“That’s what you said?” Ron asked Majid, the two of them in his office, Ron sitting, Majid standing, after Rafe had gone. “Stupid?”

“That’s what I said.” Majid moved close to Ron’s desk. Put his hands on it. Leaned forward. “But stupid isn’t the only explanation, is it?”

Ron did not reply.

“I told you to make the Bouvier trade blind, like the other one. You said you would, like the other one. But you didn’t. You put our name on it.”

From Ron, still no reply.

“Honestly, sometimes I think you are stupid . . .”

“Excuse me?”

“But I don’t think you were being stupid. I mean, you were being stupid but you thought you were being smart.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Ron said.

Majid didn’t move, still hovered over Ron’s desk.

“I don’t like him,” Ron said.

“You’ve mentioned that.”

“I don’t think we should be in business with him.”

“You’ve mentioned that, too.”

“But we still are in business with him.”

Majid closed his eyes and shook his head. “So you didn’t talk to me again. You didn’t have it out with me. You just, in your own great and unmatched wisdom, decided to deliberately leave a trail to lead the authorities to our door?”

“I did talk to you again,” Ron said.

“And I told you that, after this dairy business, we’d be done.”

“I thought this might give us a gentle shove in that direction. Make sure we didn’t forget. Either of us.”

Majid sighed, removed himself from Ron’s desk, and sank into a couch.

“You’ve never had any difficulties in life, have you?” Majid said. Behind the couch, on the wall over his head, was a photo of Ron with his rowing club at Cambridge.

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“You don’t need to succeed here, in this little company of ours. You always say you don’t want to go home, but if our firm blows up you don’t have to. You can go play remittance man somewhere else. Singapore, Hong Kong . . .”

“I don’t really . . .”

“You can afford to be stupid.”

“I think our discussion of my intelligence is finished.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. What did you tell him next?”

“Well, I didn’t tell him we suspect we have a client who fucking blew up Africa.”

“That’s good.”

“Do you think so? I would have thought you’d disagree. I pleaded client confidentiality. I pleaded coincidence. I pleaded lack of stupidity.”

“Did he believe it?”

Majid sank deeper into the couch and shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Balloons

BALLOONS