Suddenly a new voice entered the fray.
“Please, Mevrou,” a man said, his voice pleading, gruff and heavily accented. A familiar accent. One Miggy had heard recently, listening to a female marine biologist. “We’ve come all the way from South Africa.”
Miggy was on his feet and at the door in a moment. He yanked the door open, revealing the appointmentless visitors who had managed to get all the way through the security cordon. Actually, he was a bit amazed they had gotten that far. Looking at the big man and the blond, exquisitely coiffured and made-up woman, he realized it was probably easy enough for this couple. What the big guy couldn’t simply bull through, she would arrogantly slice apart. The man looked grim, the woman angry.
Miggy smiled reassuringly at them. “Come in. Is your name De Beer? We’ve asked the South African Consulate to contact you.”
The big man had a hat in his hand. A hat, in this day and age. He was twisting it. “Those mamparas, they’re too busy worrying about cell phones and BMWs to do any work, Myneer. We tried to contact Liz when we saw the news on CNN. Got the first flight over here when we heard that she’d gone off to be with some of your military. I’ve come to take my daughter home, Myneer. I lost my son,” the big man swallowed, “in our army. My daughter comes home. Get an American to do the job.”
Miggy Tremelo took a deep breath. Damn whichever incompetent deskwarmer had let him be the one to break it to them. “I’m afraid, sir, that your daughter is missing.”
The big South African went pale under his tan. He sat down abruptly in a chair in the outer office.
His blond wife was unfortunately not similarly affected. Her cultivated English accent did go to hell in a handbasket, though.
“Then you bleddy find her, you dumb American bastard. Trust Elizabet! Silly girl should have stayed at home and got married like I wanted her to.” She glared down at her husband. “But no, Jan! You had to let her go to university. You encouraged her. You let her marry that American. This is all your fault, you hear me! Your fault!”
She went on. And on. The big guy just twisted his hat to ruination. His face was almost collapsing, in the way that a man who does not know how to cry wishes he did.
* * *
Well, that was no help, Miggy thought bleakly, about an hour later. Between the woman’s outrage and the man’s grief, neither of them had been able—or even willing, in the mother’s case—to tell him anything about their daughter that he didn’t already know.
Tremelo stared down at the psychological assessment report in front of him. This one claimed to be an assessment of Lamont Jackson.
“Assessment, my foot,” muttered the physicist. “There’s nothing here but the shell of a man, carefully constructed to deal with a none-too-friendly world. I need to know him.”
Again, he sighed. Now that Mr. and Mrs. De Beer had finally showed up, Miggy had personally interviewed almost all of the close friends and relatives of that largest party of abducted people.
None of it had been very useful.
Jerry Lukacs had no immediate family left. A single child, his parents had died years earlier in an auto accident. He had a number of colleagues, many of whom considered themselves to be (and undoubtedly were) his “friends.” But the friendship involved had been so curlicuedwith typical academic one-upsmanship-combined-with-qualifications that their accounts of Lukacs had been more useful as guides to them than he himself.
The young corporal’s family had been large and helpful. Helpful, at least, in their attitude. But—nothing. Just a tale of a young farm boy, ambitious in the way that such boys are. A nice kid, it seemed, if perhaps with more in the way of an “attitude” than most. But—nothing, really.
Cruz’s family had been even larger, and less helpful. Not because they were hostile, but simply because they were heartbroken. The sergeant’s father had died when he was only a boy, and Anibal Cruz had become the man of the family—a position he had apparently fulfilled very well indeed. Miggy winced, remembering a wizened grandmother weeping softly in one of the chairs in his office. Nothing.