The Cairo Affair

1

Over the space of his sixty years, twelve spent in the foreign missions section of the Central Security Forces, Omar Halawi had learned that the quickest way to uncover hidden facts is to keep an eye out for things that do not belong. This particular sense had many times proven to be his primary asset, and it was how he came to learn of Jibril Aziz.

Given the wealth of nationalities that made up the United States, it had always amused him how many white men with English and Irish and German surnames the CIA flew into Egypt, and so when, in 2002, a casual report on Harry Wolcott noted a three-hour clandestine meeting with a young Libyan American, Omar took notice. Once they had his name, Omar followed the files backward to the 1993 coup attempt against Muammar Gadhafi and the execution of young Aziz’s father. It wasn’t long before they had a barebones story for him: Jibril Aziz was in Cairo under nonofficial cover, meeting only occasionally with Wolcott, always outside the embassy, though his primary work had him slipping with mounting frequency over the border into Libya.

At the time, Abdel Suyuti ran Omar’s section, and so together they pored over the facts in front of them. Abdel, unlike his successor, had considered it his duty to protect the foreigners in his land, whether or not they were spies. They decided to leave Jibril Aziz alone for the time being, as there was no evidence he was spying on Egypt. Aziz was plainly gathering information on that madman of the western deserts—who, despite proclamations of solidarity between Egypt and Libya, was an embarrassment to all of North Africa.

When Abdel retired in 2004, there had been good reasons for Omar to believe that he would move up to lead the section, so he was surprised to find Ali Busiri, from the sometimes-competing State Security Investigations Service, sitting behind the desk that had been empty for only three days.

Fouada had told him to send in a letter of protest. “It’s not done that way,” he explained. She didn’t care how it was done, she told him. There was a principle here. There was also, he suspected, a woman’s desire to be married to an important man, a desire that had remained just beyond her reach for going on three decades, just as the desire for children had been denied them both.

He had not protested Ali Busiri’s ascension, but he had asked questions. He’d been around long enough to have friends throughout Central Security, as well as a couple in the very well-informed General Intelligence Service. In a sly café off of Halaat Tarb one old hand explained that Ali Busiri was friendly with Mubarak’s inner circle, particularly with Omar Suleiman, director of the General Intelligence Service and arguably the next in line to rule Egypt. Cronyism had given Ali Busiri Abdel’s old chair, but what else had he expected? Omar, in the end, was a realist, a flaw that Fouada often pointed out to him. “But don’t get down,” one of his friends told him. “Busiri’s no wilting flower. He did great things at the SSI.”

“Like what?”

“Stopped a Japanese Red Army hijacking. This was 1992. They were going to take over a flight from Cairo to Tripoli and demand cash from Gadhafi.”

Omar frowned, running a hand through his hair. “I never heard about this.”

“Which shows how well he took care of it.”

His friend, it turned out, had been right: Busiri seemed born for subterfuge. While on paper their section existed primarily for the protection of various foreign diplomatic corps in the capital, Busiri soon raised the bar, expanding their mandate by issuing new directives to turn diplomatic staff into Egyptian assets.

Before altering their basic purpose, however, Busiri spent weeks reviewing the work that had been done under Abdel Suyuti, and they often had to face Busiri’s rage as he blustered on about the ridiculous state the section was in. They’d been sitting on their hands, he told them. Collecting dust. When he came across a file chronicling the activities of one Jibril Aziz, he called Omar into his office. “Am I to believe that you discovered an American spy and didn’t do anything about it?” Omar wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical. “Do you want to explain this apparently treasonous behavior?”

Unlike others in the office, Omar was too old to be intimidated by this newcomer’s rage. “His territory is Libya, not Egypt. There was no point letting him know that we knew about him. Better to watch from a distance.”

“And what has watching for an entire year taught you?”

“He visits often enough to suggest he has a large network inside Libya. He’s been building up something valuable.”

“How often does he go in?”

“It’s irregular.”

“How irregular?”

This was all in the file, but he answered anyway. “One or two months between visits. Stays between a week and a month each time.”

Busiri sniffed, a sign of irritation. “Can you at least tell me the next time he crosses over? Is that too much to ask?”

“Of course, sir.”

When in December 2004 Omar reported that Aziz had crossed over again, his boss said, “Thank you. It’s so nice to be trusted with sensitive information.”

While Omar bristled at this treatment—he was, after all, ten years Busiri’s senior—he couldn’t help but recognize that their section was entering a renaissance phase. For the first time in his memory, intelligence was moving out of their office on the seventh floor of the Interior Ministry to other parts of Central Security, to SSI, and to GIS. They were depending less and less on the kindness of other departments. “Independence,” Busiri told them during one of their weekly meetings, “is the great reward of intelligence.”

Even so, there were failures. In early 2005, a colleague in the office, Hisham Minyawi, recruited a high-ranking official in the Libyan embassy named Yousef Rahim, using a double ploy of bribe and blackmail. There was a night of celebration in the office—cookies and tea for everyone—but it turned sour when, three days later, Rahim was recalled to Tripoli and summarily executed.

A few weeks after that incident, while Ali Busiri and his personal assistant, Rashid el-Sawy, were on a trip to Damascus to discuss new cooperation initiatives, Omar received a call in the office. A young man had been picked up on the Libyan border, hungry and dehydrated, without documents. He’d spoken to the border guards in Libyan Arabic, calling himself Akram Haddad. No one believed it, but since he refused to say more they e-mailed a well-lit photograph to Cairo, and each of the section heads was contacted by the fifth floor to help identify the stranger. Omar gazed at the image from the internal server, and in the features of that vacant face he recognized Jibril Aziz.

He had Sayyid drive him nearly eight hours to the border, where the guards—Bedouins, mostly, for they were the only ones who could take the climate—cleared out a communal dining room for the conversation. Their prisoner sat at the center table, a bowl of soup in front of him. Omar took the seat opposite and laid his fingertips on the edge of the table. In English, he said, “Hello, Jibril.”

To his credit, the young man didn’t react, only stared into his untouched soup. Only twenty-seven, but he had the skill set of an older man. Or maybe he was just in shock.

Omar continued in English. “There is no need for you to play this game. I am not going to take you away in chains.” He patted his pockets, coming up with cigarettes. Back then he never went anywhere without his Winstons. He offered the pack to Jibril, but the young man shook his head. Omar lit one and spoke quietly. “We have been watching your progress for over two years. You are really very talented—that it has taken this long for you to find serious trouble in the Brother Leader’s kingdom is a great feat. I know of good men who lasted less than a week before being returned in body bags.” He was stretching the truth, but it didn’t matter. “Can you look at me?”

Jibril did so. He was thin and too pale, his eyes still bloodshot; the man needed sleep. The border guards had told him that Jibril had appeared with dried blood smeared across his neck, but by then it had been cleaned off, revealing vertical scratches from his ear down to his collarbone. He needed a shave.

Omar said, “If you didn’t tell them anything, then your networks are safe. I will not be able to tell them anything because I am not going to ask about your networks. Of course, I would be happy to accept any intelligence you want to share, but I don’t want you to think that this is a prerequisite. We are going to give you a shave, some food, and get you back to Harry Wolcott once you’re clean and rested.”

Silence followed, and Jibril’s dark eyes bored into him. He had the eyes of a refugee, as full of mistrust as they were of desperate hope.

“Come,” Omar said, standing and making his decision quickly. “I am going to take you home.”

Had Busiri been in town, he would have called in for instructions, but this wasn’t the case. If he brought Jibril into the office, he would have no choice but to admit everything to Busiri later, and he wanted to keep his options open.

Sayyid drove them back while Jibril dozed in the backseat, and they reached Cairo by early morning. Sayyid helped their American guest to the door of Omar’s building in Giza. Omar took the stairs first, climbing to the fifth floor and letting himself in and telling Fouada that they had a guest. “Why didn’t you call me?” she demanded, suddenly in a panic, looking around their roomy home for things out of order.

“Because he won’t be here. You’ll never tell anyone that he was here. Do you understand?”

She did, though she didn’t like it, least of all when she saw the squalid condition of the man Sayyid was helping through the door.

They gave him the guest room, the blinds closed, and the planned twenty-four-hour stay turned into three days. By the first evening Fouada had warmed to him. It wasn’t so much Jibril she had warmed to, but the sudden presence of someone who, unlike her husband, was in dire need of her care. She washed him with wet towels and fed him soup the way a mother would feed a baby, or at least the way she imagined mothers fed their babies. On the second evening, Omar found her in the guest room singing a lullaby as Jibril slept.

In between these ministrations, Omar would sit with Jibril and talk, but never about work. He admitted to knowing of Jibril’s father, the great general Mustafa Aziz. “His death, and the deaths of the others, was an abomination. One of these days, Libya will be free of that man, and it will be because of men like your father, who sowed the seeds of change.”

Jibril looked at him, as if judging his honesty. “I’m not sure that’s true,” he said finally. “I don’t think anyone’s having an effect.”

“That’s because you have just had a grand failure. To you, all is destruction and woe. Give it a week, a month, a year. You will be optimistic again, and you will see that your work, as well as your father’s, is chipping away at the foundations.”

It turned out that Jibril’s employers saw it differently. After Jibril had been quietly returned to Harold Wolcott, orders came through from Langley. Jibril was blown, and therefore he was being recalled to Virginia. Before leaving, however, he stopped by and had tea with Fouada until Omar returned home from work. The two men went to the guest room and talked in English in case Fouada was listening, Omar smoking his Winstons. Jibril was less dejected than he had been before, but he had bad news. “Half my network is still in place,” he told Omar. “I got word from one of my Bedouins.”

“The other half?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how I lost them.”

“It happens,” Omar said. “Even to the best. How many?”

“Eleven,” said Jibril.

After a moment of silence to mourn the losses, Jibril said, “What would you think of working with me?”

“With Harry Wolcott, you mean.”

“I mean me. I’m being moved to operation planning. Sometimes I may need help with details. We’re not as all-knowing as we want people to think.”

Omar grinned.

“It’s not volunteer work,” Jibril said quickly. “I’m talking about exchanges of information.”

“Could you get clearance for such a thing?”

Jibril shrugged. “Asking for clearance might be a mistake.”

“I see what you mean,” Omar said, warming to the idea. “But I would be under no obligations, you understand? If I am uncomfortable—”

“Then it’s silence,” Jibril finished.

Though their business was taken care of, Jibril stayed for dinner at Fouada’s insistence, and over a platter of grilled lamb Omar watched how his wife fawned with the attentiveness of an adoring mother over this skinny little Libyan American.