“This goes back to the money.  If the corporations you investigated are making hundreds of millions of pounds a year, how much does it cost to build a small school or orphanage in the middle of Zambia?”

“I don’t know, ten thousand?”

“At the most.  So, with even a portion of the money, couldn’t they be building hundreds of these places every year?”

“You’d think so.”

“But it doesn’t seem like they are.  Which makes the locations seem even more odd.”

Still in his seat, Omar raised a finger to scratch his upper lip.  “That is interesting.  Building places in larger cities would help more children.”

“Exactly.  But it feels like just the opposite.”

“How many are out there?”

“I don’t know.  That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”

“Let me guess—another is where the money is going?”

“Not really,” she replied.  “People have been finding creative ways to hide money for thousands of years.  So, where it’s going wouldn’t surprise me all that much no matter what I find.  What I’m really curious to know is when did Mido Saad become rich?”

“When?”

She switched the phone to her other hand.  “From what I can find from Saad’s past, there was nothing really extraordinary about him.  Average child.  Average teenager.  Average family.  Dropped out of college.”

“He dropped out of college?”

“Yes.  Which was a bigger deal back then.  It would have been hugely embarrassing, even disgraceful.  Especially if your family had struggled to send you.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t find much on him until several years later when he was already a businessman.”

“Okay, so how are you proposing to find out when he made his fortune?”

“I was hoping you could help.”

On the other end of the call, Omar leaned back, thinking.  “Well, from what I saw, those business structures seemed very sophisticated and go back a long time.”  He paused.  “So, how does Mido Saad go from a dropout to a brilliant businessman in just a few years?”

“More specifically, when and how fast?”

“You want to know how fast?”

“Any ideas?”

He sighed.  “The structures have been around for a while.  How long, I’m not sure.  He could have been hiding money from the beginning, if he was smart enough.”

“Or experienced enough.”

“Yeah, but who has that kind of experience at that age?”

“Maybe he was coached.”

“If that’s true, then if we could get his financial filings from that far back, they may not reveal much, especially if he was already hiding it.”

“Is there another way?”

He looked up at the ceiling above him.  “There could be.”

“There has to be something he couldn’t hide.”

Omar blinked, then slowly eased forward.   “Labor.”

“Labor?”