The Cairo Affair (39 page)

“Emmett verified that America was going to steal the revolution from the Libyans?”

Another look crossed Halawi’s face, but it was neither shock nor anger—it was embarrassment.

“Well?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Mr. Kohl said that he did not believe it. He believed America was doing nothing of the sort.”

Sophie thought a moment. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that the CIA killed my husband. Yes?”

He nodded.

“Because they wanted to cover up Stumbler. Correct?”

“Yes. That is correct.”

“But Emmett didn’t believe we were behind it.”

“Correct.”

“Then why did they kill him?”

Halawi rubbed his eyes, maybe tired of spelling out the world to this woman. “Because Langley did not know for sure, Mrs. Kohl. It did not look deeply enough into the circumstances of their meeting.” He paused. “Mistakes were made. They often are.”

“And Jibril?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t know where he is, do you?”

“He is in Libya.”

“But you don’t know where in Libya.”

There was no point answering that, so he didn’t.

“What makes you think he’s still alive?”

Another smile, this one bordering on angelic. He placed a hand on his heart: “Because I
believe,
Mrs. Kohl.”

She wanted to laugh at him, but she didn’t. She wanted to cry as well, because for all the information he was willing to share, she was starting to believe he was as much in the dark as she was.

He sighed loudly. “Mrs. Kohl, this is not your fight. You know who murdered your husband. You can go home without shame.”

“You don’t know me very well, Mr. Halawi.”

He smiled, as if he really did know her, and said, “What do you plan to do that others cannot do better? You should be honest with yourself.” He inhaled through his nose, and she thought she saw sympathy in his features, but maybe it was a mirage. “You do not belong here, Mrs. Kohl. You should never have come.”

3

She lay on her bed in room 306 and stared at the ceiling, troubled by the fact that she was still unsure. She had her plane ticket, yet she kept asking herself questions. Was she really done here? Or was she going to try to find Jibril Aziz? What would she do once she found him? What answers did she expect from him? And if he gave her the same answer this Egyptian had given her—that the American government had killed Emmett—then what would she do with it? Would she call
The New York Times
and start shouting down the line?

She wasn’t sure she trusted Omar Halawi. He had an air of madness about him, the kind that changes the faces of zealots and bigots. He was building his world on a foundation that was subtly different than her own, and therefore whatever he said was just beyond her own way of looking at things. It was a cultural difference, perhaps, but it also made him sound like a loony to her.

What if she did call
The New York Times
—what then? She tried to imagine the reaction of the American government, of the CIA. How long would it take for them to discredit her? How hard would it be for them to connect the dots and discover that, for over a year, she had been an agent of a foreign power? And how would she defend herself—with the story of Yugoslavia in 1991? That was no defense.

The real question, she suspected, wasn’t what she would be able to accomplish, but what was
right
—and in this situation what did
right
mean?

Even though she knew better, she wished that Stan were beside her in bed. He might give her lies, but at least his mouth would distract her from her confusion for a little while.

There was a tap at her door. At first, wrapped in her thoughts, she didn’t hear it, but then it came again, louder, and she sat up. It was after ten. She considered not answering, but then a voice said, “Sophie Kohl? My name is Michael Khalil. I used to work with your husband. May I have a word?”

She got up, went to the door, and touched the handle before hesitating. She used the spy hole and saw a man holding up a photo ID that said on one side, in blue letters, “FBI.” On the right was a photo and “Michael Khalil.”

“I’m FBI,” he said unnecessarily.

She started to open the door, then remembered Andras Kiraly. The old Hungarian had asked about Michael Khalil, who claimed to be FBI.
We have our doubts.
Khalil had spoken to Emmett about Stumbler on the day that … on
that
day. “What do you want?” she asked, a sudden, deep fear tightening the muscles in her back.

Through the spy hole, he lowered the ID so she could see his face. A swarthy man, tall and thin, with a smile. Handsome, even. He looked Egyptian, but his voice was flat midwestern. “Sorry for the hour. I wondered if I might have a word.”

“You couldn’t have called first?”

Irritation sharpened his features. “Well, I’m coming here unofficially. And I’d appreciate it if you kept this conversation to yourself.”

“We’re not having a conversation yet.”

“I hope you’ll decide to talk to me.”

“Why should I?”

He frowned, glancing up the corridor again, as if expecting—or fearing—someone. “I’m here because I don’t want you to get killed.”

It wasn’t the answer she had expected, nor was it the answer she had desired. “Why do you think I’m in danger of getting killed?”

“May I come in?”

She stepped back, thought a moment, then secured the door latch up beside her head. She opened the door until the latch caught, leaving five inches through which Michael Khalil could see a slice of her. “You stay there.”

Again, irritation. A tongue rummaged in his cheeks.

“Now tell me why you think I’m in danger of getting killed.”

Another glance down the hall, and he lowered his voice to a high whisper. “Do I have to say it aloud?”

“I think you do, Mr. Khalil.”

He tugged at the lapels of his jacket, straightening it. “You know by now who murdered your husband?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“CIA.” He paused. “Is this a surprise?”

“It doesn’t matter how many times I hear it—it’ll always be a surprise.”

“Emmett was preparing to betray the Agency. He’d learned about an operation in Libya, and he was going to expose it. He told one colleague—direct quote—that he would find a whistle and blow it. Emmett didn’t mince his words.”

She leaned back a little, thinking of how good Emmett was, and how little she’d really known him. “Stumbler,” she said, then shook her head. “But Emmett didn’t believe that. Jibril Aziz believed it, but he didn’t. He wasn’t going to blow any whistle.”

“Did Mr. Halawi tell you this?” he asked.

“How do you know about him?”

A half-shrug. “I just know him. He’s a good man, but that doesn’t make his word gospel. Consider your husband’s position—he’s got a young man, a man with a family, preparing to rush into Libya and get himself killed. What would a good man do? Let calmer minds prevail. Lie to Jibril, get him to go home to his wife, and then go about it the diplomatic way—memos to people who matter.”

“Wait,” she said, and he did just that, his face relaxing as he stared at her through the gap, waiting. She took a moment to think this through. She said, “Emmett’s the one who wanted to write memos, not me. I still don’t understand why I’m in danger.”

Again, he looked back down the corridor. “Well, you didn’t follow the script, did you?” he said as if to a child, full of patience for the nonprofessionals of the world. “You didn’t bow down like a grief-stricken widow and go home. You’ve come to Cairo and started digging. You’ve gone to Stanley Bertolli, an officer of the Agency, for help. Why don’t you figure out how long it took for the Agency to find out exactly where you were and what you were up to?”

“Stan didn’t tell anyone,” she said quickly.

“Do you really believe that?” He gave her a moment to come up with an answer, then said, “Listen, I’m not saying Stan Bertolli isn’t decent, but he’s first and foremost an Agency man. He may not even know what’s going on, but he’s certainly going to follow procedure. It’s in his DNA. His father was CIA, too, you know.”

She didn’t know—he’d never talked about his family, which probably should have told her something. She stared into a space just to his left, a bit of wallpaper, wondering if she could believe this stranger. Stan had been so worried about discovery—and this man, who was he? Kiraly thought he wasn’t who he claimed to be, but maybe the Hungarian was wrong. Weren’t they all liars? “Did you talk to Emmett about this?”

“I didn’t have a chance.”

“You never talked to Emmett?”

He hesitated. “Your husband was dead before I could talk to him.”

Who was lying? Why would Kiraly make it up? “And who are you?”

“I told you, I’m Bureau. We cooperate with our friends in the Agency, but we are quite separate.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, who are
you
? What’s your stake in this?”

He blinked at her, as if stunned by her question. “Well, a man was murdered, Sophie. One of our people. And it turns out that another section of our government is responsible. It’s sort of my job to be worried about this kind of thing.”

She straightened now, feeling the anger bubble up inside her but trying to keep it under control. She was sick of people being vague and handing her outright lies. “Connect the dots for me,” she told Michael Khalil. “Show me how this puts my life in danger.”

“Connect the dots?” he said, opening his hands. Impatient again. “Okay, Sophie. It’s this way. Your husband wanted to blow the whistle on Stumbler. If he’d done that, it would have been a major embarrassment for the Agency. A disaster. So they got rid of him. His wife—you, Sophie—has not disappeared like she’s supposed to. She’s slipped her handlers and run off to Cairo, presumably to uncover who killed her husband. Do you really think the Agency’s going to sit around and wait for you to connect them to that Albanian thug?”

“Where
is
the connection?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Go ahead, then. If you’ve got all the damned answers, then hand them over.”

Michael Khalil leaned forward, face close to the crack in the door, and she could smell garlic on his breath. His eyes were big and veined. “Someone like Gjergj Ahmeti, he’s a ghost. You won’t find his name in any records. He’s hired for specific jobs, paid in cash, then sent on his way. So you won’t find a paper trail—the best you can do is find a person who knows what the Agency is up to. The best you can do is track down Jibril Aziz.”

“And how, pray tell, am I going to do that?”

“Let me in, and we’ll discuss it.”

“No,” she said.

“You’re being childish. You saw my badge. I just want to come to an arrangement, Sophie.”

There was noise up the corridor, and he glanced back. She soon saw what he saw—a laughing couple, maybe a little drunk. Germans muttering in slurred accents to one another, his hand on her ass. They paused in their revelry to eyeball Khalil and the slice of Sophie they could see. They passed, but before he could speak again three men arrived in the corridor—Germans, again—singing “Hände zum Himmel.” Khalil, clearly frustrated, turned back to her and whispered, “Let’s meet in the morning. Okay? You’re nervous—I understand that. So I’ll meet you for breakfast downstairs. Agreed?”

She nodded.

“What time?”

She thought,
At nine thirty I get on a plane and leave all of this behind
. “Ten o’clock,” she said, smiling the way Zora had taught her to do when she was lying. “I’m sleeping late tomorrow.”

He hesitated again, brow furrowing, then nodded sharply. “I’ll be waiting.”

4

As she had done in Budapest, she was going to walk. She’d come here urged by an overwhelming sense of guilt, hoping to find anyone—Zora or Stan or Jibril—who could assure her that she was not responsible for Emmett’s murder. No one was able to assure her of anything. Instead, everything was ballooning out of control. She had entered the realm of coups d’état, of deceit, of murder, of the desert. She wondered where Jibril really was now, maybe living some thrilling and terrifying existence among desperate men fighting for their lives, while back in Alexandria—the Virginian Alexandria—his pregnant wife worried herself sick about him.

That image, as much as anything else, convinced her that she was making the right decision. Emmett had gotten caught up in boys’ games. She had, too, for more than a year, but she’d survived her childish phase and come out the other side. It was time to go home.

She set the alarm on her phone for seven and showered and climbed into bed wearing her last pair of clean underwear. By nine thirty, she would be on the plane. Then she would be in Boston. She turned off the light and closed her eyes. And saw:

A leg kick-kicking in the dirt.

Jackbooted soldiers throwing babies into the air.

Her own voice:
It’s mercy. He’ll starve.

A man screaming behind a filthy gag.

The banging that woke her brought immediate terror, for the dream had followed her into the blackness of the hotel room, and the banging on her door had the ring of a boot heel kicking against one of those heavy Yugoslav front doors.

A familiar voice: “Mrs. Kohl? Mrs. Kohl, I must speak to you.”

She clawed at the darkness until she found the switch for the bedside lamp. She gasped for breath, assuring herself that she was the only person in the room.

Thump, thump, thump
. “Mrs. Kohl?”

It was Omar Halawi—she would know that hesitant accent anywhere. “A minute,” she said, then wrapped herself in a hotel robe. He ceased his banging, and in the spy hole she saw him, fisheyed, standing rigid, hands behind his back. She opened the door, forgetting the latch, and read the surprise in his face before understanding the reason. Why was he surprised? It was two in the morning—he was lucky she wasn’t naked.

He said, “Mrs. Kohl—”

“Wait,” she cut in, raising a hand. “You don’t have to worry, okay? I’m out of here in the morning. I’ve had enough.”