Chapter 14

Senator Aldan Nicholl was at a foldable table, sitting on it's counterpart of a matching foldable chair. He was instructed into the room by several members of the Egyptian guard, and left alone.

Several minutes had elapsed and his mind began to wonder about many things. Had something serious happened? And most importantly: Has an American been injured or worse?

He folded his thick fingers together, and then repeated this several times, as his mind raced with the propaganda.

The Senator had seen his fair share of pain in the past. At 12:37pm on a day in September, he received a call that a terrible loss had occurred in his family.

His daughter had been working at the Pentagon for almost 3 years to the day. Melissa Nicholl was talented and young most of all. Too young, to her fathers eye, to have her life ripped from her.

He never believed it was bad timing or fate that caused her death on September 11, as she was killed by an attack of terror on the governmental building, one of many that day, but the most heart breaking to him.

Since the notice of her death, he vowed to stop the insanity that caused such a plight. He vowed that no terrorist would harm an innocent American again. By any means, he would stop them.

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The Cairo bureau was calm at the time of their arrival, surprising to Langdon, as he figured reporters and producers would be swarming over the story.

"You do not think they are?" The young Egyptian secretary at the desk said to him as he raised his question. "Pretty much everyone is at the ground on location. We have been feeding them the information all day. Just because it is not a circus in here does not mean the job is not getting done."

Langdon surrendered to ask no more questions of the woman. He let André take the initiative in this realm.

"It's very important that I use the phone," he said. "We are affiliates in this after all."

"And you can't go to your own bureau to do this?" She gave him a smirk and her Cleopatra eyes smiled at him. "Of course you can use the phone. Use the one at the back, it's on a table, you will see it." She pointed, and André followed her lead.

While André took care of his business, Yvette was quick to ask questions of the Egyptian woman. "Have you heard anything?"

"Not more then I am sure you already know," she said, getting back to her paper work.

"Have you heard any predicted out comes?" Yvette pushed further.

"What do you predict will happen?" Langdon continued, digging for the answer with her.

The secretary looked up at them both. "Outcomes we are almost never able to predict. That is one of many goals of such actions as these. Sometimes it could take days or weeks before the hostages are released. Sometimes it takes that long for information to be released. The same can be said for the amount of time it takes for bodies to be found."