They had a short rest in the room and then showered in the rusty bathroom, and went out for a pizza and beer. After they had returned to the room Alia called her parents' store in Colorado where it was only early afternoon. Her father answered and said he was relieved and surprised to hear her voice and told her about the visit by the FBI. Alia said that it must be some big mistake as she was on a planned vacation in Europe with her husband. She said that she wanted to know if they had relatives in Europe and wanted to contact them to strengthen the family ties. Her father said that he only knew of some family members in Germany but had last heard from them quite a while ago and didn't have an address or phone number but remembered that the name of their business was "Sayed and Sons, Oriental Foods Imports" in Frankfurt. He added that Sayed was his cousin on his mother's side and that he had become an Ahmadiyyan so most of the family, who were Christians, didn't want anything to do with him, and regarded him as a traitor to the faith. He also said that Sayed was a good man who believed in justice and fairness. Alia told him not to worry about her and that she would be in touch soon and that he should not mention this phone call unless he was directly asked about it. She refrained from telling him that they were in Frankfurt and had plans to go to Turkey.
A short web search yielded the business phone number and address of "Sayed and Sons, Oriental Foods Imports". It was too late to call the shop but they decided to go there the following morning, case the joint and then decide whether they should contact Sayed and his sons.
At last, the task force in charge of tracking Nagib and Alia had breakthrough. The wider net cast by Penny had come up with information that the couple had crossed into Canada and were probably in British Columbia. The cooperation of the RCMP was pitiful at first, when they thought that the US authorities were after the couple for some trumped up allegations, but this changed when the head of the FBI personally called his opposite number in Ottawa and explained what kind of sensitive classified information on nuclear weapons Nagib had downloaded from a computer in one of the most secret and supposedly well-guarded facilities in the United States.
It didn't take the RCMP more than a few hours to locate the used-car dealer who had bought the car from Nagib and only a short time to find their motel. A quick check of the passport control database at Vancouver airport showed that they boarded a flight to Frankfurt via a stopover in Reykjavik. The record showed that the ticket had been purchased at a local travel agency. The police inspector who was put in charge of the investigation in Vancouver drove over to the travel agency and was told that the agent who had sold the tickets had already left for the day. He was persistent and called her at home. She clearly remembered the nice, polite couple and after hearing their story of being robbed and about Nagib's father in Istanbul had felt sorry for them and had gone out of her way to assist them. She said that generally someone paying cash and buying a ticket for the next day would raise her suspicion — she was actually directed to call her manager in such a situation — but the couple was so nice, she repeated that, and she saw they were under real stress that she decided to act on her own volition and help them. She said that she had worked out the cheapest and fastest route would be with Icelandair to Frankfurt and from there by a low-cost airline to Istanbul that was their final destination.
The investigator called his boss who passed the information on to the chief of the RCMP who in turn called the head of the FBI who delivered the news to Penny in Los Alamos. She told her boss that the matter was now out of her hands as her task force could not operate overseas and proposed to close down her group and reassign the responsibility to the other task force that was better suited to handle international affairs.
By the time these events had unfolded it was close to midnight in Washington, DC, so Penny called Eugene on his private cellphone, apologized for disturbing his sleep and updated him. She said that she had checked with the airline that the plane had landed right on schedule in Frankfurt and that the two Jaber passengers had disembarked there. Eugene asked her if there was any record of them boarding the flight to Istanbul and was told that she had not checked that as the FBI did not have the connections to do so. He then enquired if the FBI had put Alia's parents under surveillance and she answered that they didn't have the manpower for that, and added that they didn't even have a court order to tap their phone. Eugene was truly disappointed and hung up after thanking her for her efforts.
Despite the late hour Eugene called the NSA member of his task force, an engineer by the name of Brad Evans, explained the situation and asked him to check whether an international call had been placed to Alia's parents' phone. Brad said he'd get back to him shortly and then reported that no such calls were made to their home phone or cellphones, but a call from a mobile phone with a German SIM card was made to their store about 12 hours earlier. Eugene asked if the call was recorded and Brad said that he would have to check that early the next morning. Eugene thanked him and told him to update him as soon as he had the information.
In the morning Nagib and Alia rose early and used public transportation to get to the store of "Sayed and Sons, Oriental Foods Imports". The storefront was very modest — the text on the sign barely fit above the narrow door and store window. It was located in a small quiet street amid a neighborhood in which many Turks and other Muslims lived. At first, there were few people on the street this early, half an hour before most stores opened for business, but gradually more and more people filled the narrow sidewalks. Nagib and Alia wandered around the block and tried to understand the ebb and flow of people and traffic. If they could ignore the signs in German and only look at the people in the street, listen to them speaking and smell the odors they could easily imagine they were in Turkey or somewhere in the Middle East, perhaps even in Palestine.
Fifteen minutes after the store opened Alia and Nagib entered it. There was one other customer who was being served and after she had filled her basket with products and delicacies and paid the cashier, Alia approached the man who appeared to be the elderly proprietor who was seated at a table behind the cashier. In halting Arabic she asked him if he was Sayed. He looked up, saw a young woman dressed in clothes that were obviously American, and replied courteously that indeed that was his name. She introduced herself and the old man rose from his chair and greeted her with a perfunctory kiss on both cheeks and enquired about the health of her parents. Alia told him that they were well, had made a good life for themselves in Durango, Colorado, but missed the old country. Sayed said that he too missed it but did not want to return there, even for a visit, until peace prevailed in the Middle East. Alia called Nagib and introduced him. So here in Frankfurt stood the three of them — Sayed the Ahmadiyyan, Alia the Christian and Nagib the Muslim — related by family connections, but with little in common. Sayed complained that since his conversion most of his relatives did not speak to him so he was glad to see Alia. He then mentioned that his son, Ammer, had taken one step further away from his Christian roots and converted to Islam, mainly under the influence of his Muslim wife, Zenab.