THE UPPER DECK OF THE FERRY was empty as it left Beykoz, headed back to the city. Rustem listened to the afternoon call to prayer sounding across the strait, the muezzins’ call-and-response, the overlapping echoes of refrain drifting from one minaret to another. He had grown up without religion, but was there anyone who was not moved by this?

Perhaps she would not come. Maybe the message had not gotten through. It would be a relief, really. He could enjoy this ferry ride back to Karaköy, spend one more night on the well-laundered sheets of the Pera Palace. Eventually he would have to meet her—but there could be a day or two of reprieve. A seagull drifted off the rail. He could hear the hiss of the wind through its feathers.

“Is it a day for good news?”

She was at the rail a few meters from him. He had not heard her approach. Too lost in the call to prayer, too distracted.

When the time comes, I will be easy to kill.

“I think I am getting close.”

“You are?”

“Yes. I think I found a vulnerability. Not a doorway, not the portal itself—but a path to it. There appears to be a way in.”

“How did you find it?”

What is it like to be a bat?

“I’ve never been good at explaining my technique. There’s a set of linkages between memories, where a number of associations in the neural network—”

The platinum-dipped fingers waved him off. “Just kidding. I’m not interested. What I’m interested in is time.”

“There’s never enough of it.”

“That’s right. And more important than time is timing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You aren’t supposed to. It’s as I said before: we’re not asking for you to think broadly—just deeply, about the problem in front of you. I suggest—if you want to keep yourself safer than you have kept others—that you keep that in mind. Don’t concentrate your energies where they might endanger you—concentrate them on your own task. You’ve been hired to do a job. You’re being paid a nice fee to do it. You’ve learned what happens when you stray from the path: don’t stray.”

“Stray…,” Rustem repeated. “That reminds me. Do you know which island it is? The one they abandoned all of Istanbul’s stray dogs on?”

“What are you talking about?”

“In 1909. You must know the story: the municipality collected all of Istanbul’s stray dogs, ferried them to an island in the Sea of Marmara, and abandoned them.”

“I’m not from here.” With the flattening and distortion of the abglanz, it was impossible to tell if there was any feeling in her voice.

“But certainly you must know the story. They were left with no food or water. Their cries were heard throughout the city.”