Majid paused there and looked beyond the monument to a shallow fountain and, beyond that, the faux-rustic café. At outdoor tables a waitress was serving sandwiches to an elderly couple wearing broad-brimmed hats. Near them a woman fully sheathed in black abaya and niqab was eating ice cream with her daughter, a little girl too young to be covered, who wore jeans and a pink T-shirt and spooned over-large helpings of ice cream toward her mouth, sending some spilling onto her shirt and pants. Her mother ate more delicately, lifting teaspoons of ice cream toward her face with her right hand while using the left to lift her veil just long enough to open a path to her mouth, and then letting it drop. A choreographed maneuver.

At a table beyond them, in the shade, sat Stavro. Majid took a quick look around, then moved in his direction.

The husky Yoruba had leapfrogged ahead of Majid while he walked; Okoro and the other had followed behind. Another tactical formation. When Majid entered the park, they regrouped by the mausoleum and watched him move toward the café.

“We go talk to him now?” said the husky man. “Maybe have a beer when we do it. I want shek Heineken.”

“Maybe we carry am go into a corner,” said the one in the yellow tie, gesturing to a small grove of trees at the edge of the park, by the Rue Adhémar-Fabri. “Make a talk with him there.” He was a Muslim and didn’t drink.

Okoro didn’t answer. He was watching the man at the table Majid was approaching. The man was tall and of indeterminate ethnicity and he looked at Majid with a sullen glare. A client? Maybe. Perhaps a special client. A special client who preferred not to meet in Majid’s office. Okoro watched as Majid reached the man’s table and sat without shaking hands. Okoro spoke softly to his companions. “That man, too,” he said. “Make we jist that man too.”

Stavro spoke before Majid was fully in his seat. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Majid sat. “What do you mean?”

Stavro had an empty whiskey glass in front of him. The waitress, seeing Majid arrive, moved toward them. Stavro brusquely waved her away, never taking his eyes off Majid.

“Where’s the fucking money? I told you to send the fucking money.”

“I did,” said Majid. “I sent it. All of it.”

Okoro briefed his companions. “You go to the left. You to the right. The man, Hassan, has met me. I will go to the table and ask to meet his friend.”

“And if he no ’gree?” asked the husky man.

“Then you two will help me change his mind. If Hassan waka, let him. I know where to find him again. But the other man must not waka without talking to us.”

The tall man nodded. He liked a clear task. “By hook or by crook?”