“Talon,” she noted. “Offices in Greenwich, New York, London, and Dubai. Sounds like a lot of employees?”
“It’s a good size. We do a lot of forensic stuff in finance, IT. Some field protection work as well.”
“And you are here to look into the disappearance of Stephanie Winters. I’m told you have some connection to the family?”
“Not personally,” he explained. “My boss told me to come. Ms. Winters’s father is a client of Talon.”
“Talon must have a lot of clout,” she said. “I was told by Chief Inspector Farnoush to make myself available to you and share what we know. Your boss talked to my boss, so to speak. The men upstairs. And here we are. Did you travel here from the States?”
“I happened to be in Tel Aviv on a money-laundering investigation. Fake antiquities out of Syria. The money was going somewhere in Connecticut. By the way, I was told there was another American consultant coming in?”
“Later today,” the inspector said. She opened a drawer, pulled out a thick file, and slipped on her glasses. Pretty stylish. Fendi or Prada or some Italian brand. She opened the folder and her manner changed.
She looked defensive.
“I’ve been in your seat many times. Enough to know no one loves people looking over your shoulder,” he said.
“You’ll see we are pretty thorough. Not quite the third-world police investigators you expect.”
Yes, definitely defensive.
She snapped the file shut and slid it near Hauck on the desk. “This is all we know. Ms. Winters was an intern at the Alexandria National Museum. I understand she was receiving her master’s in archaeology at Columbia University.”
“That’s about as much as I know too.”
He paged through the file. Photos. Evidence forms. Interview transcripts. Depositions. Much like they had in the States. Most of the documents were in English. He assumed this had been done for the benefit of Stephanie Winters’s family.
Clipped to the front of the file was Stephanie Winters’s ID photo from the museum. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was attractive. Straight blond hair. Wide eyes. A strong and confident smile. She looked eager and ready to go.
And smart.
Hauck’s managing partner, Tom Foley, had told him that Stephanie was top of her class. A young woman who’d had every reason to be pleased with her life.
Then she’d vanished.
The Winters family had resources and contacts. They’d pulled every string they had with the Egyptian government and the U.S. State Department.
And came up empty.
“She went missing when?” he asked.
“Two months ago.” Nabila didn’t have to look at the file to know. “The parents are divorced, as you know, but they’ve both been here several times. I understand their frustration. She was last seen in an Internet café on Mustafa Kamel Street. I’m told she had some interest in a young man who works there. A Croat. She was, by all accounts, an excellent student and a committed worker. According to Doctor Razi at the museum, they were doing work in satellite cartography. Do you know what that is?”
“You’re talking to someone who barely got through eighth-grade earth science,” he said with a smile.
“Electromagnetic cartography can map out formations of ruins that are still underground. All Egypt is built on layers and layers of such ruins. Greek. Hellenistic. Roman. Ottoman. Dig anywhere, we say here, you will find something.”
“You might say we cops believe that sounds true for anywhere,” he said.
“The world over. It is true. But here we are sitting atop buried civilizations. A graveyard of history. Watch your step, you may trip over Cleopatra’s chariot wheel. I am kidding, of course. Anyway, we checked, regarding the girl. We don’t have street cameras here, the way you have in the United States and London. But we interviewed everyone. Her roommates, her colleagues. We went through her apartment and office. We checked for hairs and DNA. We exhausted all our leads. Nothing.”
“No chance she just ran off with someone?”
He had to ask, though it didn’t seem likely.
“Without word? At work, Stephanie never missed a day. She and her parents would speak several times a week. And she was in constant contact with her brother and her sister on her WhatsApp account. They were all anxious, as you might imagine, a young American woman here in Egypt. Attractive. And Jewish, too, I was told.”
“I was going to mention that,” he said. “I don’t know what the climate for that kind of hatred is, here. I know in Cairo—”
“In Cairo the temperature is even higher, as we say. For what is going on in the world. In the second and third century, Alexandria had the largest Jewish population in the world.” She shrugged. “Even now, we have a reputation as a tolerant, multicultural city. There is still a small Jewish population here. But in today’s world, violence can happen anywhere.”
He had seen the aftermath of hatred more times than he cared to remember. “You’re right. May I take a good look at this file in a room here?”
“You can keep it. I’ve made copies for both of you.” Nabila glanced at the clock on the wall. “I already e-mailed one to your colleague, who is due to arrive soon.”
“I’ve never met him,” he admitted. “I was only asked to make sure things went smoothly for this guy. My boss told me he could be pretty unconventional. I assume he’s a forensic guy?”
“Not a guy,” the inspector said with surprise. “A woman. Were you not briefed?”
“Obviously not. It all happened pretty quickly. I was just asked to get down here as fast as I could, and get up to speed when I landed in Alexandria.”
“Then I think you are in for a surprise,” the inspector said. She smiled openly. “This young lady was sent by the Winters family, not by the police. I think you’ll find she has an interesting specialty.”
“And what is that?”
Nabila Honsi rose and slipped her purse over her shoulder.
“Apparently, she can speak to the dead.”
THE LUFTHANSA FLIGHT FROM FRANKFURT to Alexandria pulled up to the gate at Borg El Arab International Airport an hour late. Hauck was used to delays, used to waiting, but the drive from Alexandria out to the airport had been longer than he expected and he was ready for the plane to taxi up.
He watched men in light-colored business suits and open shirts, carrying val pacs and briefcases, who looked like they might well be in commercial fields like oil, textiles, or import/export, exit from the first-class compartment.
They were almost all native Egyptians.
Trailing behind them were two young Americans, perhaps in their twenties. The pale woman was wearing yoga pants and a denim jacket over her tank top. Her short dark hair stood up in spikes, though he wondered if that was deliberate or a result of hours on the plane. The man was in battered jeans and a cut-off UNC sweatshirt, and he wheeled a cheap carry-on suitcase behind him.
He looked past them, waiting for his colleague to emerge.
Every woman he’d met who claimed to deal with the occult had either been overly made up and glitzy, or of the gauze skirt and sandals type.
Nearly always middle-aged.
The two young Americans stepped up to Nabila Honsi, who held a sign reading HARPER CONNELLY.
“I’m Harper,” the woman said. She looked first at Nabila, next at Hauck, as if she were recording them mentally.
“See, Harper, I told you they’d be meeting us,” the man said. He had dark hair, too, and his face was scarred with the evidence of long-ago acne.
They grew up poor, Hauck thought.
“I thought you’d be at baggage claim,” the young woman said.