Chapter 26 : The File Grows
The email was in his inbox when he arrived at his desk on Tuesday morning, sitting above the production schedule update and a chain from Toofer about Harvard's television archive that nobody had asked for.
The subject line said: Documentation Review Notice — Action Required.
Albert had been expecting it since Sunday night. He opened it, read it once at normal speed, read it again at the pace of someone identifying each specific requirement and cross-referencing it against what he knew existed.
Employment Verification — AAT Solutions, 2004-2006. AAT Solutions had dissolved. Its domain was parked, its principals dispersed, its official record in the New York State business registry showing Dissolved – Voluntary, which was the bureaucratic equivalent of a building that had been demolished cleanly rather than collapsed. Devon's inquiry to the business registry would return that record, and the business registry record would return no current verification contact.
Academic Transcripts — CUNY Graduate Program, Communications. The community college program itself existed. The transcript would exist. The transcript would show incomplete coursework and a withdrawal date, not the completed graduate degree that the NBC application implied with its careful language of graduate coursework, Communications. A transcript was verifiable. A transcript would show exactly what it showed.
Professional References — minimum three, from prior positions. He had none that would survive a direct call.
He closed the email. He opened it again. He stared at the list.
Frank was at the table with a hat reading PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. Pete was at the whiteboard reviewing the week's production order. The morning had the ordinary Tuesday quality of a room that had a show to make and was organizing toward making it.
Albert put his phone face-down on the desk and opened the filing inbox.
Jonathan found him at the elevator bank at 11:45.
Not accidentally. Jonathan didn't do accidental encounters — he managed them, arranged them to appear accidental while containing specific intent. He came from the direction of the executive stairwell with a message folder and a coffee cup and a pace that converged with Albert's position at the elevator bank as naturally as a precisely aimed object converging with a target.
"Mr. Myers." The precision warmth, the same delivery he'd used the morning after the first Jack walkthrough.
Albert pressed the down button. "Jonathan."
"I'll ride down," Jonathan said, which meant he had something to say that required a contained space with no audience.
They waited for the car. The elevator arrived, empty. They got in, and Jonathan pressed L and then stood slightly angled away from Albert the way a person stood when they were about to say something that wasn't on the record.
"Mr. Banks submitted an inquiry to HR last Thursday," Jonathan said, to the elevator's middle distance. "He cited procedural irregularities in documentation for a recent staff hire." A pause, timed with the elevator's descent. "He's building a case. I don't know the full scope of it."
Albert said nothing.
"Mr. Donaghy finds you interesting," Jonathan continued, with the careful flatness of someone delivering intelligence without editorial. "He's mentioned it to me twice, which is twice more than he mentions most people." The elevator reached twenty. "Devon Banks is aware of that interest. He finds it... motivating."
Albert looked at the panel. The L button was lit.
"Why are you telling me this?" he said.
Jonathan's expression didn't change. "I serve Mr. Donaghy's interests. Mr. Donaghy's interests include the stability of his current TGS investment." A beat. "You are part of that investment." The elevator reached the lobby floor. The doors opened. "That's all this is."
He walked out, message folder tucked under his arm, coffee cup level, at the pace of a man running a routine errand.
Albert stood in the elevator for a moment after he left. The doors started to close and he stepped out before they did.
He ate at his desk — a habit he'd developed during the trust-rebuilding weeks when proximity to the room mattered more than comfort. Today it was the protein bar from his inside pocket, which tasted like someone had described food to a chemist, and the coffee he'd made that morning and hadn't finished.
Devon finds Jack's interest motivating.
In the Corporate Archive, under Devon Banks' profile, there was a file he'd built from the show and from two months of direct observation: Devon's operating principle was the identification and management of threats to his position. Jack's favor was a finite resource in Devon's calculation — anything Jack found valuable was potentially something Devon could not afford to ignore. An NBC page who became a writers' room assistant who was producing measurably improved TGS results inside two months was, in Devon's framework, either an asset Jack was protecting or a variable Jack hadn't fully understood.
Devon had been running the investigation to answer which one.
The documentation request was the move after that answer came back inconclusive. If Albert's background couldn't be verified, the verification failure was the answer — and a person with an unverifiable background in a position of creative influence was a liability Devon could use to remove a threat.
He had two weeks. He needed documentation that would survive direct scrutiny from someone with Jonathan's skill set and Devon's motivation.
The only thing he had that was real and verifiable was whatever the host body had actually left behind.
He finished the protein bar, put the wrapper in his desk drawer because the bin was across the room, and opened his notepad to a blank page. He wrote one word at the top: Inventory.
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