The Cairo Affair (17 page)

“Unlike in a family,” she said, her eyes locked on him, no longer taunting.

“Right,” he said, then paused before going on. The lies about his job hadn’t been required—he’d just been asked to avoid advertising his real position at the embassy. She was waiting. “So I applied with Global Security, and a few years later I was sent here.”

“Global
Security
?” Maribeth placed the coffee cup on the table, her eyes slitted. “You’re a
contractor
? Like that—that guy in Pakistan?”

He nodded.

“Well, damn,” she said, almost a whisper.

Before she could go on, there was a knock at the door, and as she went to get it John finished his toast, wondering how to escape. He had no idea how this revelation was affecting her, and, given the way he was feeling, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out right now. Then he heard the newcomer’s voice: “My
love
!” It was Geert Rutte, a Dutch media consultant, another Deals regular. John didn’t feel he had much choice in the matter—he got up and went out to say hello.

Despite being near fifty, Geert dressed like a hipster, with thick-framed black glasses and bowling shoes, and was full of overabundant, meaningless smiles. He also maintained an absolute indifference to the feelings of others—empathy had never been part of his upbringing. “John! What a surprise!”

“Morning, Geert.”

“Is it still morning? Maribeth, is it still morning?”

“I think it’s early afternoon,” she said, smiling at John.

“Yet this is a wonderful coincidence, John, for I have two propositions for you!”

“Do you see my face?” John asked him.

“Yes, John. I do.”

“How does it look?”

“Pale. Well, paler than usual. It’s hard to tell with you people.”

“I’m hungover. So please talk quietly.”

Geert’s eyebrows rose. “Ahh,” he said before lowering to a whisper. “I have two propositions for you, John.” He wandered in, sniffing the air. “Is that coffee?”

“Would you like some?” asked Maribeth.

“Of course.”

They all went to the kitchen, and as she poured another cup, Geert sat in Maribeth’s chair and bit into a slice of her toast. “My propositions.”

“Perhaps you could just spit them out,” said John.

“The first one is an investment opportunity.”

“Do I look like I have money?”

Geert paused, staring in shock. “You don’t?”

“Well, not enough to invest in anything.”

“But you have a job. With the American embassy.”

“I also have an ex-wife and two children.”

“That’s criminal.”

“It is what it is. What’s the second proposition?”

“Don’t you want to know what kind of investment?”

“What’s the point?”

Maribeth placed a fresh coffee in front of Geert. “Doesn’t anyone want to offer me an investment?”

“Do
you
have money?” Geert asked her.

“Not really.”

Geert shrugged elaborately, then came out with one of his ubiquitous smiles.

“What’s the second proposition?” asked John.

Geert finally looked at his coffee. “Milk?”

“It’s next to the plate,” Maribeth said, giving John a quick grin.

As he poured the milk, Geert said, “Now that I know you’re poor, the second proposition might be more interesting. A part-time job making conversation with pretty Egyptian girls.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Conversational English. That’s all they want. Thirty euros an hour, and they pay for the tea.”

“Who are these Egyptian girls?”

“And why am I being passed over again?” Maribeth demanded.

“Because,” Geert told her, “you are a woman. And no,” he added, holding up a finger, “I’m not ashamed I said that. John,” he continued, turning away from her, “they’re
women,
not girls. Married, as well. To members of the protest movement. They know their husbands’ stars are rising, so they’re desperate to look good and speak well when faced with foreign diplomats. With English, they will be prepared for most situations.”

John shook his head. After Libya, this felt ridiculous. He imagined sitting in the Marriott or Arabica or Starbucks with an Egyptian housewife discussing beaches and servants and diplomats’ wives, then being asked, “And what do
you
do for a living, Mr. Calhoun?”

“I’m not sure,” he said as Geert took another bite of Maribeth’s toast.

“It’s the easiest job in the world, John. And they want you.”

“There are thousands of native English speakers in town.”

“Me, for example,” said Maribeth.

Geert shrugged. “But most of them are not American blacks.”

Maribeth looked at John, who said, “Neither are most English-speaking diplomats, Geert.”

“Maybe they want to speak the jive to your president,” Geert said, and when neither of them gave him a smile of encouragement he shrugged again. “I can’t explain the inner workings of the Egyptian female mind. I never will be able to. All I know is that when I described you to Mrs. Abusir, she perked up as if I had shocked her toe. She told me—in confidence, mind—that she was sure the other wives would
love
to meet you. But don’t tell her I told you this.”

“Tell her thanks, but I’m not interested.”

“Really?” Geert looked surprised. He believed he had sold it well. “Maybe when you feel better, you’ll change your mind. How many tequilas did you have?”

“I need to go to the embassy,” John said, rising to his feet. He thanked Maribeth for the breakfast, then slipped on his holster in the bedroom. As he was pulling on his jacket, Geert appeared in the doorway.

“You should watch it,” the Dutchman told him. “Too much tequila and you’ll end up in jail. You don’t want to see the inside of an Egyptian prison.”

“Maybe you’re right, Geert.”

“You’ll end up like Raymond Davis.”

Raymond Davis was the contractor Maribeth had been thinking about. A month before, he had been arrested for shooting two Pakistanis in Lahore, and it had blown up into large-scale protests all over that country, demanding his execution. Raymond Davis’s situation had terrified everyone in the contractor community.

“And if you’re in jail,” Geert said, “what will poor Mrs. Abusir do?”

6

From Maribeth’s building on Hussein Basha Al Meamari, he walked to Talaat Harb Square, a large yet elegant intersection of six streets circling the statue of Talaat Harb, economist and banker. He kept an eye out for shadows but saw nothing, worrying that his roughshod brain wasn’t up to the challenge. Yet as he continued down the street toward Tahrir Square, it occurred to him that perhaps he’d had it wrong. Perhaps—and he briefly felt a sense of warm relief at the prospect—the two men outside his place had been watching someone else in the building. He didn’t talk to his neighbors, but he wasn’t the only foreigner on that leafy Zamalek street. By the time he’d made it through Tahrir and was entering Garden City, the charm of this thought had gone a ways toward relieving his headache.

The air—fresher on the weekend—was also doing him a world of good. He reached the embassy on Tawfik Diab Street and gave his passport to one of the local guards, a conscript with the Central Security Forces, which was responsible for, among other things, guarding embassies. The Egyptian glanced at the passport, then took a good look at John’s face. “You are in bad shape, no?”

“Not as bad as I look,” he answered unconvincingly.

There were a few extra marines posted on the grounds, looking hard yet serene. They didn’t bother asking his condition.

Another guard stopped him just inside the door, and once he’d stated his intention John removed his Glock and handed it over. The guard didn’t seem surprised by the pistol, just took it over to a steel cabinet and put it into a locked drawer. Then John handed over his keys, phone, and change, stepped through the metal detector, collected everything again, and went to the far window, where he told the doorman, Eric, where he would be. Eric was maybe twenty-five, from Wyoming, and was losing a battle with psoriasis. He had a remarkable memory for the hundreds of faces that passed him each day. “Haven’t seen you since Wednesday, Mr. Calhoun.”

“Even wage slaves get a day off now and then.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“They’ve got you on weekend shift?”

“Anything and everything for the Man.”

He took an elevator to the fifth floor, which was officially part of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Section, but in reality the primary offices for CIA in Egypt. While Stan Bertolli, his direct boss, controlled five primary agents, he was still just a submanager. John knew of three others—Jennifer Cary, Dennis Schwarzkopf, and Terry Alderman—but he didn’t know the sizes of their staffs. Add in the agents who never actually came to the embassy, living instead as foreign businessmen in the city, as well as the local assets, paid and coerced, and Harry Wolcott’s little empire likely numbered more than a hundred souls. Today John saw half a dozen faces he’d never been introduced to. They gave him gruff nods on their ways to the communal coffee machines before heading back to their cubicles to keep track of whatever they kept track of. John supposed they were looking into the death of the deputy consul in Hungary, but he wasn’t about to ask. He knew his place.

Stan’s office was locked, but there was an open anteroom beside it with an old desktop computer, solely for reports. A sticker on the monitor informed him that it could be used for information up to
SECRET
. In fact, the machine wiped itself clean whenever anyone logged out, and so each time John logged in he was faced with a gutted computer. It wasn’t connected to the Internet, but reports were sent to other computers via Ethernet lines after logging out. That is, he would write his report, list the recipients, and press
SEND
, but only once he had logged out would the computer send the report on before erasing it locally. This, he had been assured, represented the highest achievement in data security.

His identifier was LAX942, which was automatically used in place of his name on the report. The date, “March 05 2011,” and location, “Embassy, Cairo,” were also filled in by the computer, so the first space for him to type in was labeled “Operational classification.”

He thought about that a moment. In other reports, the subject had been self-explanatory: Agent Meet, Surveillance, Courier. He decided on Transport.

Security Classification: Secret.

Subject: Jibril Aziz.

Below was a blank space without the aid of directions. Here, then, was where he was to explain a failure that had cost the life of an American agent. He began with the particulars of the operation, the orders he’d received, and the pickup at the Semiramis. He described the route they’d taken and the stop in Marsa Matrouh, including the meeting with the man in the red-checked ghutra, their movement through the border, and Jibril’s purchase of the Kalashnikov.

He spent some time on their disagreement over the road they were to take, even admitting to having believed Jibril’s traffic excuse. “However,” he wrote, “once Mr. Aziz met a contact in Al `Adam, it became obvious that his reasons were not limited to our narrow timeframe. Traffic was less a reason than an excuse.”

“Hey, John,” he heard. Stan Bertolli was approaching, a laptop bag hanging from his shoulder.

John gave him a nod.

Stan frowned at his face. “Harry putting you through the ringer?”

A ripple of worry passed through him—Harry had told him to keep his Libyan trip quiet, yet all Stan had to do was take three steps forward and peer over his shoulder to get a good idea of what had been going on. John considered replying, but feared that anything he said would be an invitation to approach, so he just shrugged.

“That the report?”

John tensed, then nodded.

After a moment’s uncomfortable silence, Stan unlocked his office and went inside. John exhaled and, after staring blankly at the screen for a few seconds, gathered his wits enough to get back to it.

He described the contact, but realized that the description was too wordy and deleted it in favor of “a tall man, dark-skinned, in traditional Bedouin dress.” Though he nearly put it into words, he avoided mention of the leather book that he had promised to burn.

By then the sentences were flowing and, as if he had been taken again by the anxiety of the events he was remembering, his fingers flew over the keyboard as he described that last stretch of road that led to the bandits. He brought up the conversation about their families and even Jibril’s explanation of his obsession, via his father’s tragic murder, before remembering that he had lied to Harry about what Jibril had shared. So he deleted that paragraph. Then they were at the Toyota truck. He paused, closed his eyes, and tried to see it all again. He slowed it down, smelled the dry, cool wind, saw the bright green bandannas on their sunbaked heads, squinted into the darkening sky, and heard
Fuck you English!
Then he typed.

Stan

1

They shared the same bed, but he did not consume her. It was too soon for that, he knew, though it was a struggle to convince his hand on her hip to remain where it lay. She was there with him, but a part of her was still with Emmett and would be for a very long time. Hadn’t that always been true? Yes—but now, Emmett Kohl had graduated from cuckoldry to sainthood, and that would not blow over quickly. She fell quickly to sleep, proving that they were not really strangers, or perhaps it only proved how exhausted she was. Either way, he was left staring at the smooth curve of her shoulder rising out of the sheet, asking himself if just one small bite would wake her.

He wondered how many nights his father had lain in Italian beds, unable to sleep for all the clashing thoughts in his head. Though he had shared some things with his son, Paolo Bertolli had preferred to avoid discussions of dirty reality, detailing only his moments of glory—the afternoon in early 1978 when he wore a wire to a meeting to plan the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the intelligence he passed on about the location of the kidnapped Brigadier General James Dozier in 1981, and the 1983 arrest of Vanni Mulinaris. Nothing about how he had learned to sleep when the fear was eating him up, leading to a midlife of chronic ulcers that had required three separate surgeries. His mother, when she had chosen to speak of his father at all, told Stan that he wept in his sleep. Unforgivingly, she would say, “And what kind of a man does that?”