Countdown in Cairo

FIFTY

The man traveling under the Russian passport of Benjamin Schulman put his paperback novel across his knee as his El Al flight descended into Istanbul. He could have caught a direct flight to Cairo, but precaution ruled against it. Anyone moving back and forth on El Al between the Egyptian capital and the Israeli capital drew extra scrutiny, and extra scrutiny he did not need.

He still sensed something strange about Boris’s email and Colonel Amjad’s mildly garbled phone call. But he also knew that he had to take some chances. Some days, everything was a chance. He had placed a price tag of two million dollars on the merchandise he was currently peddling, and for two million bucks and a cozy retirement in Paraguay or Argentina, well, why not? Besides, for anyone to know who he really was or what he was about would mean that his passport numbers were blown. And how could that be?

He had ninety minutes of turnaround time in the airport in Istanbul. He watched his own back carefully, spent time in shops and in the washrooms. He didn’t expect trouble in Turkey, but if he had a tail or any sort of surveillance, this was where he could pull out a second passport and board a plane to a safe third country. Syria, for example, was just two hours away.

Schulman, or Cerny, knew that the law-enforcement bastards behind the two-way mirrors and the digital surveillance cameras were busy and active even though he couldn’t see them. But he saw no street-level activity to suggest he was being followed. So he continued to the boarding gate for Kuwaiti Air and continued his trip.

Benjamin Schulman on Kuwaiti Air. He enjoyed his little joke.

The Kuwaiti Airbus arrived punctually at the gate in Cairo at 6:15 in the evening. The airport was busy. Like the rest of Cairo, it was noisy and overcrowded.

Cerny proceeded from the exit ramp to the baggage carousel and waited. The delivery of baggage to disembarked passengers was bad enough in the First and Second Worlds, Cerny grumbled to himself. In the Third World it was an instrument of psychological torture.

He wasn’t that fond of Arabs. Of the Middle Eastern people he knew, he vastly preferred the Jews, which is why he was always willing to do business with them-or at least offer to. They were smart, modern, and learned, and they paid well. What more could he want? The best that could be said for Arabs, in his opinion, is that they hadn’t adapted very well to the twentieth century, much less the twenty-first. So he was often standoffish when Arab men crowded too closely to him, as they did here in the baggage area. He kept finding himself pulling away and repositioning himself.

Arab women were different, however. He liked the demure mystery of the veil on younger women. He had no objection, in fact, when one particular woman stayed close to him at the carousel. He turned and looked at her eyes. She looked away quickly, as Islamic women often do. He liked to pursue them, so when she stepped a bit farther away, he moved closer to her.

She wore a headscarf of blue, gold, and green silk. A very pretty new one. He gave her an eye-to-eye gaze again and then a smile. She looked away. He loved this cat-and-mouse game. She was wearing an Islamic gown over Western clothing. It was a shame to him that all the very pretty Islamic females were so prudish, but maybe this one, with some Western habits, could turn into some fun.

He dismissed his desires. His thoughts returned to business. He spotted his bag and plucked it from the carousel. Good luck-none of the crooks in baggage handling had broken into it. It was his lucky day.

He proceeded to immigration. When he got there, he noticed that the same woman had fallen into line just in front of him. He watched her progress as she went through the line. He eyed her carefully. Under all that clothing, she had a nice shape.

The strangest thing, he noticed as she passed through immigration, was that she had a Canadian passport. Who would have guessed?

He lost track of her as he passed through immigration himself. Everything went smoothly. It was time to look for a cab. He went through the glass doors that led outside to the taxi stands.

He joined the line. There was some sort of commotion going on where the cabs were being routed to the end of the line. He became wary. Anything unusual put him on alert. But he settled himself and stood in line with his bag. He tried to discern what was going on.

A sense of paranoia gained on him.

Then a Cairo taxi, a van with its off-duty sign turned on, pulled out of the regular cab line and, with the assistance of the local police, pulled up to the line of waiting passengers. It stopped right in front of Cerny. The rear door opened. What was this? he wondered.

Cerny felt a tap on his shoulder and heard a woman’s voice.

“Michael?”

He felt a flash of anxiety. He turned. It was the woman in the veil again, the same one that had been at the luggage carousel, the shapely woman in Islamic garb over Western clothing.

“Nice to see you again,” she said.

Cerny stared. He didn’t like this. Not at all.

Alexandra LaDuca reached to her veil and removed it quickly so that he could see her full face. She could see the look of horror when he recognized her. In that instant, Michael Cerny knew that his operation had crashed.

Cerny threw a fist at her. But she parried it expertly and threw her own shot into his face. She nailed him directly in the nose. He staggered and would have fought more, but four powerful hands came out of the back of the van. They hauled him backward. He shouted profanely, but no one came to his rescue. Struggling and shouting, he was pulled into the van.

People in line yelled, screamed, and broke away as the commotion spread. But as usual, the police protected the public order. Inside the van, a cloth rag wrapped across Cerny’s face and smothered him. He felt an incipient buzz. Then he felt a needle in his shoulder.

Alex picked up his bag and threw it in.

She climbed into the van with him and pulled the doors shut. Tony pulled away, the police clearing a corridor for them to escape.