He hung back as she slipped up behind the girl and clamped a hand over her mouth. Randi spoke soothing Arabic as she eased the terrified girl to the floor and began going to work with the tape.

He’d have helped, but since Muslim women were particularly resistant to being pawed by strange men, he padded over to the tray and began grazing on olives and hummus. It took only a few seconds for the girl to be completely silenced and immobilized—barely enough time for him to drizzle a little honey into a bowl of yogurt.

Randi whispered a few more reassuring words into the girl’s ear before standing and turning toward him. “Am I disturbing your lunch?”

“You should try this. She must make it herself.”

Randi let out an impatient breath and headed back toward the archway. He followed, but took the bowl and spoon with him.

“Check out the door to your left,” he said when he caught up.

She opened it and, spotting the second door inside, dropped to her knees to insert a key-shaped card with what looked like circuits imprinted on it. Less than thirty seconds after connecting it to her iPhone, the mechanical bolt slid obediently back.

“Good thing it wasn’t secured by a rope with a knot in it,” he commented. “We’d have been here all day.”

She scowled as they entered a small room packed with books, papers, and computer equipment. Randi took the chair in front of the terminal and stuck a thumb drive in the USB port while he browsed the hundreds of German and English titles on psychology and neurology.

“Damn!” Randi muttered.

“Problems again?”

“His encryption isn’t anything I’ve run into before.”

Smith came to a table stacked with loose papers and began scanning the statistical analyses, graphs, and endless columns of data. He finally dug up a partially completed abstract written in German and used it as a key to figure out the abbreviations on a poster-sized collection of charts.

“I don’t think I’m going to get anywhere, Jon. If we want into this thing, we’re going to have to pile it on a donkey and take it with us.”

“Uh-huh,” he said absently, continuing to dig through the papers on the table.

“Do you have something?”

“I’m not really sure. This looks like a long-term study of behavior and intelligence. The subjects were all adopted at birth…”

“And this is interesting to me how?”