He didn’t respond, continuing to try to decipher what he was reading but finding it increasingly hard to believe. Where would Eichmann have gotten this kind of data? While it was vaguely possible that he would be able to track thousands of cross-cultural adoptions, it seemed like every aspect of the children’s lives—from education to nutrition to parenting—had been meticulously controlled. Admittedly, the study design was impeccable, but it was also wildly unethical and completely illegal. And then there was the astronomical cost of micromanaging and recording every aspect of people’s lives over the better part of a quarter century.

“Jon? Are you—”

Randi went silent when the sound of a key being inserted in the massive lock on the front entrance floated in to them.

She made it into the courtyard first and he ran after her, skidding into the entryway just as the heavy door was swinging open. He pressed himself against the wall and watched a frail-looking man cross the threshold.

“Hafeza?” he said in heavily accented French. “Where are you?”

Randi slipped up behind him and pressed her pistol against the back of his head. “She’s indisposed.”

Smith stepped out of hiding and the man froze. He didn’t look like much of a threat—more like a composite of every aging professor he’d ever had in college and medical school.

“Gerhard Eichmann?”

“Who are you?” he said, the confusion on his face deepening. Home invasions weren’t unheard of in Marrakech but camera-toting tourists and women in traditional dress generally weren’t the perpetrators. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk,” Smith said, taking him by the arm and leading him toward the office they’d broken into.

“Where is Hafeza? What have you done with her?”

“She’s fine,” Randi answered, still covering him from behind.

He stopped short when he saw the open door, but Smith dragged him through. Once inside, Eichmann broke free and ran to the obviously rifled-through papers on the table. “You have no right to look at these! They are of no interest to you!”

“Don’t rush to judgment,” Smith said. “My field is microbiology but I read my share of behavioral studies in school. Children from all over the world, primarily poor countries that don’t keep very good records and are amenable to bribes. Identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings, all split up, often adopted by foreigners with very different backgrounds. And all completely ignorant that you were pulling the strings.”

“They…they weren’t harmed,” Eichmann stammered.

“Please, Doctor. You stole these children. You separated them from their families, you shipped them all over the world through bogus adoption agencies—”

“They had better lives! Girls taken from rural China where they aren’t valued were given to parents in Europe and—”