“Apologies,” Jones said. “I lapsed into State Department talk. The FBI maintains a presence in several countries as legal attaché offices, or ‘Legats.’ So, maybe Mr. Tilson—your dad—had read something about Legats and he more or less—and I don’t like to put it this way—demanded that our Legat start investigating his personal case. I explained to him this is simply not their role. As big a calamity as this thing was to him personally, it doesn’t rise to the level of an international concern.”

“So, what exactly is the Legat’s job?”

“They play a supportive role in cases that are of common interest to the United States and the host country. For instance, let’s say CID has a need for sophisticated evidence collection and testing, that’s an area we could assist; or, for instance—and I’m being entirely academic here—your father was in a hostage situation, we could offer the FBI hostage negotiation skills, if CID wanted them. Things like that. Beyond that, all I could recommend to your dad was to stick with the local police authorities.”

“Who, I’m sure you know,” Derek said, making a face, “do absolutely nothing.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Jones said. “Prosecution of these fraudsters does occur. There have been a few high-profile cases like this one guy who used to ride around Accra in a candy-red Ferrari from all the money he swindled. But by and large, the steady drip, drip, drip of everyday scams is a colossal problem the Ghana police struggle to keep up with.”

“Is that the whole story? Isn’t the truth more that the police are too corrupt to seriously investigate?”

“There’s no doubt that corruption is rife in Ghana at many levels of society and government,” Jones said, and left it at that.

Derek blew out his breath. He felt deflated and helpless. Then he thought of something. “By any chance, do you read the Washington Observer?”

“On occasion. Why do you ask?”

“I wonder if you might have seen an article there last month by Casper Guttenberg in which he talks about Ghanaian and Nigerian Internet con artists and uses my father as an example.”

Rachel shook her head. “I must have missed that one. I’ll confess we tend to read the Post around here.”

“No matter,” Derek said. “I can find it and email it to you, if you’re interested. Anyway, the end of the article mentioned that my father was remaining in the country to”—Derek air quoted—“investigate who had swindled him. This was news to me. Did he say anything to you about his intention to get to the bottom of it?”

“He did not,” Rachel said firmly. “If he had, I would have strongly cautioned him not to go down that garden path. It’s not the kind of thing an American wants to get mixed up with, especially on foreign soil.”