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Marchetti
THANK YOU MUELLER. For once we agree.
Thompson
Mueller agreeing with you should make you question your position.
I type without thinking.
She is not keeping the secret to protect herself. She is keeping it because telling the truth would change the relationship she depends on. The secret is not about the information. It is about what happens to the structure if the information gets out.
Three dots. Disappear. Appear.
Thompson
Hájek you just ended the debate again.
Marchetti
...damn.
Mueller
Wait I need to reread that.
Marchetti
No, he's right. That's exactly it. She's not scared of the truth. She's scared of what the truth costs.
Thompson
Hájek asking the real questions as usual.
Damián came on purpose. He watched and he came and he said show me your city and his thumb moved once against my collar. Yesterday I'd have called that the answer to a question I'd stopped asking.
Chapter 4: Damián
Kovár is asleep against the bus window before we leave the hotel parking lot.
The training facility is twenty minutes out, and the bus has the energy of men who’ve been doing this since they were boys. Behind us, Novotný is explaining to Polášek why the 4-3-3 formation is superior to the 4-2-3-1.
“The width,” Novotný says. “The width in the final third creates the overloads.”
“The width is meaningless if you don’t control the middle.”
“I’m controlling the middle with three.”
“You’re controlling the middle with two and praying the third tracks back. Which he never does. Because the third one is Šíma.”
“I track back,” Šíma calls from four rows up. “I track back with purpose and intention.”
“You track back with the speed of a man who’s already deciding what he’s eating for dinner,” I say.
Šíma turns in his seat. “Vež, I respect you, but my recovery runs have been timed. I’m faster than Kovár.”
“Kovár is asleep.”
“He’s asleep because he knows I’m faster and it hurts him.”
