and not a sure thing that I would be any better off in all the commotion that would result. After the bells stopped, we all remained quiet for another five minutes or so. The man next to me got up and had a low conversation with Ahmet, who opened the heavy door and disappeared.

“You probably are wondering what is going on, Inspector.” A man at the far end folded his napkin in a triangle and set it on the table. “You don’t recognize us?”

“Should I?”

“We were on an airplane together.”

I looked at each of them carefully. “You must have been in first class.”

“A few of us were, actually. We are from Mossad. Does that worry you?

“Of course not. My job description calls for me to have regular meetings with Mossad. Every Thursday night over lamb. We take turns getting knocked out.”

“It was not exactly according to the script—that was Ahmet’s doing. He thinks you are making eyes at his daughter. You’re not, of course. She’s much too young.”

“Much.”

The man with the triangle napkin rearranged it into a rabbit with floppy ears. “We understand that you came to Geneva on Mr. Sohn’s orders. We have been trying to contact him, without success, I might add. Out of desperation, we decided to invite you to dinner.”

Two lights went on in my head. I almost thought I was seeing double. “Dilara was part of the invitation. Sort of like bait?”

“She helped.”

“There was never any idea of dancing with me at the disco.”

“Never.”

“Then why was Ahmet so upset?”

“Ahmet deals with possibilities. He likes to forestall things, especially when it comes to his virgin daughter. We don’t approve of everything he does in that regard; we also don’t control him.”

“Getting back to Sohn.” I looked at my wineglass, which was still empty. No one moved to fill it, and I was in no mood to pour for myself. This was the second light that had clicked on. They knew Sohn. That meant Sohn probably knew them, though these things are not always so symmetrical. But if he did know them, it meant the reason he picked me to come out here was welded to my bad luck in having to play host for Jenö. Unless, of course, it wasn’t just bad luck. Maybe Sohn had engineered my playing host. The idea had crossed my mind before, but I had dropped it as far-fetched. I should trust my instincts, the ones that didn’t touch on Turkish virgins.

“Getting back to Sohn,” said the man to my right. “We have been discussing a few ideas with him over the past many months, as you no doubt know.” No, I did not no doubt know. I had only entertained a bad premonition that Sohn had been working with the Israelis. Knowing and entertaining were not the same thing. “It turns out, much as he kept telling us, we do have some common ground, though as he constantly warned us, that is not a perception universally shared in your leadership.”

“Or in ours,” one of the other men muttered and left the table. The others did not watch him go.

The napkin man moved his chair closer to the table. “That’s good, now we are only five—an excellent number for a conversation. Six is too many, don’t you think?”

Ahmet walked in with a bowl of fruit and put it on the table.

“Please, Inspector, eat, have a piece of fruit.” The man with the napkin took a banana and began to peel it. Ahmet found a chair next to the fireplace and sat down. His radars were turning. I tried not to think about Dilara.

“Here’s what I know,” I said. “First, I have a diplomatic passport; second, and in contradiction to point one, I am being held against my will in a basement somewhere in France by people who have no authority to do so.”

“No, Inspector, we’re not in France at all. We’re in Italy. We were in France, but your M. Beret seems to know a lot of people in the French service. He doesn’t like the Italians, however, and they don’t like him. While you were resting we all drove here. Excuse my interruption—do you have a third point?”

“What about Jenö?” There was apparently a great deal of lamb going around this corner of Europe, French lamb, Italian lamb.

“He’s probably sitting with M. Beret at this moment. They have a lot to talk about. As do we, Inspector. We have a message for you to give to Mr. Sohn. It is