Countdown in Cairo

FORTY-THREE

Like any fine hotel, the lobby of the Metropole boasted an arcade of overpriced specialty stores catering to the hotel’s international clientele. Alex visited the shopping area the next morning and found what she was looking for. A plain navy-blue maillot to use in the hotel’s vast swimming pool. A size ten was a perfect fit and the suit flattered her. Not too sexy, but not too demure. It would work.

Toward 1:30, she went to the well-guarded pool area behind the hotel. She entered the water on the shallow end and began doing laps, a small fresh bandage on the scar on her arm. At least she could combine some exercise with business. Despite showering and washing well the night before, the parched atmosphere of the desert remained upon her. The water soothed her.

She completed a brisk ten laps, watching the other visitors to the pool as she swam. She saw Richard Bissinger enter the hotel’s pool area, using the guest pass that she had left for him at the front desk. She continued to do laps as Bissinger, or Fitzgerald, disappeared into a bathhouse at the far end of the pool.

Voltaire, she noted, didn’t need a pass. He apparently had whatever access he needed to anything he wanted all over the Middle East. He arrived a few minutes after Bissinger but, wearing a pair of shorts suitable for swimming, was faster at getting into the water. He stood at the shallow end and waited for her.

Bissinger emerged from a locker area and slipped into the pool. He moved to the area where Voltaire stood. Alex did a final lap, then emerged and grabbed a towel and a pair of sunglasses off her deck chair. Then she joined her two visitors in waist-deep water.

It was midday and the pool was otherwise deserted, other than children and nannies. The children, splashing and screaming, formed a perfect acoustical backdrop to make electronic eavesdropping on them impossible, even via a rifle mike aimed from a hotel window.

“I’ve been to meetings that were all wet before,” Bissinger said. “But to actually be in a pool is a first.”

“You should thank me for getting you out of the office,” Alex said, standing and pushing back her hair. She toweled her shoulders and let the towel hang across them.

“I do,” he said.

“Everyone knows everyone,” she said. “I already know that. So what are the signals we need to get straight?”

“It seems that a certain someone in whom we have an interest,” Bissinger said, “ ‘Judas,’ has just made a move.”

“What sort of move?” Alex asked.

“As I understand it, he smelled danger here in Cairo, or maybe a better opportunity somewhere else, and departed from this wonderful country.”

Against her normal habit, Alex swore emphatically. She had traveled all this way for no resolution?

“Where is he?” Voltaire asked.

“Tel Aviv,” said Bissinger. “Or so we think.”

“Ha! Well, that’s not far, is it?” Voltaire asked. “Although the jurisdictional problems just increased.”

“So is our operation scuttled?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Bissinger said. “Look, here’s what else we know about Judas. In addition to his actual passport under his real name, he has at least four others. Two are Russian, a pair of solid forgeries that he seems to have picked up from his business associates. Then he’s got a British and a Hungarian.”

“Impressive collection,” Voltaire said.

“I posted an alert for all the passports and their numbers,” Bissinger said. “We have an internet apparatus now. Works through Homeland Security and all the airlines.”

“How so?” she asked.

They all fell silent as a pool attendant passed by with chilled containers of purified water. They each grabbed one. Bissinger tipped the man with a wet US five-dollar bill, which was appreciatively received.

They drank liberally. The sun pounded down on them.

“When a passport moves in which we have an interest,” Bissinger said, “whoever posted the alert gets an update. As long as we have passport numbers, we can keep track of anyone in the world.”

“Impressive software,” said Voltaire, who was more of a street-level guy.

“We had analysts review the images on the airport security cameras at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. We checked the passengers disembarking for the flight from Cairo. The images we got are not a hundred percent conclusive, but we think that Judas arrived.”

“So?” Alex asked. “What if he continues onward with a different passport?” Alex asked. “A fresh document. Presumably a man who has access to four fake passports isn’t going to get weak-kneed about finding a fifth.”

“We’re sunk if he does that,” Bissinger said. “We would just have to wait for him to surface again. But the odds are that he won’t do that. Whenever a new passport goes into the system, there’s always the chance it will bounce from improved security software. The other thing is that if Judas has no reason to be wary other than normal precautions, he’d tend to use an ID that has already worked.”

“What’s the rest of it?” Alex asked.

“Judas has got some deals cooking for the information he swiped from the US Defense Department, but it’s all fairy gold to him until he can close a deal. And we know he needs to close a deal ASAP because he knows that Langley is officially listing him as a defector. We suspect Judas won’t move again, wherever he is, until he’s given the heads up. It’s a one-two punch. He has to hear from his first contact here by email, then he needs to get the voice go-ahead from his number-two guy, his security guy here in Cairo. Only then will he move. Then there’s the problem with the apprehension point. Let’s say he’s coming from Moscow or Ukraine. If he flies to a neutral point, like Athens or Rome, we have no brief to pick him up. Quite the contrary. Certain host countries in Europe would be furious if we did. Too much rendition during the Bush administration. We did it but never told the host countries we were doing it. Over the back channels they’re still screaming, and the new administration in Washington wants to distance themselves from the Guantanamo mentality. So we have to sit on our hands and wait for him to connect. We can monitor him, say in the airport at Athens, but even that’s risky. He’ll be looking for a tail, and if he sees it, he’ll cut bait, head back to Russia, and that’ll be the end of our ball game.”

“Or we can lure him back here,” Voltaire said softly.

“What’s here that he wants?” Alex asked.

There was a soft splash nearby. A child’s wayward Frisbee had skimmed to rest near Alex. She picked it up and deftly sailed it back, with a smile and a wave.

“One of his Russian friends is still here,” Bissinger said. “Boris Zharov. Boris is one of the two men Carlos caught him with. Judas is anxious to get his deal with Boris done. Overanxious, perhaps, which could work in our favor.”

“Tell me more about Boris Zharov,” Alex said.

“Boris is still ensconced at the Radisson Cairo,” Bissinger said. “He goes down to the hotel lobby every evening around nine. He sits there and glowers for about an hour, smokes like a Soviet-era factory, and waits for instructions from Moscow. He’s got a wife back in Moscow, but he’s always on the trawl for Western women. If he doesn’t get lucky, he goes out to the clubs. Dances with every young girl he can find. Brings them back to the hotel when he gets lucky. He’s careless. He builds most evenings around a skirt and a bottle-long consultation with Dr. Stolichnaya. Sometimes he pays for both.”

“Well,” Alex said. “We all agree on how to target him. This is what you’ve had in mind for a while, right?” she asked Bissinger.

Bissinger allowed that it was.

“You want me to seduce him, right?” Alex asked. Bissinger and Voltaire looked at each other.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind terribly?” Bissinger said. “We promise to break in just as you’re pulling your dress up over your head.”

“Maybe thirty seconds before that would work even better,” she said.

“We’ll try,” Bissinger said.

“I assume Boris can access Judas by email,” Alex said.

“That’s pretty much what we had in mind,” Bissinger said.

She looked to Voltaire, who was squinting behind sunglasses.

“Can you put a couple of guns in the room as backup?” she asked.

“I was going to offer Tony and Abdul for the snatch operation,” Voltaire said. “They like to get their noses punched from time to time. Makes them feel good about themselves.”

A moment passed as Alex thought it through.

“Okay,” she finally said. “But if I’m going to be the centerpiece of that exercise,” she said, “I want to bring in at least one of my own people and maybe a laptop tech.”

“How long would it take to get them here from America?” Bissinger asked. “If Boris gets bored and goes home we’re out of luck. Ditto if Judas scores with the Israelis and sells his wares there.”

“My contacts are in Rome,” she said.

Bissinger looked at Voltaire. “That’d work,” Bissinger said.

“Okay with me,” Voltaire said.

Alex turned back to Bissinger. A welcome breeze swept over the pool. “You said he also needed a voice okay before he returns,” she said. “How do we work that?”

“That one’s trickier,” Bissinger said.

“How are you feeling today?” Bissinger asked, seeming to shift the subject.

“I’m okay,” Alex answered.

“Head? Stomach?” he asked.

“I think I ate something a little tainted on the flight,” she said. “Or maybe it’s been the heat. Today I feel better. How did you know and why do you ask?”

“You were poisoned.”

“What?”

“Or an attempt was made to poison you. See here’s the thing-Judas got wind of the fact that someone had been sent from the US to spot him. He reasoned it was you. Something about some shootout in an American drug store. So he got out of Cairo until you, who could identify him, have been successfully killed. They planted some radioactive crystals in your hotel room. You’ve been bathing in them and sleeping on them. You should be able to illuminate any room you walk into by now without even turning on a lamp.”

“Are you-!”

“Not to worry,” Voltaire said. “Some of my people intercepted the plot. We have a young man named Masdouth as an infiltrator. He was part of the team that planted the crystals in your room. They switched some harmless stuff for the poison.”

“How on earth did they get in?”

“Same way that Judas knew who had come from America. A traitor in out midst.”

“Who?” she demanded.

“Who got a good look at you and would have been able to describe you to Judas?” Bissinger asked. “Who knew exactly where you were staying, right down to your room number? The same individual has been compromising our embassy for years and stood guard while the crystals were being planted in your room. He kept the hallway clear for the intruders. As soon as he departed, it was their cue to get out.”

She sighed and seethed with anger. “Colonel Amjad,” she said.

“There will be a day of reckoning for him too,” Bissinger said. “But first we need to play the colonel along and he needs to report that you’re dead. Game?”

In Alex’s mind, it all fell into place. “Game,” she said. “How does that work?”

“It works with you posing on a slab in a filthy Egyptian morgue and letting the colonel get a look at you,” Bissinger said. “With you out of the way, there would be nothing stopping Cerny from making a quick gambit back to Cairo.”

“So I’m supposed to play dead.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“If you think we can get away with it, I’ll go for it,” she said.

“Then I think we’re finished here,” Voltaire said.

“I think we are,” she agreed.

“Thank you, Josephine,” Bissinger said.

“My appreciation also,” Voltaire said. “What a trouper.”

“Some day in the future,” she said, “you guys owe me big time.”

First Bissinger left, then Voltaire. Alex tossed her towel back on a deck chair and gently flipped her sunglasses on top of the towel. As events, past and future, swirled in her head, she wore off her nervous energy with another ten laps. Then, after drying off and getting five more minutes of sunshine, she went back upstairs and phoned Gian Antonio Rizzo in Rome.

That same afternoon, Bissinger arranged to have a network of rooms rented at the Radisson Cairo where Boris was staying.