“We need him here,” Rafe said, trying to sound firm without sounding desperate.

“Why?” asked Sykes.

“Because, if he’s here, he can lead us to Homeboy. He can’t do that if he’s hanging by his thumbs in a cell in Cairo.”

Sykes and Frank exchanged a look. Then she turned back to Rafe.

“Go on,” she said.

Good Boys

GOOD BOYS

“Did you get my money?” The voice, low and husky, came via WhatsApp, encrypted, from Abuja, where its owner had a whitewashed six-bedroom villa with a screening room and pool. Not bad for an assistant inspector general of police with an annual salary of six million naira. If anyone asked, he would explain that he got it cheap (“The seller was desperate”). But no one ever asked.

Okoro was listening to the voice on his phone in the lobby of his one-star hotel, where the nightly rate was the equivalent of one hundred thousand naira. Two months there would take the assistant inspector general’s entire annual salary. But the assistant inspector general always stayed in nicer places when he traveled.

“Not yet, sir,” Okoro said.

“Why not?” demanded the voice from Abuja. “Wetin you dey do there? Learn to ski? Eat Swiss cheese?” The voice laughed. Not a friendly laugh.

“I found the investment firm they are using. I haven’t found the man who controls the account.”

“But the investment firm must know who that is.”

“Yes, sir,” said Okoro, lowering his voice as a middle-aged Chinese couple passed him carrying shopping bags from Fendi. Okoro had seen them before, arguing about something at the reception desk. The man was wearing an oversized watch on his wrist. He might as well have worn a sundial.

“Big firm? Small firm?” asked the voice from Abuja.

“Small. Basically one man.”

“Good. So ask him to tell you.”

“I have asked him, sir.”

“Ask him harder. If you need them, there are a couple of good boys at the embassy who go fit help.”

Mix-Up

MIX-UP

It was a nondescript apartment on the third floor of a building on the far side of the train station, overlooking the pond in the Parc des Cropettes. There were photographs of mountains on the walls. There were no buildings opposite to see in the windows. The name on the buzzer downstairs was Fleurent. No one named Fleurent, or anything else, lived there.

Majid and Rafe sat on a brown leather couch. Sykes sat at a dining table, facing them, above them. There were bottles of water and iced tea on the table. So, Rafe noted, the CIA has a catering budget.

“His name is Stavro,” Majid said.

Sykes looked interested, as if she didn’t know that already. “Is he still in Zurich? Or back in Geneva?”

“I don’t know,” Majid said.

“And that’s the last time you saw him? In Zurich?”

Majid nodded.

“What’s supposed to happen next?”