In case rampant senselessness needed another example (which it didn’t), Rafe just then noticed, near him on the quay, a Roma woman of unknowable age, in a flowing brown dress and white head scarf, kneeling on the sidewalk and bowing in a supplicating manner with a plastic dish on the pavement in front of her. It was against the law to beg in Geneva, so she wasn’t begging. She didn’t have a sign. She didn’t say a word. She was just resting semi-prone here on the quay with her plastic dish available as a repository for any passerby who suddenly felt overburdened by small currency. If cited by the police nonetheless, she would be fined one hundred francs, which of course she would only be able to raise by more non-begging begging.

Which was just one more thing for Rafe to ponder as he lingered outside his Harvard classmate’s office trying to decide if and how to go in and question him about why he was shorting shares in a French dairy company—and also, by the way, as long as they were talking, had he previously shorted shares in another company as part of an international terrorist conspiracy? Maybe, as a conversational icebreaker, he could ask Majid what he thought of Harvard’s chances against Yale in football this year.

It was ridiculous. Except it wasn’t. So he crossed the street and started to walk toward the office building. And stopped when he saw Majid walking by the river. He was with Catherine, and they were having an intense conversation. They paused, then sat on a bench across the street from Rafe. They were looking away from him, facing sightseeing boats threading around the islands in the Rhône, sitting close to each other, the way lovers would. Or, in this case, the way lovers do. Catherine, after all, had told him. Now Majid was saying something, and Catherine turned her head to look at him, which put Rafe in her peripheral vision. He ducked into the doorway of a store. He didn’t want them to think he was spying on them, even though he was, sort of, spying on them. Catherine had her handbag slung over a shoulder and was leaning into Majid, listening intently—since when had Majid ever been that interesting?

That’s when the Syrian made his move.