“It’s very good.”

“Especially with the khalta. We civilized people, on the other hand, buy nicely butchered, sliced meat in supermarkets. We don’t witness cattle being brained with an electronic hammer, or sheep and pigs having their throats cut. We miss the fun part. So we’re more conditioned to simply expressing fear, anxiety, and misery. A few might shoot up the landscape and kill the neighbors in a fit of madness, but we would never eat anyone.”

“What type of exotic toxin can cause those problems?” asked Pitt.

Eva drained her wine and waited until the waiter poured another glass. “Doesn’t have to be exotic. Common lead poisoning can make people do strange things. It also bursts capillaries and turns the whites of the eyes beet red.”

“Do you have room for dessert?” Pitt asked.

“Everything is so good, I’ll make room.”

“Coffee or tea?”

“American coffee.”

Pitt motioned to the waiter who was on him like a skier attacking fresh snow. “An Um Ali for the lady and two coffees. One American, one Egyptian.’

“What’s an Um Ali?” asked Eva.

“A hot bread pudding with milk and topped with pine nuts. Soothes the stomach after a heavy meal.”

“Sounds just right.”

Pitt leaned back in his chair, his craggy face set in concern. “You said you’re catching a flight tomorrow. Do you still intend to go to Mali?”

“Still playing the role of my protector?”

“Traveling in the desert can be a murderous business. Heat won’t be your only enemy. Someone out there is waiting to kill you and your fellow do-gooders.”

“And my knight in shining white armor won’t be there to save me,” she said with a tinge of sarcasm. “You don’t frighten me. I can take care of myself.”

Pitt stared at her, and she could see a look of sadness in his eyes. “You’re not the first woman who said that and wound up in the morgue.”

In a ballroom in another part of the hotel Dr. Frank Hopper was wrapping up a news conference. It was a good turnout. A small army of correspondents representing newspapers around the Middle East and four international wire services were besieging him with questions under a battery of lights from local Egyptian TV cameras.

“How widespread do you believe the environmental pollution is, Dr. Hopper?” asked a lady from Reuters News Service.

“We won’t know until our teams are in the field and have a chance to study the spread.”

A man with a tape recorder waved his hand. “Do you have a source of the contamination?”

Hopper shook his head. “At the moment we have no idea where it’s coming from.”

“Any possibility it might be the French solar detoxification project in Mali?”

Hopper walked over to a map of the southern Sahara that was hung on a large display stand and picked up a pointer. He aimed the tip at a desolate region of desert in the northern section of Mali. “The French project is located here at Fort Foureau, well over 200 kilometers from the closest area of reported contamination sickness. Too far for it to be a direct source.”