The Cairo Affair

5

He was at the airport a half hour early because he couldn’t think of what to do with himself, and he wandered among the list-less crowds and armed security, wondering how his father would have approached the questions before him. Paolo Bertolli would have taken it easy. He had been a doyen of the long-term operation, an agent with immeasurable patience—it was the only way he could have survived for so long within the Red Brigades, while around him young Marxist-Leninist Italians ate themselves up with paranoia. Stan had never had that kind of patience, nor that kind of bravery.

Sophie Kohl, he believed when he first laid eyes on her trailing the other passengers out of Arrivals, wouldn’t be any help. She looked overused, slumped under the weight of her bulky shoulder bag, which was apparently her only luggage. Even broken, though, she had taken the time to apply the burgundy lipstick he remembered so well. He took the heavy bag from her, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and thought, Christ you’re beautiful, though he didn’t say it aloud. He noticed how easily she still fit in his arms, and how holding her brought on a carnivorous instinct, the desire to consume her whole. It was a strong desire, and six months hadn’t done a thing to lessen it. Without her, he had been able to convince himself that he was fine being alone, but in her presence the whole illusion was shattered, and he was just as stunned as he had been the previous year.

Besides the how-are-yous and let-me-help-yous they didn’t speak in the airport, and on the way to the parking lot she only said, “It’s warm here.”

“I suppose it is.”

“I’d forgotten.”

It wasn’t until they were in the car, heading out of the airport and onto the long, well-lit El-Orouba Road into town, that he said, “Tell me about it, Sophie.”

“Do I have to?”

“You don’t have to do anything. But maybe you’d like to tell me why you’re in Cairo. I thought you’d be heading home.”

He got silence for his efforts, and when he looked over her face was twisted in an expression he recognized: eyes sad and the left corner of her lips sucked in, held tight between her teeth. It was a look of guilt—she had sometimes worn the same expression after their trysts.

“You’re here for a reason.”

Gazing at the passing streetlamps, she said, “It just seemed like the place to be. He—Emmett—was talking about Cairo before. It. Happened.”

“What about Cairo?”

“About a woman we knew a long time ago. Serbian. She was in Cairo, too.”

Stan had to concentrate on his hands to make sure he didn’t jerk the car off the road. Who else could she have been talking about? “Does she have a name?”

“Zora Balašević.”

He breathed through his nose, waiting, but she said nothing. “How did you know her?”

“Honeymoon. Back in ’91. We went to Novi Sad. I didn’t tell you?”

“Only that you’d been there.”

“The war was getting started,” she said, but didn’t continue.

“So he was talking about an old friend of yours.”

“Sort of. But we hadn’t seen her in twenty years, then she popped up in Cairo. They had lunch.”

“Why did he tell you about lunch with this Serb woman?” he asked. Maybe he’d been wrong—maybe she did hold answers.

“It was a story. It was on his mind.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Excuse me?”

“He talks about her just beforehand,” he said, sharing her unwillingness to say “murder” aloud, “and now you’re here. Do you think there’s some connection?”

“Maybe.” He couldn’t see her face; he was focused on a weaving truck up ahead. “Maybe I can find her and see if she knows something. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I’m just so tired, Stan. Can I sleep at your place?”

“I wouldn’t let you sleep anywhere else.”

Hiding what he’d known about Balašević hadn’t been his plan. In fact, he’d had no plan before collecting her from the airport. But she’d come out with the name so quickly that he didn’t have a chance to reflect; the concealment began on its own. Then he was trapped in a deception that he would have to carry on all night, at least. How easily these things could happen. At moments like this, he was in awe of his father.

Tomorrow, he thought as he focused on his driving, he could pretend to discover the name. But for that night deception would define their relationship. He hadn’t wanted that.

Perhaps because of this, there was a definite awkwardness between them when they got to Stan’s apartment. He made dinner—frozen tilapia filets and garlic simmered in olive oil—and they drank an Australian Riesling, but even with the alcohol in them the overwhelming feeling that they were strangers stuck in the same room never quite left. Yet she was here, actually here, and he remembered the feel of her skin, its texture and pliability and scent. It was all he could do to resist hauling her to the bedroom.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

After dinner, they moved out to the terrace, and he brought out some throw blankets to fight the mild chill. His apartment was just high enough that, when you stood, you could see over rooftops and straight across the Nile to the concrete cacophony of Giza and, beyond, the pyramids Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, lit up for the evening’s Sound and Light Show. He paid a lot for that partial view, but Sophie only gave the monumental structures a glance before settling down on one of his wooden chairs and losing sight of them entirely. She talked a while, telling him about the idiosyncrasies of her life in Budapest, her “quite crazy” friend Glenda, and how much she missed Cairo (Cairo, she said, not him). Then she asked, “What do you know about Jibril Aziz?”

He repeated the name back to her, and she nodded. “Nothing,” he said. “Who is he?”

“He’s American. I think he’s CIA.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the Hungarians know that he is.”

Stan had no idea who Jibril Aziz was. “I’ll look into it,” he said.

“I’d appreciate that. And now that I’m here, I want to talk to Harry.”

This gave him pause. He thought of how it would look, Sophie staying in his place just after her husband had been killed. Would Harry connect that to Stan’s attempts to throw Emmett to the wolves at Langley? Of course he would. Harry was as suspicious as anyone in the department. “Wait,” he told her. “I can get more out of him than you can.”

She frowned, not liking this, so he explained himself:

“You’re going to come in, and he’s going to handle you. He’ll sweet-talk you and give you the illusion that he’s sharing everything—but you’re not cleared for things, and it doesn’t help that you’re a grieving widow. He won’t really tell you a thing. You can talk to him, of course, but wait. Let me get in there first.”

“You’ll ask about Jibril Aziz?”

“I will. Just tell me how he connects to Emmett.”

She sighed, a touch of irritation, as if the connection were obvious, and he noticed the mellow glow of sweat on her upper lip. She said, “He was in Budapest; he met with Emmett. Twice. He also met with some people the Hungarians think might be terrorists.”

Stan rubbed his face, wondering how to connect this to Zora Balašević. He had no idea. Maybe to avoid the increasing confusion, his thoughts began to grow carnal again. He could feel it in his legs, different from the weighty feeling of his father coming to him, for this tingling rose higher. The same desire he’d felt in the airport, to crawl across the terrace and pull her down off her chair, wrap himself around her, lick the sweat off of her lip, and slowly, meticulously, devour her. He pressed his eyes with his fingertips and tried to focus.

“I’ll do everything I can. You know that. But it sounds to me like this is all connecting to Budapest, not Cairo.”

She smiled suddenly, and it was then that he realized she hadn’t really smiled, not a real smile, since she arrived. Her eyes were wet. “You don’t understand, do you?”

He apparently didn’t.

She leaned forward and took the hand he had left on his knee, squeezing. “I know you’ll help me, Stan. That’s why I’m here. You’re why I’m here.”

Just like that, he was in love all over again.

Then the moment was gone, and she was looking out, as if through the villa across the street she could see the pyramids. She stood slowly to her full height and squinted at the distant glow. She exhaled. “They’re so damned beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” he said, but he had no need to stand. Now that she was here, he felt little need for anything.