The Cairo Affair

8

The low sun was hidden behind clouds as he drove to al-Azhar Park on the east side of town. He parked along a quiet section of the Passages Insaid al-Azhar Garden, near the main road, then locked up and headed into the vast, sculpted park. As he moved forward, he assessed (as Paolo Bertolli might) everything he saw: a long line of empty cars parked down the curb, a couple taking a relaxing stroll toward the enormous cafés on the man-made lake, two old men on a bench talking over a hand of cards, a woman in a hijab watching three children dance to a transistor radio playing Arabic pop. He followed a cobblestone path deeper into the park, where it opened up and palm trees were aligned geometrically and marble bridges crossed over little streams. It wasn’t busy here—most families were preparing for dinner—and he saw a couple with a teenaged girl packing up a picnic and heading out. He settled on a bench, gazing across the lake with its fountains and restaurants and sunken garden on the other side, a spot of tranquility in the clogged mess of Cairo. As he waited, the clouds released a sprinkle of welcome rain that dimpled the lake and misted his hair, but only briefly.

He thought of these Egyptians whose world he passed through every day—how many friends had he made among them? None. He and most of his embassy co-workers were ghosts in this town, circulating only among themselves, as if the locals were there just to make sure their electricity and water flowed, and that they were well fed. He lived among Egyptians but not with them, which, on those rare days when he grew philosophical and critical of his life, bothered him deeply.

Ali Busiri found him easily. They didn’t know each other well; a couple of meetings in other parks were the sum of their personal relationship. There were no pass-phrases with a contact as high-ranking as Busiri.

He was plump and healthy-looking, and if Stan hadn’t known Busiri’s file he would’ve been tempted to use the word “jolly” to describe him. But he knew enough about Ali Busiri to know that he was far from jolly, and his expression that day, interrupted only by drags on a filtered Camel, did nothing to change his opinion. He sat down beside Stan, stinking of smoke. “This is about Emmett Kohl?”

Stan nodded.

“Otherwise I wouldn’t have come. He was a good man.”

“Maybe you didn’t know him that well,” Stan said in spite of himself.

Busiri turned to give him a look, something close to disgust. “You wanted to talk.”

“First I have a question: Do you know where Sophie Kohl is?”

The older man blinked. “Emmett’s widow? No. Is she missing?”

Stan very nearly answered the question before changing his mind. If Busiri didn’t know where she was, then that part of the conversation was finished. “I’d like to talk about Zora Balašević.”

Busiri smiled thinly; it did nothing to brighten his face. “The lady Serb. What about her?”

“She was working for you.”

Busiri rocked his head from side to side, but he wasn’t up to playing games today. “Yes.”

“She passed you intelligence from the American embassy.”

“Yes.”

“And her source was Emmett Kohl.”

This time the smile did brighten his face, just barely. “No,” he said.

Stan took a breath. “Then who was it?”

Busiri turned away from him to look up the length of the path. Stan supposed he was looking for shadows, though there seemed little reason for it. Meetings between American diplomatic staff and Egyptian civil servants happened all the time. Some, Stan had heard, were even friends. Speaking in the direction of the rest of the park, so that Stan could only see his profile, he said, “Mr. Bertolli, what did you think of Omar Halawi’s warning?”

“Who?”

Busiri turned back. “You think I don’t know about Omar? You call him RAINMAN, as if he’s some idiot savant, but he’s not.”

“You’ve been running him?”

Busiri looked surprised. “Of course. You didn’t know?”

No, Stan hadn’t known, though he’d had his suspicions. He felt stupid.

“But his message, Mr. Bertolli.”

“That we should look at ourselves.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know what to think. Particularly now that I know everything he told us was coming from you.”

Busiri snorted softly, then shook his head. “Omar liked Emmett. Omar also has some problems that I believe will eventually require medication.”

“Are you saying he’s paranoid?”

“I am no doctor. However, for some people the layers upon layers of lies have a detrimental effect. One has to rewire the brain to do the kind of work we do. One crossed wire can throw everything off.”

“What does he believe?”

Busiri took another drag and exhaled smoke. “Why don’t we start with a simple question? The inverse of yours. Where is Jibril Aziz?”

“Tell me what Omar Halawi believes; then we can move to that.”

“So you do know where Jibril is?” he asked, a trace of hope in his voice.

Stan nodded.

Busiri considered him for a moment, smoking, then tossed the unfinished cigarette into the damp grass, where it sizzled. “Omar and Jibril are friends. When Jibril drafted a plan to overthrow the mad despot in Tripoli, he brought it to Omar for consideration.”

That was a surprise—Aziz had brought a top-secret plan to the Egyptians? Stan shook his head; it didn’t matter now. “You know we rejected it, right? The Agency shelved the operation.”

“Did you?” Busiri asked. “Perhaps you rejected it. Jibril was certainly told that it was rejected. But what was the reality? In some back room at your Langley, the planners were reconsidering. They reconsider everything, don’t they? They put everything on ice.”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Stan admitted.

“I’m not going to be coy with you, Mr. Bertolli,” he said, opening his hands. “You see how open I’m being. However, you’ll also notice that Omar has been reticent of late. This is his decision, not mine. He’s appalled by what he believes the Agency is up to.”

Stan shifted on the bench so that he could see Busiri’s face better in the sudden darkness—sunset had occurred without him noticing, even though a distant prayer should have reminded him. “I don’t have keys to secret back rooms, so you’re going to have to be clearer with me. I’m just a cog.”

“Just a cog?” Busiri grinned, then lit another Camel. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Bertolli, because maybe you are just a cog, or maybe you’re the man with his fingers on the controls. Either way, you should know what I know, for perhaps that will lead you to reconsider your actions.”

Stan waited.

“Jibril called Omar a couple of weeks ago. February 22, five days after the Day of Revolt in Benghazi. He said, ‘They’re doing it, Omar. Stumbler is beginning.’ That’s all he had to say.”

Though Stan knew the answer, he still wanted it spelled out. “What did it mean?”

Busiri brought the cigarette to his mouth, blinking, and took a drag. “It meant,” he said, smoke coming out with his words, “that it was all set up. Once the Libyan people began to work for their own future, once they were dying in the streets, your people were prepared to take advantage of the historic moment. Take advantage of their courage and their martyrs. It meant that your world-renowned Agency was ready to steal the revolution from the bloodied hands of those in Libya who love freedom.” He paused, took another drag, then said, “And because of this breach of basic human decency, I suggest you keep your distance from Omar. If placed in the same room with a representative of your Agency—with you, perhaps—I fear he may become violent. And we don’t want that, do we?”

Stan thought about this a moment, briefly feeling Omar Halawi’s anger, an anger Busiri seemed to share. Busiri wasn’t talking about the CIA helping the revolution but taking it over, installing America’s handpicked leaders in the presidential palace. He could understand the Egyptian’s anger, but only to a degree. He thought again, then said, “I’m not going to take a lecture on basic human decency from a member of the Central Security Forces. We weren’t gunning down protesters in Tahrir Square.” Stan paused, but Busiri didn’t react, so he went on. “What do you think the radicals are going to do once there’s a vacuum in Tripoli? Do you think they’re going to sit back and watch from their caves? No. They’re going to threaten and sweet-talk the electorate until they get power, and then it’ll be sharia law, women as chattel, and the export of teenagers with backpack bombs. Which would you prefer on your border—a Western-leaning government, or an Islamofascist state?”

Busiri scratched the edge of his lip, smiling. “You speak as if there’s a world of difference when dealing with those two kinds of entities. There isn’t, Mr. Bertolli. States are predictable, particularly when they have an extreme ideology. So are intelligence agencies.”

“What about you?” Stan asked. “Should we be careful putting our representatives in the same room with you?”

Busiri raised his eyebrows. “Omar is passionate; I try not to be. I believe that things are very complicated. I believe that in the end this has little bearing on the security of Egypt, and so perhaps I shouldn’t care.”

Stan was hot, sweating inside his shirt, distracted by the wrong question: Was the Agency trying to hijack a popular revolution in Libya? And if so, what would this mean? He was losing track of the smaller threads, the ones he had requested this meeting to discuss. Busiri’s cigarette had gone out; the Egyptian noticed this and tossed it away, irritated, then stood.

Stan got to his feet as well. “Why did Aziz meet with Emmett Kohl a week before his murder in Budapest?”

“Do you want to know what Omar believes?”

“Yes.”

“Use your imagination.”

Busiri’s eyes were weary. He wasn’t goading Stan; he simply wanted him to do a little thinking for himself, so Stan spoke aloud as it came to him. “Aziz was going in to undermine Stumbler. Emmett was working with him.”

With a look of scorn, Ali Busiri clapped silently, then glanced up at the clouded night sky. “Allah tells us it’s time to go.”

“Wait,” Stan said as a new thought came to him.

The Egyptian frowned with impatience.

“Did you really try to defect?”

Busiri’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I was told that you tried to come to our side.”

Busiri sighed, then glanced at his watch, a Rolex. He glared at Stan. “Who told you this? It’s ridiculous.”

“So you’re denying it.”

“Absolutely.”

Someone was lying, but Stan wasn’t sure who.

Busiri stepped forward and, in an unexpected sign of kindness, put a hand on Stan’s shoulder and squeezed. “You and me, we love our countries. My country may be different now, but do we lose our love for a woman because she has matured?”

“Are you going to tell me who Balašević’s source was?”

Another pat on the shoulder, and this close he could see all the haggard lines in the old spy’s face. “It’s time for you to tell me where Jibril is.”

Stan hesitated, but Ali Busiri was through sharing his information. “Dead. I don’t know where, but he’s dead.”

Busiri withdrew his hand. “How?”

“I don’t know. But I was told he was dead.”

“By whom?”

“My station chief.”

“Harold Wolcott.”

Stan nodded.

“Do you believe him?”

“I think I do.”

After a moment, the Egyptian said, “I suggest you put some thought into your career path, Mr. Bertolli. Remember: Love makes us blind.” He raised a hand in farewell and, before turning to leave, added, “The answers are always in front of us.”

As Stan walked back through the darkness toward his car, he still felt the weight of Busiri’s hand on his shoulder. There had been times when, after reading some journalistic revelation or other, he had questioned his choice of employer, but those moments were rare. What he knew, because he’d been there, was that the people who clocked in each day at Langley were essentially decent. They tried, through whatever means necessary, to assure that their country remained safe. He’d never questioned that fact. The problems occurred when it came to the details, the how—that was when things became dirty. It was true of everything. Even so, the Agency tried to maintain a certain standard of morality—not for the sake of morality itself, but in order not to be caught with blood all over its hands.

Would Langley back a plan to put a friendly government into Tripoli in the middle of a popular revolution? Maybe. There were huge risks, but they weren’t insurmountable. More likely, though, Langley would follow the path of least resistance: Wait until the dust had settled, take a look at the situation, and then make its decisions.

Someone like Omar Halawi believed otherwise. He was influenced by the same misinformation the Agency had done too little to combat, the failed operations and occasional misdeeds that painted the Agency as a monster that needed to be kept caged if the world wanted its sons and daughters to remain safe. To people like Omar Halawi—and, perhaps, Busiri—CIA was part of a vast conspiracy to turn the planet into drones friendly to American business.

He was near the entrance to the park when he paused beside a palm tree. Busiri’s final words came to him. The answers are always in front of us. Before that: Love makes us blind. He closed his eyes and squeezed the dome of his forehead against another impending headache. Ali Busiri wasn’t talking about the CIA. He was talking about …

He said “No” aloud. He held on to his stomach.

For a year he’d had all the facts in front of him, everything pointing in the same direction, yet he’d been blind to the obvious conclusion. He thought back, raising the puzzle pieces and refitting them, and … there. He saw with despair just how well the pieces meshed. Not all of them, no, but the mystery of the leaked information. It was right there. It had always been right there.

It took a few minutes for him to recover, but it was only a partial recovery. He straightened, fighting against the pounding in his head, and dialed her number. No surprise: She was unreachable. He stared at the phone in his hand. In an instant, she had become someone different. A stranger.

What would his father do?

His father would slink off in order to live another day, but Stan wasn’t his father, and he never would be. He would find Sophie. He would withhold judgement until they had spoken, because Harry was right: Until he knew everything, he didn’t know anything.

He jogged the rest of the way to the Passages Insaid al-Azhar Garden, along the line of dark cars until he reached his own. He unlocked the door and climbed inside, thinking alternately of Sophie Kohl and of revolutionaries fighting in Libyan streets. Dying, so that they, and no one else, would control their fate.

The inside of the windshield was foggy, and he wiped at it with his sleeve. It took a moment, him sliding the key into the ignition, before he noticed the smell in the car: garlic. A strong stink of roasted garlic. Then he thought: The glass is fogged. He looked up at the rearview mirror, and from the darkness of the backseat he saw a nose, eyes dark above them, and a bar of light shining across a large ear that—why?—had a tip of blue rubber sticking out of the canal. All of these details so close he could touch the face rising from the gloom. It was a face he’d seen before—a light-skinned Egyptian—and as the fear swelled (he now understood why the man wore earplugs) the recognition followed. On a computer screen, sitting down in Frankfurt Airport, glancing up at a passing security guard. Stan said, “Who the hell—”