Countdown in Cairo (28 page)

“One of them was the commandant of a labor camp in Poland,” he said. “Very nice man as long as you weren’t a Jew, in which case he was a monster. He escaped here after the war. I rather liked Uncle Heinz, murderer though he was.”

“That’s for you to live with, not me,” she said. “Assuming there’s even a grain of truth to any of that, which I suspect there isn’t.”

He kept a tight gaze upon her, eye to eye. Then he relented and smiled. “All right,” he said. “You passed.”

“I passed what?”

“Until right now I could have rejected you as a working partner. You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

“Now you do,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Fitzgerald by phone later this evening. He’ll send you some further background files, mostly on the intelligence operations of a ‘third party’ nation that is normally friendly to the United States, but isn’t always. Any idea who that might be?”

“I could offer a short list.”

“Good. Don’t. Fitzgerald will send you files. Read them in the morning. Tomorrow we’ll meet again. Have you been out to the Pyramids of Giza?”

“Never,” she said.

“Good again. We’ll go for an open-air ride. Perfect place to talk. I’ll explain what will be expected of you. Be in front of your hotel at 3:00 p.m. Dress a little bit like a tourist if you can. Khaki is good. If you don’t have any with you, there are shops around the hotel. It will be hot in the afternoon, then cool in the evening. Khaki is perfect.”

“I brought some with me,” she said. “Work shirt, slacks, and shorts.”

“Good move. Ever ride a horse?”

“Last year in the Kentucky Derby. Finished third.”

“Brilliant, but answer me for real.”

“When I was a teenager, neighbors had horses.”

“In the US?”

“Eastern Ontario. I also worked on a ranch in France one summer. I rode there too.”

“Like it?”

“France or the horses?”

“Either,” he asked.

“Both.”

“Good,” he said. “You might be on the back of a camel tomorrow. It’s similar, just hurts more if you fall because you’re higher up. And God help you if you get kicked with a hoof.”

“You’re serious about this camel thing?”

“Completely. It goes with my cover. I’m a local businessman. I invite friends and business associates from all over the world and take them out to the tourist places. Wide open air. We can talk in complete freedom. Many of my guests are beautiful single women, so even if we are observed, nothing raises an eyebrow.”

“Got it,” she said.

“Now, tell me a bit more about yourself,” Voltaire said.

“There’s very little reason to,” she said. “You obviously know a lot about me or you wouldn’t have come here to meet me.”

“True enough,” he said. “But tell me things anyway.”

“Such as?”

“Tell me something I might not know,” he said, “something that might have escaped your official file or record. And don’t bore me with any of that Canadian nonsense, I know exactly who you are.”

She thought for a moment. She sipped the chilled tea that accompanied the meal.

“All right, here’s something,” she said. “I got into this line of work almost by chance. I never had any desire to do it. I was at a desk in Washington working on internet financial frauds. Next thing I know, they put me out in the field on a mission to Nigeria. That was a group effort. But thereafter, I got hooked into a trip to Ukraine. They needed someone who spoke Russian, so they tapped me.”

“You never thought there might have been an ulterior reason?” he asked.

“For what?” she asked, slightly surprised.

“For sending
you
. Specifically you, to Ukraine.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“It never occurred to you?” “Not until now.”

“Always consider something like that,” he said. “That’s a word of good advice for the evening, free of charge.”

She pondered the point.

“I’m enjoying this dialogue. Keep talking,” he said.

“About?”

“How you never sought your current métier. But like greatness in anything, rather than seeking it or attaining it, you had it thrust upon you.”

Plates of food arrived. Suddenly, Alex was very hungry. She dug in, and they retreated to small talk for several minutes.

“Here’s something else, since you asked,” she said at length. “I tend to take code names very seriously,” she said. “The more one examines them, the more they reveal something about the person who has taken them.”

“Do tell,” said Voltaire.

“The desk-bound intellectual who yearns for action takes the name of ‘Fireman.’ The outlaw takes the name of ‘Sheriff.’ The atheist takes the name of ‘Priest.’ Somehow your code name expresses something about you. A reference to French parentage perhaps instead of the Nazi cover story that you tried to sell me. A coy allusion to the Enlightenment in Europe. You’re obviously well educated, I suspect perhaps even in the French language, as you speak it with no accent that I can pick up and with excellent diction and grammar. Or you have a yearning again to be what you’re not, vis-à-vis, French. I may never know, but somewhere the name is a key.”

“Very,
very
clever,” he said. “Maybe as a reward, I should tell you part of it.”

“Maybe you should. If you chose to, I’d listen.”

“Consider it an expression of opposites. It’s an expression of personal philosophy as opposed to anything of action, strategy, or import. You’re a rather educated little imp, yourself,” he said. “My guess is that you’ve studied French extensively and probably read it on a university level. So if you read French literature of any sort, you probably read
Candide
.”

“I did. And I once saw a production of the musical in New York.”

“And what was the key phrase of Dr. Pangloss? Of what was the real Voltaire mocking so bitterly?”

“The concept that this is the best of all possible worlds,” she answered.

“Exactly,” he said. “And that is exactly the opposite of what I’m making fun of, what I’m alluding to. This world that we live in is, in my benighted opinion, often the worst of all possible worlds.”

“Hence your code name fits you completely and gives away a large part of you,” she said. “Because that was absolutely the feeling of the real Voltaire.”

He laughed. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met who cut right through to the core of that,” he said.

“I might be the first person who cared enough to,” she said.

“That too,” he admitted. “Impressive. It’s rare enough to find an American who has read
Candide
.”

“I’m Canadian,” she said.

“Good catch.”

“Nice try.”

A waiter came by and cleared their table. They ordered a final mint tea.

The conversation drifted back to Voltaire’s long residence in, and expertise about, the city of Cairo. From there he rambled into local politics as he smoked again. Alex found it wise to listen.

“The people of Cairo don’t believe their rulers, but they give credibility to every halfwit political rumor that goes around, no matter how stupid and ill-founded. Did you know that Coptic Christians were waging a secret war by going around spray painting crosses onto the clothing of Muslims? Did you know Israel had hired and sent to Egypt one thousand AIDS-infected prostitutes to infect young Muslim men? Did you know that radical Muslim extremists were planning to dump poison into the vats at the Stella brewery? You keep your ear to the ground in this city and you’ll hear just about anything,” Voltaire said. “Unless you trust your source beyond any question, you believe nothing that you hear and maybe ten percent of what you see.” He paused. “Want to experience an example of it for yourself?” he asked Alex. “Right now?”

“Where? How?” she asked.

“There’s a little group in a café near here that I join every now and then. People talk. Often in English. I drop by and listen and do some give and take. It helps to keep an ear to the ground.”

He glanced at his watch. Alex glanced at hers at the same time. It was 10:45.

“And they don’t know who they’re talking to?” Alex asked.

“They don’t know and they don’t care,” Voltaire said. “My cover is this: I’m a Monsieur Maurice Lamara, an importer of air-conditioning units from France and Italy. I run a midsized company here. I have a dozen employees and I treat them well. I never go near the embassy, and I collect a nice payment every month from the Americans who put an electronic transfer into a bank in Europe for me every month. Cairenes voice a lot of noisy opinions, but they know better than to ask many questions because they might get a visit from the police. You’ll see what I mean.”

“Who will you say I am?”

“My
femme du jour
,” he said with a trace of lechery in his eyes. “They’re used to seeing me with beautiful Western women, one after another. I bring women by, just to show them off. They rather admire me for it in their swinish Arab way. If you’re game, I’ll take you there.”

“I’m your squeeze of the night, huh?”

“So to speak.”

“I didn’t travel four thousand miles to go home early,” she said.

“That’s the spirit.”

“Am I dressed okay? For wherever we’re going.”

“You’re fine. Keep the headscarf. We’ll have some high-artillery backup, anyway. I don’t go anywhere without it.”

“I noticed. You have at least six.”

“There are more than that, but I’m not giving away numbers.”

“Eight then? The two Persian women have guns?”

“Now you have it.”

“I never for a moment thought you were stupid,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Voltaire turned and gestured to a burley man seated two tables away. The man stood. As his body straightened up to standing position, Alex realized he was even larger than she had guessed. He stood maybe six-four. He wore a white robe and an Islamic skull cap. He came to the table and a grin spread across his face. He had the torso of a Kodiak bear and the face of a cherub with a stubbly beard.

“This is Abdul,” Voltaire said. “Abdul and I have known each other for twenty years. He’s one of my bodyguards and he’ll lead the way.”

Abdul held out a hand to Alex.

“Charmed,” he said.

“My pleasure, I’m sure,” Alex said. Abdul’s hand was like a catcher’s mitt.

Abdul nodded.

“Where are you from in America?” he asked.

“I’m from the Toronto area,” she said. “I’m Canadian. What about you? You’re a native of Cairo?”

“I’m Iraqi,” Abdul said. “I grew up in Detroit. I was in the US Army for six years. Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Benning, Georgia, stateside, one tour in Afghanistan.”

“Surprising place, isn’t it?” Voltaire asked. “I assume you have a weapon. Check that it’s functioning in case there’s trouble.”

“Expecting any?”

“I never expect any. And I always prepare for it.”

“My weapon is fine,” she said. It was where it always was, on her right hip, accessible, the safety catch on.

“Then let’s go,” he said.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Abdul left the room for several seconds, then came back and gestured that they should follow. They took off. Alex stayed close to Voltaire. They were back in the alley but now headed in a different direction. It was close to 11:00 in the evening, and Voltaire led her into an alley between shops. It was so dark that she couldn’t see and so narrow that they had to pass one at a time.

“You’re a brave woman, coming here by yourself, Josephine,” Voltaire said softly and affably. “You’re well educated and attractive. There must be easier ways for you to make a living. Safer too. Why do you do it?”

“Sometimes I ask myself the same question,” Alex said.

He snorted a little in reaction. “We all do,” he said. “What is it? The adrenaline? The danger of hanging out with disreputable people? The feeling that we’re on the side of the angels? A sense of justice? Must be some reason why we kick through back alleys and put our lives on the line. My question is rhetorical, really. I don’t know the answer and I suspect you don’t, either.”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” she said.

“I promise you I’ll do the same.”

They came to an even narrower passage between buildings. No more than two feet in width, jagged nails sticking out from bricks, plus some electrical wires. For a moment, Voltaire took her hand to steady her. “This is tricky here,” he said. He eased Alex through sideways for twenty feet until they emerged into a wider alley.

“Tu parles français
,
n’est-ce pas?
” he asked.

“Je parle français
,
oui,”
she answered.

For good measure, even though there was still noise from the city in the background, he suggested switching into French. Less chance of being overheard and understood. Alex concurred and agreed. While French was not uncommon in Egypt, it was nowhere nearly understood as much as a second language as English.

“I’ll give you thirty years of history in six minutes as we walk,” Voltaire said, still in low tones. “And my history lesson will tell you where we are today. Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Nasser in 1970, was assassinated by his own soldiers in 1981. Several of the soldiers who shot him had had family or close friends who had been displaced by one of his urban renewal projects. Sadat was liked and respected outside of Egypt, but here the poor and the Islamic militants hated him. It was a matter of time before his own people murdered him. And he misplayed his most basic politics at home. He quietly funded some Islamic radical groups, figuring they would combat the leftists who Sadat actually feared. His plan backfired. Some of those who conspired to kill him had been radicalized by the same groups that Sadat had founded. Other leaders of the assassins were people whom Sadat had himself freed from Nasser’s jails. They weren’t grateful, they were bitter. They hated the government no matter who was running it. They felt the government had betrayed Islam. It was their theory that if someone had betrayed Islam, it is the duty of the individual as a Muslim to right that wrong. So they righted the wrong by murdering the president of their country. Quite a place, huh? Egyptian politics as usual. That’s how it’s been for centuries. It will never change.”