The Cairo Affair

2

When he reached the fifth floor of the embassy, he was surprised to find, at the computer terminal outside his office, a large black man hunched over the keyboard, typing rapidly with two fingers. “John,” he said, and the man looked up, blinking.

“Hey, Stan,” said John Calhoun.

He was enormous, the kind of man one could easily misjudge as a stupid brute, but Stan had read his reports—John’s English was better than any of his agents’. Today, though, he looked exhausted, his dark skin splotchy and both eyes bloodshot. “Harry putting you through the ringer?”

A shrug.

“That the report?”

John nodded but said nothing, so Stan continued to his office, closing the door behind himself. Soon John was getting up and leaving, his report finished and sent, and he gave Stan a mock salute as he lumbered toward the elevators.

Stan logged on to the secure server and retrieved the file on Jibril Aziz. He learned of a wife, Inaya Aziz, and found an Alexandria, Virginia, phone number, which he wrote down. There was some background on his family—Libyans who immigrated in the nineties, with a father killed by the Gadhafi regime in 1993. Then he followed Aziz’s career from the National Clandestine Service (Regional and Transnational Issues), where for four years, from 2001 to 2005, he had been based in North Africa, presumably focused on Libya, to the Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis. A few pages in, Stan found a chronological listing of trips he’d taken in the last five years on the Company dime for Collection Strategies. There was no mention of Budapest, or even Cairo. That didn’t mean he hadn’t made those trips, just that he hadn’t arranged them through the Agency’s travel office.

Considering that Aziz was only thirty-three years old, it was a packed CV, yet it told him little that might connect to Emmett’s murder.

There were two e-mail addresses listed for Aziz, and he sent off brief messages asking him to get in touch. Then, around three o’clock, eight in the morning in Virginia, he tried Aziz’s home number. The answer was immediate, an excited female voice. “Hello? Jibril?” Inaya Aziz, he assumed.

“I’m sorry, no,” he said. “I was actually looking for him. I’m from the office.”

He could hear the deflation in her voice. “No, I—I’m … no. He’s not here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

She paused, as if his question were out of line. Then, suspiciously: “What’s your name again?”

He didn’t like her tone, so he hung up. She was on edge and—a little more digging told him—seven months pregnant. He pulled at his nose, thinking. She’d said little, but enough to tell him that she had no idea where her husband was.

At three thirty, he packed his laptop and powered down his desktop, then left, nodding at the on-duty marine and saying farewell to Eric at the front desk, as well as the Egyptian guard at the gate. Life in administration had taught him to be a little more congenial than he naturally was.

He drove west, crossing into Zamalek on the 15th of May Bridge, then parked a block away from the monstrous Cairo Marriott before finding his way to the Garden Promenade restaurant, one of Harry’s regular haunts. The station chief was already at a back table, drinking what Stan knew was gin and tonic from a Collins glass. He caught a passing waiter and ordered the same. “You’re running around on a Saturday?” Harry asked.

“Just pulling at some loose threads.”

“You need a wife, Stan. She’ll give you balance.”

In recent months Harry had started using words like “balance” and “equilibrium” as if they were concepts he’d only just stumbled across.

Before Stan could begin, Harry scratched at his cheek and said, “Have you talked to Sophie Kohl since that phone call?”

Like the mention of Zora Balašević, it seemed to come out of nowhere. Instead of lying directly, he said, “Why?”

“Seems she’s gone missing.” There was no sign of guile in Harry’s face, just curiosity.

“Missing?”

“Damnedest thing,” Harry said, reaching for his glass. “Stepped out of her life yesterday, before her flight home. Not answering her phone. Just gone.”

What, Stan thought, would an innocent man say in this situation? “She wasn’t kidnapped, was she?”

“No, no. She was spotted at the airport. Flew somewhere, but the Hungarians aren’t sharing that information with us.”

“Why not?”

“Have you dealt with the Hungarians lately? They demand pay-back for everything. This new administration is a real ball-cruncher.”

“I didn’t realize,” Stan said.

Harry took a sip. “Well, if she does get in touch with you again, let me know. Budapest station is starting to get frantic.”

“Will do.”

Harry set down his glass. “What do you need?”

There were many possible questions he could pose, but he had decided to begin with the fresh piece that Sophie had brought to the table. He said, “I need to know about Jibril Aziz.”

Like it had the day before, Harry’s forehead contracted as if Stan had slapped it; then he leaned back in his chair. “Who’s Jibril Aziz?”

He was lying, but Stan didn’t know why. “CIA, Harry. You know his name already because he was the architect of that plan we nixed a couple years ago—Stumbler. He also met twice with Emmett a week before the murder.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Yes, it is. And if we’re going to investigate, then I need to know about him.”

Harry took a long breath, gazing into his glass. “I’ll make some calls, then.”

There wasn’t anything to do, so Stan just nodded. It wasn’t the first time Harry had lied to him, but repetition made it no easier to accept. “Would you like to hear about Zora Balašević?”

“You tell me, Stan—would I?”

“She lived over in Islamic Cairo last year, and—”

Harry cut in: “And now?”

“Back home in Serbia.”

“Not in Hungary.”

A crowd of youngish Westerners, seven or eight in leather jackets, spilled noisily into the restaurant, laughing. At a glance, Stan suspected they were members of a film crew. He said, “Dragan Milić claims he never received anything from Emmett. Balašević told him Emmett wouldn’t play ball.”

“You believe this?”

“Dragan doesn’t. Nor do I. The important point is that by then she was working for the Egyptians.”

Stan couldn’t see Harry’s forehead, for he’d covered his entire face with his large hand, thumb and pinkie rubbing at his temples. Finally, he took down his hand and gazed at the Hollywood types gathering around a long table with seats for twice as many.

Stan said, “There’s always the chance that she wasn’t lying, you know. Maybe we were wrong, and Emmett didn’t share. In that case, the embassy sprang a different leak.”

Harry blinked a few times. His hair wasn’t as pristine as usual; a few errant white strands had fallen across his high forehead.

Stan said, “Ideas?”

Still looking at the far table, Harry shook his head, and there was something so bleak in that movement that Stan’s suspicions rose again, all at once. The Paolo Bertolli in him was thinking, Of course it’s him. And here you are, spilling everything to the man you should’ve caught last year. Now tell me how the Agency keeps people quiet.

“Come on, Harry. Speak to me.”

In reply, Harry lifted his glass and drained it completely. He set it down again and said, “How’re your secret-keeping skills?”

“I’m a model employee.”

“Then let’s take a walk.”

Harry paid for the drinks, and together they left the hotel through the front, headed past busy porters and taxis crowding the entrance ramp, then found a convenient spot to cross Mohammed Abd El-Wahab to reach the Nile, where narrow piers shot out into the water, harboring small boats. Instinctively, they sped up and slowed, sometimes stopping, in order to lose anyone who remained near them for more than a few seconds. Harry said, “First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way—you can forget about Jibril Aziz.”

“Why?”

“You’re right—I know the name, but that doesn’t matter now, because he’s dead. And no,” he said, raising a hand, “I’m not going to tell you how or where or when, because that’s not for you to know. Just don’t waste your time trying to find him.”

Dead? Stan took a second to catch his breath. “Then how about why?”

“I’m just a station head. Don’t ask me things above my pay grade. Langley tells me what to do, and I huff and I puff and I do it.”

How, Stan wondered, was he to connect a dead Jibril Aziz to everything else? How was he ever going to put any of this together? “What’s the second thing?”

Harry rubbed the side of his neck as they reached a gangplank that led to a long restaurant boat. A sign in English called it the Veranda Restaurant and Lounge. Stan thought he was going to take them down the ramp for another drink, but Harry just stopped, reached into his jacket pocket, and took out a pack of Marlboro Lights. Cupping his hands, he lit one with a Zippo and inhaled deeply. A fresh breeze rose, bringing the rot-stink of the Nile along with voices from the restaurant boat, staff members complaining to one another as they set up for the evening’s business. Harry was stalling, and Stan’s anticipation brought out a layer of sweat beneath his shirt.

Eventually, Harry said, “Do you really think that you were the only one Langley came to last year? Those were some serious leaks.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Langley gave you a portion of the story and sent you off. After a while, you came back with Emmett.”

“What do you mean, a portion of the story?”

“I mean what I say, Stan. How many pieces of compromised intel did they share with you before you tracked them to Emmett?”

“Four.”

“There were at least nine pieces, Stan. At least, that’s how many pieces they gave me when they sent me off to find out who the leak was.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Don’t get self-righteous, Stan. You don’t have that right.”

Stan wasn’t sure what he meant, but the tone in Harry’s voice was clear. It was as close to a slap as Harold Wolcott ever came, and Stan felt the chill of his shirt sticking to him. The station chief placed a hand on a post beside the gangplank to steady himself. There were more voices from the boat, and he saw two waiters on deck, shouting fiercely at one another about something, and that was when Stan finally got it. Stupid, stupid Stan finally understood that, despite what their emissary had said, Langley hadn’t trusted him at all. He felt flushed. Aloud, he said, “They were testing me.”

“They were testing us both, Stan. Why do you think I didn’t throw Emmett at Langley? I saw you walk in like you’d been hand-picked by God to dig for a mole, and I knew you had only been given a few cards to deal with. You were starting with limited intelligence.”

“And who did your evidence point toward?”

Harry exhaled smoke. “Emmett, too. But the difference between us is that I believed him.”

Stan swallowed hard. “Which is another way of saying you weren’t sure you could trust me.”

“Who trusts anyone these days?” Harry said, then put a heavy hand on Stan’s shoulder. “Don’t take it personally. In a situation like this, everything should be examined, and if you’re missing some crucial piece of information it’s best to assume you don’t know anything. I do know how those planners in Virginia think, though. Sometimes they’re like string theorists—what’s real is not real. Hell, it’s possible that there was no compromised intel in the first place.”

“You believe that?” Stan asked, thinking of the mutilated undercover agent outside Homs. That was real.

Harry didn’t bother answering, but he said, “If the evidence we got pointed at Emmett, yet it now turns out that Emmett wasn’t giving away anything, then one possibility would be that Langley wanted to get rid of Emmett. It’s not unprecedented.”

A way to keep him quiet, Stan thought—Omar Halawi’s warning. He was gradually recovering from his humiliation, considering this new idea. “Emmett talked to Jibril Aziz. Did he know about Stumbler?”

Harry nodded. “I needed his help on the economics. He asked to see the whole plan, so I sent him a copy. But that doesn’t mean they were talking about Stumbler.”

“Is there any other subject you can imagine them discussing?”

Harry flicked away his cigarette. It arced down toward the murky water. On the boat, the two waiters were fighting now, fists held up close to their chins, like boxers from another century. “Let’s not assume we know anything, because we still don’t.”

“So what do we do now?”

Harry grinned. “Ask yourself what your father would do.”

“Sometimes, Harry, you’re a real dick.”