The Cairo Affair

2

By the time Stan left the apartment on Saturday morning, she was only able to sit on the sofa and stare into space. She’d been in town a single night, and she was already exhausted: It had been a while since she’d dealt with this level of anxiety. Budapest had been dull, but it had been a vacation from deceit, from the faces upon faces. In Budapest there had been no clandestine hours with Zora’s flash drives, sucking out all of Emmett’s precious information; there had been no more clandestine meetings in cafés and suburban squares where Zora praised her, no visits to parks and crumbling buildings to seek out dead drops. And the lies—so many lies for Emmett and Stan and whoever else she ran into, for Zora had told her that the investigators could come from anywhere. They will suspect you eventually—make no mistake—but you’re very good, draga. You know how to mix and circulate and present. Thus the lies had been for everyone. In Budapest she had lied to Glenda and Mary and Tracey and Anita about little things, but often the lies were only to give herself little injections of adrenaline. Budapest, really, had made her soft.

Once she pried herself out of her lethargy she poured another coffee and did what she’d been waiting to do: She made the call again, using Stan’s old cell phone. Again, the Arabic recording told her that Zora’s number had been disconnected.

Did she really think this would work so easily, six months later? A single phone call, and presto: Zora Balašević would be back in her life?

Yes, for Sophie had never fooled herself into thinking that she was the only reason Zora Balašević had moved to Cairo. She was a small fish, while that sexy blonde with all the leg was much bigger—she was the kind of fish who could rub and kiss intelligence out of big Russian mafiosi on command.

Then it occurred to her: Of course Zora was still in Cairo—she had just changed numbers. Sophie had become a security risk as soon as she’d left town. Therefore, Zora had gotten rid of the phone she had used with Sophie, so that they could both go on with their lives. She’d said as much once: When spies say good-bye it’s really good-bye. We wipe our memories clean. You understand? In movies they’re always getting in touch with old comrades, but this is not reality. Instead, we build new lives that have nothing to do with each other. This is how we survive.

Changing phone numbers was a simple matter, but changing homes was more difficult, so she found a city map on her iPad and began to chart her route from Garden City to Al-Muizz Street. Bus lines. No taxi, for now she was thinking like a spy, wanting to leave no paper trail. She showered and made herself presentable in yesterday’s clothes, patting them flat, then grabbed Stan’s spare keys and descended to the street.

She took a long walk north along Al Kasr Al Aini toward Tahrir Square, absorbing Cairo with each step. She’d gone from airport to car to apartment, but now she was a part of the city that had once made her feel so liberated, and she tried to breathe it all in. The smell of exhaust and roasting meats, of cigarettes and cologne. The broad avenue teemed with pedestrians, dark and loud and full of some quality she believed Westerners lacked. An appreciation of loitering, perhaps, or some truer love of life—she didn’t know. She only knew that it made her feel as if she still had something to learn here.

When she reached Tahrir Square, she took a few minutes to orient herself in that vast circle that had not long ago overflowed with human bodies demanding change, a mass ruptured now and then by security service thugs riding in on horseback, swinging clubs, firing guns. Now, it was nearly as she remembered it—cleaned up, almost elegant, some storefronts still covered in cardboard but most with new glass and doors. Disruption. People here knew how easily life could be disrupted. A whole world could vanish in an instant. They had understood this in Prague. They had understood it in Yugoslavia, too, where they had fought the chaos by feasting.

In the shadow of the Headquarters of the Arab League, she joined a crowd at a bus stop, then climbed aboard a diesel monstrosity that brought them up to Talaat Harb Square, where she waited twenty minutes before climbing aboard another bus that carried her all the way to Al-Muizz Street. On the way, among the warm press of locals, sweat tickling her back, she felt the low hum of that old thrill: anonymity and secret purpose. She was a stranger on a foreign bus searching for her controller.

As they passed through Islamic Cairo, however, the feeling drained, for she was soon back to Emmett. The next day was his funeral, and she imagined in-laws dressed in Protestant black, weepy but not loud, for too much noise was abhorrent. Emmett had made wicked fun of such things, and it was a shame that she wouldn’t be there to make fun of it for him. She wondered what they would be thinking about her absence. Would they be angry? Worried? Christ—was anybody worried about her? Were they searching at that moment, scouring satellite photos and listening for the signal from her phone? Was there an office somewhere in Langley where some young agent had been tasked with finding Sophie Kohl?

She hadn’t even turned on the television that morning—was her disappearance on the news?

She disembarked on the southern end of the ancient, sun-drenched street, and as she walked north she sometimes caught glimpses between the low buildings, some recently renovated, of the ever-present Citadel. It was not a long walk—ten minutes, maybe—but the stares she received made it feel much longer—she’d forgotten how Egyptian eyes could bore into her, how sometimes men she passed would hiss and cluck their tongues at her. She wiped at her wet forehead, trudging up stone steps with crumbling, medieval buildings on either side—ornate, arched entryways and windows, walls tiger-striped by layers of dark bricks and light. She passed the aromatic spice and perfume markets, the mausoleum and madrasa of the Qalawun complex, and the Aqmar Mosque, before reaching the mud-colored, flat-faced building across from the house of Mustafa Ja’far, an eighteenth-century coffee trader. There was a narrow entrance with three stone steps, and as she mounted them the peeling front door opened and a tall, handsome Egyptian came out, smiling at her. “Good afternoon,” he said, knowing from her face and blond hair what language to speak.

“Hi, can you let me in?” she asked, then wondered if greetings were the extent of his English.

They weren’t. He unlocked the front door and held it open. “You live here?”

“Visiting a friend. Number five.”

He looked her square in the face, eyes bruised and a little glassy. “A friend of Pili’s?”

“How did you know?” she said, thinking, Zora’s cover name, Pili.

“She’s the only one who speaks English.”

“Right,” said Sophie. “Of course.”

She lingered in the doorway, watching the Egyptian disappear into the crowds, then stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind her. She stood in the gloom of the entryway, smelling dust from some ongoing renovation. Someone, somewhere, was cooking something wonderful. She climbed the narrow stairs she remembered climbing only twice before in her life—each time, like now, with apprehension in her gut.

Their meetings had usually been in nondescript, public places, so the two times she’d come to this apartment had been exceptional. Her first visit was to celebrate their initial success. Sophie had delivered a flash drive full of information, and afterward Zora had wooed her with champagne and the details of a UBS Bank savings account, opened at the Albisriederplatz branch in Zurich, which had jumped from zero to twenty thousand euros overnight. You’re a natural, Sofia. That had been a wonderful night, just the two of them drunk and dreamy and open. Emmett had been on a trip to Alexandria, and so she stayed over, though in the morning when she let her out Zora reminded her that they were never to meet there again. Tradecraft, draga.

Of course.

Yet there had been a second visit, nearly a year later. Zora hadn’t been answering her phone, so Sophie came to the apartment. She’d survived a liberating year of betrayal, while Emmett was succumbing to an onset of evil moods that she would only be able to fully understand moments before he was murdered. Their fights had been mounting, and at the time she’d begun to believe that she was the cause. Her affairs: the one with Stan, and the one with Zora. She was beginning to believe that he knew she was selling his work on to their Serbian friend, though she had never even told him that Zora was in town. And if he didn’t know anything, then she was sure he would figure it out eventually. Her only option was to withdraw.

But Zora must have sensed her apprehension, for she dropped out of contact, and Sophie’s only recourse was to seek her out.

That had been April of 2010. By then she’d been a traitor for a year and an adulteress for nearly five months, and she felt as if her fragile world were going to collapse on her. So she’d rung Zora’s bell, and after a moment was in. Zora began with apologies—“I’ve been out of the country.”

Over glasses of bourbon, Sophie told her. It had been a wonderful ride, but she couldn’t take it anymore. It was time for them to shake hands and call it quits. She couldn’t go on deceiving Emmett.

“Because he is such an innocent,” Zora said.

Sophie wasn’t going to take the bait. She shrugged. “It’s got to end.”

Zora made fresh drinks, and when she returned from the kitchen she was a different woman. A woman that Sophie had yet to meet—or, perhaps, a woman she hadn’t met in twenty years. Gone were the smiles, the easy sisterhood of information professionals, and the understated flirtation that drew Sophie to her, promising an erotic relationship that, despite overtures, had never actually been consummated. “You can’t stop,” Zora said. “Not now.”

“Of course I can.”

“Your material is in demand. The value is rising.”

“So is my blood pressure.”

“Then take medication.”

“You’re not listening, Zora. I’m done.”

“No, Sophie Kohl. You are not done. When you are done, I will tell you.” No smiles, no warmth.

Sophie set down her glass and stood. “I’m sorry. I really am. But we both knew it couldn’t go on forever.”

Zora set down her own glass but didn’t get up. “Do you want Emmett to learn about Stan?”

Sophie lost track of her feet, spread her hands for balance, and stared hard at her. “You would do that?”

“To protect my information, yes.”

She imagined this, Emmett learning about Stan, and how it might crush him. She could feel herself weakening, so she pushed the image away. “Then do it,” she said. She was stronger than she had been a year before. If her world had to snap, then let it snap.

As she walked to the door, she heard Zora say, “And Vukovar? How do you think the American government would react to that? What their diplomat and his wife used to get up to in war-ravaged third world countries?”

She was touching the door handle, and she kept her hand on it as she turned to look at Zora. “You would ruin Emmett’s career simply to keep me?”

“Worse,” she said. “I would ruin Emmett if I was unable to keep you. We’re not talking about thousands of dollars, Sofia. We are talking about millions. I would do a lot more for that.”

“You’re a bitch.”

“You finally understand,” Zora said quietly.

Their relationship became something completely different that day, and now, nearly a year later, Sophie listened at the heavy door to number five. She thought of Emmett. As bad as his final minutes had been, they could have been worse. Instead of learning about Stan, he could have learned about Zora. That would’ve killed him before the actual murder.

Through the door, she heard a radio playing and a woman’s voice speaking Arabic, either to herself or on a telephone. Sophie raised her hand in a small fist, then rapped on the door.