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commission in the Foreign Legion—though very few are accepted, since first you must endure the same harsh basic training as the men who will be under your command. But I applied and so—”
    “ Non! ” Louise gasped, interrupting. “ Putain! You’re not with the Foreign Legion!”
    “I am.”
    “They’re the worst! A bunch of brutes! Criminals! I’ve seen them beating each other in the bars in Pigalle in their ridiculous white hats! Drunk and bloody, just beating people up with their fists! Just for the fun of it!”
    “There are no saints in the Legion,” Phillipe admitted somberly. “Only desperate men from every nation, men with no place else to go, men who need a second chance.”
    “You mean mercenaries, hired assassins . . .”
    “I mean foreigners who have volunteered to serve France to the last drop of their blood. It’s an ancient tradition. Louis Philippe gave the Legion its first standard, which has since been carried to every corner of the earth.”
    “Oh, very nice!” Louise said, disgusted. “Spoken like a true imperialist!”
    “If it makes you feel better, think of me as a musician,” Phillipe offered brightly. “I play the piano, like your father. I’m not famous, of course, but I am second in command of la Musique Principale. We’re very well known, one of the best military marching bands in the world. And there’s le Chorale du Légion, which is my direct responsibility. Singing is one of the great traditions with us. Last year, in the competition at Moscow, we took the silver medal. If we only had a decent top tenor. But good tenors are hard to find—”
    “Enough!” Louise cried suddenly, clutching her head. “Stop!”
    Phillipe stopped himself, abashed. He had already said far too much. The thing that separated Satie from every other composer of his era—from Debussy and Ravel and Saint-Saëns—was his exquisite silences; the long, melancholy pauses between notes. Now, Phillipe played out one of Satie’s somber sarabandes—that courtly, complicated little dance—in his head, leaving plenty of space for the reverberating silences, and when he had finished, he took Louise by the arm again and they went back to the hotel, to the dining room, just open for breakfast.
    Louise ate like an American, which is to say heavily, ordering an omelette, spécialité de la maison , usually reserved for dinner, more like a soufflé than an omelette, and a platter full of homemade goose liver sausages, and ate every scrap. Phillipe ate a few crumbled pieces of a croissant and drank several cups of coffee. His stomach felt unsettled, sour, though he appeared completely at ease, an ability that might be attributed to battlefield training or an aristocratic disposition, or both. They finished eating; the bill came and Phillipe paid, but neither of them stood up to leave. The waiters clattered around impatiently, clearing dishes. The lovers didn’t speak, they didn’t say a word; they hardly looked at each other across the starched white tablecloth.

2

    GATEWAY TO
    THE AGE OF THE
    HIDDEN IMAM

    1.
    F rom the air the Saharoui refugee camp at Awsard in the Algerian Sahara looked like a heap of dirty clothes tossed onto a pile of sticks. Scraps of canvas, blue plastic UN tarps, striped bits of native fabric all flapped and billowed from improvised tent poles in the steady desert wind known by a woman’s name—Simoom—unbearably hot and pregnant with a nagging, sandy grit.
    The Russian-made Antonov C-160 circled the camp in the teeth of the wind in the yellow desert light, lowering toward the uneven airstrip below, flecks of mica hissing against the scarred glass of the cockpit. As they banked for the approach, dark stains revealed themselves between the dunes at the southern perimeter. These couldn’t be mistaken for anything else, even at this altitude: great mounds of trash and human excrement, the refuse of the refuse.
    “Poor miserable bastards,” Phillipe said, half to himself,