"You know, you really shouldn't have come back here. This is a bad time."

"I know," Turk said. "Tomas was arrested, or kidnapped or something."

The woman displayed no reaction beyond a barely-perceptible flinch.

"And we have a couple of questions to ask, if that's okay."

"Since you're here, we may as well talk." She pulled up a chair and said, "Introduce me to your friend."

This woman is a Fourth, Lise thought. Maybe that was why she generated this odd, fragile authority, to which strong men apparently deferred. Turk introduced her as Ibu Diane Dupree, using the Minang honorific, and Lise accepted the woman's small, brittle hand. It was like handling some unexpectedly muscular small bird.

"Lise," Diane said. "And you have a question for me?"

"Show her the picture," Turk said.

So Lise fumbled nervously in her pack until she came up with the envelope containing the photo of Sulean Moi.

Diane opened the envelope and looked at the photograph for a long moment. Then she handed it back.

Her expression was mournful.

"So can we talk?" Turk asked.

"I think we have to. But somewhere more private than this. Follow me."

* * * * *

Ibu Diane led them away from the cafe, down a lane between a makeshift grocery store and a wooden municipal building with buffalo-horn eaves, past a gas station where the pumps were painted carnival colors. Lise would have expected a slow walk, given Diane's age and the heat of the day, but the older woman moved briskly and at one point reached out and took Lise's hand to urge her along. It was a strange gesture and it made Lise feel like a little girl.

She took them to a cinderblock bunker on which a multilingual sign announced, in its English portion, medical clinic. Lise said, "Are you a doctor?"

"I'm not even a registered nurse. But my husband was a physician and he cared for these people for years, long before the Red Crescent showed up in any of these villages. I learned basic medicine from him, and the villagers wouldn't let me retire after he died. I can take care of minor injuries and sicknesses, administer antibiotics, salve a rash, bind a wound. For anything more serious I send people to the clinic down the highway. Have a seat."

They sat in the reception area of Diane's clinic. It was fitted out like a village parlor with wicker furniture and wooden slat blinds clattering in the breeze. Everything was painted or upholstered in faded green.

There was a watercolor picture of the ocean on one wall.

Ibu Diane smoothed her plain white muslin dress. "May I ask how you came to possess a photograph of this woman?"

Get to the point, in other words. "Her name is Sulean Moi."

"I know."

"You know her?"

"I've met her. I recommended Turk's charter service to her."