The Cairo Affair

7

Stan returned to his office and called Paul, who had spent the whole day in room 306. “Nothing,” he told Stan in the midst of a yawn. Hope was bleeding away. “You want me to leave?”

“No,” Stan told him, then hung up. He settled back in his chair, again looking at the Stumbler memo, and rubbed at his eyes. He thought back to a year ago, to the dour Langley man telling him of intercepted communications from the Syrian, Libyan, and Pakistani embassies. Pretending to be giving him the whole story. Had Langley really not trusted him, or Harry? Had—

His desk phone rang, breaking his wandering thoughts. He picked up. “Stan Bertolli.”

“My man,” said Saul, his voice rough from a lingering cold. “I got your name.”

Briefly, Stan didn’t know what he was talking about, then it came to him—the video still from Frankfurt, Balašević with a man. “Tell me.”

“Michael Khalil, American.”

“American?”

“So his passport says.”

“What do you say, Saul?”

“I say it’s fake because his passport number matches a guy who died of a coronary in 1998. He can’t use the passport to get into Fortress America, but he’s used it to visit other countries. We’re running his face through the recognition software, but God only knows how long that’ll take.”

“Where’s he been recently?”

Saul hummed as he read through his information. “The Khalil passport spent a week in Tripoli last year, but the rest of that year it was in your town—except for that one-day visit to Frankfurt. Then last week he visited Germany. Munich.”

“For how long?”

“Three days, March 1 to March 3. Then he flew to … well, why don’t you take a guess?”

“Cairo,” Stan said.

“I don’t care what anyone around here says, Stan. You’re one smart kid.”

Stan closed his eyes, thinking about that flight in and out of Munich. After murdering Emmett, Gjergj Ahmeti had been tracked to a train heading from Budapest to Munich. Emmett was killed on March 2. Khalil could easily have flown in and out of Munich for a visit to Budapest to oversee the killing—what other way could he interpret it? Which meant that the man Zora Balašević had met in Frankfurt—her Egyptian or Serbian client—had been behind Emmett’s murder. Not the United States of America.

Stan stared at the dead phone still in his hand, then checked with Nancy: Harry had stepped out again, destination unknown. He was overwhelmed by the feeling that he was playing catch-up, yet he didn’t know what he was trying to catch up to. It was getting late.

He called Paul. “Close it down. Go home.”

“Need me in the office?”

“Just get some sleep. I’ll call you later if I need you.”

“Yes, sir,” Paul said, evidently pleased.