everyone like a hawk. I'll be meeting the rest of the team in the conference room, if you need me."
Barbara was determined not to need her, as well as to do justice to the DCI's faith in her.
And as she faced Muhannad Malik and Taymulah Azhar across the table in what had once been the Victorian house's dining room, she recommitted herself to those ends.
The two men had been kept waiting a quarter of an hour. During that time, someone had provided them with a jug of water, four glasses, and a blue paper plate of Oreos. But they appeared to have touched nothing. When Barbara entered, both men were sitting. Azhar rose. Muhannad did not.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she told them.
"Some last-minute details we had to clear up."
Muhannad didn't look as if he believed that remark. Obviously, he was experienced enough and clever enough to know when power-jockeying was being attempted by an adversary. For his part, Azhar made a study of Barbara as if trying to gaze beneath her skin for the truth of the matter. When she returned his scrutiny, he lowered his eyes.
"Details we wait to hear," Muhannad said. Barbara had to credit him with opening the meeting with an attempt to sound polite.
"Yes. Well." Onto the table she slapped the folders she was carrying. There were three of them, and she'd brought them along more for effect than for any other reason. She topped them with the yellow-bound book she'd taken from Querashi's hotel room. Then she drew out a chair, sat, and gestured Azhar to do likewise.
She'd brought along her cigarettes, and she took a moment to light up.
The room was only a degree or two less stifling than Emily Barlow's office had been, but unlike Emily's office, there was no fan circulating the tepid air. Muhannad's forehead glistened. Azhar, as usual, could have stepped from an icy shower a moment prior to Barbara's entrance.
Barbara indicated the yellow-bound book with her cigarette. "I'd like to begin with this.
Can you tell me what it is?"
Azhar reached across the table. He turned the book with the back cover face up and read what Barbara would have thought to be the final page.
He said, "This is the Holy Qur'aan, Sergeant.
Where did you get it?"
"In Querashi's room."
"As he was a Muslim, that can't come as a surprise." Muhannad said pointedly.
Barbara extended her hand for the book, and Azhar complied. She opened it to the page she'd noted on the previous night, marked with a satin ribbon. She directed Azhar's attention to the passage on the page, where brackets had been drawn in blue ink. "As you obviously read Arabic," she said, "would you translate this for me?
We've sent a fax of it to a bloke at the University of London for deciphering, but we'll be that much ahead of the game if you're willing to do the honours right now."
Barbara saw a small flicker of irritation cross Azhar's face. In revealing that he read Arabic, he'd inadvertently given her an advantage over him that she'd otherwise not have had. In telling him that she'd already sent the page to London, she'd made it impossible for him to manufacture a translation that might meet ends other than the truth. Love-one, she thought with no little pleasure.
It was important, after all, that Taymullah Azhar understand their acquaintance wasn't going to stand in the way of Sergeant Havers's getting her job done. It was equally important that both men knew they weren't dealing with a fool.
Azhar read the passage. He was silent for a minute, during which time Barbara could hear voices coming from the first floor conference room as the door opened and shut upon Emily's afternoon meeting with her team. She shot a glance at Muhannad but couldn't decide whether he looked bored, eager, hostile, overheated, or tense. His eyes were on his cousin. His fingers held a pencil and tapped its rubber end against the top of the table.
Finally, Azhar said, "A direct translation isn't always possible. English terms aren't always adequate or comparable to those in Arabic."
"Right," Barbara said. "The point's duly noted.
Just do your best."
"The passage refers to one's duty to go to the aid of those who are in need of help," Azhar said.
"Roughly, it reads, 'How should you not fight for the cause of Allah and of the feeble among men and of the women and the children who are crying: Our Lord! Bring us forth from out this town of which the