“And I walk in with a new watch? Every week at the private session with a new watch? No. Too suspicious. These people are serious. The shaykh already looks at me very hard.”

Frank sighed. What’s to see? he thought. A poor refugee adrift in Europe. One of millions. Frank didn’t think this guy was any more dangerous than the caramel sauce. But he had a connection to the shaykh. And to the people in the shaykh’s private sessions.

“What did they talk about?” he asked.

“They are angry. Very angry.”

“And what are they going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. They speak carefully. Even in front of me. But I think something will happen. And if they trust me they will tell me.”

“Is there anyone there named Stavro? Does anyone ever mention that name?”

“Stavro?” Mohammed put down his spoon and thought. “I don’t know. People don’t say names. Or maybe they make one up.”

He picked up his spoon and dug in again. “Do you want me to keep going?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. And Mohammed waited while he pulled out another hundred-euro note.

Aasim

AASIM

When the police showed up and confronted the men in the rented Renault, the Englishman had escaped by running into the boulangerie and out its back door. The others—the Moroccans and the Tunisian—had scattered on the street. There were only two cops and only so many ways they could give chase. By the time they had rounded up the Arabs and come into the boulangerie to talk to the proprietor, all they could get from him was that a man had run in and run out. Which way had he gone from there? The proprietor shrugged. He had been busy with customers.

The Englishman, born Trevor but since his conversion Aasim, made his way back to the shabby apartment in an immigrant quarter of Lille that had been rented for the operation by someone he and the others had never seen. He couldn’t be sure that the Arabs wouldn’t give away the address— in his own previous career as an armed robber he had more than once turned in mates to get a break—so he was in and out quickly. Just long enough to grab the hidden cash and two jugs of the chemical. There was still a way to accomplish the mission. He went to a mini-mart and took a close look at some bottles. It was easy enough to buy syringes and needles from an indifferent chemist.