“It’s freezing,” Mihai said, turning on the motor. “This time of year.”

Leon smiled. In Istanbul’s dream of itself it was always summer, ladies eating sherbets in garden pavilions, caïques floating by. The city shivered through winters with braziers and sweaters, somehow surprised that it had turned cold at all.

Mihai ran the heater for a few minutes then switched it off, burrowing, turtlelike, into his coat. “So come with me but no questions.”

Leon rubbed his hand across the window condensation, clearing it. “There’s no risk to you.”

“Wonderful. Something new. You couldn’t do this yourself?”

“He’s coming out of Constancia. For all I know, he only speaks Romanian. Then what? Sign language? But you-”

Mihai waved this off. “He’ll be German. One of your new friends.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s a small favor. I’ll get it back.”

He lit a cigarette, so that for a second Leon could see his grizzled face and the wiry salt-and-pepper hair on his head. Now more salt than pepper. When they had met, it had been dark and wavy, styled like the Bucharest dandy he’d once been, known in all the cafés on the Calea Victoriei.

“Besides, to see the rats leaving-” he said, brooding. “They wouldn’t let us out. Now look at them.”

“You did what you could.” A Palestinian passport, free to come and go in Bucharest, to beg for funds, leasing creaky boats, a last lifeline, until that was taken away too.

Mihai drew on the cigarette, staring at the water running down the windshield. “So how is it with you?” he said finally. “You look tired.”

Leon shrugged, not answering.

“Why are you doing this?” Mihai turned to face him. “The war’s over.”

“Yes? Nobody told me.”

“No, they want to start another one.”

“Nobody I know.”

“Be careful you don’t get to like it. You start enjoying it-” His voice trailed off, rough with smoke, the accent still Balkan, even now. “Then it’s not about anything anymore. A habit. Like these,” he said, holding out his cigarette. “You get a taste for it.”