“What did you just say?” Mustafa asked.

“I said, maybe you should take a second wife. Then you could have children, and I—”

“My God,” said Mustafa, his bewilderment turning instantly to rage. “My God, Fadwa, what sort of madness are those Christians filling your head with?”

He stormed out of the house. Fadwa followed, calling his name, but he was through the front door and into his car before she could catch him.

But he couldn’t outrace the knowledge of who he was really angry at. Not Fadwa, for making the suggestion. Himself, for being tempted by it.

The dead man’s name was Ghazi al Tikriti. He was a mid-level Baathist who managed a string of rat cellars and a semi-legitimate nightclub in Rusafa. On the evening in question he’d left his car in a no-parking zone for an hour while he went to have dinner; he returned to find a ticket on his windshield and a surprise package wired to his ignition.

Mustafa was dropping Fadwa off at Umm Isa’s church when he got the call. “It’s a murder,” he told Fadwa. “I’ll be home late. Can you—”

“I’ll find a ride.” She got out without kissing him goodbye.

Samir and a homicide detective named Zagros were already at the crime scene. A group of Baghdad PD uniforms stood by the rope line, ogling the car—a brand-new Afrit Turbo—and holding a high-spirited debate about how much the corpse would affect its blue-book value.

Mustafa was surprised that the vehicle was still intact. “I thought you said he got blown up.”

“He did,” Samir replied. “Somebody replaced the air bag in the steering column with a pack of ball bearings and some extra propellant. Think shotgun.”

“Clever piece of work,” said Zagros, who was crouched by the open driver’s door. “It looks like they unscrewed the dome light to keep him from noticing the tampering. Or maybe that was to get him to lean in closer when he put his key in . . .”

“What about the parking ticket? Have you tracked down the cop who issued it?”

Samir pointed to one of the smugger-looking bystanders. “He claims he didn’t see anything suspicious. But wouldn’t you know, he’s also from Tikrit. We’re running him through the computer now, to see how close a relative he is of Saddam’s. And whether he’s got any auto shop experience.”

“Here’s the victim’s wallet,” Zagros said, standing up. “The driver’s license matches the registration, but we’ll need to check fingerprints to be absolutely sure.”

A slip of paper with a woman’s name and phone number was tucked into the billfold. “Noor,” Mustafa read. The paper smelled faintly of perfume. “What do you think, a girlfriend?”

“Or a prostitute,” said Zagros.

“I recognize the phone exchange. It’s the BU campus.”

“So? A whore can’t seek higher education? This is the city of the future, my friend.”

Mustafa turned to Samir. “We should get an address and go talk to her.”

“What for?” Samir looked over at the rope line. “Ten to one our killer’s right here.”

“Yes, and a thousand to one he never talks.”

“You think the girl will?”

No, thought Mustafa, but it’s a more diverting waste of time. And it will take longer. “Indulge me.”

“My mother had one of these,” Mustafa said, lifting the statue of Bastet—black kitty-cat with an ankh on its collar—from the knickknack shelf on which it sat. “She brought it back from her honeymoon.”

“Mine was a gift from my father,” Noor said. “He told me he’d stolen it for me from Cleopatra’s tomb.” She smiled. “I was eleven before I realized the gold was painted on.”

“Your father was an archaeologist?”

“An amateur treasure-hunter. Not a very successful one. He did better with abandoned storage lockers than ancient tombs.”

“And you?” Mustafa said, returning Bastet to her shelf. “What are you studying at university?”

“Ah, nothing,” said Noor, with the coy look of revealing a naughty secret. “I’m not a student.”

“No? I thought this was student housing.”

“It’s cheap housing,” Noor said. “I couldn’t afford such a view off-campus.” The apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up, had an unobstructed view across the river. Mustafa could see the twin towers in the distance, rising towards a full moon. “It’s supposed to be a student apartment,” Noor conceded, “but I have a special arrangement with Umm Banat.”

“Your landlady?” Mustafa pictured the old crone who’d answered the buzzer downstairs. The building was not just student-only but women-only, and Umm Banat had looked upon Mustafa and Samir as potential despoilers of virtue; their Halal badges had only barely sufficed to gain them admittance. “If you convinced that woman to break the rules for you, you must be quite the charmer.”

“Oh, I can be,” Noor said. “When I want to.”

She was tall. In heels she would have been as tall as Mustafa, and even in the silk slippers she was currently wearing, she had to tilt her head up only slightly to look him in the eye. She did look him in the eye, her gaze frank and open and relaxed, unintimidated by the presence, at this late hour, of two strangers in her home, policemen who had yet to state their business.

She wasn’t a great beauty. Her face, a mix (he would later learn) of Egyptian, Berber, and Spanish features, was off somehow, but off in an interesting way. Returning her gaze, he had to struggle not to become distracted—by her look, her manner, and by rogue thoughts about what it would be like to embrace a woman nearly his size. Fadwa was short.

“So,” he asked next, “where do you work?”

“Al Jazeera,” she said, smiling again—either at his visible effort to stay focused or simply because she liked smiling. “I do story research for Mesopotamia This Week. And once in a while I freelance for FOX, if they have an out-of-town crew that needs a guide or a translator.”

“Jazeera and FOX,” Mustafa said. “I didn’t know it was possible to work for both at once.”

“Ah, it’s like juggling two boyfriends,” Noor replied. “You just have to be careful not to let them in the same room together.”

“You have experience juggling boyfriends, do you?” said Samir—the first words he had spoken since their arrival. While Mustafa bantered with Noor, he’d made a slow circuit of the apartment, touching things at random, looking for incriminating evidence or some other antidote to his boredom. Now in the kitchen, less a separate room than an extension of the living area, he reached into the open cabinet above the gas range and brought down a pair of champagne glasses.

“Uh-oh,” Noor said. “Now I’m in trouble. You’ve found my drug paraphernalia.” A bit of current-events humor: Earlier that year, a junior POG House member had introduced legislation to ban drinking vessels “designed specifically for the consumption of illegal beverages.” Although the bill had never made it out of committee, the press had gotten wind of it, and it had since become a running gag.

Samir, trying to come off as though it were no laughing matter: “If I keep looking, will I find a bottle to go with these?”

“I think I will choose not to incriminate myself by answering that,” Noor said good-naturedly. Glancing sideways at Mustafa: “At least until I know you better . . . Now I don’t wish to be rude to such charming gentlemen, but what is it you are here for? Not to search my pantry, surely.”

“No, we’re here about this,” Mustafa said, holding out the paper they’d found in Ghazi’s wallet. Noor’s fingertips brushed his as she took it.

“This is my phone number,” Noor said, “and my handwriting, but I don’t remember . . . Oh.”

“Oh?”

She bit her lower lip. “This is about the car, isn’t it?”

“The car?” Samir said. He set the champagne glasses on the kitchen counter and turned towards her. “What car?”

“Well,” Noor said, focusing on Mustafa. “This man—”

“Ghazi al Tikriti,” Mustafa said.

“—yes, he came to Al Jazeera a few days ago to be interviewed, and while he was waiting to be called into the studio he chatted me up. While we were talking, I mentioned I was looking for a new car, something a little sporty—”