From the age of eight onward, then, Zula had been raised in an environment that had been all about the free and frictionless flow of information into her young mind. She hadn’t fully appreciated this until she had found herself in this predicament where no one saw any point in telling her anything at all. Traveling with Jones’s band of jihadists, she almost felt nostalgic for the good old days of Ivanov and Sokolov, who had at least bothered to supply explanations of what was going on. Those two had bought into a Western mind-set in which it was important for things to make sense; and, needing the services of Zula and Peter and Csongor, they had been forced to keep them briefed.