He stood up now, his chair scraping softly on the polished floor, and every head in the room turned to him. His heart hammered so violently that he could feel it in his teeth. He was aware of Sterling's pale eyes flicking toward him, of the sharp surprise in them, of the question forming there: you too?
"Mr. Sterling," Daniel said. His voice cracked on the first syllable, and he swallowed and began again. "Sir, I think the Captain is right."
Sterling stared at him as though a piece of furniture had spoken. "Sit down, Daniel."
"No, sir."
It was the first time in two years that the word had left his mouth, and it tasted strange and clean, like cold water after a long thirst.
"I have read the maintenance logs," Daniel went on, and now the words came faster, steadied by their own momentum. "The fault is real. It has been deferred three times. The part has not arrived. If that aircraft takes off tomorrow morning, there is a serious chance that two hundred and six people will be in the air with a failing hydraulic line and a crew that was not told the truth."
"You have no idea what you are talking about," Sterling hissed, leaning toward him. His voice dropped to a low, venomous rumble that only the nearest tables could hear. "You are a junior associate. You are a paper pusher. You do not understand the economics of this industry. Sit. Down."
Daniel looked at him. For the first time, he saw him clearly, not as the giant he had spent two years fearing, but as an old man in an expensive suit, afraid of losing control in front of a room that had always obeyed him.
"I understand them very well," Daniel said quietly. "I just don't think they are worth two hundred and six lives."
CHAPTER 6: WHAT THE ROOM COULD NOT UNSEE
A hush spread across the Aurelian Room like ink across paper.
The diners were no longer pretending to eat. A heavyset banker at the back had put down his knife. A woman in a pearl necklace had pressed her fingers to her lips. Even the pianist had stopped, his hands hovering above the keys, afraid to make the smallest sound.
They were all watching three people: the old man in black, the young man in blue, and the woman in gray. And they were watching them with the peculiar, guilty fascination of people who have been given a front-row seat to something they are not sure they ought to be seeing.
A man at the next table, a venture capitalist named Reginald Voss who had once shaken Sterling's hand at a charity gala, leaned toward his wife. "Is this real?" he whispered.
"I think," his wife whispered back, "that it is the most real thing that has ever happened in this room."
Sterling felt the change. A man who has spent fifty years reading rooms cannot avoid feeling the moment when a room slips out of his grasp, and he felt it now, a cold current under his feet. The faces that had once turned to him with deference were no longer deferential. They were measuring. Calculating. Weighing the cost of being associated with whatever was about to happen.
He raised his voice. It came out too loud, and he heard that it was too loud, and he hated it.
"This is absurd," he said, to the room at large. "This is a staged ambush. A disgruntled employee and a, a disloyal subordinate, trying to blackmail me at a private dinner. I will not have it. Alphonse! Alphonse, have these two removed at once."
The maître d' stood at the end of the room, his hands clasped before him. He did not move.
"Alphonse," Sterling barked.
"Sir," Alphonse said, in a voice of immense, courteous reluctance, "I am afraid that I would need to be certain who was in the wrong before I could do so. The Aurelian Room has a long tradition of neutrality."
A faint ripple of laughter, quickly smothered, passed through the diners. Sterling's face flushed a deep, unhealthy red.
"You will regret this," he said, to no one and everyone. "All of you. I will remember who sat there and said nothing."