All of which made the cool air-conditioning of the BMW even more surreal, at least to Omar, who continued peering through the front windshield as he drove, with Mona quietly turning pages next to him, flipping through the thick folder on her lap.

“Find anything else?”

She shook her head without looking up.  “No.”

Over the last several days, she had slowly been piecing the papers together into some semblance of organization—or at least in some vague chronological order, trying to connect one dot at a time.

If the original order of the folder had made sense to the old Egyptian pilot, it certainly didn’t to her.

With some pieces of the puzzle now identified, she found her attention frequently shifting to the papers at the back of the folder.  The copies of newspaper articles.

There were over two dozen, all black and white, copied over the years from what appeared to be newspapers from different countries, judging from the differing languages.  But the pictures were more than enough for her to understand what they were.

And they were harrowing.

Article after article, and picture after picture, of significant events–catastrophes–all over the planet spanning the last fifty years.

Omar glanced over from behind the wheel, noting one of the pictures.  “What do you think those mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Mona paged through them again, looking closely for something that might stand out.  But each time she came up empty.

There were no marks.  No references.  No circles or arrows on the papers pointing to a particular image or mention of the story.  Just dozens of old copies.  More dots that, for some reason, she couldn’t seem to connect.

All she knew was that the articles were the only pages in the folder Hamed, the retired pilot, had sorted by date.  That was all—the one and only consistency.

Mona’s quiet contemplation was interrupted when her phone rang from inside the brown leather purse at her feet.

She pulled it out and answered with a standard Arabic greeting before falling silent.  After a moment, she quickly closed the folder and flipped it over, searching for her pen. When she found it she immediately began scribbling on the back cover.

She paused periodically to ask when, where, or how many before scribbling furiously again while the two sped down the open road.

Omar glanced over after she’d ended the call.

“Your sister-in-law?”

She nodded.  “At the Ministry of Labor.”

“Sounds like she found something.”

“A few things,” answered Mona, rereading her scribbling.  She then flipped the folder back over and pulled out the small stack of financial records.  “She said the first company they have with Mido Saad’s name on it was called Bahgat Construction, established in January of 1970.”

“Construction?”