Chaya grabbed the ID wallet from Nick’s hand and thrust it in the receptionist’s face. “And I told you I’d be back. This man is from Interpol. You have to tell him where my father is.”
Nick gently but firmly pulled Chaya’s hand back and reclaimed the badge, using the pressure from his fingertips to tell her, You’re not helping. Confrontation rarely worked with witnesses. As Walker once told him, no matter how loud you shout, you can’t argue a fish into your boat.
Nick quickly shifted the mood, baiting his hook. “What Miss Maharani is trying to say is that her father may have vital information relating to a counterterrorism investigation.”
The receptionist’s eyes widened. “Counterterrorism?”
“Yes, counterterrorism.” Nick slowly turned the reel, bringing the bait to life. “Of course, I must inform you that anything we discuss from this point forward is strictly classified. You cannot share our conversation with anyone.”
The receptionist glanced down the hallways on either side of her pill box and then leaned forward on her elbows, brushing back the ragged strands of mauve that fell about her face. “You can count on me, love. How can I help you?” This time the question sounded much more sincere. The fish was on the line.
Unfortunately, the fish knew very little. She explained that Maharani’s leave of absence was nothing unusual. Bioengineering was a high-stakes, high-pressure field, and minds like his needed the occasional respite. IBE had a generous leave policy, and all of its researchers took full advantage, Chaya’s father included. The receptionist handed Nick the researcher’s leave request. “He only lef’ me his home address,” she said. “No resort or vacation house.”
“Then shouldn’t you be concerned that he isn’t at his home address?” asked Chaya.
The receptionist pursed her lips. “They all put down their home addresses. I’ve got a department full of regular absentminded professors who can make a rat grow purple hair but can’t remember the name of the resort they’re headed to.”
Nick examined the form. There was a list of equipment at the bottom. It appeared the doctor had signed out assorted beakers and containers, a pair of laptop computers, and some culturing solution. “What’s all this?” he asked, pointing out the list to the redhead. “Did Dr. Maharani indicate that this was a working vacation?”
The girl bobbled her head, making the mop of red flop back and forth inconclusively. “Not really. The professors of’n take a few supplies along, ’case they get ideas halfway through their holiday.” She raised her penciled eyebrows and took on an expression she must have thought looked quite intelligent. “A true genius does not choose his moments of inspiration.”
Nick scanned the list of supplies again. “There’s a lot of glass here. More than an older gentleman like the doctor can carry.”
“Oh, he had help, love.” The receptionist’s eyes drifted and she smiled to herself. “Tall, dark, and handsome help — with a bit of a prison vibe, but the kind a girl likes if you know wha’ I mean.” She winked and poked Nick in the arm with a press-on nail.
“No, ma’am. I don’t know what you mean.”
“He had a tattoo, love. Right here.” She pointed to her pasty white forearm. “But not a cheesy set of flames like the boys at the pub have.” She looked around again and lowered her voice. “It was a proper marking. You could tell it meant some’n serious.”
Nick flipped over the paper between them and drew the circle with the crescent and star. As soon as he finished, the receptionist jabbed her finger at the paper. “That’s it, love. That’s the one.”
“Are you certain?”
“Do I look like I’m blind? ’Course I’m certain.”
Nick glanced up at the security camera behind the desk. This might be the break he needed. He tucked his badge into his coat. “Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been most helpful.”
“Have I?” asked the receptionist, her cheeks beginning to flush.
“Yes, but remember, our conversation here was strictly classified.”
She waved her hand in a slow arc, fluttering her fingers. “You were never here, love.”
On the elevator back down to the lobby, Chaya tugged at Nick’s elbow. “How could you know to draw that tattoo unless you already knew who took my father?”
Nick watched the red numbers tick by above the elevator door. “I didn’t know, I suspected. We’ve been tracking a terrorist group with similar tattoos since the bombing in Washington, DC.” There was a loud ding and the doors slid open. He stepped out into the lobby at a quick pace.
Chaya was right on his heels. “And when were you planning to tell me that the people who bombed your capital had my father?”
“I’m telling you now.” Nick reached the security desk and loudly slapped the polished concrete surface, startling the college dropout behind it nearly out of his chair. He flashed his badge. “I need to see yesterday’s video files.”
CHAPTER 31
In one hundred meters, turn left on Lensfield Road.”
“This one?” asked Drake, putting on his blinker.
“No. Keep going. That one was thirty meters. I said one hundred meters to Lensfield.”
“There are no street signs. How do these people find anything?”
“You’re there. Turn now!”
Drake missed the turn.
Scott exhaled loudly into the comm link. “Stand by. I’m recalculating.”
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m upset because you’ve taken one of the most brilliant technical minds of our time and reduced him to a TomTom. Make the next available U-turn.”
Drake followed Scott’s directions deeper into the Cambridge University campus, crossing from modern to old to Old World. He stared up at the brownstone faces of the long renaissance buildings as if he might enter the maze within and never find his way out again. He hated the endless dusty halls of academia, and Nick knew it. Yet Nick had sent him up here anyway.
“CJ’s databases won’t have anything on a terrorist group that’s been dormant for eight hundred years,” Nick had explained as he peeled Drake away from Chaya and stuffed him into the Peugeot. “I need you to go up to Cambridge and consult Rami.”
“What kind of database is Rami?”
“Rami isn’t a database. He’s a professor — my professor. Dr. Rami Fuad taught Middle Eastern Studies at the Air Force Academy. A few years after I graduated, he abandoned that program as a lost cause and moved to Pembroke College, at Cambridge.”
The interior of the college was as nightmarish as Drake had feared. Long, echoing halls, stairwells that only led down when he needed to go up, room numbers with no decipherable pattern to their order. He made several wrong turns and backtracks before he finally stumbled upon a half-open door with a frosted glass pane that read: DR. RAMI FUAD, MIDDLE EAST HISTORY, EGYPTOLOGY.
Drake rapped lightly on the glass and then pushed the door open and peered inside. He heard voices, but he saw no sign of the professor, only a narrow L-shaped room that might have once been Shakespeare’s broom closet. The leg of the room ahead of him was lined with books, most on shelves, some in precarious stacks on the floor. What he could see of the back wall sloped downward with the roof, except for a recessed window where sunlight held the dust of centuries past suspended in a thin beam.