“Thank you,” she said. “My passport’s in there. Losing it would have been a major hassle.” She pulled the passport out, looked at it, and put it back. Then looked at the cosmetics in the shop window and said, “You weren’t shopping, were you?”

“No,” Rafe said. Then looked at Majid. “Actually, I was on my way to see you.”

“Really?” said Majid. “What about?”

Stupid

STUPID

“What did you tell him?” Ron asked.

He and Majid were in Ron’s office an hour later, after Rafe had gone. Ron was leaning back in his desk chair, cream leather, ostentatiously relaxed. He’d seen Rafe go into Majid’s office, and he’d seen Rafe come out. He hadn’t heard their conversation.

It had not been the most pleasant conversation Majid had ever had. After a rehash of the attempted purse snatching and some rote pleasantries and mild averrals by Rafe that he had not been spying on Majid and Catherine, Rafe produced proof of the latter, proof being the question he had come to ask Majid, which was: did Majid frequently route trades through a certain bank in Turkish Cyprus?

Majid would have preferred that Rafe had been spying on him and Catherine.

To Rafe’s question, he had said maybe, they used a lot of banks here at Sterling Wealth Management. And counter-questioned: why did Rafe want to know? Was he looking for a friendly bank for his own new firm?

Well, Rafe had said, not exactly. And smiled and got sheepish, the guileless American. Rafe could pull that off. The girls in Cambridge had liked it—Catherine had apparently liked it—a friendly down-home face among the tight smiles of naked ambition that everyone else there wore without shame. They had not come to Harvard Business School to learn how to bale hay. But did Rafe wear it easily because he actually was a guileless American? If there had been any doubt about that in Cambridge, it was augmented in Majid’s office by Rafe’s answer to Majid’s question.