“Let me remind everyone of a number of facts in this investigation. As opposed to conjectures.” This was Mark again. “Number one: Walking into a storage unit, touching the walls of the storage unit, touching some drums in the storage unit, and having a key to the unit, while it may be enough for you, is not enough for me. This storage unit—how long has it been rented? Five years. We don’t know what-all has been in this unit these five years. There’s plenty in it even now that can’t be linked to illegal activity, unless you want a Batman action figure my son has at home to be criminalized. These two, Abdelaziz Arkoun and Taffounnout Belghazi, who have prints on the EGDN containers—there is no residue on their clothes, in their drains—hell, we swabbed everything but their left ass cheeks. Nothing there.”

“How do you explain the key that Arkoun has? No one else has a key.”

“All that key means is that someone gave it to him and he went in. But when? Four years ago or four days ago? Maybe his other associates are wise enough to keep the key in their jocks.”

“But no one else’s prints but Arkoun’s and Belghazi’s are in there.”

“Maybe Arkoun and Belghazi are too stupid to wear gloves. Maybe they don’t wear them because, unlike Kamal Gamal, they’re not planning to blow the cradle of liberty to kingdom come.”

“Let’s face it, there are only stolen goods in there,” April said. “I mean, who has dozens of telephones, suitcases of designer suits? Don’t forget the heroin. And look at all the calls Arkoun and Belghazi made to Kamal Gamal. And to Dhakir Yahyouai.”

“The phone number, registered to a Heather Montrose, at 6A Brooks Street, has called one of the numbers at Kamal Gamal’s sixty-eight times in the last week,” an FBI agent said.

“But there are—what?—four individuals who use that phone.”

“Two of whom are Arkoun and Belghazi,” Agent Melhaney said.

“What if Heather is banging Kamal?” Mark asked. “We don’t know who’s saying what to who.”

“Yes, we do,” said another agent. He pushed the notes of the translator toward the center of the table.

“That translator, I happen to know, is Jordanian. Do you know how many ways there are just to say yes in Arabic? There’s naam, which is modern standard Arabic; that’s the one they teach in schools, in every country. There’s eywah, which is how an Egyptian says it. There’s wakha, which is how a Moroccan says it. There’s eh, which is how an Algerian in Algiers says it, and there’s wah, which is how people in West Algeria, the city of Oran, say it. These fucks are from Arzew! They could say suck my dick when they mean yes!”