“Let me see,” Mourad said. He read, “Lau kan al-kalaam min fedha fa al-samt min dhahab.” If speech is of silver, silence is golden.

“Go with that one.” Mourad sighed. “Aziz, we have to find a better place. One that is inside, not cold. No wind.”

“Tomorrow we look.”

“Tonight is for writing,” Ghazi said.

Aziz picked up one Ghazi had just written: Maaza walu taret.

“It’s a goat even if it flies!”

Ghazi had a sly face. “What?”

“That is not good! We cannot say that.”

“Why not?”

Mourad was laughing. “They used that one for me, back home,” he said.

“I will not mock stubborn people,” Aziz said. “Bad for business.” But he was laughing. Ghazi raised his eyebrows. “Seriously, stick to the ones Heather gave us for a while,” Aziz said.

“You are the boss.”

“What about this?” Ghazi pointed to one on Heather’s list.

“Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” Mourad read.

Aziz looked up. He shook his head. “That’s worse than the goat one.”

“Here,” Mourad said, “this one.”

Ghazi looked. “Slow and steady wins the race.” That made no sense to him.

“We just investigate and arrest them,” Mark said. “We don’t indict them, and we don’t prosecute, and we aren’t the judge or the jury.” There was a lull in the phones.

“Please, I’m not just out of Quantico,” April said.

“Let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Why do you think Belghazi’s and Arkoun’s are the only prints in there?”

“It’s like you said. Either too innocent to be smart or too dumb to be smart about being guilty.”

The phone rang. She picked up. It was her friend in main Justice, Melody Abraham. Everyone in Washington had signed off on the arrests. The official fax was on its way. Also a call from the director. “No doubt to chew me out,” she said to Melody.

“Nope, not by my read,” Melody said, and had to run. April hung up.

“You know what the Algerian intelligence abstracts say?” Mark said.

“Haven’t seen them.”

“They’ve been on the director’s desk.”

“So what do they say?”

“He’s going there, you know, next week.”

“Who?”

“Director.”

“Oh.”

“Meeting with their head of military intelligence. Farouk Aourak. Known more commonly as General Zahaf.”

“Can’t they just send the Cairo legat?”

“Uh, no. Not to Algeria.”

“Touchy, huh.”

“April,” he said.

Don’t lecture me, she wanted to say. I’ve lectured myself. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned; it’s been three minutes since my last confession.

“Algeria is—it’s as old as the Balkans. Intractable. Such—I mean, you know that shit about Kamal, the mutilation?—Actually, both rapes.”

Mark must be tired; he wasn’t speaking in complete paragraphs for once.