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happy.”
    â€œA pleasing role reversal.” Leo is the only military man Finn knows who is also a devout vegetarian. And he isn’t a small man. At six foot seven, with glossy flaxen hair, a rosy complexion, and thickly muscled torso, Leo is a poster boy for the vegetarian lifestyle. Must blow the Mazrooqis’ minds, a vegetarian DA. “I see enough death at work,” he’d said simply. “I don’t need to see it on my dinner plate.”
    When Leo heads off to organize the helicopters, Finn turns to his e-mails, now numbering 379. Lyle brings him a cup of Earl Grey and he opens the first one, an update on a water project down south.If only he could do his job without e-mails. He is a slow, methodical thinker and he types with two fingers. E-mails that would take Mira ten minutes to write take him two hours. His talents lie elsewhere, in negotiating agreements with the president and his men, arguing politics with tribal sheikhs, and encouraging consensus among disparate groups, which is why the other European ambassadors chose him to lead mediation efforts to head off open hostilities. And while he is typically self-deprecating when speaking of his linguistic abilities, he is secretly proud of his Arabic. When the president meets with Finn, he dismisses his translator in favor of Finn’s superior ear for nuance.
    When Finn has cleared 170 e-mails (mostly by hitting the ever-handy Delete button), he allows himself to ring Miranda. The sound of her voice, cheery and warm, soothes him. Reassured of her continual presence on the planet, he opens his lunch bag. He never has time for lunch out unless it’s official, so Negasi packs him sandwiches. He’s halfway through the first one when Dax, First Secretary Political and their resident spook, sticks his head in the door.
    â€œGot a minute? Oh, sorry, you’re eating.”
    â€œI can listen and chew at the same time. If you don’t mind. Come in.” Finn waves a hand at his leather sofa.
    â€œIt’s about the kidnappings up north.” Dax comes in, closing the door behind him. “We may need the police back, to do some forensics.”
    â€œOh, Dax, no.” Feeling suddenly queasy, Finn drops the remains of his sandwich back into the aluminum foil.
    â€œI’m afraid so.”
    â€œAll of them?”
    â€œAll except one. The Dutch boy is still missing.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œI know.”
    The two men sit in silence for a moment.
    â€œAnyone claim responsibility?”
    â€œNot yet. A few hallmarks of AQ, but could be Zajnoon’s people. They can be pretty brutal. But we don’t know.”
    â€œI’ll ring the families,” says Finn.
    â€œThey’re still here, at the InterContinental.”
    â€œI’ll go over then. Brief me.”
    Dax unfolds the particulars of the horror, the search that led to the row of headless corpses found in a mass grave up north. The heads were buried several feet away.
    â€œThe Dutch and the French know? And the Germans?”
    â€œTheir guys were with us.”
    When Dax leaves, Finn rings the other ambassadors to offer his condolences and vow to collaborate further on the search for the killers. And then all four of them head off to strip the frantic families of their last remaining shreds of hope.
    â€”
    I N THE CAR , a new dread leaps onto his shoulders. Miranda is out walking today. She wouldn’t have heard of the killings, no one would have. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office had managed to keep the disappearances out of the papers entirely. It had surprised him when he began his career, just how much the FCO managed to withhold from the press, how many missing people. But this was critical; publicity was disastrous for hostage negotiations. Not only did it give violent men the spotlight they craved but it gave them an exaggerated idea of their victims’ importance, often resulting in astronomical ransom requests. The