Chapter 7 - The Settlement

Marek’s desk was empty on Monday.

Not empty in the way desks were empty when people worked from home. Empty in the way a hotel room was empty after checkout.

No mug. No cables. No stack of printed papers with notes in the margins.

Even the small plant that had survived three reorganisations was gone.

Simon stood beside the desk longer than he meant to.

Lea noticed.

“He left.”

Simon looked at her.

“When?”

“Friday.”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“No.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

Lea turned back to her screen.

“He said goodbye.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

Simon waited.

Lea didn’t look at him again.

· · ·

HR gave him less.

Nora Keller — no relation, a fact they had established years ago and never needed to establish again — listened without interrupting.

“Marek’s employment ended by mutual agreement.”

“When did this happen?”

“He was placed on paid release from duty after the Security escalation. Access was removed immediately. The mutual agreement was signed on Friday.”

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“You weren’t his manager.”

“I worked with him.”

“A lot of people worked with him.”

“Was there a problem?”

Nora folded her hands.

“There was an employment matter.”

“What kind?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Was it related to PROTOKOLL?”

“I can’t discuss that either.”

“That sounds like yes.”

“It sounds like I can’t discuss it.”

Simon leaned back.

“Did he resign?”

“I told you what I can tell you.”

“Mutual agreement.”

“Yes.”

“Those usually have terms.”

“They usually do.”

“And you can’t discuss them.”

“No.”

Nora waited a moment.

“Simon, don’t turn an employment matter into something else because you don’t like not knowing.”

He almost told her that not knowing was the point.

Instead he thanked her and left.

· · ·

Reiner was easier to find.

Harder to read.

Simon caught him between meetings.

“Did you know Marek was leaving?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“A few days.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“It wasn’t mine to tell.”

“Was it because of Weber?”

Reiner stopped walking.

There were people moving around them, badges and laptops and coffee cups, the ordinary traffic of a company in the middle of a working day.

“Why would it be because of Weber?”

“Marek raised the subgroup in January.”

“So did you.”

“He wanted us to delay.”

“He wanted us to look at something. We looked.”

“He thought it mattered.”

“We all thought it mattered. Then we made a decision.”

Simon watched him.

“Did he raise it again?”

Reiner’s expression changed slightly.

Not guilt. Irritation, perhaps. Or concern.

“You met the sister.”

Simon said nothing.

“Legal told me.”

“I wanted to understand the case.”

“You wanted to understand the person. Those aren’t the same thing.”

“No.”

“And now you’re connecting a statistical pattern from January to one outcome in June.”

“The pattern described her.”

“After you knew what you were looking for.”

Simon felt the sentence before he answered it.

Reiner wasn’t wrong.

That was what made him difficult.

“You think I’m doing this backwards.”

“I think you’re doing what people do when something terrible happens. You’re trying to make the cause as specific as the consequence.”

“And if it is specific?”

“Then find evidence.”

Reiner checked the time.

“I have a meeting.”

At the door he added, “Don’t make Marek’s departure part of this unless you have a reason.”

Simon turned.

“Do I?”

“That’s what I’m telling you to find out before you decide you do.”

Then he was gone.

· · ·

Simon went back to the January rollout folder that afternoon.

It looked cleaner than he remembered.

That was not evidence.

Folders changed. People reorganised them. Final versions replaced drafts. Working documents disappeared because they were working documents.

He knew all of that.

Still.

There were three presentation decks.

He remembered five.

There was no deck dated 22 January, the day of the final approval.

He searched for Segment X.

Nothing.

The headline slide was supposed to be gone. He had killed it himself in January, and he had been right to. But the sober table that replaced it should still have been there.

So should Marek’s underlying subgroup analysis.

Neither was.

He searched threshold.

Nothing relevant.

He searched Marek’s name.

Meeting notes. Routine comments. Technical changes.

No subgroup analysis.

Simon thought of Anna’s notebook.

Every call. Every name. Every answer.

She had kept a better record of the system than the system appeared to have kept of itself.

He had not asked Eva to see it.

Not yet.

He opened the rollout approval.

ROLLOUT_RISK_ACCEPTANCE_FINAL

Two pages.

He read it once.

Then again.

The document said what he remembered saying: aggregate performance improved, residual risk acceptable, monitoring recommended.

His approval mark was at the bottom — the same static stamp the workflow had used in January.

But the document was shorter than he remembered.

He scrolled back to the first page.

There was no paragraph on the subgroup.

No note on the threshold change.

No reference to Marek’s recommendation.

Simon opened Version History.

There should have been earlier versions. Drafts, edits, the ordinary sediment of a document that had moved through review.

There were none available to him.

Simon stared at the empty history longer than he had stared at the document.

He closed it.

Opened it again.

Same file name.

Same date.

Same approval.

Different memory.

Memory was not evidence.

He knew that better than most people.

But absence was not nothing.

He took out his phone and called Marek.

The number was no longer in service.

Simon listened to the recorded message twice.

Then he put the phone down.