The message came through a channel that shouldn't have known he was in Madrid.
That was the first problem. The second problem was the message itself, but the channel came first because it meant one of two things: either his operational security in Spain was compromised in a way he had not identified, or Lorenzo Salvatore's network was longer and better calibrated than Ranon's current intelligence suggested. Both explanations were bad. Neither was tolerable.
He read the message twice. Then he put his phone face down on the desk and sat with it for a moment, which was unusual because he did not generally need moments. He ran an operation that required constant rapid decision-making and he had trained himself out of the need for pauses the way an athlete trained out of the need to warm up. Pauses cost something. This message cost him a pause.
