Empire of Ashes — Season 2, Episode 76: A Face Half Turned

0:00 Empire of Ashes. Episode 76. A Face Half -Turned. Written by Mia. Lena. Tuesday arrived the way every important day has this year. Ordinary on the surface, unbearable underneath it, the two of us moving through breakfast and errands, and an entire afternoon of pretending neither of us was actually counting hours until Pharaoh's call. You've checked your phone four times in the last ten minutes. Dario said, not unkindly, setting a cup of tea in front of me I hadn't asked for but was grateful for anyway. I know, I said. I keep telling myself checking it doesn't make the call arrive any faster. I keep checking it anyway. I've done the same thing twice since you last looked, Dario admitted. I don't think

0:49 either of us is actually capable of not doing it today. I've stopped pretending otherwise. He came and sat beside me at the window instead of across from me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him without either of us needing to say anything about why we'd both wanted that today specifically. I keep running the whole plan through my head, I said. The scope, the weather, the timing. As though thinking it through carefully enough might actually change how it goes, three hours south of here, entirely out of either of our hands. I do the same thing, Dario admitted. I know it doesn't change anything.

1:26 I think the thinking is simply what we do instead of screaming most days. It's not useless. It's just not actually control, however much it feels like it in the moment. Do you think it will actually happen this time? I asked, or will something else push it back again, the way the weather did last time? I don't know, Dario said. I've stopped letting myself predict these things.

1:50 I think that's actually been one of the harder lessons this year, if I'm honest. Learning to want something fully while genuinely not knowing whether today is the day it arrives. I keep thinking about the tobacco tin, I said. I don't know why that's the detail surfacing today of all days. I haven't thought about it in weeks. Maybe because today's the day you might actually get close enough to ask him about it, Dario said gently.

2:15 I think some part of you already knows that. even if the rest of you is still trying to stay properly careful about it. We sat together at the window for a while, watching the ordinary street do its ordinary things, both of us holding the particular stillness of people who have learned, this year, that waiting well is its own kind of discipline one neither of us has ever fully mastered no matter how many times we've had to practice it. Dario Pharaoh called a little after five, and I heard the particular energy in his voice before he'd said a single actual word, the same brisk lift he'd carried the night he first found the two -block connection. He's on his way here now, Pharaoh said. I didn't want

2:59 to say anything over the phone. I couldn't properly explain in person. It went well, Dario. Better than well, I think. He arrived twenty minutes later with his laptop already open, and I watched Lena's hand find mine under the table before he'd even sat down, both of us bracing together for whatever he'd actually brought. The weather cooperated this time, Pharaoh said. Clear morning, good light, none of the haze that's fought us on prior visits. My contact had the scope steady well before the supply boat even arrived. And this time... Near the end of his twenty minutes, something happened that hasn't happened either time before. What? Lena asked, hardly breathing.

3:42 A gull startled him, Pharaoh said. Landed close, loud. The way gulls do. He turned toward it instinctively, the same reflex any of us would have. For perhaps two full seconds, my contact had him at three quarter profile instead of the usual angle. He got the shot. How many men this time? I asked, needing the tactical shape of it before I let myself absorb anything else. Still five. Still five, Pharaoh said. No change there, which is its own small comfort. Whatever shifted in Greco's caution seems to have settled at that number for now, rather than continuing to climb. And the twenty minutes, I asked. Still the same length?

4:27 Still Tuesdays only? Still exactly the same, Pharaoh said. Whatever else has shifted in the last several months, that particular routine hasn't moved at all. I don't know whether that's Greco's own habit, or something the old man himself has come to depend on. Either way, it's the one piece of this entire situation that's stayed reliably predictable. Lena. Pharaoh turned the laptop toward us, and I made myself breathe once, slowly, before I actually let myself look at it properly. The image was still imperfect, grainy at that distance, the light doing what distance light always does to find detail, but it was considerably more than we'd ever had. A thin face, weathered, the particular gauntness of

5:13 a man who has been careful with his body for longer than he should have needed to be. White hair cut short and practical, and something in the set of the jaw that made my chest tighten before my mind had even finished cataloging why. I set my old photograph beside the laptop screen, the two images side by side for the first time, and felt the specific vertigo of watching two separate decades of the same face try to agree with each other. Dario leaned in close behind me, his hand resting lightly on my shoulder, saying nothing at all, simply being present the way he's learned matters most in moments too large for words to actually carry properly. It's him, I said, quieter than I meant to. I know

5:58 that's not evidence. I know I'm not supposed to say it that plainly. I'm saying it anyway, because I don't think I can hold the caution and the certainty apart in my own chest any longer, looking at this. I understand, Pharaoh said gently. I want to be honest with you about what this actually is and isn't. It's the strongest visual match we've had. It is still not a face -to -face confirmation by someone who stood in a room with him. I'd be doing you a disservice pretending otherwise, even now, even with how much this costs to say. I know, I said. I think I actually needed you to say the caution out loud, more than I needed to hear it from myself this time.

6:40 It's easier to hold on to when someone else is holding the other half of it with me. That's what I'm here for, Pharaoh said, something gentle in it. Careful, so neither of you has to be careful entirely alone. I don't intend to stop being that for either of you. Whatever this year still is left to hand us. There's something else, Pharaoh continued. He was holding something again the same as last time. This time my contact caught it clearly enough to identify it. A small book, leather -bound, worn soft at the corners, the kind a man carries for years rather than months.

7:19 Dario. I watched Lena's whole body go still at that. and understood, before she'd said anything at all, exactly what she was thinking. A ledger, she said. Or something like one. He was Aldo's teacher, Dario. If there's one object in the entire world that man would keep pressed against his own chest like something irreplaceable, it's a book of numbers. We don't know that, I said gently, though I felt the same hope pulling at me too. It could be anything small enough to hold. A photograph of his own. A prayer book.

7:54 We're building a very specific story, out of a very general shape. You're right to say that, Lena admitted. I think I know it's a leap even as I make it. I'm choosing to make it anyway, tonight. I don't think I have to be right about the book to still be right about what it means that he's held something close enough to protect for two visits running. Whatever it actually is, it matters to him. That's not a leap. That's simply what I saw. No, I agreed. That part isn't a leap at all. You're allowed to want the rest of it, too, Pharaoh said gently, closing the laptop with a specific care of a man handling something he understands is worth more than the machine carrying it. I'd ask the same of my own

8:37 heart in your position. There's one more thing I need to raise tonight. While we're all still together, though, the other matter, the block. I felt the shift in the room before Pharaoh had said another word, the specific gravity of a conversation about to turn from one hard thing to another, entirely different, hard thing. Have you asked him yet? I asked. Your contact? About watching for Falcone. I did, actually, before I drove here, Pharaoh said. I wanted his answer on Porto Fiore settled first, in his own mind, before I asked him to consider carrying something new on top of it. I thought it mattered, giving him one whole thing to finish before handing him another. That was considerate of you, I said.

9:22 I've learned it the hard way, Pharaoh said. Asking too much of a good man at once is how you eventually lose him entirely. I'd rather move slowly and keep him whole than move fast and burn through his willingness before we've actually finished needing it. Lena, what did he say? I asked, my whole chest tight with a fear I hadn't expected to feel this sharply. He hesitated. Pharaoh said honestly. Longer than he has at any point this year. I told him plainly it was a different kind of risk than the coastline, populated ground, a man who notices repeat faces, considerably less room to disappear if anything went wrong.

10:05 I wanted him to understand exactly what I was asking before he answered. And then, Dario asked, He said yes, Pharaoh said. Not immediately. He thought about it for nearly a full minute, standing right there on his own dock, before he said it. I asked him why, once he had. He said something I don't think I'll forget for a long time. Pharaoh paused, choosing the words carefully. He said he'd spent his whole life watching an old man's world from a safe distance, minding his own coastline.

10:37 never once being asked to actually matter to anyone beyond his own family. He said this year gave him the chance to matter, and he wasn't ready to hand it back simply, because the next part frightened him. I felt something in my chest ache at that, the particular ache of understanding, all at once, exactly how much one quiet, ordinary man had chosen to carry for people he'd never even properly met. We have to make sure nothing happens to him, I said. Whatever this costs, in time or care, or anything else, he doesn't get to be the one who pays for this. I intend to make certain of exactly that, Pharaoh said.

11:17 I've already started thinking through how to protect him properly, beyond simply thanking him afterward. A quiet arrangement, the kind that doesn't announce itself as gratitude. He'd refuse anything that felt like payment, I think, so it has to look like something else entirely. What does something else entirely actually look like? I asked. I haven't finished deciding, Farrow admitted. Perhaps steady, ordinary work through a legitimate contact of mine, the same way we handled the Corvus situation. Perhaps simply making certain his boat's always properly maintained, his family's never quietly in want of anything, without him ever having to know exactly where the ease came from. I wanted to feel like luck

12:01 to him, not like a transaction. That sounds right, I said. I don't think he'd forgive any of us if it felt like the second thing. Sophia's finished verifying the photograph, as it happens, Pharaoh continued. The resolution held up under closer inspection, clean enough to actually use. We have what we need. I simply want to give him a few days to rest properly before I ask anything more of him at all. Dario. Farrow left close to midnight, and Lena and I sat together afterward with both photographs still on the table between us. Hers, decades soft at the corners, and the printed copy Farrow had left of tonight's grainy profile shot. Two faces in one night, Lena said quietly. Vasco's, closer than we've ever had

12:51 it. And somewhere out there, a photograph of Falcone finally clean enough to hold up to a stranger's eyes. I don't know how to actually feel all of this at once. I don't either, I admitted. I think tonight is simply too large to feel properly in one sitting. I think we'll keep feeling pieces of it for days. Do you think we're close to actually finishing this? Lena asked. Or does it only feel that way because so much moved at once tonight?

13:19 I think we're closer than we've ever been, I said carefully. I don't know if that's the same as close. I've learned this year not to trust the feeling of nearness too quickly. I remember thinking we were close after the third book, and after the Orsini truth, and after Nico's card game. Each time, something new opened up underneath the answer we thought we'd finally reached. That's not entirely comforting, Lena said, something rye in a despite everything.

13:49 No, I agreed. I think it's simply honest. I'd rather give you honest than comforting. most nights, even ones like this. I know, Lena said. I think that's actually why I trust it coming from you. Good, I said, and meant it more than the single word probably carried on its own. I keep thinking about the fisherman, Lena said after a moment. A man who's never met either of us properly, choosing to matter to people he barely knows, at real cost to himself, because it's the first time anyone's ever actually asked him to. I think that's the truest thing this whole year has taught any of us, I said. How much good is sitting quietly in ordinary people, waiting only to be asked properly? Aldana. Priya.

14:37 The dry cleaner. This man. None of them owed us anything at all. Every single one of them gave it anyway. Do you think we'll ever actually be able to thank them properly, Lena asked. All of them, together, once this is finally over. Not quietly. one at a time, the way we've had to manage it so far. I'd like that, I said. I don't know what it would even look like, honestly.

15:04 A dinner, maybe. Something ordinary enough that none of them would feel like they were being thanked for something dangerous, even though every one of them would know exactly what it actually was. I'd like to be the one who plans it, Lena said. When we finally get there. I think I'd like something to actually plan that isn't about danger or careful next steps for once.

15:26 Then that's yours, I said. I'll help however you want me to. I think you've earned deciding what the ending actually looks like, at least for the people who helped us reach it. I'd like to remember that, Lena said, long after this is finally over. Whatever it costs to get there. We will, I said. Reaching for her hand across the two photographs, the whole quiet weight of the night settling between us like something we could finally, almost, afford to hope through.

15:57 To be continued. That was episode 76 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. Thank you for listening.