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“See?” he said, looking at his mobile. “I told you.”
“Hang on. I haven’t finished reading the alert.”
According to Nem’s latest report, Decker Ashford was able to obtain a copy of Seshat’s birth certificate. There was a time stamp recorded, which indicated more than one baby was delivered. I looked up at Zep. “Were you aware of that? I wasn’t.”
“Which part?”
“The time stamp.”
He nodded. “If you mean did I know about it in relation to Seshat, obviously, I didn’t. What I did know is its presence meant more than one baby.”
I kept reading. “Oh my God.”
“You got to the good part.”
I was stunned. “The body in the morgueisn’tSeshat?”
“The working theory is it was made to look like the second child died.”
“Right. I wonder when the, err, switch was made. Also, this doesn’t mean Seshat is alive. Her twin, if that’s who she was, most likely killed her.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the switch, as you called it, coincided with when Puck went missing.”
“Are you thinking that, twenty-five years ago, whoever took the second baby somehow knew that, eventually, she’d have to infiltrate a UN coalition, kidnap, and kill an agent?”
He thought it over for a few seconds. “Yes.”
“Come on. That’s preposterous.”
He turned to face me. “Is it? You’ve read the brief from Oleander’s interview with Nemesis and Poseidon. Before he was killed, O’s father was investigating a man he believed was a human trafficker who we now know was Mithras’ and Pharaoh’s father.”
I stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t receive that brief.”
“Of course you did. It came over at zero three hundred.”
I checked, and he was right. I had no idea how I’d overlooked it. “When did you read it? I was awake before you were.”
He shook his head. “I reviewed it when it came in, then went back to sleep.”
I opened the file and began reading. It started with Oleander’s abduction, the details of which I already knew. I skimmed ahead to the part about her father. According to the brief, before dying in a plane crash O believed wasn’t an accident, he’d been with SAS, the precursor to Unit 23. Prior to that, he’d been investigating a man named Salvatore Rávdos, code name Cronos.
During Oleander’s captivity, Pharaoh said O’s father had ruined her father’s life—meaning Rávdos. She’d also accused O of killing her brother.
Now, I understood why Zep had said we knew Rávdos was Pharaoh’s and Mithras’ father. So, how did this relate to the unknown body in the morgue?
“Are you suggesting Rávdos was also Seshat’s and this other woman’s father?”
He shrugged. “Makes sense.”
The last thing it did was “make sense.” It was about as far-fetched as I could imagine, which, in turn, probably meant Zeppelin’s theory was dead-on. Or at least close.
“Nothing on Z, though. Fucking Iris,” he muttered.
“He’s been missing for fifteen hours.”