The Cairo Affair (7 page)

“I was hoping you might have something to share,” he said, quite reasonably.

But he didn’t know who he was dealing with. “I wish I did,” she said. “Emmett was very quiet about his work.”

“If you do think of something…”

“Of course, Mr. Kiraly. I won’t hesitate to call you. I appreciate what you’ve already done.”

“I’ve done nothing, Mrs. Kohl.”

“But you—”

“
I
have done nothing for you. You understand?”

The slow-witted widow suddenly understood. “I’m sorry you couldn’t help me.”

“As am I, Mrs. Kohl. Have a pleasant evening.”

6

It turned out that Fiona Vale had no plans to leave her alone, and when, at six, Ray showed up to give more condolences, Fiona served the meal Glenda had spent the day cooking: coq au vin with herbed rice and grilled zucchini. Sophie had never imagined that Glenda knew her way around a kitchen, but it turned out that she was an excellent cook.

What Sophie wanted was to ask Ray about Jibril Aziz and his connection to Emmett. Presumably, Emmett had been meeting Aziz on consul business. Yet all through dinner she couldn’t think of a way to ask without betraying Andras Kiraly, who had stuck his neck out for her.

What to do with this information? She tried sidewinding queries. “Ray, was Emmett meeting with anyone out of the ordinary recently?”
No, Sophie. Why do you ask?
“Ray, did Emmett share any personal worries with you, like—I don’t know—about debts he might not have mentioned to me?”
Emmett was the most fiscally sound man I’ve ever known
. “To tell the truth,” she lied, “I thought that maybe he had gotten tangled up in something. I don’t know—something illicit?” A surprised look, then a slow shake of the head.
Forget it, Sophie. Emmett was clean, absolutely upstanding. And unlike a lot of the guys we work with, he never even looked at another woman.
That one hurt.

Finally, she excused herself and ran upstairs to find the slip of paper where she’d written Jibril Aziz’s name in capitals. It wasn’t the way she usually wrote, for she had wanted it to be perfectly legible. She took the paper downstairs and, as Glenda and Fiona watched in silence, handed it to Ray. He took it, read it, and looked up at her blankly. She said, “I found this in Emmett’s things. In one of his jackets,” the lie becoming more specific as the words came out. “The gray one. Why does Emmett have an Arab’s name in his jacket?”

“Gosh, Sophie. I don’t know.” He actually said
gosh.
“But it could be anything, couldn’t it? Maybe he’s a friend.”

She wanted to say,
He’s an American spy, you condescending shit,
but said, “Do you know the name?”

When he shook his head, she realized that she didn’t really know Raymond Bennett. She knew Glenda’s perception of him—sturdy but weak-willed, an easy man to cheat on—but she didn’t know
him.
It was easy to forget that he was a consul, an important man. It was easy to forget what that job might entail. It was easy to underestimate him. Then she wondered if he was someone she should fear. She’d been frightened by very few people in her life; since Yugoslavia, most people hadn’t measured up. Maybe this was someone who could measure up.

It wasn’t until after dinner, once she had convinced Glenda to go home with her husband and Fiona had finally headed off to sleep, that she had a chance to be alone with the threads weaving through her head.

What did she have?

She had men who looked like terrorists but might not be. One of them was a CIA agent who met with Emmett, twice.

She had Emmett, who had been too strong and too good to be blackmailed by Zora Balašević. She’d had no idea he could be such a hero. She certainly was not.

She had American spies who smiled diplomats’ smiles and a kind-faced Hungarian spy who knew she had information and hoped that she would eventually share it.

What she had—all she
really
had—was a name, Jibril Aziz, and like the rest of the world she went to Google to assist her investigations. She would have used Emmett’s laptop, but it was no longer by the bed; she had no idea where it was. She turned on her iPad and began typing on its smooth screen.

There were many Jibril Azizes, she learned. They were on Facebook, on dating and gaming sites, and they had their own LinkedIn pages. But none of these looked right. They were young men, comfortable with sharing their lives online. No, Emmett’s Jibril Aziz would have been elsewhere—or, more likely, nowhere.

Almost nowhere.

For when she added “CIA” to the search, on the third page of results she came across something that made her throat choke up. A Dutch hacker had set up an automated blog to index and tag all the material contained in WikiLeaks, the infamous organization that had, over the previous year or so, leaked hundreds of thousands of classified cables and e-mails to the world at large. In the automated list, Jibril Aziz appeared on one entry among a thousand others:

AMEMBASSY CAIRO to SECSTATE WASHDC: FALSE PREDICTIONS RE: STUMBLER. (
link
) TAGS:
AE/STUMBLER
,
Africa
,
ALF
,
American
,
Arab
,
China
,
CNPC
,
Frank Ingersoll
,
Geneva
,
IFG
,
Jabal al Akhdar
,
Jibril Aziz
,
Libya
,
London
,
Muammar Gadhafi
,
Muslim
,
Paris
,
Revolutionary Guard
,
Rome
,
Washington
,
WRAL

She followed the link and was rerouted to WikiLeaks.org, where she found herself in a section called “Cablegate: 250,000 US Embassy Diplomatic Cables,” faced with a communiqué from December 2009, more than a year ago. It was the first of three cables dealing with something called Stumbler, but a search proved that the other two cables were not available.

She read it once, then sent it to the wireless laser printer in the closet and read it again. December 2009: She and Emmett had been in Cairo when the embassy worked on Stumbler—an operation, it seemed, that had originated with one Jibril Aziz. Which meant, she supposed, that Emmett had been working on it as well.

She took the printout to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of rosé from a half-sized Napa Valley bottle. As she was reading it a third time a voice said, “What’s that?”

She nearly dropped her glass.

Fiona grinned. “Sorry. Just saw the light.”

Instinctively, she folded the paper and slipped it into the pocket of her robe. “Old stuff. Memories.”

Fiona nodded mournfully. “I can’t imagine.”

“Maybe not,” Sophie said, “but thanks.” Then, “By the way, have you seen Emmett’s computer? It was in the bedroom.”

“I meant to tell you. Mr. Strauss took it. For the investigation. I’ve got a receipt around here somewhere.”

“I see,” she said, but she wasn’t thinking of the laptop. She was thinking of tomorrow, for while reading the secret cable it had dawned on her that she wasn’t going with Emmett back to Boston. She wasn’t going to sit around dealing with Glenda. She wasn’t going to do anything that she’d done before in her life. Emmett had been too good and too strong, and so she would try to at least be something better than what she had been.

She returned to bed and picked up her cell phone, again turning it on. It was three thirty in the morning, and there were twenty-eight missed calls. Mother, father, friends, unknown numbers, and, twice, Stan Bertolli. Dependable Stan. She pressed the green button to call her old lover in Cairo.

7

Not surprisingly, Glenda was amenable to morning drinks, though when Sophie told her where they were going she paused, silence over the line, wondering if grief had driven her friend mad. “But it’s full of
Hungarians,
” she whispered.

“It’s full of people who don’t know me.”

“Ahh…”

It was a real fear, but not for the reason Glenda suspected.

When she told Fiona that she was going out with Glenda, her babysitter frowned. “You think that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s an excellent idea. For the next week I’m not going to be able to get away from anyone—family, press, police—and right now, while it’s still calm, I’m going to have a drink and a chat with my best friend.”

“Your plane’s at three forty-five.”

“And everything’s packed. I’ll come back a little tipsy, and you’ll guide me into the taxi. Really, Fee. Don’t worry.”

Eventually, she nodded her acquiescence, as if with Emmett’s murder she had become Sophie’s mother. “Shall I come along?”

“I’m a big girl.”

“At least tell me where you’ll be, in case there’s some emergency.”

“Menza, in Liszt Ferenc,” she said, her fifth or sixth lie of the day.

The paparazzi had finally arrived, but it was a small contingent—two photographers lounging with cigarettes in the sharp cold just outside the gate to the apartment building. When she came out to climb into Glenda’s car, they snapped photos, and she wondered if later those photos would be requisitioned by the authorities, the last record of Sophie Kohl before she disappeared. Of course, the Budapest airport was full of cameras, and so was Cairo, but these clear, professional shots would be far more useful for the newspapers or some missing persons circular.

She slammed the passenger door behind herself. Glenda, behind the wheel, said, “Well, aren’t
you
all dolled up?”

“You want to drive?”

Glenda put the car in gear, and they began to move, leaving the photographers behind. “You’re not thinking of throwing yourself at some Magyar, are you? Because it’s a losing proposition.”

She went on, but Sophie was hardly hearing her. Instead, she was inventorying what she’d stuffed into her shoulder bag. Passport, credit cards, euros and forints, phone, iPad, address book, four pairs of clean panties, tissues, antibacterial lotion, aspirin, perfume, and the burgundy lipstick that Stan once said he loved. And, folded into quarters, the WikiLeaks cable: Aziz and Stumbler. She was thinking of chronology—the flight she’d reserved online early that morning left at three thirty-five, only ten minutes before the Boston flight, but she couldn’t risk Fiona staying with her at the airport. She could only hope that of all the places Fiona Vale would think to look for her, the airport would be her last choice.

She was thinking of logistics. She wasn’t thinking of Zora Balašević, Jibril Aziz, or even poor Emmett. She was trying not to think of Stan, but was only partly successful, for when she had called him at three thirty that morning she’d noted the doubt in his voice. Would he be there, and if so would he be alone? She kept flashing back on their hotel room, and the particular nuances of his bed etiquette. Stan, unlike Emmett, was extremely oral.

With shocking appropriateness, Glenda’s voice broke through. “And they’re a
mess
when it comes to cunnilingus. I don’t know what it is, maybe all that paprika they eat.”

“You’re unfair, Glen.”

She gave Sophie a sidelong glance as she took a turn, but didn’t bother replying.

Bitch Lounge was on Üllői Avenue, Budapest’s longest street, which headed straight out to the airport down a corridor of sooty Habsburg buildings. The front door was half buried in the sidewalk, with a small, unassuming banner beside it. Glenda was right—though an influx of gay-scene foreigners attracted by the lounge atmosphere and drag shows had been changing the place, it was still largely Hungarian. And at that time, eleven thirty in the morning, it was mostly empty.

The bartender was a prim young man who spoke spotty English. He brought their Cosmos to a zebra-print sofa along the brick wall. Over the speakers Édith Piaf sang “Non, je ne regrette rien.”

“What time’s your flight?” Glenda asked, momentarily throwing her, but she meant the one Sophie wouldn’t be on.

“Three forty-five.”

“I’ll lay odds I can manage a ticket. Consul’s wife and all that. We can cause a drunken ruckus.”

Sophie grinned. “No. Please. I’m hoping to catch up on sleep.”

“Thatta girl.”

“But right now,” she said, “I’d like you to open up to me.”

Glenda arched a brow—only she could arch one that way. “I thought we were drinking.”

Sophie leaned close and rubbed Glenda’s knee through her slacks. “Tell me what Ray’s been saying.”

“About what?”

“About what do you think?”

The brow relaxed and Glenda shifted, her knee slipping out from under Sophie’s hand. “Well, first of all, he’s devastated. You know how crazy he was about Emmett.”

“Yes, of course he is, Glenda. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What
are
you talking about?”

She was talking about CIA agents; she was talking about terrorists; she was talking about an operation called Stumbler. She said, “I’m talking about the investigation.”

“Oh,
that,
” Glenda said. She took a sip of her drink, looked at it, then took another sip before setting it on the table. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

Sophie waited.

“They found him.”

“Who?”

“The man.” She held Sophie’s gaze. “The killer.”

Her vision went a little fuzzy. “When?”

“Yesterday. Morning, I think. They don’t
have
him, not in custody, but they got his picture on CCTV at Keleti Station—he took the Munich train.”