The Cairo Affair

1

They shared the same bed, but he did not consume her. It was too soon for that, he knew, though it was a struggle to convince his hand on her hip to remain where it lay. She was there with him, but a part of her was still with Emmett and would be for a very long time. Hadn’t that always been true? Yes—but now, Emmett Kohl had graduated from cuckoldry to sainthood, and that would not blow over quickly. She fell quickly to sleep, proving that they were not really strangers, or perhaps it only proved how exhausted she was. Either way, he was left staring at the smooth curve of her shoulder rising out of the sheet, asking himself if just one small bite would wake her.

He wondered how many nights his father had lain in Italian beds, unable to sleep for all the clashing thoughts in his head. Though he had shared some things with his son, Paolo Bertolli had preferred to avoid discussions of dirty reality, detailing only his moments of glory—the afternoon in early 1978 when he wore a wire to a meeting to plan the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the intelligence he passed on about the location of the kidnapped Brigadier General James Dozier in 1981, and the 1983 arrest of Vanni Mulinaris. Nothing about how he had learned to sleep when the fear was eating him up, leading to a midlife of chronic ulcers that had required three separate surgeries. His mother, when she had chosen to speak of his father at all, told Stan that he wept in his sleep. Unforgivingly, she would say, “And what kind of a man does that?”

A man with things on his mind.

He knew too little, and as he dwelled on the few facts in front of him he remembered Harry’s expression from the day before, when he’d asked about John’s under-the-table job: the forehead suddenly full of wrinkles, as if it had been slapped. He remembered it because it was the same expression he had seen when he’d brought evidence of Emmett’s crimes to Harry the previous year, asking that it be passed on to Langley. That expression had shrunk Harry’s face, and after a long moment of reflection he’d said, “I’m not giving those smart boys back home an excuse to reshuffle my station. We take care of this on our own.” Taking care of it on their own, it turned out, had simply meant sending a bad apple to another orchard.

Zora Balašević had told Dragan Milić that Emmett hadn’t leaked information. Dragan was right to doubt this—for why else would the Egyptians have hired her? But what if she’d been telling the truth, and she had found another embassy source? Harry? Could Harry have been the leak, using Emmett to cover his tracks? We take care of this on our own.

Or was Stan growing paranoid? By then it was after two in the morning, and he was lying beside a woman who filled him with cannibalistic desires. How could he think of trusting himself?

He remembered a single piece of advice his father had given him toward the end of his life, when he was confined to a hospital bed, tubes poking out of every orifice: Stan, when you live in a house of mirrors, the only way to stay alive is to believe that every reflection is real. The downside is that this can cost you your sanity.

Then it was Saturday morning. Coffee, fresh orange juice, and bagels that the embassy shipped in from America. With cream cheese on her lip, Sophie tapped at the surface of her iPad, checking mail over his Wi-Fi. “Thirty-two messages,” she groaned.

“Ignore them.”

“His parents want to know why I’m not with his body.”

“Ignore them,” he repeated. “Or tell them you’re fine but don’t give details. In fact, don’t tell anybody you’re here.”

She frowned at him. “I’m here now—no one stopped me. So it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said, “and we might as well not contradict each other.”

Briefly, a look of understanding flashed across her face, but just as quickly it faded away. “Why am I a secret?”

“I told you before: Harry will want to handle you. If he knows you’re in town, he’ll figure out you’re staying with me, and he won’t be as open with me as he would otherwise. I’m just trying to buy us some time.”

“You think he knows?”

“What?”

“About us.”

Stan smiled. “If he didn’t before, he’ll figure it out once he knows where you’re staying.”

“And that would be a problem for you.”

“I suppose,” he said, as if he hadn’t thought of that already. The fear of exposure had ruled his life last year, and now that she was back in his life the fear had returned. “It’s not like you coming here is a secret—your passport left Hungary and entered Egypt. The Budapest embassy should know where you are. Soon enough, they’ll call Harry just to let him know you’re around. They’ll probably say you’re unstable. Let’s give ourselves the weekend before going to Harry.”

She nodded, finally understanding. “Do you think I am?”

“What?”

“Unstable.”

He walked to the sofa, leaned close, and kissed her forehead. “You just want to understand. There’s nothing unstable about that.”

She looked up at him and, after a moment, nodded imperceptibly. Then she reached into her pocket and removed a folded sheet of paper that was crumpled and misshapen, as if it had been read and refolded many times. She held it out for him, and he took it.

“What’s this?” he asked as he saw what it was—a classified cable.

She said, “Tell me about Stumbler.”

He knew he was reddening, but he played along, reading the message and seeing, right there, Jibril Aziz’s name. Stan knew about Stumbler, but he’d never known that it had originated with Aziz.

She stared at him, waiting, and so he sat across from her and began to explain.

Stumbler had been one of twenty or so ideas that crossed their desks in 2009. Young, creative, sometimes brilliant analysts at Langley’s Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis sat around wondering how to make the world a safer place for American enterprise, and when they had their eureka moments they spent a few weeks researching the plausibility and real-world applications of their plans, the repercussions and risks and rewards. But the Agency had long ago learned that a plan half-baked is worse than no plan at all, and so eventually the plans were taken from the analysts and sent around to regional experts to further assess risks and rewards and, additionally, to spread the responsibility. If ten different regional experts agreed that a plan was solid, when it later fell apart their signatures could be used as references. “But in the real world, it means that everyone’s covering their asses, and very few plans get past the assessment stage.”

“And Stumbler?” she asked.

“You can read it right here,” he said, holding up the cable. By then he’d seen the address line at the bottom of the printout and knew she’d gotten it from WikiLeaks. This wasn’t the first headache that site had caused, and it wouldn’t be the last. “No one in the Cairo embassy wanted to sign off on it, and Harry passed on our assessment.”

“But what was it?”

“Regime change in Libya,” he told her, for it was a dead plan, and there was little risk in sharing. “This analyst—”

“Jibril Aziz.”

“Apparently, yes. He had cobbled together a network of Libya-based groups and tribes that he thought we could bring together. That was the first thing we doubted. Getting various factions in a place like Libya to work toward a common goal is damned near impossible, and it’s one of the reasons Gadhafi has remained in power so long—it’s why he’s still holding on to power right now. Aziz saw signs of the regime’s instability wherever he looked, but he chose not to look at anything that contradicted his vision. That was obvious from his report.”

“Are you saying he was delusional?”

Stan rocked his head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s just say he didn’t seem perfectly reliable. Also, Stumbler required—if I remember right—a couple hundred of our own troops to act as the axle around which the tribes would roll. That’s what killed it. If something like this were to become known, that we’d had an active hand in regime change there, the political fallout would be immediate. I’m talking about riots throughout the Middle East, worse than what’s actually going on now. Leaders we support would suddenly be branded American puppets. Our business interests in the region would be open to attack. That scared the shit out of us, but Aziz considered it a minor issue. That was delusional. So we nixed it. You can see it right here, Harry’s words. We suggested continuing our present line: funding the groups we were already funding, perhaps increasing their share a little, but essentially doing nothing.” He paused, reflecting on what was going on now in Libya. “Of course, time has proven Aziz right in many ways, but two years ago there was no way for us to know any better.”

He hadn’t told her much that she couldn’t have gleaned from reading between the lines of the cable. She sipped at her coffee, thinking about this, and said, “What about Emmett? Was he part of the assessment group?”

Stan shrugged. “Harry might have pulled him aside for a question or two—part of the argument for regime change was economic, and that was Emmett’s specialty. I’d be surprised if he told Emmett the full plan.”

“Then why was Aziz meeting with him?”

“If I knew, Sophie, I would tell you.”

“We have to find Aziz.”

“I’ll go in and see what this leads to.”

“Does he have a phone number?”

“Who?”

“Jibril Aziz.”

“I’ll find one,” he said, straightening and pocketing the cable. “I should have most of the floor to myself today. I’ll call you—is your phone on?”

“No.”

“Good. Take this,” he said, stepping into the kitchen. From a drawer full of batteries and twine he took an old cell phone and charger. He plugged it in on the counter and then powered it up. “I’ll call you on this, and if you run into something you call me and I’ll follow up on the Agency database. I’ll try to meet with Harry, too, and this afternoon we’ll compare notes.” He gave her his serious look. “Sound good?”

She thought about it a few seconds, then shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”

“It’s certainly that.”

He gave her a kiss before leaving, and the desire for consumption returned. He packed up his laptop and went downstairs, pausing briefly to check the empty sidewalk. Dragan’s boys were nowhere to be seen. He got into his car, but before starting up he called Harry, who was at home over in Zamalek, helping his wife with preparations for an embassy event that apparently required an enormous number of lilies. He appreciated the interruption. “Can we meet?” Stan asked.

“When?”

“Now.”

“You’ve obviously never been married, Stan. Be reasonable with your demands.”

“An hour?”

“Four o’clock,” Harry said. “The Promenade.”