April had to laugh. Her deputy, who had delivered this primer, wasn’t even smiling.

“I don’t want to see thousands of innocents dead in Boston streets,” an FBI agent said. “I don’t want to know I knew what we know today and did nothing about it. If we wait, if we stand by, we are playing with the lives of every man, woman, and child in Boston.”

“Gentlemen,” said the prosecutor. Finally, April thought. “I certainly appreciate your well-placed concern for the lives of innocents. That’s why we’re all here, Mark included. But to put things in perspective if I may, every individual in this investigation is under twenty-four-hour surveillance. The chances that they could initiate any type of operation at this point are extremely small. I tend to agree with Mark that the absence of translations is troubling. Oh— and April, could you make a note about the nationality of our language specialist? We need to let headquarters know that we need Algerian translators, if at all possible.

“I think, though, that no harm would be done if we were to arrest these individuals—say, after we have more detailed notes from a translator, and that may turn out to be the one we have now, as long as he is informed of the dialect difficulties brought to our attention by Mark. Which brings me to my next question: Why isn’t the language specialist here today?”

“He’s got the flu,” April said.

“I see. April, your thoughts on all this?”

“I’m inclined to wait,” she said. “Headquarters may see it differently. But my recommendation will be that sending out the battering rams in forty-eight hours, while clearly doable, is not advisable.”

Chapter 32

32

The wind kept blowing the cups. That had not happened in Brooklyn. Aziz watched them scuttling into the street and disappearing under rush-hour cars. Cups bounced on windshields. Car tires flattened them. When the cars had passed and the street was empty, crushed cups lifted again in the wind. At least he had put a shoe on each pile of newspapers. They stayed, edges vibrating. He smiled at passersby, but it was not like the cell-phone store. His young face, that the old yemeni said brought Brooklyn business, had little draw in January Boston.

When Mourad came to pick him up in the Escort, Aziz had all of the coffee, all but one newspaper, and none of his cups inked in Arabic sayings. His brother helped him pour the cold coffee into a sewer grate. They sold the newspapers to a Starbucks for four dollars.