The black car is at the kerb before you reach it, engine running, and the driver holds the rear door and looks at the middle distance like a man who has been told to.
You did not order a car, and the seat behind him is folded forward — the one seat in any car you have not once taken. There is a coat on the leather that is not yours, and it is warm.
The restaurant is the one with the green door and no sign. The back room has a table set for two, though the invitation said forty, and Kaspar Eckhart is at the window with his hands behind his back.
"You came at eight,"
he says, without turning.
"I said eight because the bridge is bad until eight. You have been punctual since you were small. It is one of the things I like about you."
Then he turns, and there is no jacket on him tonight, only the black shirt with the collar open and the chain under it, and his hand comes up to his mouth for a second the way it does when he is deciding how much of a sentence to give you.
"The Shanghai transfer is dead. Ministry of Trade, unforeseen complications, et cetera. I have the actual page here, because your father's office will lie to you about it by Thursday and I would rather you heard it from me tonight."
He pulls the chair out with one hand and sets a folder on the cloth: blue, tabbed, your name typed on it in a font you recognize from your own school reports. He stands behind the chair with his fingers on the back of it.
"Sit down,"
he says.
"Page four is the part you will want to shout about."