But Stephen merely smiled and did not open the report, saying, “Oh no, I happened to read about this last week when the report came … out.” Sir Stephen trailed off as he noticed the date on the Frenchman’s report and realized that the information had only just reached them today. France had enjoyed a not-inconsiderable decrease in the cooperation of their US intelligence counterparts since their disagreement over the Iraq war, while the English were clearly still enjoying the benefits of America’s more advanced space monitoring program.

But François-Xavier was first and foremost a politician and with feigned ignorance he skated over the issue and smiled benignly, “You know, the club has a roof terrace. Perhaps you would like to take a turn up there and watch the show?” he said.

* * *

The two suited gentlemen stood on the rooftop balcony, the evening skyline of Brussels spread out before them, dominated by the Gothic bell tower of the church in the central Grand Place. The orange-yellow streetlights illuminated the picturesque cobbled streets of the old town and restaurant district below. But the picturesque city that sprawled about their feet was forgotten for now as the two of them joined a growing audience, their eyes turned firmly to the night sky above them as two stark, golden flame trails traced the path of their burning sources as they shot towards the northern Atlantic.

They were blissfully unaware of their smiling faces being noted and logged by a synthetic eye as it passed, unseen, far overhead. Lit by the candles arranged tastefully around the terrace, their mouths moved in conversation, the movements of their lips interpreted, translated and reviewed from far above in an instant. As their conversation was logged, images of their faces were also analyzed.

Later that night they made their good-byes and walked across the club’s private car park, their assistants escorting them to their cars. As Jeanette and her two armed guards helped the particularly merry Minister Marchelier to the door of his bulletproof Citroën, the eye watching them from above noted the briefcase chained to her side and sent a message to the interior of one of the fallen meteors.

It had analyzed the conversations of the two gentlemen and those around them, and the appearance of the case and the security detail it so clearly merited. It had sifted this from the sea of data it and its peers were already gathering as they watched the planet they now orbited. In databases already flooding with data, names, relationships, addresses, jokes, and idioms, in languages it was already decoding down to the colloquial level, the intelligences that watched from above surmised they had found a person of interest, and that one of the many primary, secondary, and tertiary mission parameters that it was so capably designed to fulfill was already clarifying itself.

It posited that it may have acquired one of its targets. It wanted the contents of that case.