At 7:12 a.m., Maud Varenne peeled back the clear flap without tearing the paper.
It was a habit acquired from handling files that could never be allowed to look important. Truly dangerous documents arrived in beige folders, with soft corners, ordinary staples, and wording whose very blandness had been crafted by people paid to do so. The one she held bore a serial number at the upper right and a gray strip: **ANTICIPATION RECORD — OPEN ONLY AFTER TIME-STAMPING**.
She checked the wall clock, wrote the time in black ink, then initialed across the flap.
Beyond the partition, the coffee machine began grinding with the sound of gravel. The analysis floor on the fourth basement level stirred in small jolts: badge readers, ventilation, chairs dragged rather than lifted. No personal phones were allowed in the area. People arrived with watches, sometimes notebooks, and the slightly amputated look of those no longer sure what to do with their hands during idle moments.
The sheet contained nothing extraordinary. A forecasting exercise of the kind the department produced every week: three hypotheses about a commercial intermediary identified at the Belgian border, a possible timetable, indicators to monitor. Maud read the two pages, refolded the sheet, and slipped it beneath the plexiglass plate reserved for “pre-event” documents.
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