The Cairo Affair (16 page)

In Cairo, things were different. It was a crowded city, the most populous in the Arab world, and it defied predictability in the best of times. Before the revolution, John had gotten used to the constant intrusion of security personnel hanging around, whatever path he took. During the revolution, though, they’d had bigger things to deal with than a low-level embassy hand, and now, with sections of the hated security apparatus in disarray, when a shadow came he was one of the awkward, fumbling rookies who knew the neighborhood but wouldn’t know tradecraft if it slapped him in the face. So when John headed out and almost immediately lost track of his shadow, he was worried. The man tracked him for one block before fading into the crowd, and when John took a couple of detours between apartment buildings he wondered if he’d lost him. But no—a block short of Deals he spotted the mustached one again, which suggested he wasn’t alone. What had John done to deserve these man-hours? He hoped that it had to do with something innocuous, like one of the numerous meets he’d observed, but with the headache still scratching at him he knew it was not.

Yet he moved on. Though a part of him wanted to, he didn’t take evasive maneuvers and double back to find out how many there were. Nor did he sit in wait to snatch one off the street, because there was the other part of him, the stronger part, the same part that told him not to burn Jibril’s secret list, and now it was telling him that his shadows could be taken care of tomorrow. It told him that tonight all that mattered was to get everything out of his aching head as quickly as possible.

So he walked ahead, feeling their breaths on his collar, and reached Said el-Bakri Street without any taps on the shoulder or throat clearings or excuse-me-Mr.-Calhouns. He trotted down the stairs and opened the door to the bar and didn’t even look back as he lowered his head to avoid hitting the overhang.

It was eighties night at Deals, and “Tainted Love” was playing to a full, smoky house—so smoky that he had to squint to see the far walls of the pub, checkered with framed pictures. With watery-eyed effort, he spotted a familiar face. Maribeth, who worked in the visa section, was at a table by the wall, drinking with a tall Egyptian man he didn’t know. She was wearing a shorter hairstyle and a new sleeveless dress that showed off her admirable biceps.

He stared for too long, and she met his eyes, smiling, waving him over. He skirted through the crowd, nodding at faces he knew, shaking the hand of someone he didn’t remember at all, and when he reached the table Maribeth kissed his cheeks. She was from Tennessee, and cheek-kisses were her favorite part of living outside the United States. They had also slept together twice in the last month, so the kisses lingered a little longer. Then she pushed him away and motioned at her friend. “Meet David Malek.”

John shook his hand. The Egyptian was maybe forty, weary eyes but youthful cheeks, and had a strong grip. He worked out.

Maribeth said, “David is a
novelist.
”

“Really? You don’t look like one.”

David grinned with overt modesty, as if being a novelist were something to be proud of. “First one comes out in the fall.” John had been wrong—that accent was All-American.

He sat next to Maribeth. “What kind?”

David cupped his ear.

“Genre?” John said.

“Thriller. Called
Desperate Intentions.
” When he saw the look on John’s face, he added, “Publisher’s idea. That wasn’t my title.”

“What was your title?”

David hesitated, a faint smile flickering around his lips, and said,
“Stumbler.”

“I’m not sure I like that one any better.”

Maribeth poked him in the ribs. “Don’t be an ass.” To David: “John’s an anachronism. He reads
poetry
.”

“You must be the last one,” said David, smiling, unconcerned by John’s assessment of his title, maybe even pleased by it.

“You researching a new one?” John asked.

“About the revolution,” David said.

As John offered good luck, Maribeth’s hand settled on his thigh. He leaned back and stretched an arm across the back of her chair. Was that a flash of disappointment in David Malek’s face? John said, “What’s your main character going to be? Egyptian?”

David scratched at his ear, grimacing. “Don’t know if I could pull that off. An American, probably.”

“A novelist?”

“Ha!” David said, slapping the table, fully recovered now. “No, that’s best avoided, too. Maybe someone at the embassy? Maribeth tells me you work there, too.”

John wondered what else Maribeth had told him. He’d never admitted to his real function, but she’d certainly noticed, the last time he slept over, the work-related call he’d received in the middle of the night before rushing off. “I hope it’s someone more interesting than me,” John told him. “I just schedule travel for the important people.”

“Know any CIA?”

Maribeth turned to listen to this.

John opened his free hand to the ceiling. “Never one that would admit to it.”

Instead of deflating him, David seemed to take this as a challenge. He leaned closer. “But you know people who
don’t
admit to it.”

“Tell it from an Egyptian’s perspective,” John said. “Much more interesting.”

Maribeth let out a disagreeable grunt. “He wants to
sell
the book.”

John got up and ordered a round of drinks from the bar. He wasn’t particularly interested in the conversation, nor was he all that interested in Maribeth’s hand sliding along his upper thigh once he’d returned with three beers. Yet here he was, trying to forget about blood in the desert as he drank his beer in great gulps and nodded at David Malek’s unself-conscious praise of the revolutions trembling through this part of the world. His optimism, John realized, wasn’t naive. Like Jibril’s, it was merely American, the belief that all anyone in the world wanted was to live in their own little America. Finally, John cut in. “You know, don’t you, that they’re going to vote in Islamist parties who have no time for the United States. Look at the history here: Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak. Failed wars, failed culture, and failed social policies enforced by a secret police. The Muslim Brotherhood has been taking care of the people for decades, far better than their governments ever have, and now it’s time for their reward.”

Innocently, David said, “And why not? It’s called democracy. You sound like Gadhafi.”

John frowned. “What?”

“The first volume of his magnum opus,
The Green Book,
is called ‘The Solution of the Problem of Democracy.’”

Green,
thought John.

David said, “You think democracy is problematic. It is, of course, but that’s the way it goes. Either they’re democratic or they’re not.”

“Yeah,” said Maribeth. “We can’t give them only half democracy.”

“We’re not
giving
them anything,” said John, leaning forward. He was a big man, and he knew it. He also knew that a little physical intimidation tended to help his arguments. “If we’ve given them anything, we’ve given them thirty-odd years of authoritarianism by supporting their oppressors. Now, we act as if we’ve given them a new world because they’re using Twitter to talk to each other.”

“Look who’s the wet blanket,” Maribeth said. David was grinning wildly at his outburst. No one here was intimidated by him.

He looked away, scanning the crowd again, but his shadows hadn’t bothered following him inside. As he took another drink he had a flashback to his dream, opening up the trunk of that Tercel and finding his son and daughter inside. Danisha climbing out and telling him how tired she was. Jibril beckoning him into the street.

He knew, of course. A man who knows poetry knows how to read his own dreams. He had populated this one with people he’d let down, just as he knew he would eventually let down Maribeth, who was now squeezing his inner thigh.
God sure didn’t make me very wise
. He’d let down a lot of people during his time on earth—women, friends, and employers—and as Maribeth’s nails dug through his jeans he hoped that no one would be too surprised the next time he failed.

She squeezed harder, nails pinching. He nearly yelped.

5

When he woke around noon on Saturday, his head throbbing to the anguished melody of a call to prayer wafting in through an open window, he briefly had no idea where he was, nor where he had come from. He was not in his own bed. His pillow was damp, and there was a stink of acid that made him think that he’d vomited, but when he sat up, gripping his head, he found no traces. Then he recognized the disorganized room, the pastel colors, and the Mickey Mouse clock. From another room, he heard CNN playing on a television.

Maribeth appeared with a cup of coffee, wearing a long T-shirt, disheveled hair, a smile, and nothing else. “You look
bad,
John.” She handed over the cup. “You need this more than I do.”

“How much did I drink?”

“Everything they had. I’m starting to think maybe you have a problem.”

He did, but he didn’t think drinking was it. With his first sip of hot coffee he was overcome by the desire to urinate, and when he got up he noticed he was still wearing underwear. “Did we…?”

A short laugh, then she shook her head. “You couldn’t have raised your voice by the time we got back here, much less that.”

He gave her a weary grin, handed back the coffee, and went to the bathroom. From where he sat on the toilet he could see his face in her low mirror. He was pale, his eyes shot through with red. “Mind if I take a shower?” he called through the closed door.

“I think I’m going to insist,” she called back.

It took a while for the hot water to reach her fourth-floor apartment, and once it did it burned. He stood under the steaming downpour, thinking through the previous night. The memories were disturbingly slow in coming, but they did come, and he remembered laughter and loud voices—mostly his—and the novelist David Malek and later on some friends. He remembered an argument with a Slav, but couldn’t remember what it had been about. Then he had a quick flash of panic—where was the pistol? He hurried through his shower, toweled off, and squatted naked at the foot of the bed, hunting through his pile of clothes. “Looking for your gun?” Maribeth asked from behind. She had dressed in a long white skirt and an open-collared mauve blouse.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Only travel agent I know of who carries heat,” she said. “It’s in the living room. Why don’t you get dressed and have some breakfast?”

He did as she suggested, then found the pistol in its holster on the coffee table. There were still seventeen rounds in the clip, and none in the breech.

Maribeth had cooked up Swiss cheese omelets, ham, and buttered toast, and they ate in her modest dining room—an extension of the kitchen—while through the window came the noise of downtown traffic. The coffee and food began to temper his hangover.

Maribeth spent her work hours approving and more often rejecting visa requests, and each week she collected a handful of stories of colorful characters who believed that simply scrawling marks on a form entitled them to an entry visa. “They always get it wrong,” she said. “We start with the assumption that everyone wants to jump ship and set up a new life in America, and it’s up to them to prove otherwise. But when you tell them this, they act as if you’ve just insulted them. On Wednesday a woman spat at me.”

“She spat on you?” he said, a slice of toast halfway to his mouth.

“
At
me. Splattered across the divider window. There’s a reason we have those things, you know. She said,
But we’re democratic now, just like you! Why would I want to leave?
”

“I’m not sure I’d call a military government democracy.”

“People believe what they want,” she said, then nodded at the television behind him. “You hear about that?”

He turned to find a talking head on CNN relating the story of Emmett Kohl, deputy consul in Hungary, who had been shot in a Budapest restaurant. There were, apparently, few clues, and only an unidentified security photo to guide the investigations: a wide face, hairless, with a cut on one cheek. A real bruiser.

“You knew Kohl?” he asked.

“As well as most, I suppose. He thought he was hilarious.”

John was struck by the cynicism in her voice. “You didn’t like him?”

“He was just … you know. One of those bosses who slaps your back and makes a joke and says that we’re all in this together. But when the shit hits the fan you never know where he is. I’ve worked for worse.”

“I’ll bet I have, too.”

She smiled over the rim of her coffee cup and said, “Where
have
you worked, John? Where did you come from before you magically appeared here?” She took a sip, and when he didn’t answer she said, “Look, I’m not trying to pry, but it’s obvious you don’t schedule flights for people. Jennifer tells me you spend most of your time on the fifth floor, with the spooks.”

“Spooks?”

She reddened. “You
know
what I mean.”

He did, and so he told her a little about himself. She already knew of the ex-wife and children, so he brushed over his time in the army, skipping mention of his dishonorable discharge. “I kicked around for a while, got married, had some kids. That didn’t work out.”

“Whose fault?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He thought about it, but he needn’t have—the question had haunted him for years. “Both of ours.”

“
Both?
Is that the answer she’d give, too?”

“Spoken like a real bachelorette.”

“I prefer the word spinster.”

“My point,” he said, trying to ignore her mocking grin, “is that we share the blame, just like we share the kids.” It was a diplomatic answer, which was another way of saying it was untrue. John would always blame himself, for he had been the one who couldn’t hold down a job, who chose to reach for the car keys whenever a fight erupted, who began to feel like his own absent father even though he lived in the same house as his kids. He said, “I remembered how good I’d had it in the army. Lots of order in that kind of life. You know when you’re waking and when you’re going to sleep. You know what you’re supposed to do, and when. The rules are clear—there’s never any ambiguity.”