The Cairo Affair

3

Zora Balašević had left Cairo less than a week after Emmett and Sophie moved to Budapest, a fact that Stan had taken as further evidence of Emmett’s guilt. With her star source gone, why would she stay? Still tipsy from lunch, he returned to her file, tracking down the flight plan that had taken her back to Serbia. According to airline records, she had boarded a plane for Frankfurt and transferred to a Jat flight to Belgrade six hours later—an odd route. Direct flights from Cairo to Belgrade existed, yet she had chosen to spend six whole hours in Frankfurt’s dour international hub. An arranged meet? He thought a moment, then texted Saul, an old friend at Langley who had been part of the communiqués involving the leaked materials last year, asking how long Frankfurt International held on to security footage.

As for her criminal connections, there was little to go on. She was on a list of suspected members of the Zemun clan, which specialized in the transport of drugs, contract murder, and kidnappings. What was her connection? Association, and not much more: She’d been seen in the company of ranking Zemun members. Her criminal record was more than a decade old, from when she had run guns into Republika Srpska, that little mountainous region of Serb nationalism within the borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Zealot or opportunist? As he stared at her file photo Stan suspected the former, but he was only guessing. She looked, with her dark eyes and black hair, as if she had been attractive in a slow-burn sort of way when she was younger, but that beauty had since been marred by hard living: eyes hollow and cheeks loose from a lifetime of heavy smoking. She had the face of someone with a whole world of tragedy behind her; she had a refugee’s face.

Though Dragan had been convincing, Stan wasn’t ready to accept his claims to innocence. Balašević could easily have been part of his crew, brought in temporarily because of her connection to Emmett, and in the face of Stan’s accusations Dragan’s only move would have been to wash his hands of her. But Stan thought he had a pretty good fix on Dragan Milić. The Serb was enough of a pro, and enough of an engaged station manager, to know that Stan wouldn’t attempt retaliation for what had been, in essence, a beautifully run operation to collect intelligence from the American embassy. In fact, had Dragan admitted to it, Stan would only have admired him more—his panache as well as his honesty. Stan, in turn, would have felt encouraged to act similarly. Despite the proliferation of satellites and networked databases and laser-guided drones, espionage was still a very personal business.

Were the rest of Dragan’s claims true? Had Balašević worked for the Egyptians? If so, then it was the Egyptians who had sold the intel on to Syria, Libya, and Pakistan. It was possible. Was it likely? He couldn’t be sure.

By close of business, Ricky and Klaus had heard back from two contacts but come up empty. These two Egyptians had known Emmett only distantly, having met him at embassy get-togethers in order to ask for ridiculous trade concessions that Emmett hadn’t even been in a position to consider. Stan gave Harry an update before leaving, and the station chief sat glumly behind his desk, listening distantly to their failures. Dragan Milić’s claims to innocence didn’t seem to surprise him, nor did the possibility of Egypt receiving Balašević’s intel.

Eventually, Harry said, “You know, Stan, it may have nothing to do with Cairo. Maybe Emmett made the mistake of sleeping with the wrong Hungarian girl.”

“Whose boyfriend just happened to be an international hit man?”

“I’ve seen worse luck in my time.”

“I haven’t,” Stan said.

“Then you need to get out more.”

Stan didn’t live far from the embassy, so he walked home in the growing darkness along Garden City’s elegantly curved, tree-lined streets, which had been built by the British at the start of the twentieth century to surround their embassy. On an empty block of colonial villas he gave Sophie another try. No answer, and no voice mail, either—he guessed it was full.

What was Sophie’s life like now? Had she found someone else in Budapest, some Stan-replacement to make up for her wreck of a husband? And who had told Emmett about them—who else knew? He had told no one, so there were two possibilities. First, that Sophie had trusted the wrong person with her secret. Though generally tight-lipped, Sophie Kohl had a tendency to wander when she became comfortable, heading down trails of association, and it didn’t seem improbable that, maybe after a few drinks in some Budapest bar, she’d let their secret slip to the wrong person. That, at least, was preferable to the second possibility, which was that their affair had not been as much of a secret as he’d thought. Had someone in the office decided to expose him to Emmett? To what end? He thought through his colleagues in the embassy—who among them was jockeying for power? All of them, really, but there were easier ways to unseat Stan than throwing mud at his sexual life.

Maybe it wasn’t anyone in the embassy, but a representative of another government. The Egyptians, the Serbs, or even, for all he knew, the Hungarians. But why? The affair had been over for half a year—what would the embarrassment serve at this point?

He scratched at the side of his nose, remembering Sophie’s burgundy lipstick, the arch of her calf, the cinnamon tint of her perfume. Stan wasn’t a man of great experience; at thirty-seven, he could count all his lovers on a single hand, and perhaps for that reason it still hurt to remember the end of his relationship with Sophie Kohl.

It had been sudden, so abrupt that they hadn’t even had time for a final teary fight. Her husband announced that they were moving on to Budapest, and then she stopped answering his calls. Just like that. Had she known that their flight from Cairo was a direct result of his investigations? He didn’t think so, but he had suddenly become her husband’s co-worker again, and nothing he whispered during their brief moments in the same room did anything to change that. Her excuse, muttered under her breath, was that they’d both known this time would come, and ending it quickly was the best course. She hadn’t been cold about it; she’d just been incomprehensibly rational. Stan, on the other hand, had not been. He began drinking too much, slipping up at work, and it took many weeks before he was able to climb out of his hole again. Then, six months later, at three in the morning, she was calling him. How could he not be surprised?

You told him about us, and you said you were in love.

He had not told Emmett any such thing, but he easily could have.

“Mr. Bertolli?”

He was at his corner, and the voice belonged to one of two men with dark hair and severe smiles. He’d been too distracted to notice them approaching.

“Mr. Bertolli, right this way.”

Polite but firm. Late twenties, Slavic accents, and tight-fitting suits. No guns, but their manner suggested they didn’t really need them. So he followed them to a black Audi parked on the other side of the street, in front of his building. One of them opened a rear door, and, before getting in, Stan peered inside to verify his suspicion: It was Dragan. He was sitting back against the opposite door, an arm across one headrest, his free hand holding a highball glass with an inch of something strong in it, an old man at rest. He was smiling, winking. “Come, Stan. A quick word.”

He slid in; the young man behind him closed the door.

“Drink?”

Stan shook his head, for all he really wanted was sleep.

Dragan looked into his glass. “Vinjak, a lovely brandy from home.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely, but no thanks.”

A shrug, and he took a swig. “That woman, Zora Balašević. You are still interested?”

“Absolutely.”

He nodded, closing his eyes briefly, then said, “I was not giving you the runaround earlier—I told you what I knew. But I made some calls. She’s in Novi Sad right now. She came into some money last year—Egyptian, no doubt—and now she’s living in an enormous house on the Danube. Amazing security system on this place, they tell me. If you like, we can pick her up and have a word with her.” He waited, and when Stan didn’t answer he said, “All you have to do is tell me what questions to ask.”

On the surface, it was an excellent offer, but Stan hesitated. All Dragan wanted in return was to know everything that he knew—or to know what he didn’t know, which in the intelligence game was the same thing. What Dragan didn’t realize was that Stan didn’t know anything yet. “I just want to know who she works for—or who she worked for when she was in Cairo.”

“Nothing more?” Dragan asked, but the answer hadn’t disappointed him at all, and that was when it happened: Stan became his father. Such moments were rare, but when they occurred they often saved him. He felt it in his thighs, a weight that mocked Paolo Bertolli’s fat legs, and his thoughts turned labyrinthine, motivations twisting upon themselves until, in a sudden burst of clarity, a simple truth presented itself. In that warm Audi, he realized that his questions for Zora Balašević were entirely beside the point. Dragan simply wanted to bring in a woman who he now knew had had access to reams of classified American material—that was his real interest.

Stan imagined the hours since their lunch: Dragan’s piqued interest, looking into Balašević, then the disappointment that he hadn’t actually extorted Emmett himself. Dragan would have wondered how to make up for his shortcomings. Maybe he had called home and learned that, given Balašević’s connections, simply picking her up was out of the question. Therefore, he wanted to come with a different story: Brothers, this is a request from the Americans. We do this, and we get a new level of cooperation. They would bring her in, and Dragan would fly back to sit with her in a barren room in the countryside, with easy access to all the American secrets in her head.

It wasn’t worth it, not yet at least. “Leave her alone,” he said. “Maybe later I’ll come to you, hat in hand, asking for this. But it’s too early.”

“I can’t promise that I’ll know where she is later.”

Stan gave him a smile. “I have faith in you.”

Dragan smiled then, too. The Paolo Bertolli in Stan knew that Dragan had suspected this outcome from the start, and if he’d gone along with the plan Dragan probably would’ve been disappointed in him. Instead, he’d earned a little respect from the old spy. Perhaps it was that respect that led Dragan to pat Stan’s knee lightly and say, “There is one more thing, my friend. While I might enjoy watching you chase your tail, I will admit that I did know about that meeting between Zora Balašević and Emmett Kohl. This is why she came to Cairo. She claimed she had an old friend in the American embassy she could extort. A very forthright woman, Zora. She convinced Belgrade, and Belgrade sent her here. She approached Emmett and made her case to him. According to her, he refused. A patriot, she called Emmett. Soon afterward, she was no longer working for us, because we had discovered her connection to the Egyptians.”

Stan felt as if Dragan had tossed him a live grenade, shattering his entire vision of the last year. If Emmett hadn’t been leaking to Balašević, then it meant that he’d been wrong from the start. Did that mean that someone else in the embassy had been selling information? If so, Emmett and Sophie never would have had to leave town. He and Sophie could have remained together. Emmett, perhaps, would still be alive. Stan squeezed his forehead. “Did you believe her?”

“I did,” Dragan said, musing over this. “Until, that is, we realized she had those new employers. I thought to myself, Why would the Egyptians want an old bitch like that?”

“Because she really did have Emmett.”

Dragan shrugged, smiling.

“What did she have on him?”

“On Emmett?”

Stan released his forehead and nodded at him. “What was she blackmailing him with?”

Dragan shrugged. “I have no idea. She wouldn’t share with me, and when I insisted she referred me to those offices in Belgrade, where her protectors work. I’m just a station chief, Stan. I don’t have any actual authority.”

“Do you know who she reported to in the Egyptian service?”

Dragan considered this a moment, wondering how much to share, then shrugged. He’d already shared more than Stan would have, but tonight he was feeling generous. “Two meetings in public parks with someone from Ali Busiri’s office. You know Busiri, of course.”

Of course. Ali Busiri: a tough nut who ran his own section in Al-Amn al-Markazī, the Central Security Forces, where Paul’s source RAINMAN worked. Occasionally, Busiri butted heads with embassies, for while part of Central Security’s mandate was to protect foreign missions, Busiri’s office often used that access to turn embassy staff into sources. He’d apparently done that with Zora Balašević. He was very good at the game, but he was also an old hand—someone who, like Dragan, Stan could probably talk to.

As if reading his mind, Dragan said, “I’m not sure he’ll be very forthcoming. I tried to have Zora kicked out of Egypt, and he bought me lunch in order to threaten me.”

“Did he?”

“Ali Busiri is a man who knows the value of brute force. Still, he’s one of the old ones, and I can’t help but respect his muscle.”

“Thank you, Dragan.”

The Serb raised his glass. “You enjoy your evening, my friend.”

Stan pulled the latch and opened the door, then climbed out. Dragan’s two assistants, waiting on the curb, climbed into the front seats. The Audi drove off as, from over the rooftops, Stan heard a crackly speaker call the faithful of Cairo to Maghrib prayers.

That haunting sound came back to him later, in his dreams, lingering when, at three thirty, Sophie woke him to say that she would be arriving the next evening on EgyptAir 552, landing at seven. “Can you keep it quiet?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want anyone to try to stop me.”

Amen, he thought as a thrill rippled through his body. It felt a lot like hunger.