Abu Issa stared at her with the same dead eyes she’d seen during their encounter at the ice cream parlor, when he first threatened to put Khalid in Uday Hussein’s death squad. Huda eyed the butter knife resting on the tray, imagined it a dagger.

She began to recount the phone call. All the while, she had a numb, out-of-body sensation, as if she were an invisible spectator watching from above: the two men in their leather jackets, and her, arms folded over her chest, making herself as small as she could possibly be.

“So the foreign woman is a journalist. And a liar.” Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter grinned at each other. “This is very useful.”

Huda glanced at Khalid’s curtained window. She remembered their argument by Martyr’s Monument, and the disgust in his voice as he asked, What would your brothers think of you . . . ?

“I think you’re mistaken about Ally.” The words slipped out before she could stop them. “It’s true she worked with Peter Francis at some business magazine in Australia. But she wasn’t a journalist. Ally was a secretary, like me.”

Abu Issa stared at her.

“A secretary?”

“In Australia they give it a fancy name, executive assistant.”

Abu Issa pushed his coffee aside.

“And you believe her?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I believe her. I’ve done what you asked, and fooled her into trusting me. She tells me all sorts of things you wouldn’t expect. Just last night she told me about a beloved cousin who died young. She even told me about, well . . .” Huda paused for dramatic effect. She glanced at the Bolt Cutter, then bent close to Abu Issa and whispered, “She confided about her relationships with her husband. It’s not entirely satisfying, apparently.”

“Unsatisfying?” Abu Issa smirked. “That’s no surprise. He has no mustache. He wears short pants in public. Only a hairless boy would do such a thing.”

“I’m sure she was telling the truth.” Huda giggled slyly. “About her husband, her work at the magazine, all of it.”

For the next fifteen minutes, as Abu Issa sipped coffee and took his fill of bread and cream, Huda told tales, made up gossip, complained about Ally, and poked fun at Mr. Tom. She felt like a courtier from ancient times desperate to keep a fickle caliph happy. When the coffee and khobuz were finished, she escorted the men to the front gate.

“Ma‘al-salamah.” She fashioned her lips into a smile. “Go with peace.”

She closed the padlock and waited for the Oldsmobile to growl to life. Instead, Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter dallied on the sidewalk, puffing on cigarettes and trading spiteful jokes.

“That hairless girly-boy can’t get it up.”

“I should give the slut a taste of a real Iraqi man.”