What idiocy to think Benane would have ever come to his army unit. He had imagined finding Benane while bringing officers tea. Imagined that Benane would look in his eye and intuit him as one of his kind. Aziz had not known enough about anything to know even one thing. He had thought Benane would swoop down and save him from the appalling insensibility of his unit, a place where men disappeared without comment, where it seemed that everyone beside you was not what they seemed, or watched you to find out your thoughts before you had any. He would trade for such uncertainties now. Child games, those questions whispered by his fellow soldiers.

Did you vote for the FIS?

Too young to have voted.

Your father?

My father never voted. (“What is the point? It will be what it will be,” Aziz’s father always said.)

One or two soldiers didn’t believe that answer. To them, his father was an Andalusian butterfly under glass.

He had believed that Benane served under General Zahaf but was a better man than Zahaf. Evidence of Benane’s being better was scant. What was plentiful were rumors of Zahaf’s malevolence. He lived not in Algiers, or even Algeria, but in Lyon, where he controlled networks of mercenaries and, it was even said, retired Israeli intelligence officers. Did they not know how to track Arabs? What better way would there be? Aziz discounted these tales. He convinced himself of Benane’s honor and conceded that Zahaf was corrupt but no sorcerer.

He had no basis for this. The miracle, the blue light shining that he had not really seen until now, was that he had convinced Sellami he was Nazzar. It was fantastical. And yet it was so. A baby had deceived a panther. It was not like his deception of Antar. Somehow tricking a madman was easy. But he had not even known the role he was to play with Sellami, and yet by some grace he had played it. The best way to be an undercover operative, it seemed, was to know nothing about the undercover operation.

There was a knock at the door.

“Nazzar,” Sellami said, as he walked in.

Aziz turned and saw he had a drink. Behind him he could hear the wheels of a cart. A dark man, maybe Mauritanian, pushed it into the room.

“What would you like?” Sellami started pulling bottles from the cart. “Gin? Campari? Cognac?”

Aziz froze. He was too weak to drink and keep his footing.

“I need food.”

“What would you like?”

“There is lamb,” the dark man said evenly. “Lamb chops that can be made directly. I will bring rice as well.”

“He needs oranges, bring him some oranges.”

Aziz nodded yes to all of it.

The man left. The cart stood there.

Sellami poured himself more of what he was drinking. “Sure?” he asked.

Aziz waved him off.

“Broke your arm.”

“It would seem so.”

“How many stitches?”