The Cairo Affair

1

Were she honest with herself, Sophie would admit that the most jarring moment of the previous week, not counting the murder, was when she realized that she had been second, an afterthought. Zora had gone to Emmett first—he was why she had come to Egypt—but Emmett had been too strong, or too upstanding, to be swayed by her threats. Sophie, on the other hand, had folded immediately.

They had been in Cairo nearly a month, still fresh from Paris, and Sophie had been relaxing at the Arkadia Mall. This was long before looters gutted and set fire to the building during the uprising. Back then, in 2009, it had been a cool, pleasant place for moneyed shoppers to spend afternoons away from the sweltering crowds, and it was there that Zora appeared, as if plucked from a dream, smiling and opening her arms, saying, “Sofia,” in her dripping accent. Everything from Zora Balašević’s mouth was drenched. She was older now, older but still vital, crackling with enthusiasm and intensity. Once, that intensity would have frightened her, for she remembered how Zora could swing between lightness and the weight of history. But now things were different—weren’t they? They were both older, both mellowed by the years, just two old friends in a strange land.

Over cups of tea at Groppi, Zora asked her about France and the life of a diplomat’s wife, using a form of English so different from the strangled Zora-speak of 1991. Over the past two decades she had ironed out most of the mistakes, settling on a slightly formal foreigner’s take on the language. She smiled a lot, too, but it was a smile of amusement—they both remembered how life had been in Yugoslavia, and the life Sophie was describing sounded as if it were part of a lunar existence.

“Tell me honestly, Sofia,” she said, sticking to the Balkanized name she’d used in 1991. “You are bored, no?”

Sophie laughed aloud to cover up a bubbling anxiety. Was Zora switching again—lightness to weight? “Of course,” she said. “But I’d be a fool to complain.”

“I don’t believe so,” Zora said, her generous smile slipping away. “You’re not a brainless puppet. You never were. Leisure is not enough to satisfy your soul.”

Sophie reacted instinctively to people who threw around the word “soul,” but from Zora’s lips it didn’t seem out of order. Zora thought differently; she thought Balkan. Sophie said, “I suppose you’re right.”

“Of course I am, draga. You need something more.”

As if this were something entirely fresh and original, Sophie leaned back and stared into her sultry eyes. She put Vukovar out of her mind and focused instead on those days before Vukovar. She remembered warm nights in the countryside, beer and rakija, dancing to Yugorock bands—Električni Orgazam, Disciplina Kičme, Idoli, Haustor—as well as the Velvet Underground, then afterward feasting on platters of grilled meats. Carnivorous and pleasurable. Unlike Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, Novi Sad had embraced them, absorbing them into a different way of living, boisterous and celebratory. There was so much happy chatter about Adriatic vacations and house parties and What do you think of Yugoslavia? before the politics would rear its head and the bitter shouting matches began. Yet each evening ended with forgiveness and kisses and proclamations of undying love. Existentially fatalistic, Emmett had called it. Their endless parties were an answer to the question: Why am I here? Their answer was to crank up the hi-fi.

Then she was back, and Zora was watching her. Sophie said, “You’re right. I do need something more.”

“You need a little adventure.”

Sophie shrugged.

“Don’t forget that I know exactly how you look when you’re having an adventure. I’ll bet it’s been twenty years since you looked like that.”

Sophie stared, repulsed by her audacity yet at the same time wanting more, wanting something to cut through the leisurely haze that she sometimes feared was consuming her. Zora was tapping on a door that, soon after their return home from Yugoslavia, she and Emmett had simply shut and locked. They’d come to the conclusion that they couldn’t change the past, and so to dwell on their mistakes would only cause more damage. Now, two decades later, the one person on earth who could pick that lock had arrived in Cairo.

But Zora was smiling radiantly as she said these things. “You were alive then, you know? I thought at the time that you were the most beautiful woman I had ever known.”

“I doubt that.”

She rubbed Sophie’s knee, long red nails lightly scratching her thigh. “Believe me, Sofia. You were magnificent.”

Did Zora know what kind of effect her words would have? Now that Emmett was dead, she wanted to think that Zora Balašević had known everything. She wanted to believe that this Serb woman had been a master of manipulation, targeting her from the moment she learned the Kohls were in town, or maybe from the moment she laid eyes on that twenty-two-year-old Sophie back in Novi Sad. What she didn’t want to think was that Zora Balašević was no more omnipotent than anyone else, yet the evidence now suggested this. She had first tried Emmett, failed, and afterward gave the wife a try—she had probably been shocked by how easy Sophie was. A handful of nostalgia and a pinch of seduction, and she was hers.

When Sophie asked what Zora was doing in Cairo, her answers had been elusive. “Work, business. You know.” What kind of business? A shrug. “Information. It’s the information age, no?”

Sweet, naive Sophie: “You have a Web site?”

A Balkan laugh, throaty and rolling. “Oh, no. But maybe I should get one. What do you think?”

“If you don’t have a Web site, you don’t exist.”

Zora stroked the back of Sophie’s hand. “I think I’ll forget about the Web site, then.”

She had the uncanny ability of making elusive statements and giving Sophie a knowing look that suggested she was sharing a secret, so that the idea of asking for explanation never occurred to her. It was just so good to be part of Zora’s secret world that she didn’t want to break the illusion by asking foolish questions. Eventually, Zora said, “Maybe you’d like to work with me now and then. I think you would like it.”

Sophie just shrugged, flattered that anyone thought her worthy of employment these days, and later, after she’d posed the idea two more times, Sophie finally said, “Of course, Zora. I’m yours.”

When asking a woman to betray her husband and country, the question cannot be posed outright. It must be worked into. No matter how willing the traitor is, subtlety is still required. That first day they spent five hours together, moving from the mall to a bar in the Conrad Hilton. When Zora suggested the move, Sophie hesitated, but Zora cut the silence short with “Emmett is working late tonight—where do you have to be?”

“How did you know that?”

“Information, draga. Information is everywhere.”

So they ended up in the Jayda Lounge, Zora drinking Ketel One neat, Sophie diluting hers with cranberry juice. “Remember that club in the fortress?” Zora asked.

“A world away from this.”

“Look over there.”

She nodded at a table by the window that overlooked the Nile and the Cairo cityscape, where three men and a smoldering blonde were gathered. The men were large under their expensive suits, the pristine fabric straining to contain them. Two were shaved bald. “Russians?” Sophie asked.

“You were always astute, Sofia. The girl—she’s a friend of mine.”

Not once had the girl looked over at their table.

“What do you mean?”

Lowering her voice, Zora said, “Do not stare, draga. I mean that she works for me.”

Sophie looked again at the sexy young thing. With her curves and mascaraed eyes and the long slice down the side of her dress, exposing so much thigh, she looked like candy—that was the only word Sophie could think of to describe her. She didn’t look like an employee of anything having to do with “information.” There seemed to be only one industry to which she was suited. Then the simple girl in Sophie understood, and she took a drink. “But who do you work for, Zora?”

“For myself.”

“But you sell to someone.”

“Those are my clients, draga. Not my employers.”

“Who are your clients?”

“There has to be some confidentiality, no?”

It was an answer of sorts, but Sophie was curious. “Just name one.”

“Why don’t you guess?”

“Serbia.”

“You know how patriotic I am.”

This didn’t feel right, and it took a moment for Sophie to remember why. “You used to call governments the first sin of humanity. You hated them.”

Zora smiled. “I grew up, Sofia. Countries, like corporations, are not people; they’re not worthy of hatred. Nor are they worthy of love.”

“And all that other nonsense?”

“What nonsense?”

“The nationalism. The propaganda. All that stuff about the Croats. I looked into it after I got home. You really took some liberties with the facts.”

Zora rocked her head, considering this. “We all fall victim to enthusiasms now and then. If I remember right, you did, too.”

This was a different woman from the one she’d known in Yugoslavia, the one who had preached a love of Serbian soil. Her logic was less Balkan and more in line with how Sophie thought: Love was wasted on nation-states, even if that nation-state was the United States of America. Too much enthusiasm was bound to get you in trouble.

Since early 2001, she and Emmett had lived outside of America, and she often wondered how they would feel once they finally returned to the country that Emmett represented to the rest of the world. How American could one be after so long away? Or did it work the other way—was distance making them more American? She’d seen both tendencies in expats. Some immersed themselves in another culture, speaking English only when there was no other option, and prattled on about the mistakes America made throughout the world. Others—like Emmett—became defenders and progressively more acute apologists against the wave of anti-American sentiment that existed everywhere on the planet. It was his job, she supposed, to defend questionable wars and extraordinary renditions and executions by drone attack, but he was often emotional about it, and the question she always wanted to ask him was: Do you really know what it is you’re defending anymore?

When was the last time they had driven out to Wal-Mart to load up on the week’s groceries? They’d never attended a PTA meeting or voted in municipal elections, and the recession had had little effect on them. They didn’t really even know what it was like to live in a city where they could listen in on strangers’ conversations and actually understand every word—she’d forgotten what it was like to swim in a sea of English. Maybe this was why, during the occasional political argument at this or that diplomat’s residence, Sophie grew so easily tongue-tied and confused. Unlike Emmett, she didn’t have a government-approved list of rebuttals filed away. Every anti-American complaint sounded perfectly reasonable to her, and all she ever wanted to do was agree. Why get upset? After all, they weren’t complaining about her personally, and they weren’t complaining about someone she loved.

One thing about Zora had not changed in twenty years: her confidence. Sitting in the Jayda Lounge, Sophie again felt overwhelmed by this Serbian woman’s surety. Being with someone so convinced of the rightness of her actions was a little intoxicating, and she felt the buzz again. “Do you have other clients?”

Zora smiled and tapped a nail against the side of her glass. “Information wants to be free—that’s what people are saying these days. I wouldn’t go that far, though. I believe I should be paid well for it.”

When she smiled again, Sophie found herself smiling as well. Then an involuntary laugh escaped her. “Who are you now, Zora?”

Her eyes widened, big and dark and full of glamour. “I am an angel come down to raise you from the dead.”