldn't load, and Dimitri said, without looking up from his papers, "Try the older archive." Mike tried it, and it worked.
Marco rejoined the call a little after nine, Rome time, which made it just past three in the morning in New York. He turned the camera toward a gray case on the desk and opened it.
Two plain white cartons lay inside, unmarked.
Mike stopped typing and looked at the screen.
"That's it?" he asked.
"That's it," Marco said.
He took a single pill from one of the cartons and held it up to the camera. Mike leaned close. It was small and white and perfectly ordinary.
