There could be dozens of explanations, but Mona sensed this was the most likely, even if she couldn’t be sure of the person’s motivation.  Because if Harpreet Ahuja had indeed written the letter, it might explain what Mona had now uncovered.

Someone by the same name had worked for a large conglomerate associated with one of the fourteen companies about which Hamed had information.  But that was almost thirty years ago.  So, was Ahuja really the same person who’d sent those various financial records to Hamed?

And was this perhaps the same Harpreet Ahuja about whom Mona could find nothing else following the mid-1990s, as if he had simply disappeared from the world?

Here are the financial records, she thought. Now don’t contact me again.  Because he didn’t want to stir attention.  About what?  Fear of reprisal?  But then he later disappears.

Mona stared at the translated text, wondering if the man had disappeared by choice.  And if so, was he still alive?  Or had he been found out as feared?

And how did Hamed, an Egyptian fighter pilot, come into contact with Ahuja in the first place?  Had he tracked the man down in his effort to understand what had happened in 1977?

And if Ahuja was indeed connected to one of Mido Saad’s companies, could he also have been connected to more?

The pieces felt loose yet still seemed to fit.  Or was she forcing them to fit?

And then there was Mido Saad himself.  Deeply connected with the Egyptian government and possibly others, operating quietly and almost wholly unseen.

She hadn’t found much more on him than her friend Omar had.  Even using every search engine she could think of only produced a few dozen articles about his philanthropy and being recognized at various events—but even those were few and far between and extremely outdated.

The man was a mystery.  Most people with that much money reveled in it, in the stardom and the prestige.

In the power.

However, Saad seemed just the opposite.  His life was a series of short, brief appearances, staying just long enough to be honored.  Long enough to dedicate a new building, usually an orphanage.  And then he was gone, disappearing from the news for months at a time.

Sometimes years.

She had found other things.  His place of birth if it was accurate.  The small town a merchant father had raised him in.  His dropping out of college, only to become abruptly rich several years later beyond most people’s wildest dreams.

Mona clicked back to her notes on him, along with several pictures she’d found on the internet spanning perhaps a few decades.

And then nothing.  Nothing at all.

She’d never found so little information on someone so rich.  Almost, she thought, suddenly peering away from the screen, as if his details had been scrubbed from public records.