“Excuse me. Would you mind taking a photograph?” It was a man about forty in a Savile Row suit. Average height, not tall but solid, with a neat goatee. He might have been Iranian or Armenian, or Arab. He was holding out an iPhone.

“Here,” he said. “Of me, in front of the sculpture.” He pointed to a large granite bas-relief set into the wall of the tower. It was headed GENEVE CITE DE REFUGE and depicted an angelic Genevan spreading sheltering arms over a poor reclining refugee.

Stavro did not see any reason not to do this. “Very well,” he said, and he took the phone.

“A city of refuge?” The man smiled and pointed to the sign as Stavro lined up the shot. “How many refugees do you see hereabouts?” Stavro glanced around the square. If there were refugees from anywhere there, it was from the better districts of London or the east side of Manhattan.

“Things have changed,” the man said. “Do you see whom the beautiful Genevan is sheltering?”

Stavro took a close look at the sculpture, which he had walked by a hundred times before. He was rarely surprised by anything, but now he was. The image was unmistakable. There, life-size, in stone, the pathetic refugee being protected by angelic wings, was Vladimir Lenin.

“He came here after being released from Siberia,” said the man with the goatee. “He sat in coffee shops in the old city plotting the Russian revolution. What do you think the Swiss would do to him now?”

“Probably not build him a statue,” Stavro said, and he snapped the picture.

“And yet,” said the man, “here we are.” He took back his phone and deleted the photo.

And said, “I have a message for you.”

Hokey-Pokey

HOKEY-POKEY

Rafe was looking at a list of Swiss banks with trading desks when he glanced up and saw Sykes standing just inside the door to the cramped two-desk office. He hadn’t heard her come in. Maybe they trained you to walk on little cat feet when you joined the CIA.

She looked past him to Frank, who, as far as Rafe could tell, had been sitting at his desk staring at a blank computer screen.

“We had the recording transcribed and translated,” she said. “From your man who infiltrated the mullah’s class on fick.”

Rafe perked up. So this is what Frank did when he wasn’t busting Rafe’s balls.

“He said it’s pronounced feck,” Frank said. “Actually, sort of between fook and fuck.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if I decide to enroll. What exactly did your man say the class was supposed to be about?”

“Islamic law. But he said the guy had been talking about jihad.”

“The guy being Shaykh Mohammed al-Yamani?”

Frank nodded.

“Who is, by the way, hard to check out,” Sykes said. “His name is basically the equivalent of John Smith from Anytown.”