The folder was thinner than the last one.
Sabatini had learned, across the weeks accumulated since the first report, that the thickness of a folder was not an accurate index of its weight.
He had brought thin folders into this room that had taken twenty minutes to set down. He set this one on Ferrante's desk without ceremony.
"She's refused," he said.
Ferrante looked at the folder. Not opening it. The expression of a man who had not expected a different answer and was confirming what he just heard. "In what language?"
"Polite, Precise." Sabatini pulled the relevant page. "She writes: The subject is not ready for the transition. I will not establish a context in which his first experience of institutional authority is being brought somewhere against his understanding. I am asking instead for the following." He looked up. "Then the requests."
Ferrante looked at the requests.
