MatchUp

THIS TEAM MAY BE THE epitome of everything we strive for with an anthology. Andy and Charlaine are nothing alike. Charlaine is a Mississippi girl, who cut her teeth on mysteries before making a name for herself with vampires. Andy is a born and bred New Yorker, who started off writing with James Patterson before forging a career of his own with what he calls “suburban thrillers.” Their characters are likewise utterly different. Andy’s Ty Hauck is a rough and gritty detective hailing from the land of the wealthy in Greenwich, Connecticut, while Charlaine’s Harper Connelly is a young woman who, after being struck by lightning, is able to locate dead bodies, then visualize their last moments.

But it was all these differences that made everything click.

The idea for the story came from Andy. He’d taken a trip to Alexandria, Egypt, a city literally built on the bones of other ancient civilizations. Once learning of Harper’s ability to communicate with the dead, he knew the story had to be set there. Charlaine was a bit dubious at first, but together they adapted both their characters, and individual styles, into a superb tale. Their only problem came with their personal generosity, each trying to give the other’s character more page time.

But they found the right balance.

So let’s—

Dig Here.

DIG HERE

THE WOMAN IN THE PALE blue headscarf came out to meet him. She was around forty, attractive, in Western clothes, other than the blue hijab. “You’re the American? Mr. Hauck?”

“I am,” Ty Hauck said, standing up to meet her. He’d been in the outside waiting room of Sikka Hadid police station for an hour, and he’d been getting restless.

They shook hands.

“I’m Inspector Honsi, but everyone calls me Nabila. We’re all a little rushed today. Some bigwigs are in town. Come on back.”

Nabila took him into a large room crammed with rows of desks. It looked similar to a hundred other detective bullpens Hauck had seen in the States, down to the Siemens computers. Men in open shirts, jackets off. The temperature in the eighties, but the electric fans made the room comfortable.

“Welcome to Alexandria,” Nabila said, pointing him to her desk. “First time here?”

“It is.”

It didn’t escape Hauck’s notice that Nabila was the only female detective in the room.

“It’s everyone’s first time in Alexandria these days. Since the Arab Spring, Egypt has kind of been on lockdown to the world. There’s a cruise ship in the port. First one in two years. We used to get two a week.” They sat at Nabila’s desk, which was crowded with folders and computer printouts. “Now all tourists want to do is go to Cairo, see the Nile and the pyramids for a day, and then get out as fast as they can. May I offer you some tea?”

“No, thanks. I had some at the hotel. Mind if I take off my jacket?” He didn’t want to offend Inspector Honsi by breaking local protocol.

“Of course not. It’s not as hot here as everyone expects, since we’re on the coast, but it’s definitely a warm day. And I’m sure you are probably used to air-conditioning. Where are you from in the States?”

“Greenwich,” he replied. “It’s in Connecticut. Near New York.”

“I know where Connecticut is,” she said.

Inspector Honsi was pretty, her dark hair streaked with traces of blond highlights pulled back beneath her headscarf, one of a hundred mixes of the old and the modern he’d seen here in just a day. She had smooth, coffee-colored skin, and sharp, dark almond-shaped eyes. He didn’t know if the glances the male detectives sent their way were because Nabila was pretty, or because they wanted to be sure an American minded his manners around an Egyptian woman.

“You’ve studied American geography?” he said, smiling.

She laughed. “I spent two years studying criminology in D.C. American University. I became a basketball fan there. And I fell in love with hockey. The Capitals. Imagine, an Egyptian. Here, you’re lucky to get enough ice to put in your drink. Mr. Hauck, did I understand correctly that you’re a police inspector?”

“I was.” For twenty years, he’d been a detective both in New York City, and in Greenwich, where he’d been head of Violent Crime. “Now I’m a partner in a private security firm. And please call me Ty.” He took out his wallet and slid his card across the desk.

“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.

“You’ve been sent by the Winterses?” Hauck said, unable to conceal his surprise.

It didn’t seem to bother her. “Mrs. Winter. This is Tolliver Lang. My brother. And manager.”

“Your manager?” Hauck said, meeting Nabila’s surprised gaze.

They’d both noticed the different last names.

Was this woman married? He’d noticed no rings.

Nabila jumped into the conversational gap. “I’m Inspector Honsi of the Alexandria police. I worked on Stephanie Winters’s case. And this is Ty Hauck. He’s from the Talon Company in the States. The Winters family asked Mr. Hauck to join us while you are here.”

“Ms. Winters’s father asked me to come along,” Hauck added. “I’ve just flown in myself earlier today, from Tel Aviv. You came in from the States?”

“The longest flight we’ve ever been on,” Tolliver said, stretching. His southern accent seemed more marked than his sister’s. “A whole lot longer than from Los Angeles to Atlanta. That was our previous record.”

“You’re a lawyer?” Harper asked Hauck.

“Ex-policeman. But I have no official capacity in Egypt. I’m only here to make sure it’s easy for you to do your job.”

“We don’t need help,” she said evenly. “We’re quite good at what we do.”

“I’m sure you are. I meant help with the local bureaucracy,” he explained.

He gave a slight wink to Nabila. This young woman was beyond cocky.

“I know it’s been a long trip,” Nabila said. “I’ll take you to the hotel. We put you at the Four Seasons at the Winterses’ request. I’m pretty sure you’ll find it comfortable. You’re staying there as well, Ty?”

“I am.”

“Good. I’m sure you’ll all want to shower and relax a few hours.”

“Definitely a shower,” Harper said, after a glance at her brother. “But we slept on the plane. I’d like to get started.” She pulled her knapsack over her shoulder as if to say, Let’s go.

Nabila looked at her with surprise. “Right away?”

They started to walk to the exit.

“Yes, we have to be in Charlotte on Friday,” Tolliver said, falling in beside his sister.

Hauck said, “You have another case there?”

Harper nodded. “It’s not an urgent one, like this. It’s pretty certain the man was killed in an accident somewhere along his route home. He’s missing, and so is his car. Plus he’d been drinking. But his family wants the body.”

She spoke quite calmly, and he began to wonder what it would take to rattle her.

“You can converse with the dead?” he asked, after they climbed into a white, unmarked Ford sedan.

Tolliver and Harper sat in back. Hauck in front next to Nabila, who drove.

“Not converse,” Harper said, gazing out the window at the Egyptian landscape. “Their bones call to me, so I can locate them. Then I see how they died.”

“And what is it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“How they communicate with you,” he asked.

“They want to be found. I feel the hum. Kind of like the wind blowing through a wind harp, if you know what I mean. It can be overwhelming.” She looked bleak, and much older, for a long moment. “This place is distracting. There are so many dead crowded here. Layers and layers and layers.” She fell silent and closed her eyes. After a moment, she began to move in tiny ways, her head tilting, hand twitching.

Creepy as hell.

He didn’t know if she was a fraud or, just remotely possible, the real thing. But she was good at selling herself. He glanced over at Nabila, but she was concentrating on the road, keeping her face neutral.

“Harper’s solved many important cases,” Tolliver said matter-of-factly. “Just last week we were in Knoxville, Tennessee, working with the police there.”

“You found a body?”

“We didn’t find one there. It was a bad case. A kid. But we had a strong case in Atlanta before that. Harper found a woman who’d been missing for ten years.”

“And how did your sister get this power?” he asked, unable to keep the hint of skepticism from his voice.

Harper’s eyes flew open.

They looked a fainter shade of gray than they had earlier.

“Lightning,” she said.

“Really?” He couldn’t hide the incredulity in his voice.

“I was struck by lightning as a teenager. I lived. Most people don’t. Tolliver started my heart again.” She took her brother’s hand. “Since then I’ve had this power. It was hard to deal with.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “I can see you don’t believe me, Mr. Hauck. Many of the police are skeptical. At least, at first.”

“I’m no longer a policeman,” he said. “But I’ll be interested to see you at work.”

Which was the truth.

“Don’t be so Western, Ty,” Nabila chided him.

He figured she was trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“In Alexandria, we are all in a partnership with the dead. As I said, our city is built on prior civilizations. The dead are alive to us here. In America, when you dig, you strike oil or water. Here, we find two-thousand-year-old ruins. Even the person who founded this city, Alexander the Great—the legend is buried here somewhere. Though no one knows where.”

“I thought he died in Asia? Babylon?” he said. “And no one knows for sure what killed him, right?”

“Alexander died in Babylon. Maybe he was murdered, poisoned. Maybe he had blood poisoning. Or an illness. His bones were on the way to Macedon when they were hijacked. Perhaps the hijacker was his leading general, Ptolemy, who stayed and founded the five-hundred-year Greek dynasty here. Of all the places Alexander conquered, he loved Alexandria the best. He wasn’t the last Greek to rule Egypt. You know of Cleopatra? She was Greek. The last of the Greeks, as it turned out.”

“Maybe Ms. Connelly will find Alexander’s bones while she’s here.”

He turned back to her with a smile.

“Maybe I will,” Harper said, staring at an open truck with an ox in the cargo bay. “If there are any bones left.”

“Do we get to see any pyramids?” Tolliver asked, eyes wide, scanning out the window. But it was only a highway, with the same rushing traffic you would find anywhere in the world, the scenery relentlessly modern.

“No, there are no pyramids here. Those are farther west. Along the Nile. Out of Cairo.” Nabila sounded as though she’d said the same thing many times, and it never made her happy.

He could understand her viewpoint.

Pyramids equaled tourist dollars.

Tolliver appeared disappointed and glanced at his sister, as if that was the reason they had taken this gig.

She patted his shoulder.

They were sure a bit touchy for brother and sister.

THE FOUR SEASONS ALEXANDRIA WAS as striking as any four Seasons, and it was situated right on the harbor. Considering that Harper and Tolliver dressed inexpensively and in general gave such an air of having been brought up rough, Hauck expected the two to be more impressed with the gleaming lobby.

But if they were, they covered it up well.

An hour later the four met again in front of the concierge desk. Hauck could tell that Harper had had a shower. Her hair looked much calmer, her face fresher. Even Tolliver looked more relaxed. This time, Nabila drove them through the souk sector of the city, down a crowded market street. The brother and sister got a taste of the foreign there with the limbs of livestock hanging from hooks in the open air, stalls of fruits, melons, and dates.

“We have also a specialized market area called the Attarine, where you can find many antiques,” Nabila told the newcomers.

The two looked at her blankly, so she got to business.

“We are heading to three places. The Coolnet café, the last place Ms. Winters was seen. Then her apartment. After that, I’ll take you to the museum. I’ve arranged a time to speak with Professor Razi, Ms. Winters’s superior.”

“Her bones are not going to be in her apartment, or the Internet café, or the museum,” Tolliver said.

“We’re also conducting a conventional investigation,” Hauck said, beginning to be pissed off by the two Americans’ indifference to the rest of the world, including anyone else’s experience.

He addressed his next remarks exclusively to Nabila.

“So what do we know about her? Did she like to party? What about any relationships with men? Ex-boyfriends? Anyone who might have a motive for harming her. Was she active in local affairs? Did she go to the synagogue, have contacts there?”

“By all accounts she was like any of the students who come here,” Nabila said. “Alexandria is a place that sets your spirits free. She went to some parties. Still, Dr. Omar Razi, her superior at the museum, says she was a serious girl and a dedicated worker. Her primary focus was the discovery of ruins of past civilizations.”

The car wound down a narrow street.

“In fact, we are entering the old Roman part of the city. There is not much left from that era. What the Ottomans or earthquakes did not destroy, time has built over.”

Hauck pointed at a tall column amid a walled-in field of white marble rubble. “What’s that?”

“That is Pompey’s Pillar,” Nabila said. She pulled to a stop and turned to face all her guests. “You know the famous Roman consul? The Romans appointed him as Cleopatra’s guardian. She hated him though. He fought Caesar and Anthony. When he was on the run from Caesar, he was assassinated here. His bones are rumored to be under the pillar, but in fact—”

“He’s not,” Harper interrupted.

“Not what?” asked Hauck.

“There’s no one buried there. No bones, no bone powder.”

“In fact, as I was about to say,” Nabila said stiffly, turning to her, “you are right. It is now known that Pompey is not in fact buried inside the tomb. And also—”

“It’s not even a pillar,” Harper said. “It’s round. Pillars have sides. It’s a column.”

“Yes,” Nabila said, with a glance at Hauck, “that’s what I was about to say. It’s a column. Everything about it is incorrect.”

Hauck grunted to himself. He was not a big fan of what he’d seen so far of the Winterses’ consultant. Psychic bone detector?

“Maybe it’s time for an Egyptian coffee,” Nabila said, and started driving again. The car pulled up at a street-side café. “We are here. This is the Internet café that Ms. Winters patronized.”

Inside, the place looked a lot like an American Internet café. Lots of young people sitting at the small tables, using their laptops. The click of the keys was louder than the conversation.

They all ordered coffees.

Tolliver and Harper, who hadn’t eaten, ordered a Greek salad and chicken in yogurt sauce.

“Be careful of the salad,” Nabila warned. “You never know how things are washed.”

“No, we are good, madame,” the waiter said. “You see, tourist menu.”

“Very well,” she said. “Still.”

A tall, lanky young man of about twenty-five with a mop of light brown hair wearing a soccer T-shirt and jeans approached the table.

“You may sit,” the inspector said, waving him to a seat. “This is Ivo Karilic. He works here. In the evenings, correct?”

“Night manager,” the youth said in a hard-to-read European accent.

“Ivo was Stephanie’s friend. He was here the night she disappeared,” Nabila told Hauck. She turned to Ivo. “These people were hired by her family to look into her whereabouts. Ivo, why don’t you tell them what you told me?”

The man tossed back his wavy hair. He was good looking and knew it. “We were friends. Stephanie was a good girl. Everyone liked her. Lots of students hang out here. We give them free Internet and some music they know. I saw her that night. She was with her usual friends. Tina, one of her roommates. Francois, I think she worked with. But I heard he’s left and gone back to France.”

“Something we should follow up on?” Hauck asked Nabila.

“We did, of course. As it turns out, Francois remained here until two a.m. that night. He never left.”

“He was fond of her,” the restaurant manager said. “We all were.”

“How fond?” Tolliver seemed to have decided to join the conversation. His sister was distracted again, tiny twitches in her face and hands indicating she was listening to other voices.

Or other bones.

Ivo looked at Tolliver doubtfully. “You are a little young to be with the police.”

“True,” Hauck said. “But it’s a fair question, so answer.”

“Like I told Inspector Honsi,” Ivo said. “Once, back in the fall, we hooked up. Stephanie and I.”

“Only once?” Hauck added a lot of skepticism into his voice.

“One night. She wasn’t into the whole boyfriend scene. She was only going to be here a year. She was serious about her work. Nothing interfered. That’s the truth.”

“When’s the last time you and she hooked up?”

“Only that once, months ago. I have a girlfriend now. Flora. She’s Albanian. She works nights with me.”

“Anyone else have an interest in Ms. Winters?” Hauck asked. “An interest she didn’t return?”

“You must be kidding. Everyone is all over everyone here. They’re students. They’re here for a while, in Egypt, and then they go. It’s the song of the Nile.”

Hauck said, “We’re not on the Nile.”

“Someone’s song then. All the foreigners here are temporary, like me.”

The salad and chicken came.

“You guys want a beer?” Ivo asked, returning to his professional manner.

“No thanks,” Harper said.

“I’ll have one,” Tolliver said.

“If I were you, I’d watch the lettuce,” Nabila warned him again. “Maybe stay with the tomatoes and cheese.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, lifting his fork. “I have a cast-iron stomach.”

Nabila shook her head, with a glance toward Hauck. “What is it you say? Famous last words.”

THEY WALKED A FEW MINUTES before getting back in the car. From their position on a natural rise in the land, Nabila pointed out the location on the water where the famous Pharos Lighthouse had stood on a promontory, maybe an island? Hauck couldn’t tell.

“It was one of the wonders of the ancient world,” she said. “But it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1480. “It isn’t far from the location of our famous library.”

“Can we please get going?” Harper said, after taking in the view. “You said we could go to where she lived?”

“Of course,” the inspector said. “This way back to the car.”

Harper turned and had taken a couple of steps before she stopped. Her face completely pale.

Tolliver leaped to her side.

She buckled.

Hauck grabbed her by the arm to keep her from hitting the ground. Her face had turned pasty, her eyes glazed and rolled up in her head.

“The food?” Nabila said anxiously. “I warned you.”

“No.” Harper shook her head as Hauck helped her back into a standing position. “It’s not the food. This is different. Something’s here.”

“Meaning what?” Hauck pressed, helping her over to a parked car where she could lean.

Tolliver said, “Dead people.”

“Stephanie?” Nabila asked. “Here?”

“No.” Harper laid a hand to her head and blew out her cheeks. “Ten times stronger. A hundred times. Something’s here. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything like it. It’s as if my legs just gave out.” Her color was still bad. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to regain her composure. Then she pointed away from the harbor, blinking, a look of determination creeping on her face. “What’s over there?”

“It’s just a park,” Hauck said, looking at a fenced-in area behind a short wall against a hillside with a small stone building in the center.

“No, it’s not a park,” replied Nabila. “It’s Kom el Shoqafa. It means Mound of Shards. The catacombs.”

“Catacombs?”

“From the first century AD. It was a burial place for ancient Romans.” They all stared at her. “There were once hundreds of bodies discovered there. But they’re all a hundred feet underground.”

Harper still looked ashen and weak. She turned to Tolliver. “I’ve never felt anything that powerful in my life.”

“Is Stephanie there?” Tolliver asked.

Hauck could see that the man was a true believer. No doubt his sister was for real.

“Nothing modern. Can you help me? I want to get a little closer.”

With Hauck on one arm and Tolliver on the other, they helped Harper walk to the grounds’ entrance. A tour bus was parked nearby.

“This is the strongest feeling I’ve ever felt. There must have been hundreds buried here? Thousands.”

“That’s right.” Nabila regarded her with astonishment. “But you have to know, the bodies are all gone. They excavated this site in levels. There are three levels underground. In each, they found more bodies. But they’re all empty now. The bone remains were all moved, years ago, to the museum of archaeology.”

Harper gingerly walked over to the site. Struggling against the weakness that seemed to overwhelm her, she slowly seemed to gather herself. Then she just stared at the tomb for a long time.

“You say they dug this out in levels?”

Nabila nodded. “The last one was years ago. A hundred feet deep.”

“There are more,” Harper said.

“That’s impossible. This catacomb is one of our most studied sites. Dozens of archaeologists have been through it.”

“They should keep digging.”

And Hauck, much to his surprise, found himself agreeing.

HARPER SEEMED TO HAVE FULLY recovered by the time they reached Stephanie’s apartment. She’d lived in a Western-style building, seven stories high, that stood in contrast to the other structures on the street because it was so new. The honey-colored stone was clean, and there was even a lobby attendant in the modern entrance area. Hauck noticed that the people walking through were all European. This was expat lodging.

And maybe government as well.

“I assume this is pretty expensive housing,” he said to Nabila.

She nodded. “There is parking behind and underneath the building with an armed guard at all times. We do our best to make foreigners feel safe here, whether native Egyptians or whomever.” She was quite expressionless as she said this, and Hauck could only guess at her feelings. But he found himself thinking that, considering the income disparity between the average Egyptian and the students who could afford to study abroad, having an armed guard watch over the vehicles was simply a wise precaution.

Nabila talked to the doorman in rapid Egyptian. The man then made a phone call and nodded.

“The roommates are home and say we can come up,” Nabila said.

“I’m not sure what good my going up there will do.” Harper huddled, thin and tense, against her brother. “They’re all alive.”

Hauck stifled a laugh. “Maybe you should come up because you’re Stephanie’s age. You might be more tuned into her roommates than I’ll be.”

Harper’s eyes narrowed. She seemed to suspect she was being cozened into the expedition.

“All right,” she said grudgingly, and they entered an elevator.

At the third floor they exited into a hall that was clean and wide, but not elaborately decorated. Stephanie’s door was to the right at the end of the corridor. In answer to Nabila’s knock a short girl with permed red hair swung open the door and stepped back to admit them. Hauck figured she was in her upper twenties, and she was wearing clothes that looked expensive. Could be knockoffs, though, like Nabila’s sunglasses. Hauck was no style expert.

“This is Jerri Sanderson,” Nabila said, then she pointed to each of her companions and introduced them.

“Come sit down,” Jerri said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

They all declined, then took seats in the small common living area.

“Have you found out anything new?” Jerri asked.

“Nothing,” Nabila said. “Where is your other roommate?”

“Tina’s on her way. She got held up at the university.”

“Do you attend there as well?” Hauck asked.

Based on nothing all that tangible, he was not an immediate fan of Jerri Sanderson.

“No. I’m a working girl,” Jerri said. An edge of anger had entered her voice. “I’m here as a gofer for an interior designer. He does places for Westerners. So they’ll feel . . . comfortable.”

The door opened and a tall girl, no more than twenty, hurried inside, dropping a load of books on the dining table.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I’m Tina Peek.”

She threw herself in a basket chair and looked at them expectantly. After introductions were done—again—Tina said, “I’m sure Stephanie is on a yacht somewhere with one of the millionaires.”

Hauck was taken aback. “One of the millionaires?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Harper sit straight.

Then she rose from her chair and began wandering around the room.

“You know all kinds of rich Egyptians come here to go to the beach,” Tina said. “Are you at the Four Seasons? That’s prime stomping grounds. But Stephanie was a magnet for that kind of guy.” She spread her hands, as if to say, Go figure.

Jerri looked away scowling.

“Can you give us a name?” Nabila asked. “And why do you think Stephanie in particular was a magnet? You didn’t mention that theory when we were here last time.”

“I can’t give you a specific name. But there are sheiks and princes and whatnot vacationing here all the time. Stephanie was blond and cute. Just their type.”

Hauck noted that Tina was neither of those things.

“She had guys after her all the time. But who did she actually take up with? That loser at the bar.”

“Ivo? He says he only hooked up with Stephanie one night,” Hauck said.

Tina gave a snort of laughter. “Really?”

Jerri tossed Tina a surprised look. “It may be true. I don’t know that Stephanie was meeting up with Ivo every night she went out. I think she was doing something else.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

In the kitchen area, Harper bent over and picked something up from a tiny space between the stove and the counter.

Jerri and Tina had their backs to her.

“She didn’t dress up,” Jerri said.

Harper wandered back into the conversation. “What did she wear? If she wasn’t dressing up for a date?”

“Washed-out jeans and T-shirts that had gotten stained from the cleaning solvents at the museum,” Jerri said.

Tina laughed again. “You’re imagining that, Jerri,” she said. “Just because she didn’t wear a lot of perfume and a skimpy skirt.”

This was clearly a dart that hit its target.

Jerri flushed and pressed her lips together.

“Can we look at her room?” Harper said.

“You can, but it’s empty. Her family cleared out most of her stuff. Her rental car is still in the parking garage, but they looked through that too. We’ll be glad when we can get a new roommate, but no one is exactly panting to live here now,” Jerri said.

They took a look anyway.

Blank walls and empty shelves. A few cheap art prints and a tchotchke or two that didn’t seem worth carting home.

“What’s that?”

Harper pointed to an odd Egyptian statuette on the dresser. It had the body of a man, but the head of a bird with a pointy, curved beak.

“That’s Anti,” Jerri said. “The Falcon God. I guess he ferried the pharaohs to the afterlife or something. They left it though. Steph was obsessed with it. Anti, Ivo, Razi. She was obsessed with a lot of things.”

Hauck looked at Harper, who shook her head in futility. But she looked as though there was something else on her mind. She seemed to be holding something she had found, and he noticed her slip it into her pocket.

When they were back in the car and on their way to their next destination, the museum, he asked, “What did you think of the two roomies?”

He expected to hear Nabila’s opinion, and she’d opened her mouth to respond, when Harper cut her off.

“One of them was lying.”

“How do you figure?” He was curious about her reasoning.

“Either Jerri was telling the truth and Stephanie was dressed for work, hard work. Or Tina was telling the truth and Stephanie was dressed for a date.”

“It has to be an either/or?” he said.

“Both things can’t be true. Especially since they don’t like each other.” Harper was observant, he’d give her that. Of course, if she was a con woman that would be part of the tricks of her trade. “Where were they the night she went missing?”

Nabila said, “Jerri Sanderson said she was out of town until late the next day, and we partially confirmed that with her employer. She was with him until eight at night, and she was there at nine the next morning. In between, who knows? Tina Peek said she was partying until two in the morning, and Stephanie was not in the apartment when she came home.”

“They don’t like each other, it’s true,” Nabila went on.

And Hauck noticed that something about the interview, or about the two women, had made Nabila thoughtful, as well.

“By the way, Nabila,” he said. “Are either of the girls Jewish? Did they mention connections of Stephanie’s through her synagogue?”

Nabila flushed. “The last synagogue in Alexandria is closed. There is nowhere she could have gone.”

So much for Alexandria’s record of tolerance, Hauck thought, taken aback by the way Nabila had misled him. Had it been simple loyalty to her city that had caused her to paint Alexandria in more flattering colors? Or did the police inspector know something about the case that she hadn’t divulged? For the first time, he looked at Nabila Honsi with a feeling of doubt.

The policewoman concentrated solely on her driving, the crowded streets noisy with cars and pedestrians of all sorts. They were close to the harbor again when Nabila pointed to a white stone building with a green lawn in front.

“That’s the museum,” she said. “I’m going to have to let you out and find a place to park. Obviously, that’s quite difficult here.”

She’d lost the pleasant tone that had made her sound so agreeable, and Hauck realized that quite possibly that had been a façade. This beautiful inspector had layers he hadn’t anticipated.

Like the city they were in.

As they scrambled out of the car and began to walk up the driveway, Hauck saw that Harper was watching after Nabila thoughtfully. Tolliver was looking pale and was sweating.

“What’s wrong?” Harper asked her brother, and Hauck saw she was alarmed, maybe more alarmed than the situation warranted.

“I don’t know if it’s jet lag or the salad I had,” Tolliver said. “I feel crappy.”

“Do you want to get a cab back to the hotel?” Harper said. “Get in bed?”

“I better do that, or I’m going to be embarrassing to have along,” Tolliver said, doing his best to sound jaunty.

Hauck undertook getting the cab, which was awkward since he didn’t speak much of the language. But the driver understood “Four Seasons,” and Hauck helped Tolliver into the backseat, at the last moment realizing the man needed local currency. He stuffed some in his hand.

“Watch out for her,” Tolliver muttered. Then he reached into his pocket and handed Hauck a handful of Werther’s Caramels and peppermints. “If she has a spell, give her one of these right away.”

Hauck pocketed the candy and rejoined Harper, who was looking distraught.

“He doesn’t have any money, he can’t pay,” she said anxiously.

“I took care of that. And I have candy in case you need it?”

She looked relieved. “He always watches out for me. I have something to give you.”

But just then Nabila joined them and he noticed the subject was dropped. They all headed to the office of Dr. Omar Razi.

“I thought it would be bigger,” Harper whispered to Hauck, as they crowded into Dr. Razi’s office.

It wasn’t a large space, but every inch of it was crammed with machinery, and papers and drawings. The walls were lined with open glass shelves crowded with interesting objects. Pots, spearheads, even pieces of bone. He wondered if Harper was vibrating like a tuning fork.

“This is not a huge museum, like your Smithsonian,” Dr. Razi said, in crisp English.

Perhaps in his early or midthirties, the man seemed young for his position. He had a thick head of hair and a trimmed mustache and was dressed in a white linen shirt and khaki slacks. Handsome man, by most standards. And to overhear Harper’s remark, the guy must be sharp-eared.

“But we are serious about discovering and excavating sites from the past that have remained undiscovered,” Dr. Razi added, as he seated himself behind his cluttered desk. The rest of them chose straight-backed chairs that were none too clean.

“And that’s what Ms. Winters was working on?” Hauck asked.

“More or less. She was learning the mechanics and analysis of satellite cartography under my tutelage.”

“I understand that it can reveal buried sites that aren’t apparent to the naked eye,” Hauck said.

And Dr. Razi was off and running. Hauck didn’t completely comprehend what the doctor was telling him, but he understood that satellite imaging had enabled archaeologists to see features of the landscape from above, features that had been buried hundreds or thousands of years not visible from the ground. There were specific programs to aid archaeologists in mapping these ancient sites and locating buried cities no one had suspected were there.

“I understand there’s another circle close to Stonehenge that is much larger,” Harper said, completely out of the blue.

“That’s right,” Dr. Razi said, his face lighting up at having discovered a kindred soul.

He showed every sign of launching into another monologue, but Hauck stopped him before he could hit his stride. “Please tell us about Stephanie.”

Razi’s face grew somber. “Of course. That’s why you are here, and I want to help in any way I can. She was an intelligent young woman, and her death is a great loss. To the program. To us all.”

“You’re sure she’s dead?” Harper said.

They all stared at her, but she showed no signs of being self-conscious.

“Sadly, what other conclusion is there?” Razi said. “Stephanie has been gone so long and has had no contact with her family. She was always on the cell phone to them. I had to speak to her about it more than once. Work hours, you know. I can’t waste the museum’s money. History must go on.”

“So she was slacking off?” Hauck said.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Razi seemed uncomfortable. “I don’t want to speak ill of her, you understand. She worked hard. But she’d also come to Egypt to sample its life, its sights and sounds, and I suppose that sometimes her job could be boring in comparison with that.”

“She was your intern,” Harper said quietly.

Razi nodded.

“So you spent a lot of time with Ms. Winters?”

“I suppose I did. She worked in my department.”

“And you say she was hard to supervise?” Harper persisted.

Razi obviously didn’t like where she was leading. “No. Just a bit careless, perhaps.”

“And you made note of that? On her evaluations?” Harper pressed.

Hauck wondered where she was leading.

“No,” Razi said, backpedaling. “I didn’t want to hurt her career in any way.”

“So what did you think she was in Alexandria for? The nightlife, or the research?”

“Both. After all,” Razi said, regaining his composure, “Ms. Winters came from a wealthy Jewish family. She was not used to being told what to do.”

The fact that Razi had made a point of Stephanie’s faith was unsettling.

“That’s so strange,” Nabila said, joining in for the first time, her dark eyebrows drawn together. “Dr. Razi, I understood that Ms. Winters was close to being an expert in satellite cartography.”

He shrugged. “She was good, but she was inclined to be too excitable. History requires patience. There are a lot of false leads. You can’t be rushing off to every site just because something is there. The funds are not there to support it.”

Hauck leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “So what is your theory, Dr. Razi? What do you believe happened to her?”

Razi hesitated. “I don’t know. But I have assumed that Stephanie had gone into some souk or bar or gotten in a car with someone who tried to force themselves on her. And that she fought back and was killed. Sadly, things happen here. Governments come and go, but there is still a lingering resentment against the West.”

“So she was a fighter?” Hauck asked. “In your opinion.”

The Egyptologist almost smiled. “Oh, yes. Stephanie was indeed a fighter for what she believed in. And, my word, that girl could argue the leg off a table.”

They rose to leave, but instead of stepping toward the door, Harper drifted to the glass shelves. Her thin white hand floated toward a partial skull. Before Dr. Razi could protest, one finger touched the rounded dome.

“That is a woman’s skull from Roman times,” Razi said. “I will have to ask you not to touch.”

“Do you want to know what killed her?” Harper asked.

Her voice was eerily matter-of-fact.

“What?” Razi seemed confused, and he wasn’t the only one. Nabila looked taken aback.

The hair was rising on Hauck’s neck.

“She got an infection during childbirth,” Harper said, her eyes still on the brown bit of skull. “She was twenty-one. The baby lived, at least for a while.”

“And now we have to go,” Hauck said briskly. “Harper’s brother is ill, and we have to go check on him.”

THEY WALKED BACK TO THE elevator, Dr. Razi behind them as if he were herding them out of the museum. The three kept silent until they were outside, amid the noise and bustle of Alexandria.

Nabila spoke first. “You frightened him.”

“He shouldn’t keep her head in his office,” Harper said, “if he didn’t want to know the truth behind it. And look.”

Dr. Razi was leaving the building too, in a hurry. He hustled over to a car parked near the entrance, a white VW Passant, flicked the automatic lock, and climbed in. Then he drove away from the museum grounds.

“Not sure how I feel about that guy,” Harper said.

Hauck nodded. “Amen.”

Nabila dropped them off at their hotel, explaining that she had to return to the police station to wrap up a few things before she could leave for the day. Hauck thanked her and told her he’d see her tomorrow. By the time he’d said good-bye, Harper had vanished. Checking on her brother, he assumed. But he was surprised when she stopped him in the lavish lobby, amid the shadow of a pillar.

“Mr. Hauck,” she said. “One of the roommates is waiting in the bar. I think she’s waiting for you. Listen, come talk to me later. I found something.”

And then she was gone.

Hauck moseyed over to the bar to see if it were true.

Tall Tina was trying to look at ease in the upscale lobby bar, but she was not succeeding. The room was designed to look like a posh living room, with plates displayed on shelves, a painting above the fireplace, velvet armchairs, dark wood tables, and the gleam of china and crystal. She looked young and awkward in that setting.

“I didn’t think you were ever going to get back,” she said as Hauck came to her table. “I’ve been here for an hour. Drinks here cost a fortune.”

“It’s a nice place to wait,” he said, not about to apologize for being late to an appointment he hadn’t made.

“Did you go to the museum?”

She pushed her brown hair behind her ears. She was wearing antique, Egyptian earrings, which seemed out of keeping with her outfit. She appeared edgy.

“I just came from there.”

“Talking to Omar?”

“Naturally.”

“Stephanie had a good job,” Tina said.

“You’re using the past tense. You’re the one who believed she’d gotten on a yacht with a rich guy?”

“Even if Steph came back today, she wouldn’t get that job back,” Tina said.

“Did you come here to talk to me?”

He was ready to cut to the chase. It had been a very long day, and he wanted to shower, eat, and go to bed.

And he still had to stop by Harper’s room.

“It’s nice to talk to an American man, for a change.”

“Tina, I’m close to thirty years older than you. What do you really want?”

She bit her lip. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short. You’re an attractive guy. But I do have a boyfriend. I came to talk to you about something else.”

He waited.

“You know Stephanie was Jewish?”

He nodded.

“And you know Jews aren’t exactly popular here.”

She said it like some kind of inside scoop.

“That’s been the case, off and on, for thousands of years,” he noted. “This is the Middle East.”

“Here’s what I wondered. What if Stephanie went to the synagogue that’s supposed to be so beautiful, the one that’s closed? Elia something. What if she tried to get in? What if the guards caught her?”

“Tina, I don’t know what made you imagine that scenario. From what I’ve heard, Stephanie was hardly observant. Her family certainly isn’t. Eliyahu Hanavi would be the last thing on her list of sites to visit in Alexandria.”

From the corner of his eye, he noticed a quick movement. He glanced in that direction and caught a glimpse of Stephanie’s other roommate, Jerri. When she realized Hauck had seen her, Jerri moved more into his line of sight and drew her hand across her throat. He guessed she was telling him to get rid of Tina.

That was curious.

It didn’t take long to accomplish the task. Tina ran out of conversational gambits, then offered to take him to a nightclub.

He declined.

Naomi Blum, who ran the Treasury’s antiterrorist desk in D.C., and with whom he was off and on with, would have a chuckle at the thought Tina could tempt him.

“I really want to get to my room,” he said.

“I’ll say good night, then. Give me a call if you have some free time.”

She handed him a card with her number written on it.

“For sure.”

He watched her leave. A young woman with an agenda. He only wished he knew what it was. Then her roommate, another young woman with her own agenda, threw herself into the same red chair Tina had just vacated. Though Jerri had not been exactly friendly or forthcoming at the apartment, he realized she was smarter and tougher than Tina.

“So here’s what you need to know,” Jerri said, not wasting time. “The truth is, Stephanie was a good person. And she knew all about that mapping thing she was doing. She was all over it. She loved it. She loved her job. She was trying to think of a way to keep doing it after her internship was over. Jobs in the archaeological world are hard to come by, and she understood that Egyptians would rather hire Egyptians. Government policy and all. She got that.”

Jerri paused, and Hauck nodded, just to show he was paying attention. If Tina had been all over the place conversationally, Jerri seemed a laser beam.

“I can’t pretend that Steph and I were close friends,” she said. “But I do know that she was having some kind of crisis. She was really worried. And it wasn’t boyfriend crap that was on her mind. It was something much bigger.”

He was an old hand at keeping his reactions private. “Bigger, like artifact smuggling? Or faking antiquities?”

“Bigger, still. She found something.”

“Like?”

“You know her area of expertise,” Jerri said. “What do you think?”

And as quickly as she had started the conversation, Jerri ended it by walking out.

He ordered a bourbon and settled back in his chair to think over what she meant.

His cell phone rang.

“Can you come up to our room, Mr. Hauck?”

Harper sounded upset.

“Tolliver’s too sick for me to leave him, and I have to tell you something. It’s 709.”

“Sure, why not?”

ON HIS WAY UP IN the elevator, he noted that this seemed his evening to receive information from young women.

He knocked at Harper’s door, and she answered it quickly, waving him in.

“How’s your brother?” he asked.

“Not good. He only thought he had a cast-iron stomach. I can’t really do much until the worst of it is over, which I hope will be soon.” She looked both worried and exasperated and didn’t invite him to sit. “Look, I found something at the apartment. I wanted to show you privately.” She dug in her jeans pocket and extracted a Kleenex, unfolded it, and handed Hauck a tiny fragment.

“It looks like part of a tooth.”

“It’s Stephanie’s. She’s dead,” she said in as matter-of-fact a tone as if she was making a bank deposit. “I felt a tiny buzz from it in the apartment. It was between the stove and the refrigerator, not even visible until I leaned down and looked. I don’t think she was murdered there. It came to the apartment some other way. Maybe on someone’s shoe.”

“Surely the Egyptian police searched the place and tested for blood?” He was thinking out loud, and he wasn’t too surprised when Harper didn’t offer an opinion or comment. “We need to find the rest of the bones. Can you track them with the piece of tooth?”

“You suddenly seem to have a lot more belief in what I do than you did before.”

“You’ve earned it,” he said.

“Tooth is not bone, but it turns out it’s close enough,” she said. “I’ve never tracked a body that way. But I could try.”

He shook his head, placing the wrapped-up tooth fragment in his shirt pocket. “You’re quite the surprising gal.”

“I am what I am.” She shrugged. “But thanks. Now let me get back to Mt. Vesuvius in the bathroom.”

“Be my guest.”

Back in his room, Hauck spent the rest of the evening studying Nabila’s file. Something didn’t sit right. Poor Stephanie. He looked over her photo again.

Was she dead?

Jerri said she had found something.

Something big.

You know her area of expertise.

Electromagnetic cartography, he read from the file.

She could find what was under the ground.

Unable to rest, he threw on a jacket and took a taxi back to Stephanie’s apartment building.

“You remember me, I represent the family,” he said to the man in the lobby. He showed him Nabila’s card with a two-hundred-Egyptian-pound note wrapped around it. “I want to check out her car.”

“I go on break.” The guard looked through a cabinet, taking the card and cash.

He handed Hauck a set of car keys.

“In twenty minutes.”

HAUCK WOVE THROUGH THE ROWS of cars to the blue fiat Stephanie had leased when she’d arrived in Alexandria. The police had gone over it, Nabila had assured him, but found nothing suspicious. The contents of the car had not been significant, so they’d left them in a shoe box on the front passenger’s seat. He took out his cell phone and switched on the flashlight app.

He looked through what was in there.

A grocery list, some notes on a museum exhibit in town, a city map, tourist brochures, and a small date book filled with appointments, sketches, some restaurant comments, and travel notes she had made on side trips to Cairo, Italy, and Croatia.

Nothing entered on the day she disappeared.

He turned on the car and checked the GPS memory for recent destinations.

It had been wiped clean.

Interesting.

Cradling his cell-phone light in his lap, he paged through the date book one more time. There were numbers scattered throughout. Prices, dates, addresses, shopping notes. Things so trivial she likely wouldn’t have even bothered to enter them on her phone.

Two of the numbers stood out.

They weren’t on the same page. Instead, they were some ten pages apart. One, on March 8, the other back in August. Both written in blue ink, instead of the more prevalent black. The first was an eight-digit number with two letters in front of it.

LO31.200092.

The second similar.

LA29.918739.

He turned the page, pretty sure he knew exactly what these numbers represented, and his heart stopped in his chest. There was a sketch of what looked like two statues, side by side. Each had the body of a man. A measurement to the side read 50´.

Fifty feet tall?

But that wasn’t what stopped him.

It was the face.

The two of them side by side.

Anti.

Each had the body of a man and the face of a falcon.

It was a long walk back to his hotel.

A lot of the city was quiet, a few cafés were still open, people playing games or watching soccer on TV.

A few cabs rushed by.

In his room once more, Hauck booted up his laptop and entered the numbers as GPS coordinates, with a period after the first two in each sequence.

And struck gold.

THE NEXT MORNING, AROUND 9, NABILA arrived at the hotel in her car. Hauck and Harper climbed in. Tolliver was still sleeping, though Harper said he was feeling much better.

The inspector turned to Hauck. “You texted me that you had a new itinerary today?”

He took out his iPhone, which was set to Google Maps. He’d entered the location of the numbers, which he now knew were GPS coordinates.

“It’s in Abu Qir.”

“Abur Qir? That’s west. Maybe forty minutes, depending on traffic. Why do we need to go there?”

“Humor me.”

“I don’t have the time, Mr. Hauck, to be chasing shadows.”

“Just this once?”

She complied, though she was clearly not happy that he chose not to explain. Harper sat in the backseat with the piece of Stephanie’s tooth, which he’d returned to her earlier.

Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be taking a nap.

It took nearly twenty minutes to flee the city center. He was tense, and the closer the car drove to the designated site, the more anxious he grew. The landscape was now desertlike and far less populated, though there were settlements from time to time marked in Arabic and English on green road signs. He was all too aware that he was basing this bet simply on some numbers he’d happened on and a hunch. That, and the dubious talent of a woman who’d been struck by lightning.

They turned north a mile or so after they left the city, heading toward the Mediterranean. The landscape became arid and barren, the Sahara creeping right to the sea. Palm trees dotted the road like sentinels. The towns were smaller and poorer, the signage all in Arabic. When they were within half a mile of their destination, Harper took out Stephanie’s tooth fragment and held it between her forefinger and thumb.

“What’s going on?” Nabila asked.

“Jerri came to meet me when we got back to the hotel yesterday afternoon,” he said. “She told me that Stephanie was on the trail of something really big. Razi never mentioned that, did he?”

Nabila turned while driving on the dusty, narrow road. “Not a word.”

“She said Stephanie was obsessed with that statue we saw in her room. Anti. The Falcon God.” He turned around to face Harper. “Feel anything yet?”

“Nothing.”

He prayed this wasn’t a wild-goose chase. If so, he’d probably have two Egyptian cops escorting him onto the first plane out of here.

Nabila said, “Feel what?”

“Last night I went back to the apartment and looked through Stephanie’s car.”

“How did you possibly get in?”

The inspector seemed annoyed.

“I gave them your card.”

Nabila’s dark eyes flared in anger.

“Plus a two-hundred-Egyptian-pound bill. Anyway, I found this notebook, among her things.” He showed her. “No worries. No reason anyone would have thought it suspicious. But it had this sketch of Anti in it, you remember, the man-falcon god. Two Antis, to be exact. They look like statues. And two, separated, not meant for anyone to see together.”

Nabila looked confused.

“GPS coordinates.”

“And where do you think they lead?” the inspector asked, though as soon as the words were out of her mouth, her eyes widened with understanding of what Hauck meant.

Google Maps announced they had arrived.

“Here,” he said.

They were next to a large dirt field. Maybe a farm that had dried up. Few structures were around. A couple of run-down stucco homes, more like shanty houses, outfitted with satellite dishes. And a domed stone building that looked like some kind of local community center. Two men were sitting at a table outside it, reading newspapers.

Nabila stopped the car. “You’re saying these statues are somehow connected to these coordinates? Here?”

“Stephanie was an expert in electromagnetic cartography. She could see what was under the ground.”

The detective seemed to finally grasp what Hauck was implying. “You’re thinking Razi—”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking yet. We’re just—”

Harper gasped.

“What’s going on?” Nabila demanded. “What have you found?”

“Let’s get out,” he said.

The car’s rear door opened and Harper was out, on the move.

“Over here,” she called, leading them away from the coordinates.

Her eyes were squeezed shut in concentration. She held the tooth fragment to her forehead, as if to help her mind listen more closely. She continued to walk, almost blindly, leading them into a barren crop field with a large mound of rock on the other side.

“The site’s back there,” he said, catching up to her.

Harper kept walking, as if following an inner radar. “That may be, but she’s here.”

Nabila picked up her skirt and tried to keep up with them. “Tell me what’s going on?”

“Harper is earning her fee.”

It was even hotter here than on the coast, and the sunlight was blinding. There were rocks ahead, and if you looked closely, you might conclude that they were not rocks, but building stones.

Palm trees stood all around.

Harper held out one hand, and Hauck understood he was supposed to take it. She pointed where she wanted to go, eyes still closed, and he led her, not breaking the trance. He started to say something, but she put up her hand and shook her head. The hill of rocks ahead seemed the target. She rounded the mound and stopped.

“There she is.”

And he saw it.

A body.

The remains loosely covered by dirt and scattered rocks.

Whoever dumped Stephanie there had surely hoped some animal would make a meal. She’d been stuffed into a naturally formed cavity within the stones, which had then been sealed with smaller rocks. Unless you came around here, to the far side, looking for something, you would never notice.

Nabila stared, stunned.

Then she looked at Hauck. “You’re saying Razi killed her?”

“I think Stephanie told him she’d found a promising new site. You heard what he said. She was impulsive, impatient. She always wanted to rush out to anything she found. But not just a site. A major Egyptian tomb, guarded by giant statues, which is what those Anti figures represent. The ferryman to the afterworld. And Egyptian, not Greek. The tomb of someone important.”

Nabila nodded, seemingly stunned at the magnitude of Stephanie’s discovery. “That would be quite a find.”

“And here, near Alexandria. Not on the Nile. She’d discovered it, plotted the coordinates, mapped out what it was. Maybe it was her hope to bring it to the world’s attention. Who knows? Maybe Razi wanted the credit for himself as the vaunted director of the program. Maybe he told her not to be looking here and now he would be completely shown up. Maybe she brought him here to finally show it to him.”

“What about this tooth?” Harper asked.

“I think Tina told Razi that Stephanie was going to tell her family about what she’d found, and then the government. Razi would be the man who let a Western woman trump him. I’m sure he and Tina were an item. Maybe Tina put a drug in Stephanie’s drink, at the apartment after she left the bar, or there was a struggle and then Tina and Razi brought her out here and killed her.”

“How?” Nabila asked.

“Tire iron,” Harper said. “That’s what she’s telling me. That’s what killed her. It’s out here somewhere.”

She started walking away from Stephanie’s resting place.

Hauck just followed.

“She’s looking for the murder weapon?” Nabila said, disbelievingly. “Out here?”

“You’re the one who chided me yesterday for thinking so Western. You have to believe.”

Harper kept kicking up dust and dirt as if on the scent of something. Fifty yards away, as if she had a divining rod in her head, she stopped at a small clump of dirt in the arid earth. Hauck bent down and swept away loose dirt with his hands.

“There are fragments of her skull on it,” Harper said, opening her eyes as if her work was done.

Hauck kept digging.

He removed a rock from the ground and pawed at the earth. Finally he came upon the edge of something promising.

Metal.

“Don’t touch it,” Nabila said.

“Been doing this twenty years.”

He took out a handkerchief.

“I know what I’m doing.”

Then he freed the metal from the ground.

A tire iron.

He winked at Harper. “Never doubted you.”

“Can we head back to town now?” Harper said. “I really need to see about Tolliver. He might want something to eat by now.”

Hauck grinned. “I think we can do just that.”

THEY WERE ALL GOING HOME in the morning.

Hauck to D.C. through London. Harper and Tolliver on their return trip through Frankfurt. Their work was done here. Stephanie’s body had been found. Razi had been detained by the police. Whether or not there was enough evidence to convict him in a country like Egypt, a place of influence and power and family, who knew? Hopefully, they would find his fingerprints on the tire iron they’d uncovered. And it would be missing from his own car. Nabila promised she would press the case aggressively. Her eyes had definitely been opened in the past two days.

And so had Hauck’s.

He’d said his good-byes over plates of spaghetti at the hotel’s restaurant. Tolliver wolfed down the food like he hadn’t eaten a meal in weeks.

“If you’re ever in Greenwich, look me up.”

He shook Harper’s hand.

“We never seem to get that far north,” Tolliver said.

“If you ever need a recommendation”—he laid his card on the table—“you know who to call.”

He went upstairs, packed, and made a few calls. He left a message for Naomi he’d return by tomorrow night. Around eleven he came back down for a nightcap and thought he’d take a walk.

Experience the city one last time.

“American bourbon,” he told the Egyptian bartender. He pointed. “That Woodford’ll be fine.”

“Interesting business in Alexandria?” the bartender inquired.

Hauck chuckled and savored a long sip. “You’d never guess.”

“Then relax, sir, and enjoy yourself.”

He sat back and let his mind drift to what lay ahead. At home he had a lot of choices to make, and Naomi was at the center of most of them. Greenwich or D.C.? As he was finishing his bourbon and thinking of going to bed, he spotted someone through the lobby, leaving the hotel.

Harper.

Alone.

Dressed in her jean jacket and college sweatshirt. It was going on midnight, not safe for a woman to be out alone. Especially a Western woman.

He signed the bill and ran after her.

On the street, she made a right turn toward the harbor with a fifty-yard head start. He followed. The night was bright, the moon exceedingly large. A warm breeze blew in from the Sahara to the south.

A sirocco, he recalled.

Harper kept for the harbor at a good pace, as if she knew precisely where she was going. At this late hour she certainly wasn’t catching up on some last-minute souvenir shopping. He wanted to make sure she didn’t find any trouble. Stephanie already proved what could happen.

Harper kept walking.

As if drawn, never looking back.

The streets were mostly dark and empty. The open markets shut up, the shops closed. Occasionally a café leaked music.

But Harper continued on her way.

As she neared the water, it began to grow cooler. The wind picked up. There were more hotels, cafés, and modern businesses. The new Alexandria library was out on the point, the previous one, one of the wonders of the ancient world disappeared centuries ago.

Finally she came to land’s end at the seawall.

Nothing in front of her but the dark harbor.

She walked along the wall, the Mediterranean quietly lapping against it. Past a hotel and a restaurant, everything dark and quiet at this late hour.

At the end of the harbor, she stopped.

Something seemed to be guiding her.

She held out her arms.

The wind kicked up, brisk and warm, whipping her hair. She stepped closer to the water’s edge. For a moment, he was worried she was going to do something crazy. He edged closer, now only about ten feet from her. He didn’t want to scare her.

He was about to ask if everything was all right when she spoke.

“He wants to be found now, Mr. Hauck,” she said, without ever turning around to acknowledge he was there. “He’s ready.”

More wind blew her hair. The moon bathed her in an eerie, almost holy kind of light.

“They brought him here, after he died. It was his favorite among all his cities. The city of his dreams. And it became so. He said it would unite the East and West.”

“You’re speaking of Alexander?”

“He was so young, but he had accomplished so much. There was so much more he wanted to do.” She turned around. “I feel it in his bones.”

“How?” he asked her.

He wanted clarity.

“I can feel his thoughts at his death. It’s perfectly clear.”

She halfway smiled.

Now Hauck’s blood surged with excitement. “Where, Harper?”

“You know what used to be here, don’t you?” She pointed. “The Pharos. The famous lighthouse from ancient times. A beacon to the entire world. That’s where he is.”

In the moonlight, Harper’s skin was eerily white, like alabaster. “He wants to be found now, Mr. Hauck. He said it’s time. He’s ready. There’s a lot of water all around him.”

She walked to the edge, so close for a moment he thought one more step and she would fall into the sea.

But then she stood still, the water lapping over the wall, the wind taking her hair, and she pointed, to the earth that had buried so many civilizations, so many worlds.

“Dig here.”