“I’d like to hear their thinking on this,” April said, ignoring a few head shakes. “Let’s send the information we’re sending to FBI to their lab too.” She looked down the table. “Mark?” Mark Blake was her least favorite FBI agent. He was also her deputy.

“The trap-and-trace and pen-register orders have yielded a substantial cache of phone numbers,” Mark said. “We—”

The state trooper interrupted. “Trap and trace, pen register— those are devices that pick up incoming and outcoming phone numbers?”

“Outgoing phone numbers,” Mark corrected. “On Kamal Gamal’s phones, cell and land line.”

“Anything of interest, Mark?” April asked. “Patterns? Repeats?”

“At this time, no.”

“Headquarters has software—” she started.

“I know your affection for database analysis,” Mark said. “But as this is my third counterterrorism case, I can assure you that these entries are riddled with errors, not to mention the errors that riddle the phone company records regarding the ownership of these phone numbers. When you add to that the problems with transliterating Arabic names to English, the variants are essentially endless. There is no other way except the human eye. And this human eye is not ready to make even a preliminary report.”

Kamal and Ghazi were trying to sort out some social security numbers. They had bank statements and credit reports spread out on Kamal’s coffee table.

“Dhakir is crazy,” Ghazi was saying.

“Where did he get this one from?” asked Kamal, pointing to a Niagara Falls address.

“None from Niagara Falls. That one Dhakir uses there—not for us.”

“Problems,” Kamal said.

“This one, this Niagara Falls friend of Dhakir’s, he thinks he’s Mr. Khandji.”

Kamal’s eyebrows rose.

“Jihad,” Ghazi said. “On my cock.”

“No.”

“I swear to God. Dhakir is fucked up.”

“Is he with a group?” Kamal was checking off numbers on a piece of paper.

“What group would take Dhakir?” Ghazi asked.

Kamal laughed.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Ghazi shook his head.

“Did I tell you what happened with Rafik?”

“No,” Ghazi said.

“So we are loading the shit, and I am on the phone with Dhakir, and Rafik grabs the phone.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then Dhakir starts in on the hellfire,” Kamal said.

“You see what I mean.”

“I hear Dhakir’s brother, he is crazy. They put him someplace in Oran.”

“Mustapha?” Ghazi thought that was his name.

“Was he the one, they called him bad boy?”

“The cats. Always with cats,” Ghazi recalled.

“Mustapha. I forgot his name.”

“I need to get out of this crap,” Ghazi said. He started on another page, marking off numbers.

“I tell you,” Kamal said. “I am thinking of Paris.”

“So, Rafik,” Ghazi asked. “He is all right?”

“Yesterday, he comes back from New York, he has these suits with him.”

“Fuck. Risks, risks, risks.”

“It is the risks he likes, not the suits,” Kamal said.

“To be honest with you,” Ghazi said, “with Rafik, it is the suits.”