On the trail of the mystery woman linked to exploding pagers in Lebanon

She speaks seven languages, has a PhD in particle physics, an apartment in Budapest plastered with her own pastel drawings of nudes, and a career that took her around Africa and Europe doing humanitarian work.

What Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of Hungary-based BAC Consulting, says she hasn’t done is make the exploding pagers that killed 12 people and wounded more than 2,000 in Lebanon this week.

After her company was revealed to have licensed the design for the pagers from their original Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, Barsony-Arcidiacono told NBC News that she didn’t make them.

“I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong,” she said.

Since then, she has not appeared in public. Neighbours say they haven’t seen her. She did not respond to messages seeking comment. Her flat in a stately old Budapest building, where a door to a vestibule had been open earlier in the week, has been closed.