“Please.” She may have said it more than once. “Please, Marco, please.” He had not given her his real name. He was hurting her. How long had she been trying to reach him? He sickened; it was a nausea not just in his stomach. He pulled out of her and to his surprise she turned into his arms. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry,” he said. Her shoulders were narrow. All of her was. He was guilt and more guilt.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she was saying.

Linda Ricco knocked. This had to be it. No answer. She looked at her watch. Six. There was a doorbell. It lit up when she pressed. Then she heard someone unlocking the locks. Like Fort Knox, she thought. She crossed herself. Holy Mother, she whispered. All of a sudden this felt scary.

A big guy, kind of homely, opened the door. Arab, that was for sure.

“English?” she said.

“I speak English,” Ghazi said. His eyes were swollen; he looked like he’d been sleeping.

“I’m looking for Heather. Heather Montrose.” He didn’t seem to hear her. “I’m a friend of hers.” Still nothing. She added, “We used to work together.”

“Sure, Heather. Sure. She’s at work.”

So this was it. She tried to see around his bulk but couldn’t. “You want to come in or something?”

“Uh, is Rafik around?”

“No. If you are looking for Mourad and Aziz, try later, maybe an hour.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll try back then.”

Ghazi found the mosque in Boston that Dhakir told him about. When he got inside for the noon prayer, he turned around and left. It was ludicrous. He caught a matinee of Saving Private Ryan instead. When the knife in the heart came, he wanted to be the heart.

“Listen. We will die,” Dhakir was saying.

“That is it,” Ghazi tried.

“We die, then up there we will account for our deeds. It doesn’t matter, how long are we going to live? Sixty years?”

“That is it.”

“Can I tell you something? They are afraid of Islam. They are afraid. That is why they are boiling. Do you know what the Americans are doing now? They are behind everything, everything in the home country.”

“Ah-hah.”

“They are the ones behind what happened. In Pakistan, they were not happy about it because it was the military; they were not happy about that. And they were demonstrating their discontent by shouting Why, why, why? And when the others were about to rule Algeria, they asked the army to make a coup. And they were telling them what actions to take. They were behind everything.”

“They were behind everything?”