“About what?”

“Grrowl."

He laughed, trying to sound natural. "Don't tell me you were holding out on me."

"I would never tell you that."

"Why don't I come to you? I'll bring a bottle. Besides, I think the French've been watching me. No need for them to see us together in a public place."

"Like they could follow a man of your considerable skills."

"Ha," he said. "Just give me your address, will you?"

He picked up more Davidoffs and a bottle of Smirnoff from an all-night convenience store, then called Einner. Einner, of course, had already heard everything. "She tried to get to sleep. No luck. She was fooling with her sleeping pills, but I guess even a conversation with you was more appealing than those."

"Do me a favor and knock off the surveillance, will you? We're good friends, and the talk will get personal."

"If you want to fuck her, go ahead. Don't ask my permission."

"I will punch you, James. Don't think I won't."

"Can't wait, old man."

"We'll talk about things no one needs to know about. If she starts to bring up anything relevant, then I'll call you."

"What's the code?" said Einner, pleased to be back in his own territory of ciphers and pass-phrases.

"Hell, I don't know. You'll hear my voice."

"Call your wife," he said. "Say you told her you'd call, and you forgot."

"But they're friends. Angela will want to talk to her, too.”

“She's in the middle of something and has to run." It was good enough, so Milo agreed. "You'll turn off the surveillance as soon as I show up?”

“Yeah. Promise."

Milo doubted that, but if things became too confessional, he knew the approximate locations of the cameras and could obstruct them. The microphones, though, would be another matter. Head to her terrace, perhaps?

She buzzed him up, telling him to come to the fourth floor, and he used the rickety elevator. She was waiting in her doorway, in jeans and a T-shirt, a glass of white wine in her hand. "That was quick. Didn't wake you up, did I?"

"Please," he said, wagging the Smirnoff at her. "It's five in the afternoon for me." He kissed her cheeks and followed her in.

He soon got the impression that Angela had changed her mind. She'd made the call, but while waiting for him had realized her mistake. They put the vodka in the freezer for later and drank wine on the same sofa he'd seen through the video cameras.

To loosen her up, Milo started in with questions about her love life. Yes, there was the princess from a year ago, but what about since then? "You've never kept your hands to yourself for long."

That provoked a laugh, but the fact was that she hadn't been to bed with anyone since that relationship ended. "It was hard. Remember how I was after Frank Dawdle turned bad? It was like that."

"A problem of trust."

"Pretty much." She sipped the wine. "You can smoke, you know."

Milo took out his Davidoffs and offered one, but Angela had quit. "I could've started smoking again when the relationship went south, but that would be admitting defeat."

He gave her a smile, then said, "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Instead of answering, she went to the kitchen, and Milo knew this was his chance. He could call Einner to switch everything on, if it wasn't already. But he didn't, and weeks later this mistake would become a nasty little detail in the history of Milo Weaver.

She returned with the wine bottle, topped off their glasses, and even returned to the kitchen again to put the bottle in the recycling bin. By the time she'd finished the ritual and settled on the sola, she had decided on her tactic. "How much do you know about what's going on in the Sudan?"

"As much as anyone else, I guess. A long, nasty north-south civil war ended a couple years ago. We brokered that. But now, in the Darfur region you've got another civil war between the Sudanese Liberation Army and the government-supported Janjaweed militia. Last I heard, over two hundred thousand were dead and another two million displaced. In the east, in the capital, you've now got another civil war, triggered by the assassination of Mullah Salih Ahmad in January, which was blamed on the president-though we know better, don't we?" He smiled, but she didn't. "What else? Terrible economy, crude oil being its primary export." He squinted at her, remembering something: "But they don't sell us oil, do they? We've got an embargo on them. They sell it to China."

"Exactly," she said, unflustered by the name of that country. "Right now, they're supplying seven percent of China 's oil. China supplies the Sudanese government with weapons to kill its own people-they'll do anything to keep the oil flowing." She touched her lower lip. "It's funny. China 's been under a lot of pressure from the UN to encourage President al-Bashir to make peace in Darfur. Finally, last February, Hu Jintao-the Chinese president, no less- met with him to discuss this. At the same time, he announced the cancellation of Sudan 's Chinese debt and promised to build him a presidential palace. How fucked up is that?"

"Very fucked up."

"But go back to Salih Ahmad. This afternoon, you told me the Tiger killed Ahmad, and he wasn't doing it for the Sudanese government."

"He might have been wrong. He never knew who he was working for. Muslim extremists was his best guess."

She frowned. "There's a kid I met with a few times back in May. Rahman Garang. Sudanese. He was part of Salih Ahmad's group."

"Terrorist?"

Angela tilted her head, then nodded. "I'm not sure what all Rahman actually did, but yes, I'd call him a terrorist-a budding one, at least. His family's been here for about five years, and when he came back to visit in May, the French picked him up. They'd connected him to some cell in Lyon. He was a real hardhead. Vitriolic. It turned out he wasn't actually connected to anything in France, but while he was held he kept blaming his interrogators for the death of his mullah. You and the Americans, he said. That's why I got a call from my ex-she's not actually a princess, though she acts like one. She's French intelligence. I think it was her way of making peace with me. I talked with Rahman once in jail, and he told me he wasn't afraid of me. I-meaning the United States and all its allies-had killed Mullah Salih Ahmad, and he fully expected to be killed next. The French let him go, due to lack of evidence.

"But I was curious. We'd all seen the news. It was in his interest to blame President al-Bashir. After all, overthrowing him is the whole point of that insurgency. I tracked down Rahman's family about a week later, then convinced him to talk to me again. We had lunch in the center-same place you found me today. Rahman's brother-Ali-insisted on coming along for protection. I agreed, but made him wait outside the restaurant while we talked."

May 16, Milo remembered from Einner's photos. As she gulped down her wine, he said, "Was he raving? Or did he actually know something?"

Angela set down the glass; it was empty. "A little bit of both. Rahman had been at the mullah's house in Khartoum the night his body reappeared. A lot of friends were there, a kind of vigil with the family. Rahman went to the bathroom. Through the window, he could see into the backyard. He saw a European-a white man- delivering the body. That was the crux of his argument."

"Did you show him the photos of the Tiger?"

She shook her head, possibly embarrassed. "Didn't occur to me. But I told him I would look into it. If I'd been a man, I don't think he would've believed me. But he seemed to like me. I drove him and Ali back to his house, and over the next several days started looking into it. Really, I had nothing to go on. I had no reason to think this one was also the Tiger. There are a lot of white faces in the world, and I assumed al-Bashir had just gone to the regional open market for his killers."