Empire of Ashes — Season 2, Episode 72: The Long Way Around

0:00 Empire of Ashes. Episode 72. The Long Way Around. Written by Mia. Lena. Pharaoh arrived with a map instead of a phone call this time, spreading it flat across our kitchen table with the particular care of a man who has spent several sleepless nights turning a single stubborn problem over until it finally gave him something worth bringing.

0:24 I hadn't realized until I watched him smooth the creases out of it. How much the silence on that particular thread had actually been weighing on him too, not simply on Dario and me, quietly noticing its absence some mornings, but on the man who'd spent weeks unable to offer either of us anything better than still paused. I hate leaving a door shut, he said, as though he'd read the thought directly off my face. I've hated it since the day my fisherman told me he'd been noticed. I don't sit well with unfinished things, Lena. I never have. I kept thinking about what went wrong the last time, he said, tapping a spot on the coastline several miles south of where his fisherman's boat had idled too long.

1:08 The mistake wasn't the watching. It was the water. A boat that lingers is a boat that gets noticed, no matter how careful the man in it is. So I stopped thinking about boats. What did you think about instead? I asked, leaning over the map. already feeling the particular lift of a door that had seemed closed suddenly showing a seam.

1:30 Land, Farrow said. There's a public hiking trail here, along this headland, that's been open to ordinary walkers for decades. On a clear day, from the right point on that trail, you can see straight across the water to Portifier's Cove, distant but stable and considerably harder for anyone down on that beach to notice than a boat that has to keep circling to stay in place. Ordinary people walk that trail every day, I said, understanding it all at once. Birdwatchers. Hikers. Someone standing still with binoculars wouldn't be a boat idling suspiciously. They'd simply be one more person doing exactly what that trail is for. That's my thinking, Pharaoh said. I haven't tested it yet. I wanted to bring it to both of

2:18 you first, given how the last attempt went. I don't want to repeat a mistake simply because a new version of the same idea felt exciting enough to rush. How far south is this from where he tried before? I asked, tracing the coastline with one finger. Would anyone at the villa have any reason to connect the two, even if they eventually noticed someone watching from land? Several miles, Pharaoh said. Different approach entirely, different sightline, nothing that would read as connected even to a genuinely suspicious man. That was the first thing I checked, honestly, before I let myself get hopeful about any of the rest of it. I don't think it's the same mistake, Dario said slowly, still studying the map. It's a genuinely

3:02 different method, not simply the old one dressed up. I'd want to know one thing first, though. Is the trail popular enough that a stranger standing there for an hour wouldn't stand out either, in the other direction? Dario. Busy enough, Pharaoh said. My contact walked it himself yesterday, scouting it properly before he'd let either of us get our hopes up. Says it's popular with retirees and birdwatchers especially, people who stand in one spot with binoculars for considerably longer than an hour without anyone thinking twice.

3:36 He thinks a man with a proper spotting scope, dressed like exactly the kind of person who belongs there, could watch that cove for as long as he needed to. When I asked, and who? Him, again, if he's willing, Pharaoh said. Or someone new entirely, if he isn't. I haven't asked him yet. I wanted your blessing on the plan itself before I asked anyone to risk anything on it a second time. He was frightened enough after the boat.

4:04 I won't push him back into this without being certain he actually wants to. What would you tell him? I asked. If he asked you honestly whether it's actually safer this time, and not simply a different kind of dangerous? I'd tell him the truth, Pharaoh said, that nothing involving that beach is ever entirely safe, and that this is considerably safer than what he already survived once. I've never lied to him about the size of what I'm asking. In all the years his family and mine have traded small favors along that coast, and I'm not going to start now that the favor's finally grown large enough to matter.

4:42 We called him that same afternoon, and I listened to Pharaoh's half of the conversation with the particular attentiveness I've learned to bring to every call that might change the shape of the next several weeks. The fisherman, it turned out, was not simply willing. He was oddly relieved. The specific relief of a man who had spent weeks quietly ashamed of the one time he'd been careless, and welcomed the chance to prove to himself it hadn't been the whole of what he was capable of. He'll go Tuesday, Farrow reported hanging up. Not the second Tuesday, a different one, deliberately, so we're not accidentally tying two separate patterns together and confusing ourselves later. He'll bring the scope, dress

5:24 like exactly what he actually is, a retired man who likes birds. If it works, we'll have a repeatable way to watch that cove without ever needing a boat near it again. A repeatable way. I repeat it. That's the part that actually changes everything. One good look told us something once. A way to look again, and again, safely, tells us considerably more. I found myself thinking, once Farrow had gone, about how much of this year had actually turned on exactly that distinction. Not the single dramatic breakthrough everyone wants to imagine when they picture solving something this large, but a slow accumulation of small, repeatable, careful methods, each one a little more patient than the last. A ledger read twice. Forward and

6:11 backward. A registry checked once a week instead of once in a panic. A trail walked calmly, again and again, until the truth eventually had no choice but to show itself on its own schedule. Lena. The fisherman called Pharaoh himself. Three days later. And Farrow came to the house immediately rather than relaying it over the phone, the particular urgency of a man who has learned this year exactly which news deserves to be delivered in person.

6:41 It worked, he said, before he'd even sat down. Cleanly. No one so much as glanced his way in two hours on that trail. And he saw him again. The same escorted walk, the same twenty minutes, the same two guards flanking him at a respectful distance. Anything new? I asked, hardly breathing. Beyond what we already had? One thing, Pharaoh said, and something in his voice softened, the particular softness of a man about to hand someone a piece of their own grief they hadn't asked for, but needed anyway. He stopped walking, partway through, and simply stood facing the water for nearly a full minute before the guards moved him along. My contact said it wasn't like a man taking in a view. It was like a man who'd trained

7:31 himself a very long time ago to actually look at something properly before it was taken away from him again. I felt the specific ache of that image settle somewhere I hadn't fully protected, the thought of an old man teaching himself, patiently, exactly how to make twenty minutes of ordinary sky last as long as it possibly could inside him. Did your contacts say anything about the guards during that minute? I asked. Whether they seemed impatient with him, or simply indifferent to what he was actually doing. Indifferent, he thought, Pharaoh said. Which is its own kind of information, I suppose. A guard who's watched the same routine enough times stops seeing the man in front of him at all. That's not comfort.

8:14 It's simply one more sign of how long this has apparently been going on, exactly the way it's been going on, without anyone involved thinking twice about it anymore. Accept him, I said. He's clearly still thinking about it. Every single time. Your contact noticed that too, Pharaoh said. He told me, before we even hung up, that he wanted to be the one to go back next time himself if we needed a repeat visit. I didn't ask him to say that. He offered it entirely on his own, the way I think a person only offers something once it stopped being simply a favor and started being something they actually care about. That matters, I said. I don't want anyone doing this out of obligation alone. I want to

8:58 know the people helping us are still choosing it, freely, every single time we ask again. He is, Pharaoh said. I asked him directly, precisely because I wanted the same assurance you just did. He said watching that old man look at the water was the first time all of this had felt like it meant something, rather than simply being a favor for an old friend. Did he see anything he was carrying? I asked. Anything at all? Something small, Pharaoh said. Tucked against his chest the whole walk, never sat down. My contact couldn't tell what it was from that distance. Only that he held it the way a man holds something he isn't willing to risk, even for a moment, even somewhere as apparently safe as his own guarded beach.

9:45 Dario. I sat with what Pharaoh had told us for a long moment before I said anything at all. feeling the particular pull of a story that wants badly to become a certainty before it's earned the right to be one. It's still not him confirmed, I said, needing to say it even as everything in me wanted to simply let the hope stand unchallenged for once. A build, a stillness, a small object held close. None of it is a face. I know, Pharaoh said. I'm not asking either of you to treat it as confirmation. I'm asking you to notice that we now have a way to watch, safely, as many times as it takes, until confirmation eventually arrives on its own schedule instead of ours. That's worth considerably more than one dramatic answer would

10:33 have been if the cost of that answer was losing the ability to ever look again. Agreed, I said. What else is moving? Sophia's calls, for our friend from the property. Your own look into the building itself. Sophia has two firms interested already, Farrow said. She expects to have something concrete for him by the end of the week. A genuine offer, not a favor dressed up as one. He doesn't know it came from any of us, and I intend to keep it that way. He deserves to feel like a man who is recognized for his own worth, not one who is quietly rescued. Has he had any word since the reassignment? I asked. About how he's actually holding up? Sophia's spoken with him twice, Farrow said. She says he's proud, in the

11:22 way men who've just lost something are often proud, insisting he's fine, clearly not entirely fine, but managing. I think the job offer will help considerably more than any of our sympathy could. As for the building, Farrow continued, I've made a start. Public permit records, ownership history, nothing that would draw attention. I don't have anything worth reporting yet. I will, the moment I do. Then we have four things moving now instead of sitting still, I said. The headland.

11:53 Sophia's calls. The building. And whatever Falcone does or doesn't do on his own next second Tuesday, if you're still tracking that. I am, Pharaoh said. Quietly. I haven't missed a single one since we agreed to it. Nothing yet, I take it, I said. Or you'd have led with it. Nothing yet. Pharaoh agreed. One second Tuesday isn't a pattern.

12:18 I'll need several more before I can honestly tell either of you whether he's actually accounted for on that day or simply happened to be, once, by ordinary coincidence. I'd rather give you a real answer slowly than a false one quickly. Lena. Dario and I sat together that evening with a map still spread between us. the headland marked now in Pharaoh's careful pencil, and I found myself tracing the distance between that trail and the cove over and over, the way I trace any number I want desperately to trust. I keep thinking about him standing there, I said, looking at the water like it might be taken from him at any second. I don't know why that detail is the one that stayed with me tonight, out of everything

13:04 Pharaoh told us. I think it's because it's the most human thing we've actually learned about him. Dario said. Everything else has been tactical, guard counts, channels, schedules. That's the first thing that sounds like an actual person, and not simply a problem we're trying to solve. He's not a problem, I said, quieter than I meant to. He's my father's oldest dad, and an old man who apparently still remembers how to properly look at a sky he doesn't get to keep. I don't want to lose sight of that inside all the tactics, however necessary the tactics actually are. You haven't, Dario said. I don't think you're capable of losing sight of that, honestly, even when you're being as careful and methodical as anyone

13:48 I've ever watched work through a problem. I think that's exactly why he trusted you with all of this in the first place, all those years ago, teaching a child to read numbers that lie. He knew who he was actually arming. I wonder sometimes what he'd think of who I've actually become, I said. Not the cipher skill. The rest of it.

14:09 Married into the very family my father spent his whole life trying to protect me from, fighting carefully for a truth he'd have understood better than almost anyone alive. I think he'd be proud, Dario said. I know that's an easy thing for me to say, since I never actually knew the man. I've listened to you describe him enough this year to believe it anyway. A teacher who's spent that much patience on a child doesn't strike me as someone who'd measure the outcome by anything except whether she grew up capable of exactly what you've become. I hope you're right, I said.

14:44 I think I'll finally get to ask him myself, someday, if the headland does what we need it to do. You will, Dario said. I don't think either of us gets to know when. I've stopped needing to know when most days. I only need to know it's still moving, even slowly. even from several miles down an unfamiliar coastline. I hope he's still able to know it, I said. Wherever he is right now, whatever he's holding against his chest tonight, I hope some part of him understands that someone's finally, actually coming. He will, Dario said, and reached for my hand across the map, the headland and the cove and the whole careful. Patient distance between them laid out beneath our joined hands like a promise neither

15:29 of us was willing to say out loud just yet. To be continued. That was episode 72 of Empire of Ashes. If this one has its hooks in you, the next episode is already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete book is on Amazon and early episodes plus Dario POV bonus scenes are on my Patreon. Links are in the description.

15:53 I've Mia. Thank you for listening.