It didn’t take a genius to figure that by now, whoever brought in the cleaners must have known they’d been taken out of the game. And after the little show I made at the police station, it could be they’d send another team for us. Like a last chance charge before full on panic. Because they’d already sent the cleaners for Nazari, it was reasonable to expect that the next team would be a higher grade of paid killer. So all bets were off and it was time to circle the wagons.

I guess Nazari was feeling it too. She turned and said, “Tom, will they come for us?”

I opened my eyes. I felt very calm and at peace. “Could be that they’ll try something. Could be that they’ll figure to try it here and now.”

She nodded. “There’s always the possibility that we were caught on camera going into that office in Lille. Either lobby, hallway, office, or all three.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “True. Time to prepare.”

She drove for a while in silence. I closed my eyes again. Then I looked at her. She was gripping the wheel tightly, head tilted forward, eyes staring at the road. I said, “You alright?”

She nodded. “Fine, yes. I was just thinking.” She looked over at me, “You remember the Welcome Foundation? Fondation D’accueil.”

“Father Bousquet’s outfit.”

“Right, the fundraiser and all that.”

“What about it?”

“They deal with migrant issues all the time. That’s their thing. We could run the list of names by Father Bousquet, the ones from the phone card. Maybe he’ll recognize one of them.”

“That’s a good idea. And maybe if he doesn’t, Miriam will.”

She looked over at me again. “Yes. Maybe Father Bousquet is different, but most people around here couldn’t remember an Arabic name if their lives depended on it.”

“But Miriam might, even though she’s from Afghanistan. Similar sounds, related alphabet. Like a French person reading Italian.”

“She might, and maybe I’m wrong about Bousquet.”

“Because he’s been around enough to start to know the difference. I get the problem, it was the same for our guys in the military. At first they couldn’t deal with Arabic language names. But once you get involved it changes. When your life depends upon it.”

“You mean to say, people are lazy.”

“I don’t know about lazy. I heard chess grandmasters can lose ten pounds in a big stressful tournament, just sitting around thinking all day. What does that tell you?”

She laughed. “That people aren’t lazy?”

I said, “That thinking is hard. You ever see an animal lose weight by thinking?”

“Can’t say I have.”