The Cairo Affair

6

From Maribeth’s building on Hussein Basha Al Meamari, he walked to Talaat Harb Square, a large yet elegant intersection of six streets circling the statue of Talaat Harb, economist and banker. He kept an eye out for shadows but saw nothing, worrying that his roughshod brain wasn’t up to the challenge. Yet as he continued down the street toward Tahrir Square, it occurred to him that perhaps he’d had it wrong. Perhaps—and he briefly felt a sense of warm relief at the prospect—the two men outside his place had been watching someone else in the building. He didn’t talk to his neighbors, but he wasn’t the only foreigner on that leafy Zamalek street. By the time he’d made it through Tahrir and was entering Garden City, the charm of this thought had gone a ways toward relieving his headache.

The air—fresher on the weekend—was also doing him a world of good. He reached the embassy on Tawfik Diab Street and gave his passport to one of the local guards, a conscript with the Central Security Forces, which was responsible for, among other things, guarding embassies. The Egyptian glanced at the passport, then took a good look at John’s face. “You are in bad shape, no?”

“Not as bad as I look,” he answered unconvincingly.

There were a few extra marines posted on the grounds, looking hard yet serene. They didn’t bother asking his condition.

Another guard stopped him just inside the door, and once he’d stated his intention John removed his Glock and handed it over. The guard didn’t seem surprised by the pistol, just took it over to a steel cabinet and put it into a locked drawer. Then John handed over his keys, phone, and change, stepped through the metal detector, collected everything again, and went to the far window, where he told the doorman, Eric, where he would be. Eric was maybe twenty-five, from Wyoming, and was losing a battle with psoriasis. He had a remarkable memory for the hundreds of faces that passed him each day. “Haven’t seen you since Wednesday, Mr. Calhoun.”

“Even wage slaves get a day off now and then.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“They’ve got you on weekend shift?”

“Anything and everything for the Man.”

He took an elevator to the fifth floor, which was officially part of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Section, but in reality the primary offices for CIA in Egypt. While Stan Bertolli, his direct boss, controlled five primary agents, he was still just a submanager. John knew of three others—Jennifer Cary, Dennis Schwarzkopf, and Terry Alderman—but he didn’t know the sizes of their staffs. Add in the agents who never actually came to the embassy, living instead as foreign businessmen in the city, as well as the local assets, paid and coerced, and Harry Wolcott’s little empire likely numbered more than a hundred souls. Today John saw half a dozen faces he’d never been introduced to. They gave him gruff nods on their ways to the communal coffee machines before heading back to their cubicles to keep track of whatever they kept track of. John supposed they were looking into the death of the deputy consul in Hungary, but he wasn’t about to ask. He knew his place.

Stan’s office was locked, but there was an open anteroom beside it with an old desktop computer, solely for reports. A sticker on the monitor informed him that it could be used for information up to SECRET. In fact, the machine wiped itself clean whenever anyone logged out, and so each time John logged in he was faced with a gutted computer. It wasn’t connected to the Internet, but reports were sent to other computers via Ethernet lines after logging out. That is, he would write his report, list the recipients, and press SEND, but only once he had logged out would the computer send the report on before erasing it locally. This, he had been assured, represented the highest achievement in data security.

His identifier was LAX942, which was automatically used in place of his name on the report. The date, “March 05 2011,” and location, “Embassy, Cairo,” were also filled in by the computer, so the first space for him to type in was labeled “Operational classification.”

He thought about that a moment. In other reports, the subject had been self-explanatory: Agent Meet, Surveillance, Courier. He decided on Transport.

Security Classification: Secret.

Subject: Jibril Aziz.

Below was a blank space without the aid of directions. Here, then, was where he was to explain a failure that had cost the life of an American agent. He began with the particulars of the operation, the orders he’d received, and the pickup at the Semiramis. He described the route they’d taken and the stop in Marsa Matrouh, including the meeting with the man in the red-checked ghutra, their movement through the border, and Jibril’s purchase of the Kalashnikov.

He spent some time on their disagreement over the road they were to take, even admitting to having believed Jibril’s traffic excuse. “However,” he wrote, “once Mr. Aziz met a contact in Al `Adam, it became obvious that his reasons were not limited to our narrow timeframe. Traffic was less a reason than an excuse.”

“Hey, John,” he heard. Stan Bertolli was approaching, a laptop bag hanging from his shoulder.

John gave him a nod.

Stan frowned at his face. “Harry putting you through the ringer?”

A ripple of worry passed through him—Harry had told him to keep his Libyan trip quiet, yet all Stan had to do was take three steps forward and peer over his shoulder to get a good idea of what had been going on. John considered replying, but feared that anything he said would be an invitation to approach, so he just shrugged.

“That the report?”

John tensed, then nodded.

After a moment’s uncomfortable silence, Stan unlocked his office and went inside. John exhaled and, after staring blankly at the screen for a few seconds, gathered his wits enough to get back to it.

He described the contact, but realized that the description was too wordy and deleted it in favor of “a tall man, dark-skinned, in traditional Bedouin dress.” Though he nearly put it into words, he avoided mention of the leather book that he had promised to burn.

By then the sentences were flowing and, as if he had been taken again by the anxiety of the events he was remembering, his fingers flew over the keyboard as he described that last stretch of road that led to the bandits. He brought up the conversation about their families and even Jibril’s explanation of his obsession, via his father’s tragic murder, before remembering that he had lied to Harry about what Jibril had shared. So he deleted that paragraph. Then they were at the Toyota truck. He paused, closed his eyes, and tried to see it all again. He slowed it down, smelled the dry, cool wind, saw the bright green bandannas on their sunbaked heads, squinted into the darkening sky, and heard Fuck you English! Then he typed.