Countdown in Cairo (35 page)

Alex turned back to Bissinger. A welcome breeze swept over the pool. “You said he also needed a voice okay before he returns,” she said. “How do we work that?”

“That one’s trickier,” Bissinger said.

“How are you feeling today?” Bissinger asked, seeming to shift the subject.

“I’m okay,” Alex answered.

“Head? Stomach?” he asked.

“I think I ate something a little tainted on the flight,” she said. “Or maybe it’s been the heat. Today I feel better. How did you know and why do you ask?”

“You were poisoned.”

“What?”

“Or an attempt was made to poison you. See here’s the thing—Judas got wind of the fact that someone had been sent from the US to spot him. He reasoned it was you. Something about some shootout in an American drug store. So he got out of Cairo until you, who could identify him, have been successfully killed. They planted some radioactive crystals in your hotel room. You’ve been bathing in them and sleeping on them. You should be able to illuminate any room you walk into by now without even turning on a lamp.”

“Are you—!”

“Not to worry,” Voltaire said. “Some of my people intercepted the plot. We have a young man named Masdouth as an infiltrator. He was part of the team that planted the crystals in your room. They switched some harmless stuff for the poison.”

“How on earth did they get in?”

“Same way that Judas knew who had come from America. A traitor in out midst.”

“Who?” she demanded.

“Who got a good look at you and would have been able to describe you to Judas?” Bissinger asked. “Who knew exactly where you were staying, right down to your room number? The same individual has been compromising our embassy for years and stood guard while the crystals were being planted in your room. He kept the hallway clear for the intruders. As soon as he departed, it was their cue to get out.”

She sighed and seethed with anger. “Colonel Amjad,” she said.

“There will be a day of reckoning for him too,” Bissinger said. “But first we need to play the colonel along and he needs to report that you’re dead. Game?”

In Alex’s mind, it all fell into place. “Game,” she said. “How does that work?”

“It works with you posing on a slab in a filthy Egyptian morgue and letting the colonel get a look at you,” Bissinger said. “With you out of the way, there would be nothing stopping Cerny from making a quick gambit back to Cairo.”

“So I’m supposed to play dead.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“If you think we can get away with it, I’ll go for it,” she said.

“Then I think we’re finished here,” Voltaire said.

“I think we are,” she agreed.

“Thank you, Josephine,” Bissinger said.

“My appreciation also,” Voltaire said. “What a trouper.”

“Some day in the future,” she said, “you guys owe me big time.”

First Bissinger left, then Voltaire. Alex tossed her towel back on a deck chair and gently flipped her sunglasses on top of the towel. As events, past and future, swirled in her head, she wore off her nervous energy with another ten laps. Then, after drying off and getting five more minutes of sunshine, she went back upstairs and phoned Gian Antonio Rizzo in Rome.

That same afternoon, Bissinger arranged to have a network of rooms rented at the Radisson Cairo where Boris was staying.

FORTY-FOUR

The next morning, without checking out of her own hotel, Alex had gone to the area of central Cairo known as Zamalek, where most of the embassies were located, along with the fashionable shops. There, in one of the French boutiques, she purchased a very short cocktail dress in smooth black satin. It was the type of dress that a young woman could wear to a private party or in one of the Western hotels, but which could never appear on the street. She bought a pair of heels to go with it and a purse that was big enough to pack her phone and her Beretta. It was a come-and-get-me outfit, and Alex was wearing it for work. Amused, she wondered if she could deduct it on her tax returns.

Then, that evening, Alex sat at the end of the hotel bar at the Radisson Cairo. She nursed a glass of wine and had a pack of Marlboros on the bar in front of her. Boris entered the hotel bar at about 9:00 p.m., as was his habit. He went to a table in the corner and sat down where he could survey the whole room. Alex had positioned herself where she would be directly in his line of view. She reached to her pack of Marlboros and lit one. Her first cigarette in ten years. She didn’t look directly at Boris but felt his eyes on her as she smoked.

Patience
, she told herself.
He’s going to assess me very carefully before he makes a move
,
if he makes a move at all. He may be careless, but he has to be at least a little bit cautious.

She engaged in a small conversation with the bartender, who brought her an ashtray. Then an American couple came in. She didn’t know them, but she had a drink with them. Alex spoke with a slight Latino accent. She sold herself as a wealthy Mexican lady waiting for a no-good boyfriend, loud enough to allow Boris to overhear, as well as to advertise what language he could use if he wanted to make an approach.

The American couple was from Illinois, and they congratulated her on her wonderful English. She hoped they wouldn’t kill the potential sale to Boris. The Midwestern couple left, and Boris was still there. He was looking at her, which was fine, assessing her from head to toe. She glanced his way, gave him a friendly smile, and looked away. She was showing as much leg as she ever had in her life, and she knew Boris liked what he saw.

A few moments later, she reached back to her pack of smokes. She picked up the pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. She muttered to herself in Spanish, as if in anger. She fumbled with a cigarette and dropped it, as if soused. Then she felt a presence next to her. She feigned surprise when a gold lighter snapped open and a sharp yellow flame rose in front of her.

Boris. The lighter was one of those five-hundred-dollar Dunhill ones. That or a fine counterfeit. The flame could have served as the Olympic torch.

“May I?” he asked in English.

His hand was frightening. It looked like a small anvil. She assumed he had a second one that matched. Yuri Federov looked like a poster boy for the Boy Scouts compared to this thug.

“Sure. Why not?” she answered.

She leaned forward and let him light her smoke. She inhaled and blew out a long steam of puffy white carcinogens as the lighter clicked shut.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m feeling slightly lonely and very angry. And I’m getting very drunk.”

“No need to apologize,” he said.

She stayed in English. Russian would scare him off.

“I can join you?” he asked.

“I wish someone would,” she answered.

He slid onto the bar chair next to her. “You’re very pretty,” he said, turning back.

“If I’m so pretty, why did my boyfriend stand me up?”

“He doesn’t appreciate you,” Boris suggested.

“Ha!” she said. “You tell him that when and if he gets here,” she said with inebriated inflections. “Will you tell him that?”

“I will,” Boris said, ever the gent.

“I’m getting old,” she said with self-pity. “Almost thirty. I guess I’m losing it.”

Boris laughed. “Not at all,” he said.

She eyed him up and down, as if to see him for the first time. He was a big man, maybe six-three, and broad—bigger than she had thought.

“Nobody appreciates me tonight,” she said sullenly. “So I’m just here getting plastered. I hate to drink alone.”

“So do I. You’d permit if I joined you?”

“Sure,” Alex said. “Drink as much as you want. Just make one promise.”

“What’s that?”

“If my boyfriend comes running in more than an hour and a half late,” making what sounded like a joke out of it, “punch the SOB out for me.”

Boris laughed. He held up a fist the size of a small pumpkin. His hands were cushioned with muscle and crisscrossed with scars, one-shot knockouts waiting to happen.

“I’m good at that. Punching out,” he said. “If that’s what you wish, I will do. You tell me when, and you don’t be afraid of anyone when you with me.”

“Thank you!” she said drunkenly. “I appreciate a gentleman.”

Boris gave her a nod.

“I hear an accent,” Alex said. “Where are you from?”

He held a hand to her. “I’m Boris,” he said. “I’m Russian.”

She feigned surprise again. She held her hand to his. He took it. He had the grip of a professional fighter. Iron. She guessed further Russian ex-military. She uncrossed and crossed her legs to pique his interest.

“I’m Maria,” she lied. “I’m from Mexico.” And deep inside her, she admired her own personal best: Alex, Josephine, and Maria, three IDs in five days, spanning all of North America.

“If you’re from Mexico,” he said, being cautious, “let me hear you speak Spanish.”

“Well, that’s easy,” she laughed.
“¿Le apetece tomar algo conmigo? ¿Qué toma?”
she said.

“I don’t talk Spanish,” he said. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you wanted to have a drink with me,” she said. “And if so, what?”

He laughed. “I’m Russian. There is only one thing to drink.”

He turned to the bartender and ordered a triple shot of vodka. Stoli all the way.

Conversation ensued. The vodka arrived, three generous shots of about two ounces each, arranged in a tray of crushed ice. Boris toasted her and knocked back the shot with a quick gulp. Then the second.

“Want to see one of my favorite party tricks?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

She reached to the third glass, picked it up and held it to her lips. “May I?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.

“I dare you,” he said.

“Watch closely,” she said.

Intrigued, he watched as she grabbed a book of matches on the bar.

She struck a match and lit the vodka. She let the flame blaze until it receded beneath the rim of the shot glass. Then she slapped her right palm on the glass and held it tightly there. The flame extinguished and formed a vacuum. She used the suction to pick up the glass without closing her fingers on it. She whirled the drink around to Boris’s delight, defying gravity. Then she used her left hand to pull the glass free. With an upward motion, she tossed the vodka up out of the glass into the air as one would throw a piece of popcorn into one’s mouth. She caught the shot in its entirety and swallowed it in one gulp. Her throat, for a few seconds, felt as if it were on fire. But Boris was, she could see, impressed.

“I have seen soldiers do that, but never women,” he said.

“You have now,” she said. “Hang around and you’ll see me do a lot of things you’ve never seen a woman do.” She snuffed out her cigarette after another drag. “I’m flying,” she said. “I mean, I am
really
flying. Too much alcohol.” Idly, she wondered what her late Robert would have thought if he could have seen the Slut Girl 101 role she was playing in a hotel bar in Egypt. Then she put it out of her mind. So impressed was Boris that he ordered another set of three shots. Then he took out his matches. He lit all three vodkas. He drew a breath, took a drink of some cold water from the bar. He stood and stepped back.

Then Boris repeated the trick, but using the vodka while it was still flaming. He tossed it high into the air, quickly positioned himself under it and caught it in his mouth. The second shot, the same. Then the third, which was a slight miss and splashed him across the jaw.

He staggered slightly, laughed, and wiped his face with his sleeve. Alex applauded as if drunk out of her mind.

More small talk. The room started to sway a little for Alex, but not as much as her body language tried to show. She wondered how much booze she had consumed in her life for the overall security of the United States of America. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs. She knew that the fire had been extinguished from the top of the booze, but she had lit one in her target’s gut.

Two shots later, Boris got around to what he wanted to know, “Are you staying here with him?”

“Here with who?” Alex asked.

“Your boyfriend.”

“Oh. Him. No,” she said.

Good
, she thought.
He’s inquiring about my room arrangement
.

In the periphery of her view, she watched Rizzo, who had arrived that morning, walk into the bar and sit down at a table.

“No,” she said to Boris. “He’s at another overpriced hotel. The Hilton. He was supposed to meet me here, and then we were going to go out. But he’s stood me up, you know that, Boris? You know how much it hurts a woman to be stood up?”

She took on a dispirited expression. “He probably went chasing after a younger girl,” she said. “So why should I care?”

“You’re here alone?”

“On business. For three days. Then I go on to Athens, then back to Miami. That’s where I live. Miami. The new capital of Cuba.”

Boris was more than intrigued. Alex slurred slightly, then took another sip of the wine that still sat in front of her. Her hand was shaky, and she spilled a few drops.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m bothering you. I should leave.”

“No, no, no,” he said, amused. “You’re not bothering. Please stay.”

“I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

“You’re very beautiful,” he said again.

She looked away. “I don’t feel beautiful. I feel rejected. That’s how I feel. I hate being alone. I’m almost thirty,” she said.

“You could pass for five years younger.” He placed a hand on her bare thigh to steady her. The touch went through her like a shock, but she went along with it. His hand was every bit as strong as it looked. If things went the wrong way, this was going to be real trouble.

“You’re kind,” she said.

He glanced at the small bandage on her arm, the one that covered the vestiges of the bullet grazing.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“My boyfriend gets rough with me sometimes,” she said. “He’s a pig.”

That seemed to turn Boris on. Alex looked him in the eye. She had had her experiences with post-Soviet Moscow-style hoods, and this was another one. In a previous generation, Boris’s station in life would have been as one of the thick-browed KGB security gorillas who would stand by the door in a leather jacket to keep the trade delegates from going AWOL. These days, in the buoyant Putin-era consumer culture of workers-of-the-world-shop-till-you-drop, the same tough boys developed a taste for Swiss watches, German cars, and French cologne, while they pursued North American women.