The Cairo Affair

1

WELCOME TO THE NEW LIBYA, read the spray-painted greeting, for the border guards had fled the night before. Creeping in his direction along the desert road, loaded-down cars and handcarts and burdened refugees on foot made their painful way toward Egypt. John wondered how they could stand so many miles under this sun, fingers burned yet chapped by the desert winds, straining under the weight of woven luggage and plastic bags, duct-taped boxes and suitcases, hauling clothes, food, and babies. The Mediterranean wasn’t far away but the landscape gave no sign of this. Each time he heard an infant scream his heart jumped into his throat.

How did they keep moving? It was instinct, he supposed. They were just motivated by the human urge to run from danger, and that was explanation enough.

Danisha had once told him that the instinct for flight was natural—it was a sign of health. The inverse was a symptom of sickness. It wasn’t the reason for the divorce, but it certainly hadn’t helped, and it was impossible not to think of her as he leaned against the dirty hood of the Peugeot, preparing to move against the tide of healthy people fleeing a civil war.

Still, it was a giddy time. In Cairo, he’d seen young faces rapturous with the wild-eyed jubilation of the Apocalypse. The world had changed so quickly. A couple of months ago, people on the streets of North Africa wouldn’t have thought to raise their voices at all, but in Tunisia one Friday morning in December a produce seller named Mohamed Bouazizi, driven to the edge by corrupt police and a senseless bureaucracy, soaked himself in paint thinner and set himself on fire. Protests had grown until President Ben Ali, after twenty-three years of power, fled the country. Algeria came next, protesting and rioting, followed soon by Lebanon.

John had been on hand to watch Egypt rise up, and Libyans had been watching it, too. Four days after Hosni Mubarak stepped down, unrest rolled through Benghazi, Libya’s second city. Protesters had been shot and kidnapped from the sidewalks, yet it went on. The protesters raided government weapon depots and went to war. Blood on the pavement, it turned out, wasn’t enough to stop history.

More fires were raging elsewhere: Jordan, Mauritania, Sudan, Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Syria, Djibouti, Morocco, Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, and the perpetual fire of Iraq. It was, John had been told by enthusiasts, a remarkable time to be alive.

Even the Bedouins guarding the Egyptian side of the border had seemed lighthearted as they checked their passports and waved them through. “Journalists? Yes? Go, go!” Though the guards were overwhelmed by the flow of refugees and Egyptian workers returning home, their steps were buoyant. Hold on to that feeling, John wanted to tell them. Next week you’ll be dreaming about it.

By that day, March 3, one day after the murder of an American diplomat in Budapest and two weeks after the Day of Revolt, the Libyan body count—estimated from panicked reports, anecdotes, and unreliable official statements from Tripoli—had passed a thousand. The east was in rebel hands, based in Benghazi, where revolutionary councils were optimistically setting up new local governments, while Tripoli and most of the west were still held by Muammar Gadhafi’s loyalists, who showed their allegiance by wearing green shirts and scarves. Green was Gadhafi’s color.

Somewhere, another baby was screaming. He couldn’t find it in the crowd.

He smelled smoke on the cool desert wind as he adjusted the wide-brimmed safari hat he’d picked up that morning in Marsa Matrouh, then examined the loose groups of men in soiled jackets and clean shirts, in robes and local headdress, talking. Families squatted in protective circles on the sand, others joining a long line heading to the Egyptian border post. There were cars parked here and there, dusty Western makes cooling off around a makeshift refreshment stand stocking warm bottled drinks and hot tea. A few yards from the stand, Jibril Aziz was talking in Arabic to three men who had come from Benghazi.

He had picked up Jibril from the Semiramis InterContinental before dawn, as Cairo was just starting to wake up. They hadn’t met before, but the man from Langley had been interested in only the briefest of introductions. John was just a driver, after all. Jibril had sniffed at their late-nineties Peugeot before climbing in, and as they took the long coastal road, fighting heavy traffic along the way, Jibril had spent a lot of time on his smartphone, checking maps, news reports, and weather forecasts, and occasionally holding conversations in Arabic. Did he know that his driver only understood enough of the language to order a meal? John had no idea.

It had been a long drive from Cairo. They had refueled and bought grilled lamb from a street vendor in Marsa Matrouh, where Jibril met with a short man in a red-checked ghutra for a quick coffee at an outdoor café while John bought his hat. Once the meeting was over, Jibril laid down some coins, shook the man’s hand, and nodded at John to meet him back at the car. They drove on in silence. John wanted to ask questions, but he knew his place. His only responsibility was to get this man safely to Ajdabiya, on the Gulf of Sidra. From there, a contact would take him farther, to Brega, where fighting was going on—he’d told John that much. Afterward (John guessed from the occasional proper nouns amid the Arabic), Jibril was heading toward Tripoli.

Once inside Libya, John’s plan had been to stick to the northern coastal highway that arced westward from Tubruq, through the green cities of Derna and, inland, Al Bayda, before heading south through Benghazi to Ajdabiya. In case of trouble, they could find help. Jibril, though, was in a hurry and insisted that they take the direct but unpredictable desert road from Tubruq down to Al `Adam, then straight on to Ajdabiya, through 250 miles of desert, much of it, he guessed, with no phone reception. It had been their single subject of conversation, and the one thing they couldn’t agree on.

When Jibril finally returned to the car, he was carrying a dirty Kalashnikov. His white shirt was clean and dry, but he had a few days’ growth on his cheeks; with another day and a change of clothes, he would be indistinguishable from these refugees. “We’re skipping the coastal road,” he told John.

“Don’t say that.”

“After Tubruq it’s a mess. We’ll never get through in time.”

In time for what? John wanted to ask, but there was nothing to say. The decision had been made. So John nodded at the Kalashnikov. “How much did that cost?”

Jibril raised the weapon, turning it over in his hands. “Hundred fifty.”

“Dollars?”

“Euros.”

“How many rounds?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Does it even work?”

Jibril looked down at the weapon and, with a flash of embarrassment, said, “That’s an excellent question.”

John tried to hide the judgment in his face as he walked around the Peugeot and took the rifle from him, then carried it out past the road, past the groups of huddled smoking men, and into the cracked desert. Jibril followed from a distance and watched as he cleared the breech, then pulled out the banana clip and checked the cartridges. This, at least, was an area in which John had some authority. He got down into a kneeling position and adjusted the rear iron sight, raised the gun to his shoulder, and aimed into the desert at a small boulder about a hundred yards away. He fired a single shot. A couple of yards to the right of the rock, sand exploded. He adjusted the front sight, then fired again. Another burst of sand. He adjusted once more, and this time the rock went up in a burst of cloud. He carried the rifle back, noting all the stares as he approached Jibril and handed it over. “Looks all right.”

“I could’ve done that.”

“What if it had blown up in your face?”

“Doubtful.”

“I’m supposed to keep you safe. If you do get killed, it better not be for something as stupid as this.”

During the drive toward Tubruq, weaving occasionally around stalled cars and children and goats that had broken loose, John said, “How long has it been?”

“What, been?”

“Since you were last here.” When he didn’t receive an answer, John said, “Langley isn’t sending in someone cold to chat with the opposition.” He hadn’t been told why Jibril was going into Libya, but with Libyan affairs the way they were, it didn’t take a foreign relations expert to figure it out.

Jibril thought a moment, maybe considering evasions, but said, “Six years.”

“Your contacts are still there?”

“Some, maybe.”

“Maybe? You’re taking one hell of a risk.”

Jibril sucked at his lower lip. “You’re with Global Security, right?”

John nodded.

“You get sent somewhere for a few weeks, maybe a year, and then you go home.”

“If I’m lucky.”

“But you’re never permanent.”

“I’m a temp. Sure.”

“Then you don’t know what it’s like to find a group of people and develop them and convince them, over years, to risk their lives simply so that you can get some information.”

As a contractor, John had spent a lot of his time being told by Agency employees what he couldn’t understand. “I do have imagination, Jibril. Why don’t you tell me what it’s like?”

“It wouldn’t make sense to you.”

“You owe them. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Yeah, John. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“And Langley agreed to this?”

There was no reply at first, and John looked to see his passenger lost in thought, one hand gently stroking the barrel of the Kalashnikov. Finally Jibril said, “I think they trust me to make my own decisions.”

“That’s what they’ll say if it goes south. That you were making your own decisions.”

Jibril squinted ahead into the sinking sun. “Well, when you owe someone, you owe them. There’s no getting out of it. Not for me, at least.”

“Sounds like a quick way to get yourself killed.”

There were about four seconds of silence before Jibril snapped. “Fucking cynics like you ruin everything. It’s always easier to tear down than to build up, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” John asked, cynically.

“Try being constructive for once. You might break a sweat.”

There was no point answering that one, or answering anything. Harry Wolcott, the station chief, had made the assignment clear: Just get him to Ajdabiya. Alive. And keep your trap shut about it.

In silence, they passed a sign in Arabic that had been spray-painted over with WELCOME TO FREE LIBYA. Neither of them wondered aloud why it was written in English, but John believed they were both thinking it. He knew he was.